Oregonian blogger Jeff Mapes has noticed some strange bumper stickers showing up in Portland this summer. Their message: “One Less Prius.”
“I figured it had to be from [a] V-8 pickup-loving, red-meat conservative scoffing at smug urban liberals,” Mapes writes. “Nope. It’s from an L.A. bicycle activist who says it’s not good enough to just shift to a hybrid.”
The bike activist, who calls himself simply “Matt,” blogs that “buying a Prius and making no other changes in how one travels every day in a city is not a paradigm shift. Cars are environmentally and socially damaging in many ways beyond fuel use. The energy and resources required to build and ship them, the destruction the space created for automobiles does, the separation of being in a 2,000 pound box, etc. And many hybrids drivers use it as an excuse to just drive more often!
To a cyclist, a Prius is just a small Hummer.” (Italics in original.)
“Buying a Prius and not making any fundamental changes, i.e. walking, biking, public transit, etc, is easy and non-threatening,” Matt continues. “What makes that worse is the smugness of hybrid drivers, as if what they are doing requires great risk or vulnerability. On my bike I risk my life every day for what I believe is the right thing to do.”
Congratulations, Matt – if you give me your address I’ll send you a medal. I think I have one from my high school debate team in a drawer somewhere.
I can see Matt’s point, though, sort of. But wait a minute – doesn’t it also take a lot of raw materials and energy to manufacture a bike and transport it to the point of sale? Doesn’t it have to be lubricated with petroleum byproducts and occasionally supplied with new tires made from rubber?
Clearly, traveling on foot is the only REALLY environmentally responsible way to go. Somebody needs to come out with tiny stickers to attach to the heels of Birkenstocks that say “One Less Bicycle.”
But wait a minute again – doesn’t it require energy and raw materials to make a pair of Birks and ship them all the way from Germany? So I guess if we want to be really, truly, completely eco-friendly and politically correct, going barefoot is the only option. The truly environmentally aware could walk around with stickers on their heels that say: “One Less Pair of Shoes.”
This could be pretty rough on the feet in Bend in the winter. But what the hell – isn’t it worth the sacrifice of a few toes to save Mother Earth?
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
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How about some stickers that say “one less pious environmentalist”? This is getting ridiculous.
“So I guess if we want to be really, truly, completely eco-friendly and politically correct, going barefoot is the only option. The truly environmentally aware could walk around with stickers on their heels that say: รข One Less Pair of Shoes.รข ย
What about that initial bout of flatulence that accompanies the onset of exercise?
HBM,
I assume you’re just being facetious. It should be obvious that the environmental impact of a Prius is *much* greater than a bicycle no matter where in the lifecyle you measure it… manufacture, delivery, driving, maintenance.
But despite the real difference, I wonder if Matt has thought this through… does it make really sense to insult the very community that might actually be receptive to your message?
“I assume you’re just being facetious.” Yes, I am. I’m using what’s known as the “reductio ad absurdum” argument.
I consider myself an environmentalist, but there are people (I think Matt is one) who make a fetish out of eco-correctness and seem to want the human race to go back to living in caves and eating roots and berries.
The “reductio ad absurdum” argument can be an amusing and effective way to highlight the weaknesses of an argument. But it’s very easy to overreach with this tactic and just create a straw man fallacy…. which is what you are doing here.
As far as I can tell, Matt doesn’t appear to be arguing that the human race should go back to living in caves or eating roots and berries (though he is vegan). He’s just a bicycling activist who feels the world would be better off if more people rode bicycles. Why is that an eco-correctness fetish?
Ric, obviously I did not mean the post literally. I was just poking a little fun at the holier-than-thou attitude displayed by some hard-core enviros. Lighten up.
Anyone promoting lifestyle changes tends to look holier-than-thou to the unconverted.
HBM, you consider yourself an environmentalist. I suppose that means that among other things you try to promote environmentally-beneficial behavior and discourage environmentally-harmful ones. I wonder how many times people have labeled you a “holier-than-thou hard-core enviro”.
I’m sure Matt believes he too is just poking a little fun at what he believes is the faux holier-than-thou attitudes of Prius owners. Personally, I think the sticker is silly, but it seems obvious that it’s meant to be funny. Lighten up ๐
It seems like there is always something more you should have done. Every time you try to make a change and make a sacrifice, you get comments about what would have been more environmentally helpful. What you did is never enough. Makes sacrifices even harder to make.
ric, I think you’re just looking for an argument.
> ric, I think you’re just looking for an argument.
And you’re not?
I closed off 37 rooms at my house to save on air conditioning.