own a prius? cough it up, chump.

In the midst of US preparation for the upcoming Copenhagen Treaty on climate change you’d think that we were all laser-focused on trying to combat global warming for once and for all. Uhh, no.

Despite the fact that the lower fossil fuel demand is a boon for reducing emissions it seems that at lower levels of government, reducing our carbon footprint is thrown out with the bathwater when it comes to paying our lowly state and city bills.

I live in Los Angeles. As I drove to drop off my son at school, I heard two news stories. First, the national story – a stirring presentation at the Senate by Al Gore urging Senate support for the Copenhagen treaty. The second was a local story about how money was so tight that the City of LA would no longer offer free meter parking downtown for Hybrids. The amount of money they’ll save will be negligible, but the message is clear. The City of LA doesn’t care if you buy hybrids anymore.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Hybrids for various reasons which I won’t bore you with here, but in a small way they are still at least a symbolic net benefit to the environment – a statement that industry and citizens are at least trying to do “something”. LA’s decision, for so little gain, says essentially that short-term gain trumps long term environmental concerns.

It won’t be the first time in American history that utterly myopic short-termism has dictated policymaking and sadly it won’t be the last, but there’s one thing governments at every level know; global warming doesn’t stop just because the economy does.

Share on Facebook

getting kinda hot in here

Houston, and everywhere else in the nation, we have a problem.

In the latest “Direction of Country” Gallup tracking poll, 87% of respondents said we were on the wrong track.

In another recent Gallup poll about the level of environmental concern, 61% said we should be doing more on global warming, and 68% continue to think we should act even if other countries, like China, do less.

Driving less would be one way to improve matters. And yet the recent news from the US Department of Transportation estimates that Americans will drive nearly 80 billion fewer miles in 2008 than we did in 2007 is greeted as a sign the country is on the wrong track, not the right track.

We all know the reason. When the economy is bad, suddenly the environment goes down the list of priorities. Unfortunately, the risk of allowing global warming to increase, (not a dice roll we should be throwing) should trump short-term economic pain. But it doesn’t. We say we really want to stem climate change, even if the bad old Chinese are still pumping out smoke, but when it’s actually happening – we want our cars back.

The cold facts are that if we really want to stop global warming, we have to live more frugally, kind of like we are now in this nasty recession. In short, recessions are green. And if we want to go green for real, we have to get used to living on less, driving less, and buying less. A permanent recession.

When your country produces 25% of the greenhouse gases with 5% of the world’s population, even with all the new green industrial policy that President-elect Obama is going to enact, we’ll still need to make profound sacrifices if we want to reduce the risk of serious climate catastrophe.

Hands up everyone who wants to voluntarily live in a permanent recession to make the world a better place long after we’re dead and gone?

You, sir, at the back, thank you for your support!

Share on Facebook