Non-Sustainable America—Don't Worry, Be Happy

On 5-22-12 David Roberts wrote a column in Grist Magazine (http://grist.org/article/toward-a-future-that-makes-sense/) about "the intense need these days for positive visions of the future." The material below is my response to that column.

For the last four decades an urban planner I have had to deal with the world as it is, not with the world I wished were there. It would be quite refreshing to chat with Pollyanna over tea and crumpets (or in this particular case David Roberts) about delightful sugar-plum visions of the future or about things that are "more forward-looking, wide-ranging, optimistic, and, well, helpful." Certainly, that would make us feel oh so much better, especially those who have no jobs and gigundus college debt hanging over their heads and are too frazzled even to think about something as non-threatening to their daily lives as 5.5 billion metric tons of CO2 Americans inject into the atmosphere every year.

Quite frankly, despite what Roberts writes, it doesn't matter how many individuals get involved in "bike culture, livable neighborhoods, urban agriculture, sharing economies, distributed energy, and many other ways people in America today are trying to live better, more sustainable lives." Those issues are totally irrelevant to our future if government policy is not adopted and implemented that drastically pushes the envelope of ecological responsibility.

Now, for a dose of that real world I mentioned above. Has anyone out there found one committed right-wing, Tea Party supporter who would go along with federal policy that drastically pushes that ecological responsibility envelope so critical thresholds aren't crossed? And what about all those Republicans elected to office in Washington, surely they’d agree to jump on the environmental bandwagon. Permit cynical me to laugh.

Look at the real world another way. How many people in China and India are anxious to cut their energy consumption and waste production so the world can be better off. Hell, Americans have refused to do it so why should they?

So, go ahead with your feel-good crap about livable neighborhoods and bicycling to work and sustainable growth (what an oxymoron). It's a wonderful narcotic and will prevent people from feeling the pain of thinking about and confronting the real world. Besides, what does it matter? Everyone alive today will be dead before the worst hits. We won't even have the satisfaction of pointing the finger of blame at idiots like Jim Inhofe and the American Petroleum Institute.