Go, Sis!
=v= The Sierra Club is concerned that you'll be "the lone environmentalist at the dinner table" this holiday season, so they've set up a website of scripted conversations with your troublesome kinfolk. One such nemesis is your dreadlocked pottymouthed "Sis," who thinks you're a sell-out, and says wacky things such as, "environmentalists should be visionaries, not realists."
The conversation follows the trajectory one might expect from the reality-based-community dialogue authors at the Sierra Club, until Sis makes her fatal mistake, questioning car culture:
They should be walking or biking or taking public transport to work.
Your role here (you, the reasonable Sierra Clubber) is to calmly redirect her back to cussing, then wrapping it up with a nice parochial lecture.
After dessert, of course, you can enjoy the Hybrid SUV ads in your copy of Sierra, while Sis heads off to the New Year's Eve Critical Mass ride.
Why hold the commuters responsible for the proliferation of cars, when the location of places to shop and work often gives them no choice? I would prefer to go back to commuting by train, but have had no success finding a job in Manhattan (or anywhere else reachable by public transit) that pays as well as my current job. And yes, I do factor in the additional costs of car maintenance, insurance, parking, etc. when making the comparison.
And when I got that job, the choice was to accept a job that could only be reached by car, or remain unemployed. I'm willing to put others out of work for the sake of the environment, but not myself.
Posted by Jimcat on December 13 2004 11:54
=v= "Sis" is a caricature. She exists to spout heavy-handed straw doll arguments. In real life, the passionate young dreadlocked carfree women that I know would focus on issues of land use planning and transportation infrastructure, but "Sis" won't go there.
Posted by Jym on December 13 2004 12:23