February 2006
As far as I can tell, the Republican line on sacrifice for the greater good, in the case of the Iraq war, is that there’s no need for the average American to pay more taxes, burn less fuel or start victory gardens, because we have aggregated all the necessary sacrifice into the bodies of our troops. They offer up the entirety of their lives in the name of the fight, so that we don’t have to give up portions of ours.
Until now! (maybe.) It seems that Bush is making good on his “addicted to oil” metaphor by enrolling the USA into a twelve-step program. Step one, of course, is overcoming denial:
MILWAUKEE Feb 20, 2006 (AP)— Seeking to fuel his own agenda, President Bush encouraged Americans to change their energy consumption habits and help move the nation away from its reliance on oil.
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“By changing our driving habits,” Bush said, “we change our dependency on foreign sources of oil.”
This is all via Nicholas Beaudrot at Ezra Klein’s blog, who will believe it when he sees any policy proposals that ease us onto the wagon. That’s absolutely right, but I hope us lefties learn how to applaud changes like this without letting up on the pressure that makes sure these prescriptions come to pass. We like it when environmentalism is embraced as common sense. Bush won’t self-identify as an environmentalist until he’s neck-deep in melted glaciers, so it’s up to us to remind folks that Bush is saying what environmentalists say.
This reminds me of an article in Wired about how some people are using solar panels and batteries to power their homes without relying on the electrical grid:
In the old days, being green meant being hardcore. Earnest enviros plugged their poky electric cars into the wall like four-wheeled toaster ovens. They bought organic food at dusty co-ops staffed by vegan clerks in hemp ponchos. And if they were really serious, they disconnected from planet-ravaging modernity altogether and lived in a creaky cabin off the grid.
Today, hardcore has given way to hybrid. Soccer moms tool around in the Toyota Prius, with its nifty gas-electric engine that saves both fossil fuel and family funds. The suburbs are stuffed with flexitarians - mostly-veggies who pick up their staples from the gleaming organic produce section at the local Whole Foods but also opt for an occasional free-range-chicken breast.
Now come the first stirrings of what may be the most telling sign of this shift from hardcore to hybrid: people who are both middle of the road and off the grid. Across the US some 185,000 households have switched from the local power company to their own homegrown, renewable energy.
In this article, the folks who were living off solar power 30 years ago were clueless hippie wierdos, but the households who are adopting this tactic today are trend-setting role-models. The “hygrid” movement wouldn’t be possible if environmentalists hadn’t been working on the problem for decades. But the first paragraph of this piece describes a stereotype that matches the image most people conjure when they hear the word “environmentalist”, and it’s inconceivable that the lifestyle of the hemp-and-tofu idealists could have any relevance to the salt-of-the-earth types who are (rightly) applauded in the piece. It’s disappointing, because Wired could have framed it like, “these geeks (just like us!) are taking this fringe idea mainstream” instead of “these geeks are revolutionizing the energy industry in a way that’s vaguely reminiscent of what some of those granola-munchers do”.
Another Wired article with the same disconnect is the one that extols the virtue of expensive oil, namely that it makes alternative-energy research financially feasible. That’s a “virtue” in the same way that crime is a boon for society because it allows us to develop some truly awesome tazer technology. There’s a whole sector of people who were trying to solve the oil-dependence problem before it reached crisis proportions, and I wish this wave of business-friendly environmentalism would patch things up with its estranged parent.
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