Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Hans Noeldner offers advice on how to heighten the experience of viewing An Inconvenient Truth, the new documentary on global warming opening in Madison on June 16:What better place to scale back our greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel consumption, and motor vehicle addiction than on our way to/from the theatre where we view "An Inconvenient Truth"? If it takes two hours to get there without a car, and we need someone to accompany us for our personal safety, the hours we spend transporting ourselves via our own human power will probably open our eyes to our nation's wonton resource usage no less than the movie itself. There is no better way to comprehend our twin addictions to oil and sprawl than to laboriously traverse by foot or bicycle the vast, absurd spaces we have laid out within our communities - spaces designed for and thus utterly dominated by the movement and storage of our automobiles.
Until we-the-people freely subjugate our relentless demands for automobile-defined space, rest assured that community planners WILL NOT change course - at least not until a merciless Nature imposes limits via scarcity and collapse. Our government reflects dominant behaviors, not idealistic sentiments, bumper stickers, or quadrennial votes that we undermine with our actions the other 1460 days of the election cycle. We do our real voting with our car keys.
Hans Noeldner is a Trustee in the Village of Oregon, Wisconsin. The views herein do not necessarily represent those of the Oregon Village Board.
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