Caring for the Environment

I really don't give a damn about the environment.

I often get comments about my bicycling lifestyle, complementing me on my concern for the environment. These comments really bother me because I don't care about the environment and it is presumptuous of people to think that I do.

What I care about is not being wasteful. I don't pollute, because it's ugly and inconsiderate towards others. I don't have cable TV (or any channels for that matter), because I refuse to pay to have endless advertising pumped into my home. I got rid of my car when gas still cost less than a first-born child and a left testicle. The wastefulness of driving my car was galling. Maintenance, insurance, fuel, and, worst of all, being under the thumb of the government. "Uh-oh, a cop is following me closely. Is he going to pull me over for no reason? Am I going 3 MPH too fast?"

And then there is the sheer inefficiency of driving a car. For the sake of math, I weigh 200 pounds and my car weighed 3400 pounds. Too haul my mass from one place to another, I brought along 17 times my mass from place to place. That is a transportation methods that only has the purpose of delivering 5.8% of its mass to a destination. Wow. My bicycle, fully loaded with a week's worth of lunch and clothes weighs a little over 50 pounds. So I bring 80% of my mass to my destination with a bicycle. When you go on vacation, do you bring, let's say, even 10 times more than you need to bring? Maybe pack 10 days worth of clothes for a 1 night trip? Maybe that's a bad analogy. I'll accept that.

Regardless, the automobile is wasteful for most of the transportation situations out there, but most Americans cannot be troubled enough to shift their mindset away from their wasteful ways. It's part and parcel of the human condition, really. I am just as guilty, although in other aspects. I recognize that, but I am working on it.

So back to caring for the environment... I don't care. I care about being wasteful. Caring about the environment is one of those touchy-feely, ill-defined goals, such as "Give Peace a Chance," "Help the Homeless," and "Compassionate Conservatism." It makes people vulnerable to marketers and propaganda. Political candidates pay lip service to helping the environment. Propaganda machines on both sides of an issue spew their toxic vitriol. And short of going out there and conducting your own environmental survey, it is hard to know where the truth is. Don't start with me on this one. It is hard to know where the truth is because I have been there (physical locations) and seen the propaganda and lies of both sides, sometimes on the same matter.

Do you really care about the environment? Kill yourself now. Or at the very least, raze your home, quit your job, and become a hunter-gatherer, living in a tree. Actually, skip the hunter part. Just be a scavenger and gatherer. But we can't do that. We are now ill-suited to live strictly off the land in a traditional sense.

But by consciously and methodically eliminating wastefulness, you are probably doing more for the environment than you would if you bought a hybrid car. We need to reach a balance with our world, in all matters. Reaching a balance is very difficult because people need homes and food and leisure. It is very easy for us (as Americans) to sit in our comfortable home, which we already have, and spew dictums such as, "No more clear-cutting forests!" or "Save the spotted owl!" or "We need to drill ANWR to reduce our dependency on foreign oil!" or "The politicians need to do something about the cost of energy!" BTW, top-down solutions are a bad idea. The greatest changes start with the person reading this post.

Try examining your life a little more honestly. Are you living as consistently as possible? I'm not, and I really, really try.

And while I am at it, actions don't exist in a vacuum. Bicycle advocacy is not the panacea for the world's problems. Yes, it will resolve many problems, but moving to a bicycle infrastructure is going to create other issues. I personally look forward to a lot of those problems, but other people are going to be seriously hurting. And people who are in a bad position tend to have negative effects on society (just look at the subprime lending market).

There is no simple answer and I wish people would stop acting as if there was. As deeply and sincerely as I love the bicycle lifestyle, it is not for everyone and it is not a fix-all answer, even though I am frequently guilty of acting as it it were. I would like to remain optimistic about our chances, but I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better. Although I suppose that is just the nature of it all...

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