Since their major objection is “those windmills are so unsightly!”

I admit that this one always baffles me. You can drive up pretty close to the wind turbines in NorCal, and I think they are beautiful. If they’re talking about noise or other disturbances, that’s a different story.

Yes, Tom, that little “if available” is a big freaking “if”.

But then, with sprawl, you get the fuel and environmental problems you describe…

Another issue with poor diets, especially among the poor, again comes back to another side-consequence of our agriculture policy. That glop that goes into junk food is mostly produced using corn and soya as feedstocks, the same corn and soya that are artificially made cheaper thanks to our Congress’ solicitude to Archer-Daniels-Midland and “farmers” like Scottie Pippen and David Letterman.

2. Rather than blaming the oil companies, who keep as profit a low percentage of what they produce, I’m looking at demand — particularly at the gas being wasted (and pollution spewed out) while everyone is IDLING in traffic jams on the highway. Has anyone besides me come to the belief that having everyone go to work and everyone leave work at roughly the same time is a rather daffy idea? The worst part is that traffic is moving JUST ENOUGH that you can’t turn off your car (to wait the more-than-one-minute that makes turning off your engine and turning it on again later a good idea), because the vehicle in front of you pulls up just when you do. Then, of course, there’s the sprawl-style planning Hugo mentioned, wherein people live in large developments nowhere near a commercial area or mass transit, so that every quart of orange juice and trip to the bookstore requires firing up the car. We’re shooting ourselves in the butt here. It’s safe to say that prices wouldn’t be this high right not if people took some of the measures they do now way back when there was no “crisis” (for want of a better word). But that’s like every drought when the local news team tells us to brush our teeth with the faucet off and other things we should be doing all the time.

4. There are plenty of geologists, meteorologists, and other scientists who question humankind’s impact upon climate change. But here’s the thing: whether or not climate change is caused by human activity, MOST of the things suggested to combat it are good ideas, anyway. We should be carpooling and walking and biking more. We should be more devoted to recycling (I have driven a county away to drop off my Number 5 and 6 plastic, while donating a fee to do so).
We should unplug appliances that aren’t being used for a while because they use up electicity otherwise, even when they’re off. It just bothers me how the talk about global warming has muscled everything else in environmentalism out. If you dump motor oil into the lake, it won’t have much of an effect on our planet’s temperature…but we should still tell people not to do it.

4. I enjoy taking the train, the bus, or the subway to get around — but I do admit that I am CHOOSING to do so; those who must use it every day probably find the novelty wearing off. My analogy for that is that day back in school when someone would show up on crutches, and everyone else would want to “try them out,” having fun trying to use them to walk, but the kid with the broken leg would find them a bit less entertaining.

5. In the inner cities, one major cause of poor health is that the foods that are most available, relatively inexpensive, and high in calories (since people are trying to feed themselves and their families economically) are the ones that aren’t so good for you: processed foods, fast food, starchy junk foods. Those corner pantries often don’t have much in the way of fresh vegetables, which are more expensive to produce and more perishable to shelve than, say, potato chips.

3.

Agreed, Tom (don’t want ‘cha to think I went away mad. Just went away busy!). I’m frustrated too. I’m an electrician, and there is a wind farm project in my jurisdiction that is being vigorously fought against by the NIMBY folks. So far, none of those NIMBY people are willing to go without electricity. Since their major objection is “those windmills are so unsightly!” I strongly suspect that the coal industry may be fueling (heh) the front group. (Also, those same folks don’t seem to have objections to cell phone towers, go figure). My Local is in the process of building a new union hall, and we’re going to install solar panels—partly to save money, partly as a sales pitch to the public (”see what you can do? call us for a list of contractors just dying to put panels on your roof!”). The more people who do that, the lower the price will get. For crying out loud, you’d think it would be a real no-brainer for the U.S. to invest in infrastructure and new technologies—more people employed at good-paying, nice-benefit jobs, more young people going into apprenticeships for a career with a future, better options for transportation translating into less out-of-pocket costs for the public, renewable energy translating into lower utility costs—damn, people, let’s get this show on the road!

As for NIMBY objections to infrastructure changes, I like the way Belleville (Illinois) handled the MetraLink (light rail) system going through. Belleville is pretty strict about not wrecking out historic buildings if it is at all possible for them to be saved. The routes were planned to minimize the necessity of bringing in the wrecking ball, and older (mostly brick) buildings were moved to empty lots where feasible. I think there was a certain amount of rerouting of freight lines so old “heavy rail” right-of-ways could be reappropriated. Of course, one of the things that made that possible was the fact Belleville stopped being the upper-crust area long ago. Higher-income areas have more clout to stop projects.

A lot of mid-size cities wouldn’t have to worry about the impact on neighborhoods—urban sprawl and the rise of the car meant those battles were already fought long ago with road-widening projects. The existing roads could be reappropriated for light rail. I live on one of the main arteries of my city—a one-way street. Make one of the one-way streets a light-rail line, make the other a two-way street. Boom—your main north/south run, no buildings to wreck. There are other streets that could easily accommodate the same method; there’s also “heavy rail” that could be relocated to the city’s edge with those right-of-ways reappropriated. It sure isn’t like this area couldn’t use the jobs created by projects like that. It would definitely invigorate the school district, since Illinois relies heavily on property taxes (and this district has experienced middle-class, mostly-white flight to the surrounding suburban communities—sure would be nice to see some urban investment around here on all kinds of levels).

With what I do for a living and the geographic area I live in, I don’t see myself ever getting by without a personal vehicle prior to retirement. That’s true for a lot of folks in “flyover country”. But there isn’t any reason those vehicles can’t be manufactured for more mileage per gallon, less gasoline usage, less pollution, etc. If we build those vehicles in the U.S. rather than import them, it can put more people to work at the same good-paying, nice-benefit jobs available in infrastructure improvement.

Forty nickels, actually, where I live. And yes, we poor people certainly are sulky about it.

Where I’m frustrated is that I see the current and near-future economic and technological situations offering considerable opportunities to permanently resolve many of these energy problems that have been bedeviling us for 35 years, were we to have, among other things, a political system that had the competence, foresight, and courage to take advantage of them. I said above six things that I would do if I were setting policy. Short-term pain for long-term gain. It’s difficult to sell that under a system that, under the best of circumstances, doesn’t like inconveniencing anyone other than a scapegoat-du-jour without a constituency. (oil executives, Muslim extremists, teenage “superpredators”, “welfare queens”, “deadbeat dads”, pharmaceutical companies, “drug kigpins”, etc.) It becomes nearly impossible in the current divisive environment and in a country where people are getting doubly hammered by current energy costs and a collapsing housing market, and that will be seeing 60+ million people retire over the next 15 years. It makes me wonder if as a country we are just too old, frightened, and sclerotic for bold and imaginative initiatives anymore.

Around here, the average new choice/solution that Hugo talks about is cutting back on the family food budget. Less food buying, more reliance on food pantries. That’s not working out too well. The pantries are running dry, the supermarkets have cut back on donations, and individual donations are down. The folks who were just able to make it the year before last have been hammered as their non-negotiable expenses have gone up but wages haven’t. This isn’t really a “solution”—just a temporary method of coping. Considering that what—seventy percent?—of the U.S. economy is based on consumer spending (go shopping!), this doesn’t bode well for the future. Less spending means more tanking economy, more unemployment, more downward spiral. Not sophisticated, I know, but hey, I’ve only had one cup of coffee this morning, and I’m responding to a blog post, not writing a dissertation.

And mythago is right on—people are reluctant to spend when the economy is tanking. I think the sophisticated people refer to it as “low consumer confidence”.

Public infrastructure is a sine qua non of transportation of any type. Tax dollars fund roads too. Whether people want to invest those taxes in more freeways that will be filled back to capacity within 15 years, or in better public transit as gas prices continue to rise, is an open question.

The advocates for the poor haven’t done such a bang up job themselves even when they have had the opportunity. Here in LA, there was a group called the Bus Riders Union that essentially got control over the county’s public transit system for a decade, after the mayor signed a consent decree. They some how decided (it was never exactly explained why) that subways were “racist” and “classist”, and prevented (admittedly, not without a lot of help) money from being spent on subway construction, diverting it to more and more buses. A decade later, we wound up with a lot of empty buses, and still no subway in most of the area that would serve as the backbone of a reasonable public transit system.