I Heart The Earth

I think today's my day to write...or maybe that was yesterday.

Jen brought up a good point yesterday about people not owning up to our impact on climate change. Sadly, most of these people are fundamental Christians. I'm not sure if it's an active denial, (after all, I'm sure these are signs of the end times, and why not help them along?), or whether they are just that ignorant. A lot of them believe God gave us the earth to do what we will, and take care of it. This is taking care of it? And even if hypothetically there was no global warming, why is it such an insane idea to actually take care of our home, just in case we do contribute to something worse. The whole thing reminds me of a scene from I Heart Huckabees. I've referenced it before, but I'm actually going to give you the transcript this time.

Setup: Albert and Tommy are at Steven's house, investigating several coincidences between Albert and Steven. Steven was adopted by an American family, and brought over from Sudan.

Mother: What do you do?

Albert: I'm the director of the Open Spaces Coalition. We fight suburban sprawl.

Daughter: What's suburban sprawl?

Father: Ask Steven. He could have used a little suburban sprawl in Sudan.

Daughter: Excuse me, dad?

Father: Industry, houses, jobs, restaurants, medicine...

Albert: You can preserve a lot of open spaces and have jobs for people with...

Father: I beg your pardon, Albert. I wasn't finished.

Albert: Sorry, sir.

Father: Clothes, videos, toys, cheeseburgers, cars,a functioning economy.

Albert: You can still have a functioning economy and preserve open spaces With a little planning.

Father: Yeah. - Socialism. Complete disaster.

Albert: Theodore Roosevelt was a socialist? And Yeats? -

Father: Theodore Roosevelt...

Albert: Henry David Thoreau, Robinson Jeffers, the National Geographic Society, all socialists?

Father: You're talking about socialism.

Albert: Oh, I'm not. I'm talking about not covering every square inch with houses and strip malls, until you can't remember what happens when you stand in a meadow at dusk.

Son: What happens in the meadow at dusk?

Albert: Everything.

Parents: Nothing!

Albert: Everything! It's beautiful, it's beautiful.

Father: I Work for an electrical engineering firm, son. We do a lot of commercial and residential contracts. If development stops, so does my paycheck. Then Steven couldn't be here as our guest, could he? So your ideas hurt Steven.

Albert: I'm not hurting Steven. That's an outrageous accusation.

Father: Don't use that tone of voice in my house.

Albert: I think you started that tone. And I think it's entirely possible for your engineering firm to have jobs for people, preserve open spaces, have contracts, do the...

Father: Do you have a job, Tom?

Tommy: I'm a firefighter.

Mother: Oh, God bless you. A hero.

Tommy: I'm not a hero. We'd all be heroes if we quit using petroleum though.

Mother: Excuse me?

Tommy: You say you're Christians living by Jesus' principles. Are you?

Daughter: Jesus is never mad at us if we live with him in our hearts.

Tommy: I hate to break it to you, but he is. He most definitely is.

Mother: All right. That's enough. Steven, I don't know what this is about. Why they're here...

Steven: Sorry, Mom. Sorry, dad. I did not know.

Father: Stevo, I'm so disappointed.

Mother: It's all right. Look, he's sad. He's sad.

Father: I'm sorry, Stevo. My bad. You didn't know.

Tommy: You should be ashamed of yourself.

Father: I should be what?

Tommy: You should be ashamed of yourself.

Father: Why should I be ashamed?

Tommy: You're a hypocrite.

Father: I'm a what?

Tommy: You're misleading these children. 'Cause you're the destroyer, man.

Father: How am I the destroyer?

Tommy: I saw that S.U. V. Out there.

Father: My car's the destroyer? You wanna know how many miles per gallon I get?

Albert: Steven, I need to ask a question. It's why I came here. Why are autographs so important to you?

Steven: It is a pastime with this family which they have taught me, which I can now carry on.

Mother:It's just for fun [Game Beeping] - for entertainment. No games at the table, please.

Son: Yes! 260! And I've reached the omega level!

Tommy: Destroyer. Destroyer. Destroyer.

Father: God gave us oil.! He gave it to us.! How can God's gift be bad?

Tommy: He gave you a brain too and you messed that up pretty good...

Father: I want you sons of bitches out of my house now.

Tommy: If Hitler were alive, he'd tell you not to think about oil.

Father: You're the Hitler! We took a Sudanese refugee into our home!

Tommy: You did. But how did Sudan happen, ma'am? Could it possibly be related to dictatorships that we support for some stupid reason?

Mother: You shut up! You get out. -

Tommy: You shut up. Come on. Let's get out of here.

Albert: Later, Steve.

So much for a short post.

As spread out as the US is, I don't think we'll be able to adopt any type of train system. I would love to have a hybrid car, but I can't afford a new car right now - and there is no public transportation in Lake City. So until I save some money to get a new car, regrettably I will still be contributing to the downfall of our environment - at least I can carry the guilt that goes along with it.

Blog changes and public transportation

I have the honor this week of announcing a few changes in BlogSupergroup! After a long series of emails among each other, we’re going to be adding some new regular bloggers and creating space for some guest bloggers as well. Our guest bloggers will include a few names you’ll recognize as regular contributors in our blog and comments sections as well as some new faces. I’ll let these people introduce themselves with their first post.

I will, though, introduce a new regular blogger, Martin, who went to school with Glenn and me and currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. Martin has a lot of interesting stuff to say, and certainly adds a different point of view to the blog. Now that I’ve vouched for him, he has to come through or I’ll loose face with these 'friends of ours' (or maybe I’ve been watching too many mob movies lately). Hope you enjoy the changes, and we’ll always take feedback. There will be another addition to regular bloggers later in the week as well.

Now to the topic of the week…

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I was talking with a friend recently about one of our favorite topics (especially now that Sopranos has ended), climate change. We agreed that one way to help the problem is to encourage people to use public transportation more often instead of their personal vehicles. When we talked about how to do this, however, he called me a Republican and threatened to end our relationship. Good naturedly, I assure you. :)

I happen to live in a city with a very good and safe transportation (compared to a lot of other places) that I use everyday, so it’s hard for me to step back and see these things from the point of view of someone who chooses to drive themselves rather than use the subways, buses, or trains when they’re available. Full disclosure: I own a car that I park on the street and use exclusively on the weekends to either leave town for a weekend trip or to do grocery shopping and Target runs in Virginia.

The first thing most of us consider is to make driving for regular commuters cost prohibitive. I worry, though, that too many changes would make owning a car impossible for any but the rich, especially in urban environments. Raising the price of parking and car taxes mostly hurts people who live in the city and probably already take public transportation because they’re already close to where they need to go. I’m probably one of the only people who think that rising gas prices are not a terrible thing (although, I’ll admit that I do complain about them when I stop every month or two to fill up). However, they don’t seem to do much in the way of encouraging drivers to find other ways to get where they need to go. So what would?

London instituted a commuter tax in 2003, when I happened to be there studying for a semester. There was a big uproar, naturally, from the people who would have to pay 5 pounds every day to enter the city, but most of the media seemed to be in favor of it. I laughed with snarky glee at some of the editorials that lambasted the opponents of the tax as rich suburban snobs who were too stuck-up to endure a ride into town surrounded by their fellow citizens. But honestly, I laughed because I didn’t have a car in London and took subways, buses, and long walks to wherever I needed/wanted to go. This commuter tax idea was mentioned in Washington not long ago, but died quickly and without a whimper. Could something like this ever pass in the US? And is it even working in Britain ?

Obviously, increasing the availability of public transportation is essential to promoting it. As long as people have an excuse not to use it, they won’t. Some of us, at certain points of our lives can make choices around this. For example, after college, two of my best friends asked me about moving to south Florida with them and sharing a house. I said no largely because I can’t stand the idea of having to drive down the interstate or a major highway just to stop by the store after work. I find south Florida, especially the Ft. Lauderdale area, to be too sprawling and inaccessible for my taste. Being fresh out of college and unemployed, I had the option to choose a more metropolitan area where things were close enough together to make public transportation feasible. But having that kind of freedom is not something that happens too many times in one’s life.

And what about places like San Francisco? I don’t have a link to back me up here, but I understand that they have a pretty good transit system, but most people drive anyway. Why?

What does it take to get people less reliant on their own transportation and more willing to use energy- and pollution-efficient public transportation? Will the federal government ever pass bans or limits that force people into taking better care? Or maybe I’m looking at this all wrong and there are better, easier ways to save our own hides (besides those $4 florescent light bulbs that Al Gore talked me into buying…grrrr)? What do you think?