On Monday, March 25, 2002, at 04:33 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
>
> And "again i ask, would you have opposed the removal of lead from
> gasoline".
>
> I beg your pardon, I did not hear you ask it the first time, but since
> you ask it of course I welcome the removal of lead from petrol. Why
> would I not? It makes cars cleaner. I'm looking forward to the nil
> emission car, too.
that was five days ago, but you appear to have missed the whole long email entirely, which contributes to the frustration you notice below.
i may have missed something. if we all want a nil emission car, then presumably we agree that auto emissions are sufficiently bad that they ought to be done away with altogether, and then i wonder, why are we fighting about this?
>
> And then you go and spoil it all by saying
>
> "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"
>
> Which is a bit like saying fuck off and die, so I'd better not respond
> to it.
it was an invitation to put your money where your mouth seemed to be, which was your own tack relative to what you call hair shirts. however, it turns out that you agree that automobiles spew something other (or more than?) people, so then, again, i wonder what the fuss is about.
even if you want to get back to the whole "global warming is shoddy science" stuff, that doesn't erase the "victorian patrician" theory of environmentalism you've set forth, and which seems to me not to sit easily with what i'm reading here. again, this seems to me problematic even in the case where we're arguing about regressive taxation, since your argument seems to have been more about environmental(ist) ideologies than about practical solutions and whether or not they are workable.
i'd be happy to be enlightened on how that all makes sense, and/or to be pointed to the archives if i've missed something, since we both know it happens that people miss entire, quite verbose posts.
j