Are You Green?
3 December, 2008
I got an interesting email from a close acquaintance yesterday. He came across this website and among other things, had this to say:
I had to suppress my vomit when I went to bikeuv.org and saw all that commuter rail crap neatly framed behind a picture of a beach cruiser. Man oh man. And the post about the NYT and more efficient cars? Oh, and what’s the link “sans automobiles” something or other? Are you in the Al Gore (we’ll be extinct in 10 years) camp or the Sheryl Crow (you can only use two squares of toilet paper) camp? Consider your answer carefully, because you might offend me and never ride on my V12 Malibu pulled to the lake by my V12 pickup truck when I rent a gas guzzling, CO2 emitting air conditioned house boat on lake powell
Considering his personality, the smiley, and taken in light of a previous conversation we had, I don’t think he was 100% serious. But his comment does highlight what I think are real misconceptions about cyclists and proponents of things as vomit-inducing as commuter rail. It got me thinking.
1. We’re not all tree-huggers — I have never watched “An Inconvenient Truth” or taken seriously anything Sheryl Crow says or sings.
2. We don’t all have a personal agenda against automobiles — I own two cars, but I do think a disproportionate amount of government money goes to car-centric transportation (how much did GM ask Washington for yesterday?).
3. We’re not all liberals — I don’t claim membership in either party. The truth is, I wish all railroad and highways could be privatized. It’s true, UTA and FrontRunner are state-sponsored, but in light of #2 above, I’ll take any alternative the state will give me.
4. We’re not all poor — Just because an adult in the U.S. chooses to get around on two wheels instead of four, or chooses commuter rail over driving alone in a car, doesn’t mean that he or she is not well off. For some reason people, Americans mostly, have the notion that a nice car equals wealth.
Here is the truth. I like the word “sustainable” a lot more than the word “green.” I like the thought of less cars on the road (that equals more room for V12 pickups which certainly have a place if you wish to drive one). Finally, there are a lot of people in the world who depend on bikes for transportation. I want to be one of them. I don’t think that’s weird.
If you’re reading this, you probably got here because you believe in bikes. But what are your thoughts? Have you ever been cast as a weirdo because you get around on a bike?
3 December, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Nice post. Yes, I think that there are others who think similar things about me as what your friend said to you (although I’ve never really had anyone hit me with it directly like your friend). When you live in Provo (which I did till 3 yrs ago) and decide to go “car-free”, that raises eyebrows. Some people thought I was nuts. Ultimately I decided I had to move to SLC in order to live a somewhat “normal” life without a car. Especially since I’m a single guy and dating in Provo without a car is DEFINITELY gonna reduce your options
Like you, I’m also not a member of either party, and I hate it when people try labeling one another as “conservative”, “liberal”, “Republican”, or “Democrat”. No one term can come close to defining me, and I think it’s sad, pathetic, and downright lazy of people to just define themselves as one of those so that they are absolved of thinking about the actual issues. “Oh I’m a Republican (or Democrat) so I guess I don’t need to think about the issues — I’ll just vote straight-ticket and let my fellow Republicans (or Democrats) take care of everything. Now back to watching American Idol…”.
I think we’d all be better off if we’d put down the partisanship and focus on the specific issues — especially at the community level. Sure, we’d still disagree on lots of stuff, but at least more people would be forced to look at different issues individually and would feel less coerced into swallowing an entire party line whole. I think we’d be very surprised to find that some people that disagree with us on one thing are on our side on others.
Oh, and one other thing that always bugs me about the whole “conservative/liberal” thing is that I think the terms are completely misapplied with regard to their actual meanings. For example, think about the words “conserve” and “liberal” for a minute. When I think of “conserve”, I think about (1) being careful, (2) conserving things that are of a limited quantity, and treating them as precious, (3) making plans and preparations to avoid future problems, (4) with regard to money, saving and spending well within your means rather than profligate spending. I could go on from there, but I think those illustrate where I’m trying to go with this.
With regard to transportation and energy issues, a true “conservative” would see that fossil energy supplies are finite and precious, and would not advocate for policies that encourage us to use lots of these resources, or tie us into long-term arrangements where we build our infrastructure on the assumption that we’ll always have plentiful and economical supplies of it (not to mention safe sources — i.e. coming from countries that don’t hate our guts). That hardly seems careful or conservative to me. It seems downright short-sighted and reckless. It seems to me that the “conservative” thing to do is advocate for policies that will help us conserve finite resources and organize our living arrangements around modes of transportation that conserve resources and have a much better chance of enduring the possibility (or likelihood, depending on your view) of a more energy-scarce future. With this in mind, what could be more “conservative” than making bicycling and mass transit more readily-available to the masses? And on the other hand, spending the vast majority of our capital on more capacity for automobiles at the expense of bikes/light rail/commuter rail/heavy rail and other relatively low-energy modes, seems like a very “liberal” and reckless thing to be doing.
Like you said, I’ve got nothing against cars in and of themselves. They are necessary and useful for some things. If I’m going to go to rural Utah for vacation, I’m going to rent a car to get there. Mass transit to Hanksville makes no sense. But the whole point of cities is supposed to be organizing things close to each other so that homes, goods, education, services, employment, recreation, arts, shopping, and everything else humans need is close to each other. It’s just more economical that way. Any city or town that is difficult (or dangerous) to get around in — and unfortunately a lot of places probably qualify nowadays — except by car is failing at the entire reason for having a city in the first place.
3 December, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Sorry to keep going, but I have to throw one more thing in here that, in my opinion, doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Some might read this and think “this has nothing to do with cycling”, but I think it does. The issue is our food — specifically how much of it is grown locally.
Let’s just take the Wasatch Front for an example. 20-30 years ago, most of Utah Valley was agricultural land. Some remnants of that still remain, mostly down in the Payson/West Mountain area (thank goodness the Allred Orchards apple and peach trees haven’t been plowed under for subdivisions yet!). But the population has increased a whole lot since then, with the result that lots of land has left agricultural production and been converted to industrial, commercial, or residential use.
To use the conservative/liberal analogy again, it seems “liberal” to me to put ourselves in a position where we depend heavily on importing basic human needs like food from more than a thousand miles away. What happens if Al Qaeda blows up the Saudi Arabian oil pipeline that carries oil from the Ghawar field (the largest producing oil field in the world) to it’s seaport tomorrow, oil prices spike, and all of a sudden it’s not economical for Wal-Mart to truck in fruits and veggies from California’s Central Valley anymore? Where do we then get our food? Might it then become apparent that it wasn’t so wise for us to create living arrangements predicated on the assumption that it’s safe for 2 million people to depend on a food supply chain that is 1,000 miles away?
This issue is so far off of the mainstream radar that you never hear it even discussed in government circles. The only place I ever hear anything of the sort being discussed is in church (I am LDS) when we talk about food storage and emergency prep. Now, I believe it’s a good idea to have personal and family food storage, but wouldn’t it be even better if we had community food storage in the form of locally-producing fields, orchards, and herds? Our government agencies plan for lots of things. The state and local governments project population trends and plan for necessary schools. UDOT is always projecting forth anticipated increases in traffic and planning on how much and where they are going to add more capacity. But as near as I can tell, NOBODY looks at an issue as basic as where we get our food from and how safe that choice is. I guess that is because our society completely takes it for granted that the current trend towards national and global food supply networks can continue, and that there is no risk in us adding more mouths while at the same time taking agricultural land out of production. Sheesh, I’m starting to read like a Wendell Berry book (any of which I highly recommend, by the way).
OK, I’d better get to the point of how riding a bicycle or taking mass transit factors into all of this. Basically, it’s this — communities that are built around the automobile are much more spread out and devote more acreage (wider roads, freeways, and especially parking lots) to car infrastructure. This acreage comes at the expense of land that could be kept in agricultural production. The more compact our communities are (and I’m not advocating New York City-style density, by the way — just more traditional compact towns), the more land DOESN’T have to be paved over. Every time you ride a bicycle, take a bus, or ride the train, you are not causing the need for another freeway lane, a wider road, or that 10′ X 20′ rectangular piece of Americana that we call a “free parking” space. And if anybody ever brings up the oft-cited line about how cyclists are subsidized by motorists since we don’t pay gas tax, ask him if he’d be willing to convert all of the “free” parking at his local mall into paid parking so that those who bike, walk, or ride the bus to the mall aren’t subsidizing motorists for the 15 acres of parking surrounding the mall.
6 December, 2008 at 5:35 pm
You said it perfectly. Thanks.