[SustainableTompkins] Hybrid parade: just nibbling around the edges

[George Frantz]

Our 1983 VW Rabbit "Sparmeister" diesel with a simple 3-speed plus overdrive standard transmission spent practically its entire 14 years and 130,000 miles puffing around the hills of Ithaca at 48 mpg actual city and 54 mpg highway.  But it was simple, noisy, had a  1.8 liter engine, anemic acceleration hard suspension and lacked air conditioning.
   
  My bike burns about 60 calories per mile.  Moreover, I can bike from my home on Cliff Street in the morning and meet that same Prius that past my house as I was leaving downtown at the corner of Green and Cayuga.
   
  But I live in the city where I work and deal with the issues that arise because I live in a compact neighborhood in close proximity to people who do not necessarily share my values or tastes and can be noisy and obnoxious on occasion.  I deal with it, primarily because I feel that if the vast majority of the world's population can live in harmony in close quarters with each other then we Americans should be able to as well.
   
  Am I the only one who sees the contradiction in people living 5, 10, 15 miles out in the middle of nowhere and commuting daily to work in Ithaca, each needlessly spewing 1,000-1,500 lbs or more of greenhouse gasses into the atmospher every year driving to and fro, and still thinking of themselves as being "green?" 
   
  Am I the only one wondering why the Ithaca urban area sprawls out over 11 square miles when cities in the rest of the world with similar size populations take up only 2-3 square miles?  
   
  The Prius may be getting a few people almost back to where I was in 1984, but it's still an example of how we as a society are simply nibbling around the edges of the problem. We are still refusng to confront the fact that we (a.k.a. the person in the bathroom mirror) have to acknowledge the high environmental costs of our personal lifestyle choices if we are to have any chance of reversing the destruction of our environment.
   
  George Frantz



       
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.