CLEAN YOUR GARAGE
By Tucker Lieberman
So you've seen that gasoline prices have gone up
from $1 to $1.50 per gallon, and you've heard that Congress is thinking on
temporarily lifting the 4.3% gasoline tax to ease the ache on the
consumer. What program would be underfunded by the removal of the
tax? Transportation. The intention is to enable us to buy more gas
so that (a) we can drive more miles on worse roads, and (b) we can drive more
solo mileage than public transportation mileage. I know these things in my
dreams.
Now I'll admit where I'm coming from. I'm an
environmentalist--yes, I actually believe that the earth is sacred and vital to
our lives--and I don't own a car, nor will I ever own a car. People tell
me that's an impossibility. "How will you drive around if you don't own a
car?" Um, I won't drive around, that's the point. How do you think
people survived in the ten millennia of human history that pre-dated internal
combustion engines? I don't subscribe to the contemporary American ethos
"don't-live-where-you-work-and-don't-carpool-because-that's-tacky". Either
I am going to live where I work or I am going to know my neighbors and ride with
them. If the area is not walkable or bikable, I won't move there in the
first place.
To tell it true: The right to cheap gas is
not guaranteed to you in the founding stapled papers of this country.
Gluttonous gasoline use, in fact, has caused way bad problems. One is the
psychological effect of solo car driving which is isolation, competition,
stress. Another is the fragmentation of land which is tantamount to
total destruction of ecosystems and, I would argue, is lonely for people and
hella ugly, though we try to deny it. Another problem is the war in
Iraq. Few people know that the US and Britain bomb Iraq daily. A
million and a half children have starved to death in the economic siege and
the once-prosperous country has been devastated, left without education or
healthcare. After ten years of daily bombing, Saddam Hussein is still
alive, so the question is: Who are the bombs hitting? Everyone knows
that the bombs are about oil. The President wages this war because he
believes that Americans are greedy and care more about their automobiles than
whether the genocide in Iraq continues. He thinks Americans are too
self-obsessed and lazy to make any lifestyle changes that would reduce the
national motive to bomb and starve innocent Iraqis. The President,
unfortunately, is correct--but we can change that fact. All we have to do
is start caring, start giving a shit at the very least, and take the initiative
to restructure our habits.
And, last but not least, we have a global warming
problem. Yes, the temperature has only increased by a fraction of a
degree, but if you're a species who cares about a fraction of a degree, it's a
life or death situation. An increase of only four to seven degrees would
bring us back to the late Cretaceous type of warmth when the T-Rex was
around. There are natural temperature fluctuations that come and go with
the ice ages and personally I feel that it's a good idea not to mimic
them. The deal with artificial global warming is that we don't know how
bad it is until it happens. By the way, for the unscientifically inclined,
global warming is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2
(largely caused by the combustion of carbon-based fossil fuels) which hang
around in the atmosphere and prevent the planet's heat from escaping back into
space, which is why it's called the "greenhouse effect." We do need some
greenhouse gases to keep us from being an ice cube, but the earth oughtn't be a
sauna, either. Gaia did a perfectly good job of regulating herself until
some wise-ass primates decided to burn all the gloppy stuff under the Earth's
crust. You can solve the global warming problem by planting a tree which
converts the CO2 into solid carbon and oxygen gas. Or you can solve it by
not burning fossil fuels in the first place. The rise in the price of
gasoline is one solution--a capitalistic one--that may encourage lower
consumption and encourage creative innovation in low-impact
transportation. That innovation doesn't just apply to white-coat
physicists, it applies to us too. I mean the kind of innovation that
occurs when you clean your garage and discover a bicycle.
Lowering gas prices, whether by bitching and
moaning at the Middle Eastern leaders or by reducing the 4.3% American sales
tax, is not what our discourse should be about. We ought to be discussing
how to develop a workable, sustainable system of energy and
transportation. Our present infrastructure--yes, including the
infrastructure of our lives--is not sustainable and I'm really not sure it's
even workable in the sense of making us meaningfully happy. As an
environmentalist, I am not anti-development. I am quite
pro-development. But the key word is sustainability. If it's
unsustainable, it's not progress, it's just another lifestyle that alienates us
from the earth and is a giant contrived excuse to be irresponsible, which isn't
our deepest happiness.
I'm not anti-hedonism either. Personal
pleasure certainly has a role to play. But I would caution anyone against
adopting an "ism" of any sort, including hedonism, as the guiding principle of
your life. Dogma limits your thought and your potential to change.
In the case of the American obsession with personal comfort, an allegiance to
this type of hedonism prevents us from seeing any sort of environmental solution
that involves personal initiative (because, honestly, who's willing to get off
his ass? Go hug a tree and bring me a beer,
I only care about the genocide in Iraq if I can see it from my armchair.)
Kahlil Gibran wrote that "comfort, and the lust for
comfort, enters the house a guest, then becomes a host, and then a
master." There's nothing wrong with seeking comfort, but comfort should
only be one of your goals, not the sole conductor of your thought that prevents
you from seeing other angles and new solutions. I mean, for example, sex
is nice, but there's something to be said for occasionally thinking between your
ears instead of between your legs. To make a change towards a sustainable,
peaceful, healthy society, you have to be willing to give up your old assurance
of comfort and try something new that may temporarily be uncomfortable and
require a sacrifice, but will ultimately give you, your children, and your
global friends a greater happiness. This is why we have intelligence, to
make these hard choices. Liberation is never won or achieved by people
seeking their own comfort. Comfort is the unchallenged status quo.
We are all born into a certain set of paradigms. Now, opening our minds to
free ourselves from those paradigms is a painful birthing process, and stepping
out and speaking our truths involves risk and sacrifice. To live by your
truths, and to enlist your truths in the pursuit of peace--this is the raw stuff
of life. This is the mess and the hard choices and the grit and the
guts. But it is also the glory and the freedom. Ultimately, if we
want to liberate ourselves, we cannot let comfort be our master. I'll
leave you with some positive examples of people who are making the
choice.
In Freiburg, Germany, there is a 280-home
development on a former military base, called the Vauban, where cars are not
permitted. This isn't because Germany is any less car-happy than the
US. It's because people decided to make it happen. They can let
their children play in the street and they don't have to deal with noise or air
pollution. People who gave up their cars for the first time discovered
that they did less running around and only went on important errands. This
project was achieved despite a German law that requires developers to have a
parking space for each living unit; Vauban solved the problem by building a huge
parking garage outside the 94-acre development. There are 20 such projects
in Germany. A 600-apartment auto-free Austrian development was completed
in 1998. Another development is slated for summer 2000 in Scotland.
In September 1999, France had a voluntary (and successful) "day
without cars." Italy has had several no-car days. Many European
business districts are pedestrian-only.
These are some ideas. No, my point is not to
move to Europe. My point is to think it, demand it, do it. There are
wants and there are needs, and then again, there are wants and there are
needs. We need not confuse our needs and wants and I doubt we want to
confuse our wants and needs. What I really want, for one, is sustainable
energy.