Thanks again to Robert Bidinotto's blog, for pointing out an interesting column by Melanie Reid on how women will fare in the Green, Eco-friendly future. Since women are commonly even more enthusiastic supporters of environmentalism than men, Reid points out how their future will change as we live in the poorer and duller world of high environmental conscience. Are you women really looking forward to your hemp sleepwear, the end of energy wasting washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers, carrying your groceries home on the bus, and wasteful skiing vacations? She seems to think that a return to the old ways, which Greens seem to look upon with such nostalgia, means a return to boredom and endless drudgery.
For those of you who enjoy shopping, can you imagine having to take public transportation from one store to the next? Well, look forward to it or start sending a very different message to our politicians who are only too happy to have a looming crisis to address with more government power and more regulations and restrictions.
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2 comments:
But I do use public transportation to shop! And think it's a terrific value.
I live in a small city and cannot afford to keep a car anymore. While it isn't glamorous, perhaps, to carry my purchases home in a backpack, it is keeping me strong and fit without a gym membership. I also use the bus to commute to my downtown job and enjoy reading, conversing and napping for 20 minutes every morning and evening. No more rush hour stress.
While I enjoy your thoughtful essays and frequently agree with you--and hate drudgery as much as the next!--public transportation is not a Gulag sentence. Enjoy your car by all means, but it isn't the only good way to get around.
I have two daughters who live in NYC now and they seem to be fine with the subway system there and the occasional use of taxis. I cannot imagine living there with all the noise all the time, the cramped and expensive housing, and the generally overwhelming imprint of government that seems to come with packing people too densely. My experience with the Washington, DC Metro has not been good. The cost is high, the Metro passes are always becoming demagnetized and causing one to lose the unused investment in them, and even the Washington Post of late has been discussing how badly the system has been run and maintained. I have waited on a particularly cold and windy February day trying to catch a bus home from downtown Silver Spring for 45 minutes as frostbite threatened. Public transportation is generally operated with all the competence that I associate with government-run operations, which is pretty low. Of course, I do need to have a car to get from home to my laboratory and my wife needs a car to get to her hospital which is difficult to get to by public transportation though it is in DC. I would like to see a real competition in private transportation in cities.
I am not a city person and frankly I would much prefer being about 60 miles away from any large city. Living near a small city would be more palatable than the big cities, but even then I would not want to commute to downtown for work. I would much rather not be paying for the public transportation systems for those who do like cities and who do want to commute to work in their downtowns. The roads are at least paid for by gasoline taxes, which are user taxes. The subway, light train, and bus systems are usually heavily subsidized.
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