Did I say anything about the solution being not to have cars? No. What I'm saying is that using cars, manufactured goods, energy, investments, credit, and banks need not result in the devastation and corruption around the world that it currently entails. We could choose to support cars that produced the lowest emissions and the least amount of fuel from local sources. We could insist that the US market provide us with "common rail" diesel engines like are known all over Europe. We could start supporting the small biodisel plants springing up, or start making it ourselves.
We could buy from companies who were found to be "greener" than other companies, promoting a new competititon among corporations to be the most "green." We could live more simply in much smaller homes. We do not need to consume as much as we do and it is the sheer amount of consumption that has corporations scrambling to meet it. But because we want the "best" price (meaning lowest), we support the corruption necessary to meet it. We can stop doing this.
Its up to us to not provide the market for imperialistic policies to obtain more oil, more ore, more slave labor. Its up to us to insist on local alternatives and to purchase them instead of what is cheapest. Until the demand dries up for the corrupted markets and is created for the greener ones, nothing will change. Pointing fingers at CEOs, politicians, and Monsanto won't fix anything. Quit buying Roundup. Eat nothing that was grown using Roundup, eat organic. Hit them where it hurts, in their wallets, the most powerful political vote we have. Such votes can succeed where pointing fingers and party votes never will.
This direction also has the benefits talked about widely in the Simplicity movement. We need not be slaves to our material things. Those material things are killing us all in more ways than one.
--tully