This Earth Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us

We're locked in an existential game of "chicken" with China, each nation daring the other not to take its foot off the gas pedal as we careen towards catastrophe. We don't want to change the way we live, and the Chinese want to live the way we do, too.

Unfortunately, the limitations of our finite world make that a mathematical impossibility. As James Kunstler is fond of saying, (and I am equally fond of quoting,) America's suburbs represent "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. America took all its postwar wealth and invested it in a living arrangement that has no future.''

Our love of living large has brought us to the brink of disaster, as Al Gore noted in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Norway yesterday. Borrowing a line from Winston Churchill, Gore compared the world's leaders who downplay the urgency of global warming to those who ignored Hitler:

'They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.'

But Gore's not the only one who sees a parallel between the Holocaust and global warming. Climate scientist James Hansen caused a ruckus back in October with this bleak statement:

If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.

Dave Roberts of Grist wrote a brilliant post about whether Hansen's Holocaust analogy is "appropriate," asking the question, "Why do we judge the Holocaust unique in history?"

His conclusion:

What gives the Holocaust its unique place in history is its origin in the deliberate intent of a single person and the chilling industrial efficiency with which that intent was carried out.

What's notable about global warming is that you get the industrial efficiency and the horrific result without the intent. You have, in effect, a holocaust with no evil. Coal miners are trying to feed their families. Utilities are trying to keep the lights on. Industries are trying to profit. Governments are trying to gain power and provide for citizens. All us developed world drivers are trying to get to and from work. Nobody intends to create a horror, but cumulatively, that's exactly what we are doing.

America's original suburb, Levittown, recently declared its intent to become the nation's first "green" suburb, with a series of initiatives designed to encourage more energy efficient homes and habits in this Long Island enclave. Scott Carlin, an associate professor of geography at Long Island University, wrote approvingly of the plan in Newsday, but noted that "truly greening the suburbs will require a bigger shift in values and behaviors."

But how can we convince our fellow Americans that conservation is a civic duty, and not a commie plot? An indignant Newsday reader from Hicksville (no comment) replied to Carlin's op-ed as follows:

In "The greening of the suburbs" [Opinion, Dec. 3], Scott Carlin uses the word "green" or references to it almost a dozen times. But his vision of Long Island is the same old template of Red socialism.

Carlin's vision of Long Island consists of high-density, mixed-use communities with public transportation. Cars will be used sparingly and shared instead of being privately owned. He proposes higher prices for natural resources and higher taxes levied on gas and electricity. And, by some sort of alchemy, being packed in like a bunch of sardines and paying higher prices and taxes will improve our lives.

Far from being a utopia, Carlin's drab Long Island sounds like the former East Germany. Rather than promoting mental health, Carlin's overcrowded, Marxist-socialist community, devoid of private property, would only foster rootlessness and anomie.

In other words, better dead than red. Because, you know, the suburbs do such a stellar job of fostering connectedness and bonhomie. Al Gore said yesterday that our children will either be asking us 'What were you thinking; why didn't you act? Or they will ask instead: 'How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?'''

The answer to the first question: We were thinking, how can we ever get through to every dumbass in Hicksville? The answer to question number two: We had to forge ahead, despite all the dumbasses in Hicksville, because the fate of the earth was at stake.

I don't know which question our kids will be asking, but I'm guessing that the answer isn't to cling to a way of living that spells death for life as we know it.

Comments

[EDRO]

Al Gore: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?''

Al gore seems to have responded to my colleague who wrote in The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 4), "Stop the Ecocide! Otherwise, we need to prepare something along the following lines to whisper in our children"s ears, every night before they go to sleep:
"Honestly, sweetheart, I kind of realized what was happening, but just didn"t have the time, incentive, or moral courage to do anything about it. Don"t you worry though, because *experts* say when you grow up you can use matter/antimatter technology to travel to outer space and look for another hospitable planet ¦]"" http://msrb.wordpress.com/

[KT]"We had to forge ahead... because the fate of the earth was at stake."

We agree! We are "flapping our wings" creating the initial conditions that could bring about the "radical" changes needed to save the planet!

Nothing short of massive action would work... My colleagues and I believe the best [and only] chance we have is the chaos theory. If there are any more butterflies out there, keep flapping your wings, it just might work. http://edro.wordpress.com/faq/

[LanceJetson]

The suburbs have been a two-edged sword. Don't forget part of the justification for "urban sprawl," as we term it today, was that the more spread out that the population was, the more people that would survive when the atomic bombs dropped. It was a cold war strategy. Personal contributions to environmental welfare were small considerations when we were expecting to be blasted to oblivion any second, or survive in a post-apocalyptic, radioactive wasteland. Gladly that has not happened (yet). Sadly the notion that we all deserve our own "God's green acre" and our ignorance of population control pushed those suburbs farther out damaging the environment that gives us life in the first place. But whereas atomic war was (and is) a potential bogeyman used by blustering politicos to control individuals and nations, the environmental fallout of our pollution and misuse of resources is a real, urgent, and growing danger to the entire world.

[WASanford]

What a mess we"re in! It"s clear that a solution to global warming will not come from our leaders and the message doesn"t seem to be getting to the American public either.
If we are going to save ourselves, we are on our own. We must begin at the bottom by taking action as individuals. On live Earth day, I took a pledge. It has seven points or principles the most effective of which, I think, is the seventh. It goes like this; "to buy from businesses and support leaders, who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century." Put in all the other ethical and moral considerations for justice and human dignity and you have a formula for putting capitalism back in its place and taking back our government. If capitalism works the way its proponents claim, then it will respond to a change in the way we spend our money. Please go to Al Gore"s web site, sign the pledge, print it out, and DO IT!
This is more urgent than you may think. All of our scientists" predictions are wrong! Global warming is happening much more quickly than even the most pessimistic models predicted just a year ago.

[overtheedge]

I find it amusing how some people view suburbs. The suburb has become stereotyped to mean a community isolated from city life, with huge McMansions, SUVs in every driveway, and a population of white people. Well, this is not the suburb I live in. I've read some of Kunstler's articles and while he has some points, I find him incredibly snobbish and ignorant.

That said, I have no problems with "greening" the suburbs. I would love to ride a bike without fear of getting hit by a car! I do have some issues with Carlin's view, though. I would like to keep ownership of a car (believe or not, it's not an SUV). And how does he define "high density?" As far as higher prices and higher taxes, well that's a tough sell.