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mallorys_cameraIn general I’m agnostic about progressive environmental initiatives. For instance: I don’t necessarily disbelieve in global warming, but I don’t necessarily believe in it either. Many, many years ago I noticed that this was the one “cause” wealthy liberals uniformly got worked up about and tried to figure out why this was. Hmmmmm... could it be that while the view from the Lear jet doesn’t include breathtaking vistas of South Central, Mumbai, Lagos and other points on Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums tour, it does include smog? No gettin’ away from that – even though they’re rich, they’ve gotta breath the same polluted air as us poor folk. And they don’t like it.
Problem from my point of view is that most of the remedies and sanctions they want to put in place to improve the environment disproportionately affect the less moneyed classes. Like those carbon emission permit thingies – they’re gonna kill small businesses.
I’ve always been environmentally conscious just as a matter of personal choice – my Daily Mitzvah for years now has been picking up random pieces of trash that I see lying on the street. I always carry a plastic bag around with me. People think I’m nuts. I’m always picking up garbage.
But this whole Copenhagen climate change summit aggravates me. Sanctimonious pricks flying in on private jets – what about those carbon emissions, huh assholes? And while I eat relatively little meat and dairy, again it’s a matter of personal choice and I’m well aware any day now I might have to start eating fois gras and Big Macs as the only effective form of social protest left to me.
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The Big Environmental Bad in these parts (western New York state) is something called “fracking.” I only have the foggiest idea what fracking is, actually – something to do with natural gas and shale deposits and contaminated water. But hey! I saw Erin Brockovitch. It’s bad.
In Ithaca proper you see lots of house with No Fracking signs – the word in a circle with a big black strike through it. Here in the boonies, 10 miles outside the city limits, you don’t see those signs – RTT tells me that half of the village of Freeville where we currently reside has been leased by corporate entities with an eye to mineral rights. The minerals are there all right: this little house gets its water from an old well on the property. Whenever I take a shower, the whole house smells like sulfur. I don’t mind it – there was a great old mineral springs in Calistoga called Nance’s where Barbara Angel and I used to hang out incalculable moons ago that smelled exactly the same way. Memories! Cha-cha-ing through the yada yada of my mind... But Ben and RTT hate it.
The price of natural gas right now is way too low to make drilling for it profitable so I think fracking in Freeville is on indefinite hold. But I do plan to be long quit of Freeville before any actual drilling begins.
Problem from my point of view is that most of the remedies and sanctions they want to put in place to improve the environment disproportionately affect the less moneyed classes. Like those carbon emission permit thingies – they’re gonna kill small businesses.
I’ve always been environmentally conscious just as a matter of personal choice – my Daily Mitzvah for years now has been picking up random pieces of trash that I see lying on the street. I always carry a plastic bag around with me. People think I’m nuts. I’m always picking up garbage.
But this whole Copenhagen climate change summit aggravates me. Sanctimonious pricks flying in on private jets – what about those carbon emissions, huh assholes? And while I eat relatively little meat and dairy, again it’s a matter of personal choice and I’m well aware any day now I might have to start eating fois gras and Big Macs as the only effective form of social protest left to me.
The Big Environmental Bad in these parts (western New York state) is something called “fracking.” I only have the foggiest idea what fracking is, actually – something to do with natural gas and shale deposits and contaminated water. But hey! I saw Erin Brockovitch. It’s bad.
In Ithaca proper you see lots of house with No Fracking signs – the word in a circle with a big black strike through it. Here in the boonies, 10 miles outside the city limits, you don’t see those signs – RTT tells me that half of the village of Freeville where we currently reside has been leased by corporate entities with an eye to mineral rights. The minerals are there all right: this little house gets its water from an old well on the property. Whenever I take a shower, the whole house smells like sulfur. I don’t mind it – there was a great old mineral springs in Calistoga called Nance’s where Barbara Angel and I used to hang out incalculable moons ago that smelled exactly the same way. Memories! Cha-cha-ing through the yada yada of my mind... But Ben and RTT hate it.
The price of natural gas right now is way too low to make drilling for it profitable so I think fracking in Freeville is on indefinite hold. But I do plan to be long quit of Freeville before any actual drilling begins.
