On Jun 19, 2007, at 12:43 PM, Mitch Berg commented on Charles' post
[with my comments in brackets]:
> Ah, but you see, Charles, you've jumped imperatives,
> here.
>
> My premise was "once we eliminate automobiles' threat
> to human survival" (let's accept, purely for
> argument's sake, the exceedingly, increasingly
> scientifically dubious proposition that global warming
> is caused by human activity)
[(Let's accept it without reservation; human causes are well
established and presently are exponentially more catastrophic than
any other source of greenhouse gases or particles in the atmosphere;
the only argument is from scientifically challenged folks like Mitch.)]
> - which I suggest, not
> without merit, that the market will accomplish long
> before government enables transit that is remotely
> useful for most of us - then what is the moral
> imperative for all of us to cram ourselves into
> transit and accept the gross alteration of life that
> comes from being forced to rely on "transit"?
>
> Since you note...
>
>> The answer ought to be a resounding "yes." The
>> problems caused by an over-reliance on autos go well
>> beyond air pollution
>
> ...that it isn't survival (remember - the market has
> made clean cars! Sign me up for an electric replica
> '69 Camaro, powered by clean hydrogen, produced by
> cheap, unlimited nuke power!),
[Hydrogen will not be available without the 'guvmit,' Mitch. The
manufacturing and distribution infrastructure needed to fuel your
Scamaro will require a great deal of government intervention in the
market, the same market that delivered us the global warming problems
in the first place. The only sort of economically feasible hydrogen
fueled vehicles are transit buses now (room for the big fuel cells);
I sure wish Metro Transit would run some in St. Paul and I hope the
GOP will buy MTC one or two for the convention (got to get this
increasingly global thread back local).]
> then what's left?
>
>> Congestion
>
> ...will be solved by jobs moving away from the urban
> core, due both to technological change (less NEED to
> centralize corporations in big cities) and business'
> having no need to pay the confiscatory taxes required
> to keep big cities in their current form operating.
>
>> and urban sprawl...Do we really
>> want
>> to devote ever more space to freeways and parking
>> ramps?
>
> So what you're saying is, once we deal with the whole
> "Survival" issue/canard, the only real imperative to
> adopt transit is "Charles' sense of aesthetics?"
>
> (and yes, I'm using Charles as a stand-in for "most of
> you on this forum". I'm not picking on him)
>
>> Having people drive ever longer distances in
>> automobiles to do the simplest things is just plain
>> inefficient and it's destroying our land and
>> lifestyles.
>
> Land isn't "destroyed", merely used for things other
> than we might wish (again, Charles' aesthetics).
[This sounds a bit like the second law of thermodynamics; entropy in
a closed system only tends to increase. In other words, Mitch is
right -- the land and folks on it just go to hell.]
>
> Lifestyles?
>
> It'd seem to be *your* lifestyle that is the issue,
> here; you're trying to impose it on everyone else!
>
> If cramming people into rotting urban cores and
> jamming them onto decrepit "public" transit were such
> a fine idea, people would be doing it voluntarily.
> And yet they've voted with their feet (and continue
> to, in increasing numbers) to life otherwise, and to
> foot the bills for it!
>
> Absent any "survival" imperative, it really comes down
> to one part of society trying to impose its values,
> its beliefs and its "lifestyle" on everyone else.
Of course our lifestyle is the issue here; the answers are in
adopting sustainable lifestyles that do not doom our children's
future. The market will provide, Mitch, but only after tweaking by
the people/government.
Rest of post
>
> By the way, I'm one of the newly transit-bound. I
> make my daily commute downtown via the bus. Which is
> hunky dory, as long as the bus that's supposed to get
> me home in time to make dinner for my kids doesn't
> "whoops" and not come at its appointed time (it
> happens about once every two weeks), leaving me
> standing on the corner with my thumb up my butt for an
> extra half hour, getting ready to come home to a house
> full of ravenous kids who've been waiting EXTRA-long
> for dinner and homework. The "transit"-bound
> lifestyle wasn't designed for people who actually have
> to BE places on time AND keep up divergent obligations
> in different parts of town (read: working single
> parents!).
>
> "Lifestyle?" Pfft.
>
> (Especially now that Fhima is closing. Their happy
> hour took the sting out of the inevitable biweekly
> "oops" on the part of the MTC).
>
> Why do it? Because my company subsidizes my "all you
> can ride" card, so it costs about a third as much as
> driving and parking downtown. There are days I wonder
> if it's worth it.
[Mitch is an inspiration to us all. I think his lifestyle stands as
the exception that proves the rule that Minnesota Republicans hate
transit and never met a road they did not like bumper to bumper from
their jobs here in the big city to their bedroom communities. I can't
wait until the GOP convention to see how green everyone can be using
transit in St. Paul, but like Mitch I'll be waiting much longer and
frequenting some happy hours as well.]
[My guess is that the green emphasis at the convention must be on
other things like recycling claimed sources of convention funding,
reusing of slogans, and reducing time spent on anything that really
matters; gotta love those 3 'R's. Thanks, Mitch.] [; - ) ]