On Monday, March 25, 2002, at 04:52 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> When you say "the waste that is spewed out by cars" what you really
> mean is people. Like the Victorian Patrician of old you imagine you can
> see a miasma rising up from the stinking masses and wafting your way.
> (strangely air quality in more car owning countries is a great deal
> better than those owning less).
perhaps that has more to do with their poorly designed factories built for export-oriented economies. your beloved workers--in the states, i.e., the ones that own cars--would actually rather have tighter environmental standards on those factories, precisely beccause it would raise costs and so the prices of the goods they produce. oh, and it would help "the environment."
again i ask, would you have opposed the removal of lead from gasoline (which, for example, has resulted in very measurably healthier people and healthier children, in particular) as a "victorian patrician" plot against The Common Man (TM)? perhaps if you think the very notion of auto waste is really upperclass snobbery, you wouldn't mind sitting in a closed garage with the car running for a while. it seems to me rather as if you are the one who is out of touch with reality. CO2/global warming is only one of a number of health issues with internal combustion engines and their efficiency.
steelworkers and teamsters in seattle had a more pragmatic approach to environmentalism than you espouse. perhaps your beloved workers have figured out something you could learn from. or, on the other hand, perhaps they simply suffered from false consciousness.
in one respect, i almost agree with you, that there is a sense in which a significant element of the environmental movement (and the anticapitalist movement) sees a conflict between a high standard of living and an environmentally friendly way of living. unfortunately, i think you embrace the same zero-sum either-or game, just on the other side. personally, i reject the dilemma altogether. the only reason i am forced to choose in this dilemma is that the rules are screwed and many of the players are conspiring to keep me playing their game instead of asking for a rule change, or even to play another game entirely.
j