Have you ever tried to talk someone out of a bad idea? Maybe the person they’re dating is all wrong for them. Or a job change or some economic investment is just going to end in tragedy? If so, you’ve probably gotten a quick lesson in basic psychology. A percentage of people are going to be open-minded and listen to your objections, and if you’re actually right, they’ll consider the evidence and take your advice. Most people will get defensive, however, and refuse to listen. Some people will get so defensive that they’ll actually double down to prove the nay-sayers wrong—they’ll marry that bad boyfriend or put more money into the bad investment. They will, rather than risk the chance that they might get proven wrong and open themselves to a chorus of “I told you sos”, will live in denial about their bad decisions until the last possible moment when it’s becoming clear that they cannot sustain this bad decision any longer.
Now, the thing about this is that everyone does this sometimes. I realize there are a lot of people on the internet who preen like they rarely make bad decisions, and when they do, they recant immediately, but you’ll see that such people rarely offer examples of how this has actually happened in their lives. We all get into the rationalization cycle, some more than others, but we all do it. If you come across someone who claims to be above rationalization or standing by bad choices, that person probably does it more than anyone else, because they’ve got a mistake-free self-image that means they are especially prone to rationalization.
I bring this up, because if you know much about the rationalization spiral, then the fact that America’s reaction to increasing evidence of both peak oil and global warming would be to reduce our average gas mileage was entirely predictable. Some people, when presented with the evidence, were likely to get more efficient vehicles or start taking more public transportation/walks/bicycles. While it’s very self-flattering, as one of those people, to suggest that we’re just super-rational, the truth is mostly that we weren’t that invested in car culture to begin with.* I never liked driving—sitting in traffic is my personal version of hell—and so I was an easy sell on the idea that cars are an environmental disaster. But for people who really like cars and driving, it was entirely predictable that they’d be eager to rationalize it to themselves not only by denying that we were facing sustainability problems, but that they’d double down by halving their gas mileage.
Which is why I agree with Tim F. that singing “I told you so” isn’t that fun after all.
I don’t feel particularly smug when I stand next to my Honda Fit watching some SUV owner near tears as she puts more than $100 of gas into a car she doesn’t need. It just feels sad to think about how long it’s been since it became obvious to anyone who cared to look that we won’t be able to scare off problems like fuel scarcity and climate change by closing our eyes and wishing.
That lead time was an opportunity to make changes. Some would have been painful and some merely sensible, but it would prevent huge numbers of honest Americans get caught with their pants down. Instead we blew it out the tailpipe of cars that average 15 MPG. Now, instead of a planned transition, we get to see what happens when stubborn denial meets inescapable change. It’s simply unsustainable to live in suburban car country with a negative equity on the house, $6-7 gas (wait until you see what that does to property values in outlying suburbs) and expensive SUVs that nobody wants. The saddest thing for me was that most who will get fucked the worst had no idea this was coming. There was that one guy who warned us, but he had a snooty laugh.
On an individual level, it’s easy to feel superior to people who bought SUVs and are paying for it now. But that’s foolish, because we all rationalize our choices like this, so it was inevitable that a high percentage of people would like SUVs not in spite of their low mileage, but because of the low mileage. Instead of wishing human nature to change, then, I’m going to suggest that the people who exploited this rationalization tendency hold the lion’s share of the blame. For people who wanted to engage in wishful thinking about the relationship between oil and environmental problems, right wing pundits, car companies, and oil companies did all the hard psychological rationalizing work for people. They painted critics as effeminate hippies that are just trying to tell you what to do because they’re sanctimonious and nosy. (That some really are sanctimonious only made the situation worse.) They gave people pseudo-scientific explanations they could latch onto. They were the ones who started offering the opportunity to marry that bad boyfriend and show everyone how wrong they were: halve your gas mileage and show those hippies! It’s a P.R. strategy that only had to work on enough people, and it did.
*Same with being a vegetarian, or vegetarian who occasionally indulges of the fish flesh. It was easy for me to give up the vice of meat-eating, because I wasn’t that attached to meat in the first place. Meanwhile, I rationalize fish-eating because I love seafood enough that I can’t go cold turkey, and also appreciate having that as a restaurant option when everything vegetarian on the menu is laden with cheese.
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As Heinlein observed: humans aren’t a rational organism, they are rationalizing organisms. It’s like presidential candidates - folks come up with rationalizations why they’re voting for someone who appeals to their emotions rather than the logical alternative.
I couldn’t disagree more. If you empathize with these dolts it’s going to lead to a plan to bail them out of their predicament that will cost us all money. Well fuck them. I made the right choice several years ago to begin altering my lifestyle in accordance with reality and I’m not about to pay for their foolish mistake of not doing the same.
That’s right, I’m a blogger and I can’t properly format a comment box. Go ahead and shoot me now.
I meant to blockquote this:
It’s not that Americans are addicted to large cars or suburbs either. Americans, or more specifically new car buyers and suburbanites, are addicted to horsepower and status.
During the last gas crisis of the late 1970’s, American car makers started to put diesel engines into cars. With the diesel engine, a large, full-sized Chevy Caprice could get 25-30 mpg (compared to a little more than half that for the gas powered version). However, the diesel engine had no power, among other problems, and was quickly dropped when oil prices collapsed in the mid 1980’s.
Still, technology improved even the gas powered Caprice. By the end of the model run in 1996, the Caprice got 18-25mpg with a V8 with twice the horsepower as the 1980’s version. But new car buyers didn’t want Caprices, they wanted SUV’s, so GM quit making Caprices and started making Tahoes at the same plant.
Now, there are plenty of people in this country who want a good car at a good price with good fuel economy and don’t care about power and size they don’t need. The problem is, from Detroit’s perspective, that most of them don’t buy NEW cars, especially new American cars. Either they will buy used, or they will buy imports. Sensible people are less likely to spend 20-30K on a product that loses a large portion of its value the moment the buyer drives it off the lot. Car companies market their cars to the irrational, selfish and vain because that’s where the money is. (DaimlerChrysler shamelessly targeted this demographic with it’s Dodge Durango commercials. Mom wanted all the creature comforts for her little darling while dad wanted the “hemi”)
A good example of this is the rise of SUV’s as opposed to minivans. For people who need a large car, minivans cost less and provide more space than SUV’s. But minivans aren’t “cool,” and coolness is extremely important to the carmakers most profitable customers. Even minivans have come a long way. Car-based minivans started off as 4-cylinder vehicles. The original Dodge Caravan was an oversized, 7 passenger K-Car. Internationally, these vehicles have been around for years, but are strictly utilitarian. However, every attempt to import a European style “microbus” has failed miserably in this country. American new car buyers want power and style.
I am a capitalist. I believe in the free market. But the market is not perfect, and fuel efficiency is one of the cases where the market has failed. Government intervention is necessary to get automakers to design, build and sell more efficient cars. (Personally, I support an exise tax on vehicles that fail to meet efficiency standards. Consumers will pay for their inefficiency.)
Carter was right, but he was too far ahead of his time. Energy efficiency is linked to national security. Far more often than not, oil money funds repression and terror. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to tell Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela exactly where they can stick all that oil? Wouldn’t it be great not to pay to send a terrorist to camp when we fill up at the pump?
I used to think the SUV/minivan contingent was primarily made up of people who drove around a lot and wanted a convenient ride above all and didn’t give a single damn about the environment or the myriad of other ways that the SUV culture makes things worse overall. But then my wife pointed out that it’s illegal now to drive in the same way we did twenty years ago and for many people SUV/minivans are the only things that will work. Specifically, if you have three young children (in some states, that is up to 8 years old!) then you need car seats for all of them, and three car seats just won’t fit in a sedan or station wagon. Yet when I was little, it was common to stick both of my brothers and I in the lap-belt-only back seat with the youngest generally stuck in the middle.
So the laws have changed but the technology hasn’t caught up. Where is the vehicle class for gas mileage above 35mpg, fits in a sedan-size parking space, yet can fit three car seats?
I swing pretty hard to the right on this issue, not to the point of being a global warming denier, but to the point that I believe that we would be better off with a (relatively) free market as opposed to making drastic measures to stop global warming and slow the rise of gas prices.
Subsidies for ethanol gas has caused food shortages world wide. Isn’t this an indication that we should tread into cautious waters to dealing with a problem that is many years, and many technical innovations away? The Simon-Ehrilch wager comes into mind here. Hell, back when people took the “problem” of over-population seriously, couldn’t you throw the same mud at those who had 5 kids - a bit much, but a drop in the bucket to world population - as the mud you are throwing at the SUV users - one owner of a SUV car is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the big picture?
Additionally, if the culture couldn’t had been changed during the era of SUVs, what steps should have been taken to stop it? SUVs production caps? Banning of SUV commercials on television? Telling gas ad car companies that they can’t go to the CATO institute when there are people making criticisms about their industry? Each seem asinine, arbitrary, unfair, and ineffective to me.
And heck, how accurate is it that people bought the cars because of their low milage? I barely remember the times, but I recall the SVU ads being directed at mothers, soccer moms specifically highlighting the fact that the (perceived) safety the cars would bring to the mom’s little kids, and the fact that the car would be best-suited for the mother’s hectic lives. (I remember one ad featured a mother driving over snow banks to get to a grocery store, and countless featured the mothers picking up kids from ______)
Myself, although I don’t drive SUVs and find driving any car that is higher then 2 feet over the ground to be terrifying, I agree with “stupid hippies” sentiment. The anti-SUV sentiments, to me, seem to come from a anti-consumerism (”You made a personal decision to buy something I don’t like, therefore I don’t like you!”) viewpoint, and is justified by “saving the environment.”
Also, to back off the right wing nuttery a little, I think stubbornness is an essential human trait- sure, it could lead me to dismiss someone’s advice that wearing a trucker hat makes me look like an absolute shmuck, but it also doesn’t mean I don’t shift my entire world view if someone persistently tries to convince me that pants don’t exist.
Bush should have put the 55 mph speed limit back into effect 9/12. Highly unpopular, but saved gas (the ‘55 saves lives’ campaign came later) He also should have imposed a $1-2 federal gas tax at the same time. Better that money go to supporting the troops than to lining oil barons’ pockets.
But no. He just used the opportunity to gut the economy to line Cheney & Friends pockets. Gut the constitution, too.
Not quite. Gore went down because Monica went down. If Bill Clinton had kept it in his pants, Al Gore would have easily cruised to victory. Instead, the squeaky-clean Gore was the unfortunate victim of a moral panic. And why would people care? Back in 2000, the biggest issue was what we were going to do with the budget surplus. Voting for Bush (or Nader, which had the same effect) gave people a way of disapproving of Clinton’s sleaze, and damn the consequences.
Only three kids in the backseat? I remember being “double buckled” in the adjustable center lap belt seat so we could fit four kids in the back.
Telling people to drive 55 when the road and the cars are designed for people to go 80+ is just inviting people to break the law. Furthermore, when some people are driving 55 and others are driving 80, this creates a dangerous situation on the highways.
A gas tax would have been a good idea, but political suicide. A better idea would have been to use the opportunity to dramatically increase CAFE standards (or implement a comparable fuel efficiency plan.)
But this assumes that Bush is getting paid to work for the American people.
Stuffing snark back down my memory hole as I type…?:~)
Anyways, I think you are making a pretty fundamental buddhist point what with all the personal qualities embedded in the things we *own* whether that be possessions or ideals, and how that can cause suffering.
The most interesting about this post is how you interpreted that point with fundamentally heirarchal lenses. Either from the “hand from up high” or the “I got the drop on you” viewpoint. I am aware that much of this is a description of how other percieve the situation and the advocates for changing the status quo, but there are other decision matrixes around other than “To Tutt or Not to Tutt, That is the Question…” I’m not sure whether this was a concious or unconscious frame (I mean, there’s at least a little of both in all frames, but the post is pretty depersonalized in places).
On another point, of course you are invested in the car culture, and the meat culture, and all that, if only because you are invested in the infrastructure and other social mores affiliated with them. And really, unless you are a hermit, it’s very hard to not be invested. Society doesn’t generally give people choices about being privileged about anything that underlies the basic premise of that society. For example, if you give someone a house, you give a depreciating asset that requires, in most places, a job in order to pay other people who buy materials and come into your house and fix it. Ergo, wage slavery. White privilege works the same way; a white person recieves a small set of benefits (visible or invisible, and some only truly available for upper class) for what is essentially a promise not to fraternize with potential enemies of “society”. Rig it such that other whites pay a penalty if nonconformists are around…Voila! You have a large group of people who will voluntarily prevent social changes at the expense of the upper class. Society depends on extracting more from individuals than what individuals recieve from society, and bait-gifting is an essential gambit in that function.
This is getting to be long, so I’ll cut it here.
It’s also true that policymakers and NIMBY community groups have made it very difficult for people who did want to make the necessary lifestyle changes to do so. Rents near decent subway systems and commuter rail are really high–lots of people would clearly love to live in places where they can get around without a car. But we don’t build those places anymore.
See my above post.
Carmakers could build one tomorrow, but not enough NEW car buyers would buy one. The profit margins simply aren’t there.
“If Bill Clinton had kept it in his pants, Al Gore would have easily cruised to victory.”
I don’t think I buy that one. Clinton was always seen by the Reichwing, and more importantly by The Villagers, as a usurper (just like Carter). His presidency was considered illegitimate from the beginning, and it was only the weakness of Dole and the surprising lack of reaction toward BlowjobGate that gave him a second term.
Gore was tainted by being in the wrong party. He could have been the best Democratic candidate of the 20th century and still failed. The only surprising thing was how close he got, but I suspect even if he had done better in some other state(s), somehow the margin somewhere else would have been too close to call and the Supremes would still have ended up making the final decision.
IMHO…FWIW…
Hah, SUVs are used here in Whitest Whitesylvania where it snows. Some of the hillbillies need the 4WD to get out of their hollers. But…this is using essentially a construction vehicle. To put it in terms even the urban can under stand. An SUV compares to driving a PennDOT truck. Great visibility, safe for your offspring (but not others’), can haul or tow all sorts of stuff, and tres macho. You’d think the drivers were stooopid shi*s and treat them with derision. The rest of the world (metric system, day-month-year, social supports) looks at us the same way. Why in the world would ‘Mericans drive such a vehicle?
The suburbs will soon allow public transport or become ghost towns. Only the wealthiest will have cabins (like the McSames) and the rest of us will learn to live on our incomes.
Additionally, if the culture couldn’t had been changed during the era of SUVs, what steps should have been taken to stop it?
How about making SUVs subject to the same CAFE standards as other cars rather than let them slide under the rules meant for actual trucks?
It still astounds me that I was able to buy a Toyota Corolla in 1988 that got better gas mileage than just about any regular car on the market today (and better even than some hybrids): 36 mpg. We backslid on requirements over the intervening 20 years and now we’re running to catch up to where we should have been by now.
Oh, and you might want to tell Toyota that making high-MPG cars is unprofitable, because they seem to be getting the opposite message from consumers. I guess that “I Want My MPG” campaign was successful.
“Where is the vehicle class for gas mileage above 35mpg, fits in a sedan-size parking space, yet can fit three car seats?”
Our European friends, who have faced much higher fuel costs than us (much of the price being taxes, BTW), for a much longer time, have been selling versions of that vehicle for some time.
But to follow in their footsteps requires Americans to make a wholesale commitment to diesel-powered cars and trucks, and not just some huge Ford or Dodge like is fairly common here now.
You have not lived until somebody driving a turbo-diesel powered full sized BMW 7-Series sedan has blown by you on the Autobahn at 100+mph, while still getting mileage in the 30’s.
There are a lot more high-mileage diesel cars available in Europe, in every car class from the lowest/smallest economy models, all the way to the top. Half or more of all new car sales in Europe are for diesel-powered models, some of which are getting mileage in the equivalent of 50+ mpg.
However, if those cars were brought over here, they would not sell because (enough) Americans would not be willing to put up with a diesel car. If if a few were sold because of consumer panic (in 1979 dealers could not keep diesel VW Rabbits on the lots), the panic disapates and we go back to our old habits.
VW has sold economical diesel cars virtually continuously since for the last 30-years but they have always sold as niche products that appeal to a very small audience, despite offering all most people need in a car.
Admittedly, technology like modern diesel engines will not solve our needs over the long run. But we do have to get through the next couple decades while real alternatives are being developed.
But until Americans decide to stop kicking ourselves in the head and emphasizing stupid macho posturing and arrogant ignorance of the overall energy picture, we’ll keep making the same bad decisions until they hurt too much to continue…
I would not be surprised in the least to see in the near future some asshole happily filling the tank of his 12mpg giant SUV, even with gas at $5, 6$, $8/gallon or more. There really are people for whom such extravagance is a badge of distinction…
To put it in terms even the urban can under stand.
this is an aside, but shut the fuck up.
I could elaborate on how this is but another example in the long series of you striving to prove what an asshole you are, but I really don’t have the time or patience right now, so I’m just gonna say shut the fuck up.
Actually, SUVs aren’t very safe for the people inside them, either. SUVs are unstable and apt to tip over in circumstances under conditions that would never roll a sedan or a mini-van. These less-serious crashes are much more common than the dramatic “big car vs. small car” crashes that people envision when they choose a vehicle for safety.
The visibility argument cuts both ways. I’s nice to be up high. The downside is the huge blindspot.
The Reichwing hated him in 1996, but not enough for Dole to win. Yes, there was Perot, but Dole would have had to win almost all of Perot’s supporters to beat Clinton.
I don’t think there was a “lack of reaction” toward BlowjobGate as much as the American people were simply madder at the Congressional Republicans than they were at Clinton. This does not mean that they didn’t care about Clinton’s behavior.
Enter George W. Bush, who was not a Congressional Republican. A large part of his campaign was that he was a Washington outsider who was there to clean up the White House. Had he not had that angle, how could he come close to beating Gore? (It should be noted that the Democrats tied the Senate that same election.) Yes, Gore got screwed by the Supremes. But the lesson that Democrats failed to learn in 2000 was that if Gore had won Tennessee, nobody would have cared about Florida.
Which is what I mean by a market failure.
The problem is not that there are assholes that enjoy filling their tanks with $5, $6, or even $8 gas. The problem is that there are too many of them and that even at inflated prices, they are not bearing the true cost of that gas.
The cost of gasoline or inefficient vehicles must be such as to accurately reflect the true cost of these decisions, including environmental, military, government and social externalities. Until then, the asshole in the giant SUV is still getting a good deal.
it’s easy to feel superior to people who bought SUVs and are paying for it now
You know why I find it perfectly OK to feel superior to the SUV crowd?
Because they so often tend to be types back home in Teh HartLayund who get all smug with me when I mention how much things cost in NYC. I explain my decision to live in the expensive Northeast with “I’m willing to pay more to get what I really want.”
Now these same idiots are paying outrageous prices for something that ultimately makes no difference to them, and you know what? The schadenfreude feels good.
Shit, $100 is the going rate to fill up an SUV? And these folks have the NERVE to mock John Edwards’s $400 haircut? He’s getting a deal compared to them…
Agreed– it won’t help to get personally incensed at individuals for making stupid decisions. It’s just a matter of what we do about it. The conservabot/neoliberal route is to say “ha ha, you made a bad decision, i’m not going to pay for i–aw, fuck, i just drove into the huge pothole you left in the road.” The more socially-conscious route is to say, “we’re all going to clean this up, and i just get to bask a little more gleefully in the result because it validates the decision i made. whereas you just won’t get it.” Holding back the benefits of a better infrastructure from people who didn’t make the right choice is the line of reasoning behind privatization. If we want functioning roads, clean/cheap/available public transit, better cars, and a for real green energy system, we have to suck it up and accept that even the bastards who got us into this are going to experience the benefits.
MikeEss, didn’t BlowjobGate happen well after Clinton’s reelection in 1996? If I am remembering right, that leaves Bob Dole’s lack of appeal to explain why the Villagers decided to make an exception and tolerate a usurping Democrat.
Be interesting to see how they try to rescue John McCain from the comparison. Dole and McCain look alike to me: crusty, ill-tempered, adulterous, dumped-the-loyal-first-wife elderly Rethugs. And Dole could’ve been spun as a maverick too.
Subsidies for ethanol gas has caused food shortages world wide. Isn’t this an indication that we should tread into cautious waters to dealing with a problem that is many years, and many technical innovations away?
Actually, America’s ethanol plans are a small part of the massive spike in food prices this year. Repeated droughts in various countries, especially Australia, the rising cost of fuel worldwide in growing, shipping, and transporting grain are also a major factor. And that’s not even touching on the increased food imports by china and india as the economies of those nations improve the standards of living.
This one isn’t America’s fault. While I agree completely that corn-based ethanol is a terrible solution for fuel independence, the current problem runs much deeper. If climate change continues, and the price of food remains tied to the price of oil, then this problem will only get worse.
Rents near decent subway systems and commuter rail are really high–lots of people would clearly love to live in places where they can get around without a car.
I’ve done the math on this time and time again, and actually, that doesn’t compute. Another reason I have very little respect for the car-addicts amongst us.
I live in NYC — Brooklyn, to be exact. I’m a 5 minute walk from the subway. I’m single and share a 2-bedroom apartment with a roommate. I pay circa $80 per month in transportation expenses, and under $600 in rent (which I’ll admit is on the cheap end). My total rent + transit costs per month are well under $800. Even working an entry-level job in a creative field, I’m able to get by quite well.
If I moved back to the rural south, I would have to have a car. Even if I got a very good deal on a used car in great shape and was able to pay in cash out of pocket, I would have to have insurance, and I would also have to keep it gassed up. Not to mention regular maintenance, cleaning, and all the little things. Since rental properties in safe and convenient areas are few and far between, I would actually end up spending more in housing, as well (especially since having a roommate is considered quasi-deviant). Even if I was willing to live in some shithole in a ghetto (or a trailer on the edge of town, or whatever), the price difference wouldn’t be enough to make up for the transportation expenses.
Long story short? There’s no fricking way I could live in car-dominant small town heartland America on what I currently need to support myself in fancy-pants elitist NYC. All this “well I would just love to live near public transportation, but I just can’t afford it” is ridiculous, sorry.
“MikeEss, didn’t BlowjobGate happen well after Clinton’s reelection in 1996?”
You’re right, although Paula Jones, Whitewater, “TravelGate”, Vince Foster, Hillary’s “luck” in the commodities market, rumors of a trail of bodies the Clintons left behind on their way to the Whitehouse, etc., were all in full bloom by ‘96. Monica was just the crowning event.
I sort of lump them all together anyway as basically one long scandal that started before Clinton was elected in ‘92 and continuing (at least) until he left office…
Dole was one of the least politically attractive candidates in several decades. I really believe the Rethugs let him get the nom knowing he would fail, and setting the stage for Bush Jr. Dole was not a NeoCon, and so was not a believer in the One True Faith of the modern Republican hierarchy, so his loss probably was as big a deal as Bush Jr.’s “win” in 2000…
“…his loss was probably NOT as big a deal…”
My fingers need to go back to the shop…
That’s a generous take on it all. Good for you for getting there. Me, I’m still pretty prone to self-satisfaction when I hear these people upset about their ridiculous gas costs, and I’m pretty pissed off, too, at the denial and rationalization that got us so deep in this mess. Yeah, I blame the leaders who led us here, but I definitely, rightly or wrongly, also blame the sheep.
*I justify the fish thing because for me there’s some moral consistency in that I personally could kill a fish. I can stand on the dock and slice it open or gonk it on the head. (I don’t like it, but I can do it.) I could not do that to a mammel. And my understanding of a fish’s consciousness and feelings of pain also factor in big time. Really, it comes down to could I kill it with my bare hands or do I object to that murder; if so, I shouldn’t be eating it. (and actually, I didn’t even start eating fish till after I gave up meat, so I’m not sure why I’d rationalize this away; but ya never know)
With regard to SUVs, I think what’s called for is some good old fashioned social approbation. Driving a 12mpg vehicle should be about as socially acceptable as farting in church.
The thing is, most people know this already. Isn’t the basic concept underlying the HUMMER a big ol’ FU to everyone and everything? Well, I say raise the social stakes for the this sort of aggressive narcissism. Making SUVs not cool will rid the roads of this scourge a lot faster than market forces, CAFE standards, or anything else.
KL, the number of people out there with three small children in car seats is a fraction of SUV owners. Like a teeny, tiny fraction. Having three under that age is really unusual.
You know why I find it perfectly OK to feel superior to the SUV crowd?
I might not necessarily feel superior to them, but I’m not exactly sympathetic, especially considering it was a trend a few years ago in Atlanta’s northern suburbs to buy the biggest SUV you could specifically to “piss off liberals.” Sort of along the lines of Adam Yoshida leaving all his lights on.
“If you come across someone who claims to be above rationalization or standing by bad choices, that person probably does it more than anyone else, because they’ve got a mistake-free self-image that means they are especially prone to
rationalizationRepublicanism.”There ya go, fixed it.
*nods* thank you for saying this. I’m a frigging graduate student, scraping by on a stipend not a hell of a lot above poverty. Yet I live in downtown Chicago. Admittedly, my apartment isn’t huge compared to what the suburbanites have, and I have a roommate, but I live 7 mins walk from the subway.
Look, you want a huge house in the ‘burbs? Cool, go for it. You want to live way out in the middle of nowhere? Have at it. But then don’t come crying to me that the solutions that work for the majority of people won’t work for you because you chose were you live.
I see choosing to take up less space, to live more efficiently, to fit more people into a given amount of land, AS a moral issue, and something our planet desperately needs. If you chose otherwise, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.
I love how the right-wingers go all on about personal responsibility, but then totally fold when it comes to take responsibility for their actions.
Lucky for them I’m NOT a capitalist. I DON’T believe in the free market working out what is best for everyone. The free market works towards one thing and one thing only; profit, and will do whatever it needs to get that. So I believe we need government interventions, like they have in Europe and other western democracies; a managed economy. I think we need to step in change things, and do things for people … just don’t expect me to feel sorry for them. The information was there for anyone willing to look.
To add to what Lindsay said about SUV safety: in addition to a high center of gravity, SUVs are also heavier than other vehicles. Because they’re heavier, they can’t stop as quickly and they’re harder to maneuver. My little Jetta can avoid accidents which an SUV can’t.
Anyway, my father used to work in the legal department for one of the American car manufacturers. I’m afraid to say that he fought against CAFE standards for years. I’ve long felt that if the GM et al had knuckled down and decided to make cars that got good gas mileage, they’d be in a hell of a lot better off than they are now.
And heck, how accurate is it that people bought the cars because of their low milage?
The Hummer’s entire marketing strategy was “fuck the hippies”, and for a time, it was effective, until it became clear how immature that was. I suspect other SUVs benefitted, and like others have said, the minivan was better for the safety and room benefits, but was a lot less popular.
I guess the reason I am willing to admit that I feel superior and that I have very little sympathy is that I feel like these folks in general are not willing to take personal responsibilities for their choices and actions (in this particular regard).
I’m perfectly able to say “Why, yes, I do pay $85 for a haircut, and the shampoo I use costs $10 per bottle. However, I’m willing to spend more money in order to get something that makes me happy.”
The people I’ve talked to who rationalize their gas-guzzling SUV’s and resource wasting McMansions, however, seem to be all about how it wasn’t their decision, they “need” this, my urban lifestyle wouldn’t work for them (AKA would be too expensive and impractical), etc. etc. Which is bullshit. Very few people really need SUV’s. You do not “need” to live suburbia-style, and no it is not cheaper, more efficient, more practical, etc. etc. etc. It’s what you chose.
Of course, I also think a lot of it boils down to family size, i.e. reproductive decisions. A lot of the people I talk to who rationalize their lifestyle choices as “necessary” have multiple small children. And it really is difficult to have a lot of little kids in places with good public transit. These same folks also tend not to get that reproductive choice exists. You have 4 kids under 8 because you CHOSE not to use birth control. Therefore your lifestyle is a choice, every bit as much as my $85 haircut lifestyle is.
There’s no fricking way I could live in car-dominant small town heartland America on what I currently need to support myself in fancy-pants elitist NYC.
A lot of the “costs are higher near public transportation” data comes from Western (and some Midwestern) cities. Try living in car-dominant fancy-pants elitist LA — rents jump anywhere from $200-500 if you are in walking distance of the (*cough*) subway (although the LA definition of ‘walking distance’ is a lot shorter than the NYC definition, I gotta say. My favorite is still the two ladies who took the bus one whole block). It’s not unique in that regard either. Once you cross the Mississippi — hell, once you cross the Appalachians — cities start spawling a LOT more, and public transportation is an afterthought. Living near it, although it won’t get you half the places you really need to go, is a privilege you have to pay for.
I assume people commenting on Americans and SUVs have all read High and Mighty?
It’s not so much that I don’t think access to public transit raises rents, just that when you factor in having a car vs. not having a car, living sans public transit IS CHEAPER than living the car-dominant life. I live in a rather upscale part of the most expensive city in the USA. It would cost more for me to live back home, in one of the cheapest parts of the country, because the cheaper housing wouldn’t be enough to absorb the addition of a car.
If you have an SUV and spend $400 a month to fill the tank, moving close to public transportation and paying $200 more in rent would SAVE MONEY.
This is why I feel superior. Because these people either don’t understand kindergarten level math, or they feel justified in living a more expensive lifestyle that doesn’t actually mean anything for their quality of life.
sorry, I meant “living sans car”. Bleh.
No argument, Opoponax, and I say that as a NYC-to-LA transplant who just got a car two months ago after getting by for 6 months without one. Why did I get one? Because public transit here is so under-developed that I need it. When I’m looking at spending as much time getting to work via public transit as I would spend AT work (half-time; I’m a student), because I would have to go so far out of my way and wait so long at each transfer, public transit is not economical. Would I like it to be? Hell yes! I would kill for a NYC-style transit system out here. Trouble is, it’s years and years away still, and in the meantime public transit becomes an interesting reverse-NIMBY issue because it leads to gentrification, pricing out all of the people who would most benefit from it because they can’t afford a car.
I swear sometimes I’m the only person in America who decided to buy an older house and fix it up (rather than tear up land and build a McMansion), then also decided to stick with a car built in 1990, treat it well, and when it got to 200k miles, bought another one (with only 37k miles!!) and use the first one for parts.
Comfortable- excellent in snow- gets fairly good mileage- low on repairs/maintenance- big enough to haul most items. Roomy enough for 6 (we normally have just the 4 of us).
i think it’s easy for dedicated urbanites to forget just how strong the anti-urban feeling runs in second or third-generation suburban folks. Many of the people i went to school with as a kid, in the ‘burbs, had parents who grew up ALSO in the burbs. Now that they’re all growns up, they too rent little shit condos (think Office Space) in slightly nicer burbs even FURTHER from anything like public transit. I’m the weirdo who left Elgin to live in NY and then on Chicago’s west side.
30 miles outside Chicago, “urban” = “Cabrini Green”. (never mind that Cabrini is mostly gone and most people couldn’t find it on a city map…) The general feeling is you don’t live there, you sure as hell don’t raise kids there, and if you can swing it you won’t even WORK there. You visit 10 square blocks of it (Navy Pier) once a year for some fireworks, or maybe a cubs game. You shake your head at those “crazy kids” in their 20s or early 30s who rent places in gentrifying areas.
I don’t know how to get around that mentality, that urban life is Not Viable, regardless of gas prices. I do know that bringing my mother here for frequent visits is making a dent…
lest the Cabrini Green comment seem like a toss-off, i should note that throughout the 80s and 90s there was a huge amount of local media coverage of Chicago Housing Authority buildings and their various scariness.
A lot of the local perception of the city is tinted by that history of sensationalism…thanks, Fox News.
And even American made…
i think it’s easy for dedicated urbanites to forget just how strong the anti-urban feeling runs in second or third-generation suburban folks.
I grew up in the country, and my entire family has been thoroughly rural as far back as we’ve been in the USA, i.e. at least 3-4 generations. It’s probable that most of my ancestors were rural folk back in the old country, too. Shit, I probably have a couple million years of pure country stock behind me.
Though I will say that I kind of get the idea that the vast majority of people are happy to replicate for themselves the lifestyle they grew up with. However, that is still a CHOICE. People who grow up in the suburbs are not biologically different from people who grow up in cities. They do not actually have different needs. What they have is different desires.
The confusion between needs and choices is a huge part of what is wrong with America today.
Why did I get one? Because public transit here is so under-developed that I need it.
No, you don’t “need” it. You chose it. There is nothing wrong with that choice. There is nothing wrong with saying “I chose to get a car because I don’t want to deal with having to change buses 3 times just to get to work,” any more than there is anything wrong with me saying “I chose to take a taxi to yoga last night because it was pouring out and I didn’t want to walk in the rain.”
Making a lifestyle choice because it’s easier or makes you happy or otherwise adds some positive benefit to your life is not wrong. Why do people have such a hard time owning up to their agency?
I can’t say what the fraction of the total is, but the phenomenon itself is really common around here (semi-rural Texas). At one church we visited, out of a total pool of maybe 100 families, over 20 of those families had 3-4 children spaced 2 years apart (4 of them were exactly aged 3-1-pregnant), and many of the other 20-30 couples who were married were thinking about having children with 2-3 years between each one. I can’t imagine that all of those SUV/minivan families are going to trade out for sedans as soon as they can fit all the kids into one, I expect that they will keep their vehicles as long as reasonably practical.
Googling “sibling spacing” shows 1-3 years between children to be quite common. For any two-parent families that choose to have (or adopt) three children 1-3 years apart, they cannot legally drive a sedan to get them around in most states. According to this , the only states such a family can legally use a sedan in are Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Dakota.
As others have pointed out, yes having children is a choice and all, but my point is that this behavior of putting 3 kids in a sedan or station wagon was viable for 30 years but isn’t anymore. Maybe a vehicle that addresses this need could also address some of the other reasons people pick SUVs.
I think your definition of ‘need’ is perhaps a little too literal, Opoponax.
i think it’s easy for dedicated urbanites to forget just how strong the anti-urban feeling runs in second or third-generation suburban folks.
My experience growing up in the ‘burbs was quite different: we were all just a generation or two removed from families who used to live in cities before having kids and coming to the suburbs. Then the instant we graduated college, we all moved to cities. Few people I grew up with went from the suburbs to college to back to the suburbs without at least a sojourn in a city in between.
Insofar as this feeling does exist, I would guess it’s on the way out and being replaced by a generation that didn’t grow up with the idea that the city was a scary place where no one lived except the very rich and very poor.
In my state, the kids have to be in various versions of car seats til they’re 7…isn’t that unusual to have three kids ages 6, 3 and under 1. I have several coworkers in that fix. They are all stuck with minivans.
I have an SUV because when I bought it, I lived out on gravel roads in a climate with a well-defined winter season. The cost of living any closer to my job was prohibitive…a lot of my coworkers live out in the wilds of West Virginia and Pennsylvania and commute in because they literally could not afford a home any closer to work than that.
I understand that some people may enjoy sneering at SUV and minivan drivers, but unless you personally know the individual you are sneering at, isn’t it kind of pathetically presumptuous to assume that they’re “getting their just deserts” now…?
No, you don’t “need” it. You chose it. There is nothing wrong with that choice. There is nothing wrong with saying “I chose to get a car because I don’t want to deal with having to change buses 3 times just to get to work,” any more than there is anything wrong with me saying “I chose to take a taxi to yoga last night because it was pouring out and I didn’t want to walk in the rain.”
Unless you’re choosing to take that taxi to yoga every single day at the same time — and take it back again once you’re done — it’s not quite the same thing. Believe it or not, having a job is not a luxury for most people, and being able to get there at a reasonable hour that didn’t require three hours on a bus is a luxury the same way that having a bed instead of sleeping on the floor is a luxury.
Unless you’re the yoga instructor, going to a yoga class and going to work are not the same thing.
Also, I’m kind of astounded not a single person has mentioned why so many people live in the suburbs and exurbs: schools. Chicago has some of the crappiest public schools in the country. Los Angeles public schools vary wildly in their quality: if you live in Bel-Air with a $5 million home, your kid will get a great education at the public school down the street. If you live in South LA, not so much.
My brother and his (now ex-) wife moved 60 miles away from his job because if they lived closer, they would pay the same price for a house but they’d have the added expense of sending the kids to private school. No matter how expensive gas gets, it’s still going to trump tuition at a good urban private school.
The Hummer’s entire marketing strategy was “fuck the hippies”, and for a time, it was effective, until it became clear how immature that was.
Which is why, I’m sure, you can understand the temptation to look at those SUV drivers who are suffering now and tell them, “well fuck you, too.” Given that you seem pretty much resigned to the fact that social pressure succeeded in convincing people to make poor decisions, don’t you think it’s at least worth considering that we should leverage social pressure and the power of spite to make them make better decisions?
The cost of living any closer to my job was prohibitive…a lot of my coworkers live out in the wilds of West Virginia and Pennsylvania and commute in because they literally could not afford a home any closer to work than that.
This sounds like you work in Montgomery County, Maryland or thereabouts. I don’t think it was that they couldn’t afford a home closer than that (the distant Frederick, MD has never been known for being expensive), but that they wanted a certain amount of space and personal lifestyle that could only be afforded by moving out to those distant regions. My housing costs are high because I choose to live in an expensive neighborhood, because it’s close to my friends and amenities I want. While I don’t like paying all the money that I pay, I realize that the reason I’m paying that amount is because it supports a certain lifestyle. If I were willing to give up a certain lifestyle I wanted, then I would have less costly options.
@ LS - I think a lot of people’s definition of ‘need’ is way, way too figurative.
If you are a member of the middle class, your life is (generally speaking) an open book of choices. Some choices are easier or will win you brownie points. A lot of choices have long strings of unforseeable consequences. But all of them are choices.
Middle class Americans spend a lot of time erasing the choices we’ve made, pretending that they were “needs”. I “need” a 5000 sf home because I have 4 kids (anyone who could afford that much house had the choice whether to have 4 kids or not). I “need” an SUV because minivans are icky. I “need” a credit card because my kid “needs” a couple thousand dollars in Christmas presents every year. Interesting how the word “want” could be inserted into any of those sentences and it would actually make more sense.
Believe it or not, having a job is not a luxury for most people, and being able to get there at a reasonable hour that didn’t require three hours on a bus is a luxury the same way that having a bed instead of sleeping on the floor is a luxury.
Yeah, because I’m secretly a trustafarian who doesn’t actually have to have a job, I only work because I want to…
I have an hour commute (each way) on 2 subway trains and a bus every morning.
I can’t afford a car.
I deal.
I’m not judging LS for getting a car. She wanted a car, because it would make her life easier. She bought a car. Good on her.
My sole point here is that a lot of American problems with lifestyle and consumption are rooted in the idea that the things we want are actually things we need. If everyone who was spending $$$ filling up their SUVs could admit to themselves that they chose to buy an SUV, that they wanted an SUV, then I would not feel superior or schadenfreudish about gas prices. I feel superior to SUV-gas-whiners (NOT, by the way, to all suburbanites, or everyone who made different choices than I did, or whatever) because I can acknowledge that the choices and splurges and treats in my life are choices and splurges and treats, not needs.
I understand that some people may enjoy sneering at SUV and minivan drivers, but unless you personally know the individual you are sneering at, isn’t it kind of pathetically presumptuous to assume that they’re “getting their just deserts” now…?
I personally know many/most of the people I’m sneering at, in this. The main reason I sneer is because they go out of their way to sneer at my choices. I’m sorry, but if someone has the nerve to act like I’m Little Miss Moneybags because I have chosen to prioritize sustainable eating turns out to be spending $400 a month on gas for their SUV? Wow, whaddya know, the table just TURNED!
An hour would be nice. I used to do that when I was living outside NYC - NJT into Hoboken, PATH, two subways and a walk. That was managable, and the NJT part was even quite pleasant.
Here in LA, my commute to school by public transit is an hour. (15 minute drive, 20 in traffic) My commute to work would have been on the order of 2-3 hours, each way. Need? Yes. I can’t afford to spend the equivalent of a whole other job taking transit when I’m juggling school and work.
I shudder to think what people who are just scraping by go through trying to deal with this; I see people nursing junk bucket cars because if they can’t drive, they can’t work in this city. It’s lose-lose, because when better public transportation comes into an area, the rents go up — but you can’t yet get rid of the car — because the transit is so piecemeal that you cannot get to all the places you need to go. Maybe one person in the family can now get to work in a reasonable time-frame; the other can’t, the kids can’t get to school, etc.
Viable public transportation has to be designed and implemented as a city-wide, neighborhood-oriented plan with considerations for mixed-income housing. That’s the bottom line. Some cities have workable systems in place already, and they’re doing well. Most don’t, and until they can develop something, the majority of their population is tied to their cars — yes, by need.
I shudder to think what people who are just scraping by go through trying to deal with this
For what it’s worth, I also have all the sympathy in the world for people who are truly needy right now. Because it’s about to get a hell of a lot harder. I saw a documentary recently on PBS about rushes on food banks (as well as drops in donations due to rising prices). A lot of people who depend on food banks are simply not able to get what they need. Which means, yes, there are people in this country who are actually going hungry.
Yet another reason why I tend to sneer at people (people I know, people who are not at all made of straw, no matter how much I wish they were) who gripe about how much it costs to fill up the Range Rover these days.
Also, LS, seriously, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a car. I’m saying that people should own their choices. And, yeah, I agree, if I had a 3 hour commute I’d find a more workable way, too.
the kids can’t get to school
Another carbon-footprint pet peeve of mine — whatever happened to school buses? When I was in school lo those many years ago, there was never any issue about how we were going to get there, because that’s what school buses are for.
55MPH isn’t the answer (Why 55? Why not 40, which is closer to the optimum efficiency of an engine?) you will save a lot more gas if you require towns to synchronize traffic lights. Once you are at a given speed, you only burn fuel to overcome air resistance and tire friction; you burn more fuel in accellerating to a given speed than driving at that speed. (F=ma, and all that.) There’s a reason why you get better mileage on the highway than in the city (hybrids excepted.)
Unfortunately, most communities do not time their lights, so you end up in a cycle of accelleration and deceleration. Near where I live is a city with about ten traffic lights, timed so that if you go the speed limit, they all turn red as you approach. But, if you go 10MPH over the limit, they’re perfectly synchronized… Bad for the environment with all the stopping and starting, but good for revenue…
Exactly. My mom works a few blocks from the White House and lives 30 miles south of DC. Her commute is an hour twenty on a good day (car to Metro or commuter bus), two thirty on a bad day. The commute is killing her–lack of sleep, stress, not to mention being forced off the road once or twice by other bleary-eyed drivers at 5:15 A.M. And yet she absolutely refuses to consider moving closer in, not just because she’d get less house for the money, but because she wouldn’t get the detached single-family dwelling and the yard that’s big enough to garden in. Never mind that she’s too tired to actually take care of said garden, and that the quiet town they moved to five years ago is now in the throes of sprawl and traffic congestion, but anyway. It drives me nuts, and it makes me worry like crazy about her, but what can I do?
I remember one summer during college when I was commuting by train to my job on campus. I overheard a fellow passenger talking about how he’d just moved out to my town, and it was so great because there wasn’t traffic like there was in the closer-in suburb he’d moved from. In the next breath, he’s talking about how great it is that we’re going to get a new major chain grocery store, because now he has to drive five miles to the next town to get the kind of services he’s used to from that closer-in suburb. I still regret not turning around and saying, “Hello? Would you listen to yourself? You are perpetuating the problem, and you don’t even see it!” If he was representative of the typical suburban dweller, then I think the problem is that they just don’t get it.
Re: school buses
Our elementary school is implementing full-day kindergarten (instead of the current 1/2 day schedule) next year so the buses will be able to make one less run around town every day.
As it currently is set up, the morning K kids ride at 7:30 am into school with the rest of the elementary kids (1st-3rd graders), then go home at 11:30. The afternoon K kids are picked up on that same bus run and go home with the 1st-3rd graders at 3pm.
Middle and high schoolers ride together- bus is here at 6:15am, as the run starts at our house. They get to school by 7:15 and then the buses go out for the above described elementary runs.
When we see gas over $5 a gallon, I think we’re gonna see either fewer bus runs and/or all the runs combined into one time period. That’s going to mean terribly overcrowded and unsafe buses…
Years ago while living in Norwood MA (Boston suburb), I found that when visiting my best friends in Framingham, you could zoom along Rt 9 to Rt 128/ I-95 nicely (about 10 miles, I think) and hit every light as it was turning green. But ONLY if you went so many miles over the speed limit. Just as James described above.
There were virtually no cars on the US market with the form factor of the Fit, Echo etc. five years ago.
The big US makers pushed their production lines into SUVs and trucks, rather than selling the small cars that they offer outside the US. The high margin and supply meant that dealers would offer low payment deals over extended time, whereas if you wanted a small car, you’d likely need to pay cash privately or take what the dealer offered. (Or: what wayward said.)
So, short-term quasi-rational decisions mean that Detroit is fucked, because the Japanese makers didn’t go all-in on auto-megalosaurs, SUV owners who bought on finance are fucked as resale values plummet, and so on.
a chart showing US transportation pattern vs other advance countries. (It’s friggin pathetic, a result only decades of detroit car advertisement can achieve)
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/eh_trips.png
OK, I knew that US public transit was pathetic compared with Western Europe; but if you try to talk about Europe, people start going on about population density, as if we all lived in Montana or something.
Anyway, Canada has lots of open space, too — and it doesn’t even have $8 a gallon gas. Yet it still has usable public transit in a lot more cities than we do.
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/the-eh-team/
The Japanese are making quite a few of those giant trucks and SUVs we’re all griping about here. Honda Passport? Toyota Landcruiser? Titan pickup? Not exactly all Fits or Priuses. Sure, they also make those quality items in the small car market, for which we should be and are lauding them. But Detroit is screwed because it put all its eggs in the big vehicle basket, not just because of the big vehicles.
Here’s what I think we need to do to make a quicker and better transition to the post-cheap-oil car world: allow carmakers to disregard safety measures for any car that gets over 60mpg (aside from obvious things like seatbelts and a windshield/lights/etc.,) have a sliding scale below that (40mpg+ requires no airbags or something similar,) and institute a consumer tax on all vehicles that get less than 20mpg ($500 per mpg below 20 would be a nice disincentive toward buying a gas-guzzler and a strong incentive to make more efficient cars.) The high-mileage stuff would spur innovation and can be accompanied with some liability-avoidance (to make the business lobby happy) while the low-mileage taxes would be needed to make people think twice about getting a big SUV, truck, or Jaguar. And no, I haven’t figured out where all-electric cars would fit in: I’m thinking out loud, not writing governmental policy.
I drive a minivan that gets the same crappy mileage (18ish) as many midsized SUVs, rarely have it filled with children, can afford gas up to 7 or 8 dollars if I must (actually could afford more, but then I might have to use my bicycle more often–oh, the horror!,) but I’m not going to turn it in for something else. The most ecological car is the one I don’t buy: to replace a vehicle that still works, still is affordable, and doesn’t require the creation of a new car is the more green choice no matter how efficient the replacement will be (at least so far.)
I’m privileged and lucky to be able to have extra money after all my bills and such are paid, but I really want to put some caution in the minds of all those who think they can buy their way out of an economic problem. A new Fit, Prius or hybrid Civic may seem like a great idea, but a used Hyundai or Geo might solve your mess without costing as much. Or, you could just drive smarter, less, and with a better maintained car. And keep those tires full of air, folks.
OK, maybe I’m just really stupid, but wouldn’t lowering safety standards on vehicles that get better mileage cause people to avoid buying them?
I mean, a lot of people rationalize their SUV’s as “safer”. (and yeah, i know they’re not, but at least they come with airbags!)
It is not an accident that we own one car and that car is not used for commuting.It is not an accident that we live near public transit, and near our children’s schools and near parks they can walk to or bike to to play soccer.
It is not an accident that we live in an energy efficient house with a modest amount of square footage. it is not an accident that we were happy to see that it came with solar panels. It is not an accident that we liked said house in 1998 for the fuel efficiency that the size, new windows, and southern exposure with northeast sheltering setback provided to us. In 1998, nobody but the previous owner and us seemed to give a fuck.
It is not an accident that in 2008 the trebling of fuel prices over the winter meant that we had a $500 a month energy bill at peak winter load, while others ouch along at $1500 or more.
So please, pardon me if I am causing a severe smug alert. I knew cheap gas was a clusterfuck waiting to explode. I planned accordingly. Why can’t I enjoy a little bit of fuck you as a result? (fflllllbbblllltttttt! Ah, smells soooo good!)
Do people still buy motorcycles and scooters? Not to mention bicycles, though I’m certain no one would ever allow a child to use such a thing.
If an unsafe thing can have two or three wheels, why can’t it have four?
Rock on, Sarah, Rock on!
To those who say “but we had to get a big house and big cars far from transit for our family” I say BED MADE LIE! For my husband and I, who grew up in smaller digs with more people, this 1300 square foot home is a fucking palace! We have some woods to toss the kids into, and we don’t have to mow them, either. Our kids wanted to go to a card store 3 miles away to add to their gathering piles of magic the gathering and… and … THEY TOOK THE BUS. My son had to referee a little kids game and … HE BIKED. We couldn’t pick him up from his soccer game until we were done at one much further away … so he walked into Davis Square and bought a coffee and played pool at the coffee shop until we arrived. Can suburban kids do that at age 12?
(looks down street for DSS bots …)
$500 a month energy bill at peak winter load, while others ouch along at $1500 or more.
Holy mother of fuck.
I am so throwing this little tidbit at the next assmunch who tells me I’m “throwing money away” as a renter. Because do you know how much I pay for heat each winter?
Exactly $0.00.
Oh, you pay for your energy use. It is included in your rent, Opoponax.
That it is included, may be a geographic issue. I really doubt that you could get a 1300 square foot apartment in the Boston area with heat and utilities included, and if you did the rent would be at least $1800-$2000 a month. That’s more than what we pay in mortgage, taxes, and utilities in the coldest winter chill.
We also live in New England, where energy bills in winter are typically quite high anyway (this was the sum total of electricity and gas bills for a January-February billing period).
A decent number of comments on this thread propose putting forth an attitude of superiority and speak of individual responsibility…ya know, fuck’em, they made their bad choices, I don’t want to pay for them now.
I can’t help but highlight the similarities in tone, if not word for word comparisons, to what you could hear on wingnut radio every friggin day for the last two decades.
Funny, huh?
Its ALWAYS tempting to say I told you so! The sense of satisfaction in being right, especially after a period of ridicule, is about as good as it gets.
BUT what separates you as a progressive or liberal from the wingnuts??? When they complain that others had the same information that they had, but they made the right decisions, didn’t you question that assumption and their arrogance? Didn’t you peel behind the black and white portrayals of complicated circumstances and their indifference to cultural barriers?
Leadership.
Now is not the time for ‘I told you so’. MOST people know that we are now in a bind and are as open as ever is humanly possible to some proper guidance and direction. Who are they going to look to first? Those who have alternatives! And it continues from there…
Did your best boss at work ever ridicule you for making a mistake or did heshe choose another path?
This is an opportunity for us all. Let’s lead, not celebrate. There is too much at stake.
Subsidies for ethanol gas has caused food shortages world wide.
Bullshit. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol have contributed to shortages of corn feedstock and food corn, but cellulosic ethanol fuels can be made out of a hell of a lot more things than corn. A lot of the shortage problem has been caused by a couple of grain crop blights that have been tearing up half the world — the half North Americans don’t tend to hear about on the news. Africa’s breadbasket region has had crop losses in the 75% range, for instance, and it isn’t much better in South Asia and parts of the Middle East. That kind of food crisis affecting that many people can’t help but cause spillover demand for other commodities, which is why rice prices are also rising.
jon: I’m reminded of the Toyota Hi-Lux that Top Gear tried to kill. It would not die. Look on YouTube for it. And the Land Cruiser is built to deal with the Sahara or Afghan roads. But point taken. Thing is, it’s rare you find a Japanese vehicle, even in the US market, that’s fuck-you big and thirsty in the way an Escalade or Hummer are big.
Detroit knows all this: its small cars compete with Japanese or Euro models in other countries. But the margins aren’t there. Except, they will be.
Well, my roommate and I pay for gas for heating in the winter, and you know how much it costs? Around $100 a month. Total.
Now admittedly, we live in a 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment, but we have energy efficient windows throughout. But you know what else we do? We throw on a sweater, and ug-boots, and maybe even a throw-blanket on the couch … don’t need to crank the heat up to toasty.
Not to mention, as much as I love my kitty, and my roommate loves hers, they simply don’t need the same temp setting during the day that we do … same thing overnight, as you just throw another blanket on the bed. It’s what all our grandparents used to do to be honest.
And Kate … rock on back at ya hon! I am so sick of people thinking that their choices somehow get them out of solutions.
A decent number of comments on this thread propose putting forth an attitude of superiority and speak of individual responsibility…ya know, fuck’em, they made their bad choices, I don’t want to pay for them now.
I can’t help but highlight the similarities in tone, if not word for word comparisons, to what you could hear on wingnut radio every friggin day for the last two decades.
Funny, huh?
Its ALWAYS tempting to say I told you so! The sense of satisfaction in being right, especially after a period of ridicule, is about as good as it gets.
BUT what separates you as a progressive or liberal from the wingnuts??? When they complain that others had the same information that they had, but they made the right decisions, didn’t you question that assumption and their arrogance? Didn’t you peel behind the black and white portrayals of complicated circumstances and their indifference to cultural barriers?
Leadership.
Now is not the time for ‘I told you so’. MOST people know that we are now in a bind and are as open as ever is humanly possible to some proper guidance and direction. Who are they going to look to first? Those who have alternatives! And this will continue…
Did your best boss at work ever ridicule you for making a mistake or did they choose another path?
This is an opportunity for us all. Let’s lead, not celebrate (as nice as it might feel). There is too much at stake.
A decent number of comments on this thread propose putting forth an attitude of superiority and speak of individual responsibility…ya know, fuck’em, they made their bad choices, I don’t want to pay for them now.
I can’t help but highlight the similarities in tone, if not word for word comparisons, to what you could hear on wingnut radio every friggin day for the last two decades.
Funny, huh?
Its ALWAYS tempting to say I told you so! The sense of satisfaction in being right, especially after a period of ridicule, is about as good as it gets.
BUT what separates you as a progressive or liberal from the wingnuts??? When they complain that others had the same information that they had, but they made the right decisions, didn’t you question that assumption and their arrogance? Didn’t you peel behind the black and white portrayals of complicated circumstances and their indifference to cultural barriers?
Leadership.
Now is not the time for ‘I told you so’. MOST people know that we are now in a bind and are as open as ever is humanly possible to some proper guidance and direction. Who are they going to look to first? Those who have alternatives! And this will continue…
Did your best boss at work ever ridicule you for making a mistake or did they choose another path?
This is an opportunity for us all. Let’s lead, not celebrate (as nice as it might feel). There is too much at stake.
Oh, you pay for your energy use. It is included in your rent, Opoponax.
I’m sure there’s something added to our rent to compensate for our energy use (though it’s a fixed amount, so i’d guess winter use is amortized), but it’s nowhere near $500 a month, I can tell you that. Let alone $1500!
The fact that we have steam heat via a boiler in the building’s basement and radiators probably helps matters.
We throw on a sweater, and ug-boots, and maybe even a throw-blanket on the couch … don’t need to crank the heat up to toasty.
That’s something we do. We also programmed our smart thermostat to dial down the thermostat to 60 overnight, and also during the day when we are likely not here. It is set at 67 when we are at home, 65 on weekend daytimes because we get solar heat that compensates.
That said, we overrode it to 70 when had the flu bug that was not covered by the flu shot. We also ripped our our kitchen and I can tell you it made a HUGE difference when I got that R19 into the walls and the alcove ceiling!!
Those factors added into that unusually high energy bill for us. I can’t understand how anyone can possibly be clocking $1800 a month peak, but that figure was typical of older homes without proper insulation and too-large suburban houses built by crappy builders and heated by oil.
Opponax, I think you have noticed one of the hidden pitfalls of seeking alternatives to car culture: that so much of car cost is hidden in the landscape.
Sometimes literally — if big cities didn’t have to accommodate parking lots, gas stations and oversized streets, they could be as much as 30% denser.
Couple o’things:
1) Some states require that children ride in a car seat up until the age of eight, and in the backseat until twelve. It’s not at all implausible that parents have to accommodate this.
2) Many semi-urban and rural communities have no public transit system — or only private van-like systems. Not everyone is an urbanite.
Many semi-urban and rural communities have no public transit system — or only private van-like systems. Not everyone is an urbanite.
THANK YOU. The public transit where I live is pathetic.
Oh, I don’t need a car. I could always walk about five miles to the nearest bus stop, and then be dropped off ten miles from my job. That’ll work.
Thank you, Lauren, for injecting sense into the discussion.
I’m not certain I got this right:
“Double down”? I don’t know that colloquialism. The pro-car people would deny any upcoming shortage (got that part), and… would cut their gas use? *scratches head*
Semi-related, I am very much someone who likes cars. I’ve owned two Austin-Healeys, a Porsche 914, even a Volvo 240DL (obligatory brick experience). For the past decade I’ve driven a ‘96 VW Golf. I get 28-30 in the city, and 34-38 on the highway; if I turn off the A/C, I can get 45-49 on the highway. And that’s with a car that’s now at 180K — and with a 2.0liter engine.
It can also haul 18 2x4s at once, or 4 sheets of plywood (cut at the lumberyard into 20″ and 30″ wide segments, but hey), or even 37 cases of books and still not obscure the side-view mirror. I’m used to truck-driving guys joshing me about buying a truck, until they see just how much the VW can hold and that’s without leaving the tailgate up.
My point isn’t that I’m a good driver, but that decent mileage is possible if you know what you’re doing and the car already has an adequate baseline in the first place (27/32 for the ‘96 Golf, IIRC). And, I absolutely love to drive (in case it’s not obvious by now).
I do not believe that SUV drivers love to drive. They sure don’t handle the roads like they’re enjoying themselves. No one’s guilty of the “brake for no reason” worse than SUV drivers, it seems; they’re slow, ponderous on the corners, hesitant, and those that don’t seem to drive like clunky “get from here to there and what’s all this excitement about” seem to be instilled with a sort of fear (which I guess is understandable if you’re driving a three-ton vehicle: you must feel like you’re always on the verge of losing control).
SUV drivers are looking for safety, reliability, and maybe a bit of cache (as much as you can get driving something the size of your living room, but hey). They’re certainly not driving for the experience… and while I get that there probably are folks who purchase more efficient cars without much invested in the cars themselves, I think there are probably a far greater number who purchase those cars because they’re fun to drive first, and the awesome fuel efficiency just makes the deal sweeter. If you love to drive, then you want to make it possible to keep at it: so you’re probably far more likely to purchase a car that gets 36mpg city… then you can drive even more without killing your budget, and ain’t that making for a great day?
Well, it does for me. Just isn’t a good day if I’ve not made at least three SUV drivers eat my German dust.
The Japanese are making quite a few of those giant trucks and SUVs we’re all griping about here. Honda Passport? Toyota Landcruiser? Titan pickup?
Yet, you never, ever see them on the streets in Tokyo. Go figure.
I hear ya, Ms Kate. Own your choices…
We left city life over a decade ago and bought a home that frankly was uninhabitable in 1996. Then applied ALOT of elbow grease…
We’re 10-15 miles from “civilization” but vehicles are well-maintained, (yes, Jon- tire pressure is an easy thing to check and a good tip) and if I go out (twice a week at most), I have a list of chores and fill the trunk. Many days, I stay within 5 miles of the house and have been this way for years. Could open a small convenience store with what I routinely keep on hand.
We replaced all 26 windows in this 100+ yr old farmhouse (1600 sf at most; huge by my standards) sealed it up and painted it with durable paint 5 years ago, have insulated attic and sheet-rocked over the existing plaster. This summer, we will be adding more insulation to the basement and having an evaluation done to see where we’re still leaking out heat. Fingers crossed, we can replace the old roofs.
Still have an old oil furnace as backup, but with a 125 gallon tank and 4 floors’ worth of chimney to resleeve before we could put in another, we started to switch over to zoned propane Rinaii heaters 2 years ago. Adding 3 more small units to the first floor this month. They are remarkably efficient.
SUVs are really not all that great. When the Philly area had one meter of snowfall overnight, most of the vehicles in the ditch were SUVs. My little FWD with snows tootled along.
Why in FSM would anyone below the Mason-Dixon need an SUV? The weather doesn’t force you to consider 4WD and who really needs a PennDOT truck to commute? Oh, it’s all about the tiny.
Lived in the evilbig city and now dwell in Whitest Whitesylvania. Both have things that endear. Both have serious deficiencies. Food in the hills tends toward fuel. Crime in the hills is far more rare. Cities have choices. Cities have nasty air issues.
If one permits oneself a bit of blue-sky thinking one can see how to save the suburbs. They are, if one thinks about it, essentially “pods” of no through-traffic clusters of hundreds of homes served by one or two main streets with similar homes. They are, with the current mortgage/housing/etc. crisis also threatening to have large numbers of empty houses. One response might be a multi-stage plan:
1 - As homes within the “pod” become available people move from the homes on the main drag to those homes; use incentives if necessary.
2- As the homes on the main drag become vacant, replace them with main-street style stores with apartments along the top. In essence, re-create a bit of small town America.
3 - Permit long, lateral stores while maintaining the “look”. In other words, if people are willing to drive to a big store then allow the big store to be long and lean rather than boxy.
4 - Gut the bylaws which discourage places of drinking entertainment in such areas. People will need to go to pubs, whatever you call such a place. There is a future for making Americans talk over a pint or wine just like 700 million Europeans do. The Puritan ethos in America has always made socializing over a drink at your “local” to be something dirty and hidden away, save for urban areas. (Think American small towns and suburbs: many of the best bars are only accessible by car. The “roadhouse” is often a product of being forced out there rather than a chosen culture expression. It’s interesting that “social gathering” bars are more likely to be found in small towns where gentrification occurred.)
5 - Have lots of bike (with decent anchors to lock to!) and motorcyle parking along these new main streets.
6 - Very, very regular public transit (electric buses?) up and down the main drag, with microbuses with less frequent but still regular schedules within the pods. Have superb linkage to the urban transport at the city boundaries.
7 - Make motorcycles, electric cycles and bicycles the sweetest deals out there. One of the flaws of the system here in Canada, for example, was that mopeds in the 1970s were pretty much wiped out by a regulatory system that treated them the same as 1200cc Harleys and a tax system that made them near-as-dammit unaffordable. It is a prime example (so prime that I’m amazed that libertarians don’t cite it all the time) of the market actually going in the right direction for once and then government screwing it up.
8 - Realize that there has to be a narrowing of the gap between the safety standards for cars and motorcyles. It amazes me and that I can hop on a superpowered bicycle and go into traffic and the government finds that “safe” but I can’t go out in many affordable, gas-efficient microcars because the government thinks them “unsafe”, notwithstanding the fact that I am a hundred times safer than I am on a motorcyle.
Oh, and one other thing. Could somebody please make big, motorcycle-style hardshell panniers* and rack-mounted lockbox for a bicycle that don’t cost a fucking fortune? Sometimes I have to take the damned car do to shopping simply because there’s a limit to what my backpack can carry, because I don’t want my stuff in an EZ-soak-through saddlebag that’s floppier than a GOP dick and because I can’t find bicycle lockbox that will fit something larger than a fucking sandwich?** PLEASE? ANYBODY?!?!?!
* - Fascinating. I just google imaged such a beastie and most of the places selling them were in the UK. What a shock. (Also, it has to have a damned lock. and be securely affixed to the bike. Just because I live in a city doesn’t mean that I want to take everything out and safe just so I can go in and have a coffee secure in the knowledge that I’ve left free goodies for a crackhead, tweaker or smackdaddy.
** - Designers: you might start with this: It, at minimum, has to be big enough to fit a laptop in a padded sleeve, one of those 2″ binder-briefcases, and an average-size insulated lunchbag. Is that so hard?
De-lurking for a minute:
“whatever happened to school buses? When I was in school lo those many years ago, there was never any issue about how we were going to get there, because that’s what school buses are for.”
You know what happened to school buses in my parents neighborhood? They cut all the routes serving anyone who lives within 2 miles of the school to save money. They rationalize this by saying that kids that close should be able to walk. What they really mean is that parents are stuck finding them another ride. This is in an inner ring suburb of Minneapolis, MN where for a good 3 months of the year it is literally havardous to be exposed to the air outside for more that a few minutes. Nobody is sending their kids out in that. Luckily my parents live on the outer ring of the school district so my little sister (in high school) can still ride the bus rather than having to drive herself there every day, but I bet there are kids living 1.9 miles from school who had to add a daily commute to their household. I bet there are even families who had to buy another car because the parents work schedules that don’t allow them to drop the kid off.
Yeah, these people have a choice in the simplest sense. They have a choice between adding to their transportation costs and carbon footprint or getting hypothermia and frostbite. Great choice.
You are really bending over backwards to dismiss the possibility that people could have genuine transportation NEEDS outside of your ideal world.
“This sounds like you work in Montgomery County, Maryland or thereabouts. I don’t think it was that they couldn’t afford a home closer than that (the distant Frederick, MD has never been known for being expensive).”
Dead on, and your info about Fredneck is sadly out of date, my friend. Back in the misty past, Frederick was relatively cheap. That has not been the case for going on about ten years now.
Just two other thoughts:
Government incentives regarding motorcycles and bicycles might have to be adjusted to those parts of N.Am which have quite a difference between the two seasons. It’s one thing to say “own a motorcycle instead of a car”, it’s quite another damned thing to say so to somebody in Minnesota, Ontario or Alberta.
Public showers in office buildings. Just because you want to bike to work doesn’t mean that you want to smell like a gym sock when you get there.
Oppoponax: oh, hey, I have no objections to sneering at people that already set themselves up for it by turning up their nose at you first. You go.
Storm at Sea: A tiny two-bedroom condo in Montgomery County costs about half again as much as a two-bedroom townhouse sans basement in Frederick County, which costs about twice as much as a three-bedroom single-family home in West Virginia or rural Pennsylvania. I don’t think characterizing the desire not to spend a great deal more on living space that would severely cramp your family of five as some kind of narcissistic lifestyle choice is realistic. Do you, really..?
seeker6079:
I have a set of panniers that i bought at a bike shop in NYC, but i’m sure you can order them. They’re made by Axiom, they’re floppy but incredibly waterproof, and they’ve got outside pockets for easy access. They’ve made riding to work/grocery shopping/in-town errands a breeze without sacrificing cargo and drizzle-tolerance. $80 for the pair.
Your motorcycle safety point is well taken. I think a fair amount of driver-shaming comes with the motorcycle package, as well as SUVs. They’re quick and efficient, and easy to park, but safety not so much, so unlike SUVs in many respects. My upscale option, if i lived 10 miles further out, would be a Vespa, but i can take the bus so scratch that. But much like SUVs, motorcycles are a lifestyle choice. We shouldn’t have safety standards that penalize people for driving small, efficient cars to which safety modifications could be made quite easily, whilst pushing them towards Mad Max mobiles that make them “safe” at the expense of alll the people they have to mow down to switch lanes.
{The anti-spam numbers are eating my life!}
Amanda,
I’m really disappointed with the conclusion you draw. Sure, schadenfreude isn’t worth the time, but the idea that “the people who exploited this rationalization tendency hold the lion’s share of the blame” is incompatible with a democracy. I don’t want revenge, but I do want accountability, not just for those who promulgated lies, but for those who believed them–often time and time again.
I would argue that one of the defining characteristics of a ‘progressive’ (and that of a liberal as well as a feminist) is a struggle against the MSM/establishment idea that we are sheep who are led around by the nose by small groups of elites. Are you one of those sheep? Am I? Or are either of us elites? If we want to move closer to a true participatory democracy, we have to hold people accountable for their actions. More importantly, we have to avoid giving people an ‘out’, and make people take responsibility themselves.
KL, the number of people out there with three small children in car seats is a fraction of SUV owners.
Amanda, just *one* child under the age of 4 is impossible to fit in a regular car with two older children… if you’re going to obey the law that says the two older ones must be in booster seats until the age of 8.
*That* one is possibly a major driver of SUV purchases, and it pisses me off. It’s one thing to say that very small children need special seats; obviously you can’t construct a seat to fit the needs of a 20-lb human and still have it meet the needs of a 120-lb human, let alone a 300-lb human. But the new rules in Maryland say booster seats until 4′9″. *I* am 5′0″. Why the *fuck* are they designing seats that are unsafe for children between 3′0″ and 4′9″ without special equipment? There are *adults* that size.
It reminds me of when airbags were killing short female drivers. We always heard “Airbags kill children! Don’t let your children ride in the front seat!” But every time they listed the stats it was something like “22 out of 46 airbag fatalities were children.” Hmm, so what were the 24 airbag fatalities that were adults, chopped liver? No, I bet they were short women.
Anyway, my point is that to comply with the law, you have to have booster seats for kids under 8 (at least in Maryland, it’s not a federal law — but many states have such laws) because the car companies won’t make seats that are actually safe for kids in the first place. And two booster seats and a car seat don’t fit in the backseat of a passenger car. I know, I tried it. And it wasn’t a small car — it was a Chevy Lumina. Try to fit all those seats in a Toyota Prius. You can’t do it. That’s why I don’t own one.
Of course, not being an asshole or a sheep, I own a minivan, and a Honda that gets as good gas mileage as the aforementioned Chevy Lumina I used to have, at that. And now that I have *four* kids I have no choice — no passenger car will fit my whole brood. But any family with *three* children can no longer fit them all in the back seat unless they are a. all out of car seats (over 4) b. all out of booster seats (over 8 or 4′9″) or not in a state that requires it c. not overweight enough that they squish each other when they are 3 to a seat. This reduces the number of people who can drive a passenger car by a lot.
I still mock the SUV drivers, though. My gas ain’t cheap, either, but like I said, I bought my minivan on mileage and reliability, not “OMG I don’t want to look like a soccer mom!” My ex used to say that people who drove minivans had no souls; of course, he had no kids, but I think he’s part of the problem, and *he* was a liberal who would totally have bought a Prius as a more-liberal-than-thou status symbol if he could. The association of the minivan with being a mom in the suburban wasteland, and the rejection of all the memes that go with that even if you *are* a mom in the suburban wasteland, has probably killed a lot of people, given how much safer minivans are both for their passengers and for anyone they hit than SUVs are.
Well, then don’t live there.
Seriously, you’ve made a choice, and then you complain about the consequences of that choice? I mean, I (like everyone here) wish we had wonderful public transit everywhere, but we don’t, so you make compromises, and pick somewhere else.
The opoponax @ 47: Why do people have such a hard time owning up to their agency?
Because there may be some point where it comes down to people choosing to work, or choosing to eat, or choosing to have a roof over their heads. Or not.
Worst I ever saw in regards to transport (though I do not doubt that it was far from the worst there is) was an on-call night shift job in the middle of nowhere. They called you, you had to be there in 20 minutes, come rain or snow. Crappy job, too.
As long as people have to work crappy jobs of that type to pay the bills, their agency is limited.
I feel like a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees here. Yes people have choices, and often make bad ones to other peopel. But it is also important to look at what societal forces make those choices.
A lot of American’s buy houses out in the ‘burbs to raise kids where they have a yard and a large house. My guess would be that for a lot of people the cities where they work have a poor park system. Additionally, a lot of people view raising kids when you dont have a house as irresponsible and damaging. Then there is the aforementioned “bad inner city schools”. All of these things can be changed by people but most just move away from the cities because it is easier, especially because historically the government has helped support suburb growth out more than urban growth up.
So yes by all means feel superior and bitch about how you shouldnt help people that made poor choices. Just remember that historically a lot of those choices have been subsidized by the government thus making them preferred at least in the short run.
“Well, then don’t live there.”
Unless you already live in an urban center with decent public transport, living without being totally dependent on your car would require a radical relocation. Minneapolis-St. Paul’s public transportation is woefully inadequate if you ever need to get anywhere besides whichever of the two towntowns is closest to where you live. So I should move to New York or Chicago? That is your solution? Move away from my job and my family and friends and whole support structure?
Maybe you are not that attached to any particular place. Or maybe you make enough money to be able to get by without the support of family to help out with childcare or when you are sick or any number of other personal hardships, but I don’t.
Unless one already lives in an urban center with decent public transport, living without being totally dependent on your car would require a RADICAL relocation. There are lots of good reasons why someone might not be able to do that.
Carpooling and driving smaller cars and taking the bus where possible are adjustments we should all expect of eachother. And people who buy SUVs and then complain about gas prices should rightfully be frowned at, but it is a bit of a stretch to refuse a little compassion to someone because they won’t go whole hog and move out of state just so they can take the freakin’ bus.
louise @ 63, on school buses: When we see gas over $5 a gallon, I think we’re gonna see either fewer bus runs and/or all the runs combined into one time period. That’s going to mean terribly overcrowded and unsafe buses…
Yikes, school buses. When I went to school (not in the US), there was a school bus going to school at 7 am, and going back at1:30 pm. School started at 8, or 9, or 10, and ended at 11, or 12, or 1, or 3, or 5, or 7, depending on grade (the higher, the more chaotic), classes chosen, and dumb luck.
I’ve never done so much bicycling in my life. I moved to the city as soon as I finished school.
The opoponax @ 68: OK, maybe I’m just really stupid, but wouldn’t lowering safety standards on vehicles that get better mileage cause people to avoid buying them?
I’d take my 1985 VW Passat back any day. So it was made of very thin metal and folded up like an accordeon when it finally ended its life against a roadside tree, but that car had a gas milage to dream of. It was also weighing 300 kg less than my current, safer, smaller car.
Cars, homes, jobs, families, energy-use, and other choices are intertwined, yes. The sum total of these, for most of us, is both easily justified and ultimately unsustainable. We could all be driving microcars, but we’d still have sprawl, crappy jobs in crappy locations, family issues, vehicle-use issues, and so forth.
The biggest problem of our time is an economic one: how to build a sustainable future now that we’re near the end of cheap oil. How can we reshape our economy without completely wrecking it? The answers can involve all sorts of nuclear power, drilling in sacred places, making and continuing deals with tyrants, building huge amounts of solar and wind and water powerplants, changing architecture to accomodate styro or straw bales and used tires and better design, and all sorts of other things. But it won’t be enough if Americans (and lots of others worldwide) don’t change our habits. And that, in this economic downturn, is easier to sell now than at any time in recent history. A credit crunch is a great time to promote spending less. What’s really needed is for someone to lead and a whole lot of people to follow, so new and better habits can stick.
And, if you want to scare yourselves, read James Kunstler’s World Made by Hand.
alara @ 98: Amanda, just *one* child under the age of 4 is impossible to fit in a regular car with two older children…
I have heard that as an argument for not having a third child. “We’d have to get a minibus, and there’s no way to find a parking space for that darned thing.”
It’s not only about one’s own children, too. When I was a kid, one parent could drive the kids of three families to a school event. Not so these days…
Also, some of the people on this thread going on about agency and how none of us really NEED cars, remind me a little bit of anti-choicers who just can’t get it through their heads that not every case of of abortion is all about selfishness.
There are all sorts of factors about other people’s lives that we can’t fully understand and sometimes something that we want to paint as selfish or irresponsible is actually just what is right and, yes, NECESSARY for someone else and their circumstances.
Pregnant with no insurance and no job? Some anti-choicer will tell you that you could always find an adoptive family to pay your medical bills andthen give them the baby! (Cause that is so easy. Or at least sounds like it when it is not your life or your body).
Need to maintain a car because you live in a city with inadequate public transport? Well you could always MOVE TO NEW YORK! (Cause we all have such in-demand skills and burden-free life that we can move anywhere at any time.)
Just because one is unwilling to go to extremes does not mean that they are undeserving of a little compassion or that their choices should be so easily dismissed. I am sure that is not what you mean to communicate, but that is how it comes across to me.
RE: School buses.
Speaking as a current college student with recent memories of how school buses work: about 2003 or so my suburban town (Norwood MA - hi Louise!) started charging families $200 per child to ride the school bus to the public school. Kids living within 2 miles of the school were not allowed to ride the bus.
Furthermore, the bus only ran in the morning at 7am and immediately after school let out, at 2:30pm. Kids like me who had to stay later for extra help, sports practice, extracurricular activities, all those things required for a good resume to get into college, were SOL to get home without a ride from someone’s parents.
Biking or walking to/from school is really not an option for a lot of kids these days. Not only are they carrying a backpack stuffed with 4-5 heavy textbooks, a lot of them have musical instruments and/or sporting equipment to and from school every day. Have you ever tried to bike with a 40-lb school bag, a violin, and a gym bag? It doesn’t work. Carrying all that stuff for a 2+ mile walk (as I did end up doing every so often during HS) took nearly an hour, which if you walk both ways translates into two fewer hours to devote to homework.
My sister, still in HS when the school implemented its bus policy, was faced with a choice: pay money towards a bus that did not actually serve her transportation needs, spend 2 hours of her busy day walking to/from school, or get a junkbox car ($500, I think it was) and at least be able to get home from her band practices at a reasonable time in order to do the many hours of homework for which she had to bring home those heavy textbooks.
She opted for the junkbox car.
clap clap clap.
The nearest establishment licensed to sell drinks on premises is a ten-minute walk from me. It’s also a strip club on a main road. No thanks.
Paranoia plus zoning puts drinking downtown or on the margins of the ‘burbs. Of course, if there were local pubs in the ‘burbs, as there are in Britain, you might be forced to talk to the people who live nearby.
Here’s a question: How did my parents, who had 3 kids under the age of six manage to fit two car seats and a booster seat into the backseat of their car? It was likely a Toyota station wagon of some kind (no third row of seating either). I know they did it somehow, even though the booster seat for their oldest child wasn’t mandatory at the time.
Were car seats so different 20 odd years ago?
Were the seats installed differently? (Or incorrectly?)
Are the car seats of today safer because they are larger? Or are they just larger for some other reason?
Can car seats and booster seats be made and safely installed so that three of them can fit in a backseat? Or so they take up only one seat?
Because it sounds like there are quite a few people who would like to purchase such a thing…
Because there may be some point where it comes down to people choosing to work, or choosing to eat, or choosing to have a roof over their heads. Or not.
Those, however, are not choices but needs. Food, shelter, clothing, etc. are obvious physical needs, and the economic ability to secure them is also a peripheral need.
But nobody “needs” a 7000 sf home. Nobody “needs” to buy their kids plastic junk. Nobody “needs” an escalade or a hummer (even if you might actually need an SUV, and there are some who genuinely do). And yet in conversations with my family, they will insist time and time again that they somehow magically did not choose to buy a McMansion, did not choose to drive a Range Rover, did not choose to have a large family, did not choose a certain career, ad nauseam.
Not to mention, of course, that a gigantic majority of those who I sneer at for refusing to grasp that their “needs” are actually “wants” are not poor people. There is a massive difference between needing certain things to provide for your 5 kids, whom you had because you couldn’t get access to any sort of birth control, and wanting to provide a certain lifestyle to the 5 kids you chose to have because you always thought it’d be cool to have a big brood.
I also want to underline yet again that “choice” and “want” are not dirty words. There is nothing terribly wrong with wanting to drive a really cool car, wanting to live in your dream home, wanting a life of convenience where you don’t always have to be bucking the system. What bothers me is that a lot of people don’t see those as choices at all, but as ‘needs’. And even weirder, the same crowd is likely to see any sort of different way of life as a “choice” or a “want” or a “splurge”, whereas their lives are driven simply by their most basic needs.
Not everyone is an urbanite.
My family seem perfectly content to harp on me over and over every time I talk to any of them about how I need to move back to the country, or at the very least, some sort of nice suburban sprawl sort of place like a lot of them do now that’s where all the jobs are.
Why is it OK to demand that people leave the city and move to suburbia, but verboten for urbanites to suggest that a great many aspects of city life are just plain better?
Again, I’ll say that nobody here is demanding that all suburban dwellers sell their houses and cars and move into the inner city — for one thing, there simply isn’t room. But those of y’all who don’t live in cities chose your way of life every bit as much as those of us who live in urban areas did.
Not to mention, no, it’s JUST NOT CHEAPER. I can afford to live in NYC. I can’t afford to live anywhere car-dominant. You live in suburbia because you like it, not because it’s saving you money.
“Then don’t live there.”
Yes, I will quit my Ph.D and move to Chicago just so I can ride the train. Sure, I chose to go into agriculture which means living in rural areas with little or no public transit. But it’s a choice that is worth it, for me. I love working out under the massive blue sky here on the prairie. I love that I get to travel for my research. Cities are nice too (I like to visit for the museums, theater, etc), and I don’t think people are wrong or silly for living there. But I think it’s worthwhile to recognize that there are some types of work that can only be done in rural areas and that because people choose to do that work you are able to choose to live in big cities. Choosing to live near public transit doesn’t make you a better person, but you should realize how lucky you are to be able to make that choice. Not everybody is able to choose where they live or what they drive.
Carrying all that stuff for a 2+ mile walk (as I did end up doing every so often during HS) took nearly an hour, which if you walk both ways translates into two fewer hours to devote to homework.
I don’t want to be rude or call you out at all, but that sounds pretty much like my life. I have a 2 hour commute each day (and, yes, I have also known times when I had to walk 2 miles each way to get to work or school). While I guess I’m lucky that this is passive time and I can read a book or something, it makes certain important obligations more complicated.
Not to mention that a lot of people’s lives also involve walking 2 miles and carrying stuff. It’s not cruel and unusual punishment, and I’d guess that it’s going to be reality for a lot more people as oil peaks and driving short distances becomes a real luxury.
What I will say is that I bet a lot of these school districts refusing bus transit to kids who live within a 2 mile radius are not set up for easy walking to and from the school. I lived less than 2 miles from my high school, but the way our town was laid out it would have been suicide walking there and back every day.
I don’t think it is. I am fully aware that there are advantages to living in a major city that we don’t get here. On the other hand, I think there are some advantages to living in a rural area. For some reason, people seem to get really defensive about their choices.
I will quit my Ph.D
Yes, because god knows getting a Ph.D is something everyone needs to do or they will starve.
The point here is not “we chose right, you chose wrong, therefore you either have to change or we will sneer at you.” The point is that the choices made by many/most middle class people are more want-based than need-based, and people should be able to own up to that. There is nothing wrong with saying “my thirst for knowledge outweighs my desire to be carbon neutral”, or whatever. But, no, actually there is not some little organ inside you that will make you implode if you don’t obtain a doctorate. It’s a choice you made, because you wanted it.
For some reason, people seem to get really defensive about their choices.
That’s really all I’m saying.
opopanax, read the rest of my post.
none of us really NEED cars
I don’t think I saw anyone in this thread actually say this. A lot of folks talked about how they were able to make life sans car work for them, or how they did the math and discovered it would be more expensive to live in a “cheaper” rural area with a car than it is to live in an urban area and use public transit.
Not to mention, of course, that I don’t think very many pro-choice folks are arguing that the reason abortion should be legal is that women ‘need’ it, but that women should have the ability to choose it if that’s what works best for them. I’m not entirely sure that “need” is a great line of argument, because it is in fact very easy to argue that this is untrue. Not to mention that it’s also easy to argue that if the pro-choice agenda is based on the need abortion, rather than offering all women as much reproductive choice as possible, we should have an elaborate system to figure out who really deserves and abortion and who doesn’t. Which is in no way what reproductive justice is about, at all, and NEVER EVER has been.
Sorry, Entomologista, I did. Unfortunately right after I posted that… Boo.
I think abortion should be legal because women need it.
In fact, some are right here in this thread.I have no kids; I recycle assiduously; I compost and am thinking about gardening; I buy very little in the way of new consumer goods (almost all my clothes are second-hand); I drive an older, well-maintained, and fuel-efficient vehicle; and I keep my thermostat at fifty-six fucking degrees Fahrenheit in the winter.
I am not going to feel guilty about the fact that I eat meat, that I drive a car, or that I choose to live alone. In fact, if I can help it, so long as I remain able in body and mind, I will never live with another person again.
Anyone who attempts to guilt-trip me over these things is cordially invited to go fuck themselves.
GumbyAnne:
No fucking shit. And after they’re done lecturing and preening about what superior people they are (despite claims to the contrary), they wonder why people get “really defensive about their choices.”I dunno about that; in fact, your argument seems pretty much consonant with the “moderate” anti-choicer argument that there are “deserving” women (rape and incest survivors, women with severe health issues) who need abortions and should be allowed to have them, and “undeserving” women (everyone else, or, as anti-choicers prefer, “sluts”), who just want abortions and can be freely denied.
Where that argument falls down is that not everything that is “right” is also “necessary.” Just because a woman doesn’t need an abortion, in a strictly utilitarian sense, doesn’t mean an abortion may not be the best choice. It doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be allowed to have one. So too with automobiles. I made do without a car for three years in South Bend, Indiana, a city with virtually zero public transportation. And it sucked. And it greatly curtailed my choices in life. But I proved you don’t “need” a car even in the small-town midwest. Yet when I got a car, my life got substantially better, and if anyone had said “you don’t need a car, so you can’t have one,” I would have burned them in effigy.
What strike me in Amanda’s post is not just the failure to respond (insofar as possible) to market signals about energy, but the elevation of that failure to some kind of political statement. It’s like the neighbor of a friend in the Midwest who commented, “We’re pretty conservative; we don’t recycle.”
(the numbers drive me crazy. Sorry if this shows up twice)
Grumpy Anne @ 106, word.
Bad infrastructure, bad city development, bad public transport is not about personal choice. It’s political and should be targeted as political. No higher power will fix it out of the goodness of their heart. The market won’t fix it. Everyone taking their families and moving to NYC won’t fix it.
The town I live in is having the 10th anniversary of its night bus system this year. Public transport between 11pm and 5 am didn’t come into existence because someone felt they could make cash with it (no one does with local public transport), it wasn’t won in some lottery, and it didn’t grow out of the bare earth. Night buses exist because people demanded them and spend years convincing the town that it was something worth spending money on.
Simply moving is the easier and safer alternative if you are single, have skills that will let you find a job wherever you want, and are not dependent on a support network. Not everyone meets these criteria, due to lifestyle choices like having dependent, being poor, or being short on marketable skills. And that’s why individual solutions, in general, aren’t. A cry for individual solutions only lets those who profit from making everyone’s life more shitty weasel out of their responsibility.
I live in NYC — Brooklyn, to be exact. I’m a 5 minute walk from the subway. I’m single and share a 2-bedroom apartment with a roommate. I pay circa $80 per month in transportation expenses, and under $600 in rent (which I’ll admit is on the cheap end). My total rent + transit costs per month are well under $800. Even working an entry-level job in a creative field, I’m able to get by quite well.
Well lemme tell ya, friend, I lived in Brooklyn too (Boro Park, represent!), until we had a kid. And it wasn’t the cost or the pretty significant amount of physical work involved in hauling a stroller over broken sidewalks and up to an elevated subway platform with a busted elevator while recovering from a c/section that got to me. It was the fact that in most neighborhoods, kids play in the freaking street, 1 foot away from New York drivers, because there *is* no where else. Not really ideal, and let’s not get into the insanity of the NY public school system, in which you have to test into good schools, and the bad ones are bad in ways that involved shootings, not just test scores.
In short, it works for you, sans *any* kids–but if you acquire one, better be sure you acquire a job and/or spouse with significant earnings to get into a place close to a safe park, and a good private daycare/school. On a small salary, you choose between kid’s safety and eating. Which is why we left.
We have one kid, one Toyota, and live in, yeah, a Texas suburb. We rent a 3-bedroom 2 bath house, in a nice neighborhood, for *less* than our crappy 3 bed/1 bath apt. w/ a roommate in a neighborhood miles from any green space. We have a school within walking distance, and a yard with a fence, good neighbors, and we are pretty damn happy about it.
Can we stop bashing suburbs already? They have their problems, and I personally would love to have more train lines close to me, but there is a perfectly sane reason for wanting grass, quiet, and safety in which to raise a family, or even just keep yourself happy. Cities are just not the answer to everyone’s problems. Which means, we have to come up with a better fuel/car answer than “move to the city, dumbass.” America is fucking huge, if you haven’t noticed, and it takes a while to get across it in flyover country. Giving up personal transportation on a European scale is just never going to be an option.
Inge, as you can see, that sort of insight is just a little too wispy for people to really take up on. People would have to think before they type.
I keep my thermostat at fifty-six fucking degrees Fahrenheit in the winter.
Maybe you can do that in more temperate places. An acquaintance of mine left his suburban Boston home at 55F while he was overseas for three weeks and ended up with $150,000+ in damage to his house from a burst pipe that fried the entire electrical system.
Actually, Ms Kate, I live in southern New Hampshire. I haven’t had a problem with the galvanized iron pipes in my old house.
I used to live in Massachusetts. Know why I left? I mean, other than the noise, congestion, Type A pace of life, and cost of living? Smug yuppie “liberals” who think that because earning two professional incomes enabled them to buy a house within walking distance of a bustling, trendy urban area in 1998, they’re morally superior to people who haven’t been quite as successful in their career paths (although you’d think that on this blog, “success” wouldn’t be defined in terms of annual income).
Even though they’ve expanded their carbon footprints considerably by reproducing. But I guess it’s OK, since your 12-year-old is so S-M-R-T he should be allowed to vote and will therefore grow up to save the world….
/snarl
Why in FSM would anyone below the Mason-Dixon need an SUV? The weather doesn’t force you to consider 4WD
Well, I seem to recall Florida having a lot of this stuff they called “mud.” It’s what dirt becomes after a hard rain. Hard rains occurred pretty much every day. Just sayin’…
Now I live in Nevada, where there’s this stuff called “sand.” A lot of it is on these things called “mountains.” If you want to get out of the city every now and then, you’ll likely run across them.
It’s why I kept my trusty old 4Runner- I like getting off the pavement and out into the desert. Too bad I can’t afford to do that anymore. I’ll be selling the thing soon, and doing more hiking instead of driving. Wth, it’s better for my own health anyway.
Yeah, it’s my choices that led me here and they sucked. After graduation, I’m totally moving somewhere urban and NOT desert- maybe Seattle.
Nobody In Particular, you seem to be venting a great deal of diffuse rage. Stop channeling me!
There, that said, I empathize. I’m of what you can call the capitalist left here in Canada, which makes me pretty much a commie by American standards. But even I had a hard time stomaching a lot of the crap that the smug lefties brought forth in law school (1986-89). It took me years to calm down from the infuriating, smug, sanctimonious, priggish, holier-than-thou arrogance which was the alpha and the omega of progressive thought and speech in those days. One of the dirty little secrets of we on the progressive left is that we have waaaaaaaaaay more right-wing-style preachers and morality mandaters than we care to admit; the only difference is that they are secularist scolds rather than religious ones.
Not much changes. A colleague of mine (a hardcore NDP [our democratic socialist party] stalwart) was recently bemoaning that the local party couldn’t even have a fun fundraising concert without preachy speeches.
Personally, I think turning down the termostat to 60 or 55 is absolute madness. However, when/if I am face with high heating bills due to my intolerance of the cold, I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that such a consequence is due to my personal choices of:
(a) My preference for living in the northeast, as opposed to the west coast or the south
(b) my personal preference for a warm living environment
If the costs are intolerable, I’ll find money savings from elsewhere, look for alternative heating/insulation methods, or move to a more temperate climate. Or I suppose I could “get used to it.” But I’d never resort to the claim, “I NEED to keep the thermostat at 70 degrees.” I know what makes me happy, and I plan accordingly. Any problems are just a set of tradeoffs I’m willing to accept for the things that I do want. Because of that, I’m not offended by the smugness of the person who tells me she can live with sleeping under several blankets and dealing with numb fingers as she waits for the shower to heat up in the cold bathroom each morning: I think that such a lifestyle is crazy and plan accordingly to avoid it. If it hurts financially, then I have no one to blame but myself.
oppoponax nailed it with “own your choices.” Figure out what your preferred lifestyle is, and figure out which aspects of that lifestyle are important, and work around those limits to figure out how to best afford it, knowing things like fuel costs are only going to go up.
the local party couldn’t even have a fun fundraising concert without preachy speeches.
Are you kidding? We can barely hold an organizing meeting without someone droning on for 10 minutes about his or her personal hobbyhorse. Thankfully, we now have blogs to provide an outlet for these people.
:DHear fucking hear.
Tyro: I can actually deal with the thermostat that low. I’ll admit that I use an electric space heater upstairs to supplement the gas heat; it’s more cost-effective than heating the whole house to a decent temperature. But I’m also, uh, fairly “well-padded,” and I have no aversion to wearing shoes, sweaters, and even a hat in the house.
What I couldn’t deal with is the summer heat in most of the country. When it gets hot here, I run a pair of late-model window A/Cs, one upstairs in my bedroom and the other downstairs in the kitchen (can’t afford central right now), on a fairly low setting. Then I draw the curtains and the light-blocking blinds and walk around in my undies.
“Move to a more temperate climate”? I’ve lived in New England my whole life. My family is around here, and a lot of my friends, too. I don’t understand the “just pick up and move” mentality. I guess a lot of Americans never grew roots. Not to mention that moving takes money.
As for “owning your own choices,” someone else nailed it upthread: So many of our choices are limited by the political realities of the modern United States. A lot of the smugness I see in this thread over people’s “choices” reminds me of wingnuts who claim they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps while they whinge about “welfare queens.” Both parties prefer to look at everything in terms of individual choices, rather than societal forces. Which is why I put “liberal” in sneer quotes in my previous comment.
First, we import most of our oil from Canada and Mexico, so the argument about not funding Middle East terrorism doesn’t quite hold up. See:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/popup?id=1566549
Secondly, I own an SUV that we bought in 2000. We bought it because we had 3 kids, 2 in car seats and it hurt my back having to bend over time & time again to put kids in & out of carseats. It was much easier to get them in & out of a car that was higher.
We also picked our SUV because we hauled around a lot of things for and with our kids including, but not limited to, soccer equipment, chairs, strollers, car equipment, and toys. A double stroller fits much better in the back of an SUV.
On top of those considerations, our SUV (it’s a Hyundai) gets comparable gas mileage (about 30 mpg) to most cars, and the car payments, when we had them, were cheaper than most cars we looked at. In other words, we bought an SUV because the pros outweighed any cons. And we still run that car because it’s cheaper–even if gas were $5 a gallon–than buying/leasing/renting another car.
Third, early in this thread, there was a lot of anti-kid rhetoric. I don’t mind people not having children if they choose not to do so. But you’ll probably be happy that other people decided to have those kids when you need somebody to pay for Social Security, provide your geriatric care or wipe your ass and feed you mush in the nursing home.
Finally, I live in the same town I grew up in (Fort Worth, TX). I’ve worked all over the Metroplex, including Dallas, and I can assure you that there are times when it isn’t a “choice” to commute more than an hour to work. Public transportation here is unworkable and it’s unlikely that anything will be in place before my children are collecting retirement. Why? Because there are still places where people don’t want public transportation (like Arlington, the largest suburb in America without public transportation). One of the wonderful things about a democracy is that people don’t have to agree with the choices of their neighbors.
Hey Nooasshole in Particular,
I grew up in a FUCKING TRAILER. I live in a WORKING CLASS SUBURB where we could afford a home on a single income and only have one car.
Maybe I should ask my BIL, a retired airforce sgt. who lives up beyond the flat lands, what he thinks of the likes of your asswipe self moving into his state?
Oh, but that might break your self important reality bubble, now wouldn’t it. I’m sure he’d be very very mean to your widdle masshole self.
the opoponax, I feel that the reason most people at this place bristle at arguments of the “you don’t really need, you just want” or “lifestyle choices” type is that those arguments are quite commonly used to deny rights to poor people and minorities, or to invalidate their experiences.
There are a lot of things I’d like to label as a “choice” and treat as value-neutral (sexual orientation comes to mind). But as long as it’s not value neutral (and burning through limited resources at the expense of every isn’t), “choice, not need” is an argument that gets people up in arms.
All the more if mixed up with the “people who believe they need
flat-screen TVsMcMansions”.So I think this argument, while not entirely without merit, won’t be much use in changing anyone’s mind.
Plus, as I said, my main beef with the “lifestyle choice” argument is that it makes structural pressure invisible. And it’s hard to change something that has been made invisible.
MJ_, on car seats: My impression is that the seats have become larger, and the interiour of cars has become more crowded. My old VW Passat felt twice as roomy as the latest models, despite newer models taking up more space on the outside.
Tyro: Personally, I think turning down the termostat to 60 or 55 is absolute madness
I’m not home 10 to 15 hours a day, so I set the heating to 12°C (lowest setting, a little under 55°F) if it’s freezing outside, and do not turn it on at all if it’s not freezing. When I come home and I plan to be awake for 3 more hours, I put it to 20°C in the living roommand put on two T-shirts until the room is heated up. As all the relevant pipes are running indoors, no trouble with that at all. (As you might have guessed, I have a pretty high tolerance for cold. It’s the heat I cannot stand.) Do I understand it correctly that many houses or flats do not have the tech necessary to heat only one room? I have heard that being the case in some modern building designs — it seems a strange kind of “progress” to me.
I think part of the problem is that “good” choices now are not the same as “good” choices, say, ten years ago.
It used to make a lot of economic sense to live in the ‘burbs and commute to the city–someone with kids, for example, could get good schools and daycare but have an urban job with better health insurance or something like that. No one has to have kids (let alone seven) or buy a McMansion, but the people who are really feeling the crunch now probably aren’t the people who would’ve been doing anyway.
I’m shedding no tears for the parents making six figures a year who are now having to contemplate changing Timmy’s karate lessons from private to group because their Land Rover costs too much to fill. It’s the people who made the best choice for them at the time–finding a way to get by that was the best available at the time–who are now being hit the hardest, and who are now without the resources to make a change. Moving is EXPENSIVE–I should know, this is the first summer in four years I haven’t moved across state lines–and requires resources. Not everyone has the resources to make the best choices *now.* They’re stuck in a bad situation that’s getting worse.
The people are most impacted by the economy are the people who have the least agency to make their own choices in the first place. Again.
Hey, Ms Kate? Blow it out your self-righteous, smug yuppie breeder ass. You might have grown up working-class but you’re as big a classist asshole as any I’ve seen on the left-wing blogosphere. “Working-class suburb”? You mean Somerville? Bahahahaha…like it hasn’t been gentrified nigh unto death by now, certainly long before 1998.
And why the fuck should I care about what your BIL thinks? Does he own New Hampshire or something?
“Self-important reality bubble”…pot, kettle, fucking black. Typical fuming from yet another Pseudoliberalis massachusettensis who’s been called on her bullshit and doesn’t like it one bit.
“Hey, Ms Kate? Blow it out your self-righteous, smug yuppie breeder ass.”
I take it you’re not a fan? I also assume you’ve never bothered to read any of Ms Kate’s contributions, right?…
I don’t know Ms Kate IRL, but around here she’s got the right combination of sense, snark, and sensitivity to bullshit. Her comments are greatly appreciated by most of us…
Amanda wrote:
But when we took our two teenaged girls — plus a spare — to see Iron Man on Friday, we had to take my F-150, because five adults — adults meaning: bigger than Mary-Kate Olsen — won’t fit in Mrs Pico’s little Mustang.
If we go shopping for more than a couple day’s worth of groceries for five — and frequently six — people, we’re not going to get everything in a little Cooper Mini. You could say, well, buy less food at one time, but then you wind up making more trips to the supermarket, thus burning any gas you saved with the toy car.
Not everybody is single, and not everybody has only two mouths to feed, and not everybody lives in walking distance of everything they need. People buy vehicles to suit their needs, for the most part.
I’ve never owned an SUV or car, ‘cause they’re too small. I need something big, real big. Bigger than a stretch hummer. Almost as big as a semi with plenty of leg room, and dancing poles at regular intervals, and big windows so I and my friends can look down on nancy boy proles in their widdle tiny SUVs. It’s pained in garish colors and even has a big marquee on the front to let the proles know the exciting places I’m going. Of course I never soil my hands with anything as base as driving, opening doors and pumping gas. I have a uniformed Chauffeur to do that. I make sure he picks up my friends on the side of the road all the time. Of course we have special cards that the Chauffeur checks when they get on to keep the riffraff off.
I don’t even buy, I lease on a per ride basis. After I get off, my Chauffeur drops of my friends wherever they’re going and then parks it somewhere. All I know is the next time I need one a new one rolls up, often with a different Chauffeur.
I”ve fit three car seats across the back of a Ford Taurus, a Toyota Camry, and a friend has done it in a Honda Accord. So it’s not true that you need a minivan to move around three young kids. But it does make it substantially easier to use a minivan.