television, cars, and cigarettes

In my travels through babylon over the last 10 months I have been surprised (perhaps naively) to find the prevalent usage of three items among progressively minded individuals: television, cigarettes, and cars.

Of the three, television, specifically cable or satellite television, is the least prevalent and its usage pretty much ends when you get further left then liberal on the political spectrum. Still, I find it surprising. Doesn't everyone not totally enmeshed in mainstream values recognize the destructiveness of network programing and commercials? I feel the desire to rant, but I'll stop myself because I'm pretty sure that any reasonably intelligent person, if they think about, can list ten reasons why television is a highly toxic element in society.

But, really, it's cigarettes and cars that shock me. Saying the health impacts of cigarettes are well known is an understatement. Millions of dollars of been spent in education campaigns, and millions more have been paid out in successful lawsuits against the tobacco industry. The existence of global climate change isn't even in debate in the mainstream public dialog at this point, only how quickly it's happening. And with every oil company expelled from Iraqi thirty years ago recently given no-bid contracts to set up shop with the Iraqi national oil infrastructure has yet to recover, it's pretty hard to argue that the war in Iraqi was for democracy and against terrorism. Again, I'll stop there. Everyone knows!

What gives? Why are you doing this to ourselves? How do we justify participating in these incredibly destructive activities? It's not like it's just somewhere on the other side of the world that the impacts are felt. It's all around us, it's in our minds and bodies! How is it possible that multitudes of otherwise caring, thoughtful, intelligent people are helping wreak havoc on the health of the world?

If humanity makes it through the next few hundred years without devolving into a tyrannical, pre-medieval society, or avoids simply wiping itself out all together, I believe it will be because there was some miraculous, large-scale shift in consciousness that motivated people to pull together and create a better world. In the history books, children will read about, as Marge Piercy calls it in her book Woman On The Edge of Time, the "age of greed and waste." They'll look at pictures of obese, haggard, sickly people inhaling toxic smoke, staring glassy eyed at an overwhelming barrage of mind-numbing images, and operating massively inefficient, energy intensive personal transportation devices while people around the world suffered and died from starvation, malnutrition, inadequate access to safe drinking water, environmental pollution, curable diseases, war and genocide...

The children will be asked, "what do you think drove these people to engage in these activities?" What will the answer be? Maybe we should start asking that question of ourselves and each other right now.

the cost of cars

Recently I did a big round of research into organizations and programs working towards sustainability, particularly urban sustainability. I signed up for various e-newsletters. One of them, Sustainlane, has been consistently infuriating me. Hardly better than "green washing" this notion that "green" consumerism will save the planet is at best ludicrous.

The last e-newsletter I got from Sustainlane asked the question , "Are hybrid cars really good for the environment?" I knew what my answer was, and I thought it a good sign that they were asking this question. The article went on from there like this:

"It depends on what you compare them to. Looking at the complete lifecycle of any product, let alone a car, from raw materials to eventual disposal or reuse is incredibly complicated. What's a poor information-starved enviro to do?"

Okay, this is looking good, I thought. For years I've been pointing out that if we're not also talking about the "complete lifecycle" of personal vehicles the question of how to fuel them is pointless. But as I read on, the article simply didn't go there. It was all about whether or not to drive small, fuel-efficient vehicles or hybrid, or whether or not Toyota's Prius or Honda's Hybrid Civic is better.

I couldn't take it. I wrote them the following letter.


Dear Editor:

I would like to see Sustainlane do an article on Are CARS really good for the environment? No matter what fuel source we're using, if we want to evaluate whether or not personal motorized vehicles are "sustainable" we have to consider several things.

We have to consider the energy and materials cost in extracting and processing materials used to produce them, as well as the energy cost in manufacturing. We also have to consider the energy and materials cost involved in creating and maintaining the roads and other infrastructure cars require. While we're at it we might want to consider the amount of human and animal deaths caused by cars and car accidents. And then there's the social cost of building human structures and settlements to accommodate car use.

Even fuel source must be considered. Electric or hydrogen are great ideas, but currently most of that energy is produced in nuclear or coal power plants. And there's no way we can produce enough biofuels to replace the amount of petroleum currently being consumed, unless we want to feed our cars at the expense of ourselves.

Studies and information detailing all of this is are out there. It is conveniently ignored by people who want to assuage their guilt by driving a hybrid or an old Nissan Sentra. Please don't enable this behavior. To actually reach sustainable levels of consumption and waste American's are going to have to make substantial changes to their lifestyles. Please, publish information that makes this reality evident and provides hope for the real solutions that exist.

in community,
Sky Blue
Portland, OR