Hugh McDiarmid Jr. lives in suburban Detroit, Michigan where he works in communications for a nonprofit foundation. He was a journalist with Michigan newspapers for 22 years including a decade at the Detroit Free Press before moving into nonprofit, government and foundation work -- primarily on behalf of natural resource protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation and social justice. Views solely his own.
The New York Times carried a story on President Obama’s speech this week in which he called for the nation to reduce its oil imports by one-third over the next decade.
As Jon Stewart has pointed out Obama is the eighth consecutive president to call for such action. The first seven crashed and burned.
The Times apparently realized this a bit too late. They added this wry, pointed and somewhat deflating addendum at the bottom of their story:
Correction: March 30, 2011 A previous version of this article misstated how many of the president's proposals to reduce the country's reliance on imported oil were new in his speech on Wednesday. None of them were, not one of them.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s hearing on climate change was today. Nice that the Republicans brought real scientists this time rather than charlatans like Lord Monckton.
The hearing was in advance of a vote on legislation sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. (Upton also chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee)
Unfortunately, the committee addressed the wrong issue. As the New York Times’ Andy Revkin points out, the more immediate, more pressing, and more manageable goal should be our “sustained quest to break the economic shackles imposed by enduring dependence on oil.”
But we've f**cked around for several generations without meaningful action on that, so why start now?
Instead, we got the predictably unfocused questioning and closed mindedness that served more as a forum for Congressmen to grandstand rather than for scientists to explain. Clearly, the ”Doubt is Our Product" strategy of the fossil fuel lobby and their toadies in Congress will continue to be effective for the foreseeable future.
A friend gave me a ride in his Hummer a few years back. It was an uncomfortable ride. Bumpy, inconvenient console controls and not much in the way of creature comforts. As a world-class combat photographer back on the streets of Detroit after months in Iraq, he needed a big vehicle for all his gear. Plus, he had a certain image to keep up. Still, I expected more from the vehicle.
I met another guy from West Bloomfield who owned a Hummer as sort of a collector’s item. He made a compelling case that it was about the social connections he made in some Hummer collector’s club, driving the car on weekends and at meetups, garaging it for a more practical vehicle during the workweek.
They had their reasons for Hummer ownership.
Then there’s the woman met on Florida’s Sanibel Island in January. The maximum speed on the island is 35 mph. There is not a single hill. She needed a Hummer for reasons that are best paraphrased as “Because f--k you, that’s why!”
The things have always grated on me in a way that oversize McMansions and other forms of conspicous consumption never have. I’ve always felt like Hummers were a symbolic middle finger to those who strive to make careful decisions about their role as stewards of the planet their children will inherit. There are other ways to stick up that middle finger (maybe my 35,000 miles/year driving for one?), but none quite so blatant and intentionally in-your-face as the Hummer.
