Sorry Cassandra, so one is listening to your hippy shit. You suggestions will never happen. They all interfere with what is assumed to be the god-given american lifestyle.

Why don't you make a bunch of money or get elected to office? That is the only way to make the changes you want.

Also, you are too new to Seattle to start telling livelong residents that their entire way of live is wrong without them just tuning you out.

Fashion shows! Boozeathons! Art auctions! Gift bags!

Let's raise awareness... and the roof!

Erica, the simple fact you've left unsaid is that Seattle Metropolitan is all advertising with no content, directed at Seattle's affluent trendies. It's magazine publishing at its cynical worst.

We could start by banning those fucking leaf blowers.

There is nothing, NOTHING, on God's green earth stupider than a leaf blower.

Ok, we get it already, you are greener than everyone else.

Rather than spending a 3rd of the GDP on a doomed effort to abolish cars, how about fostering technological innovation in the auto industry by imposing strict emissions standards or emissions taxes? Or subsidizing a new, green-focused American auto manufacturer that will make buying American synonymous with buying green (would go over well in the red states)?

The Stranger staff seems to fly around a lot. Please remember that planes use far more fuel than cars and contribute significantly to global warming!

If you could make it Stranger policy to always fly on biodiesel fueled airplanes and to bring organic sustainable snacks to eat onboard, you can be an example of what everyone needs to do to stop global warming.

Also only fly if you have to. No pleasure trips of any kind. We have to save the earth.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh, man, like, consumers suck... and stuff. How stupid can you be, to think that converting from our current, auto-based dystopia, to a walking/bicycle based hippie utopia won't take money. The reason people like me hate stupid, ultra-left clowns like you, Erica, is that everything you want (most of which is worth having) takes funds you and your fellow hippies don't think are worth earning. Maybe, one day, if you stop shitting on people who do honest work for their paycheck, they'll listen to you.

Nah, actually, go on believing that everyone who has the intellect to earn non-poverty wages is worthless. Hopefully , in that spirit, you'll encourage your readers to vote against Darcy Burner - I mean, she's one of those useless Eastside yuppies you make you livelihood slagging off.

I'd be happier if Seattle simply put in the sidewalks in my (north Seattle) neighborhood it promised decades ago. And, in the meantime, it made all sidewalkless roads bus and emergency vehicles only.

Erica,

So in your estimation the problem we have is NOT ENOUGH government interference in our lives? What are you smoking, Comrade? Your suggested "solutions" are almost as inept as our War on Drugs policy. The problem with the War on Drugs is that America's policy has been to attack the supply side - with little real benefit, as as long as there is a demand - there will be a supply. Having local/state/federal governments reduce the supply of roads won't make people drive less in the long run. What it will do is organize the vast majority of citizens, who are car drivers to demand more roads - therefore more roads will be built and we are back to square one.

What you need to do is convince people to willingly drive less (ie, attack the demand for driving). How you are going to do that, I am not sure. But I know taxing citizens to death and overregulating individual rights is only going to lead to a revolt.

The problem with the likes of Cary Moon and the Stranger staff is you take environmentalism to an extreme, almost religious level. The same type of absolutism/fanaticism in your beliefs is the same thing that makes the Far Right insane. You have an unwillingness to compromise and want to dictate public policy on the basis of your beliefs - even though you only represent a small minority of Americans.

If you want to turn Washington in to a red state keep on writing this kind of socialist propaganda that only a tiny miniority of Washingtonians agree with...

Dave

why doesn't anyone get that factory farming is the number one polluter in the United States? switching to veganism//vegetarianism will help combat a lot of the global warming problems we are facing. and it's much healthier: less heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. read "The China Study" by Dr. Colin Campbell to educate yourselves.

and requiring solar panels on every new single family home that is more than 2,500 sq. ft. would be good, as it would target the people who could afford the initial increase in housing cost.

god, i hate leaf blowers.

Yeah, I agree that their message conflicts with the other reality that they splash from page to page, but hey, they're making the effort to reach out and spread the word, it's like soft power, kind of like the Stranger, not perfect, but out there getting other solutions and reasonings noticed. Leave em' alone, maybe one suburban or urban individual or family will take notice and really plunge into a dramatic change. The environmental movement isn't for nuts and freaks anymore, but they were necessary to get us where we are today, not perfect, but still trying to improve.

Here's my proposal to Mayor McGreen for meeting our supposed Kyoto committment:

If ST2 passes, all major activity centers Everett-Tacoma will be linked by rail or BRT. This improves on the current situation, but not by much, since it does nothing to solve the last mile problem. Many suburban destinations will remain tedious or impossible to get to on the local bus spokes radiating from these hubs. No road grid, too little density.

Station cars solve the problem. FlexCar is a demonstration of what could be, but it suffers from problems of scale. Too few cars in too few places to be useful for most trips, at a high cost. A full fledged station car program would put thousands of cars at key transit hubs.

One car can serve multiple people running errands during the day, renting by the hour. Commuters take them home at night and bring em back in the morning as part of a monthly pass deal.

The benefits are manifold:

1)Shifts long haul trips to BRT or light rail. Reduces CO2 emissions and congestion.

2)Makes most short trips time competitive to a private auto.

3)Attracts the "choice" riders who won't wait around on a busy suburban arterial for a bus.

4)Lets you repurpose wasted suburban bus hours on expanding dial-a-ride shuttle service to those unable or unwilling to drive. Not to mention adding bus service in areas dense enough to support it.

5)With a limited number of fueling points, the station cars can be as green as we are willing to pay for. A few E85 pumps could fuel thousands of Chevys. I predict GM would cut us a deal. More CO2 reductions.

6)The cost is reasonable, especially if we repurpose existing park'n'ride facilities.

I'd like to hear the haters argue against this modest proposal. It isn't trying to disturb your suburban splendor or ban cars, just make transit a real option for all trips.

Fuck the future - I want my toys NOW! Who cares about trashing what's left of the planet - our grandchildren can just go find themselves another one when this one is wrung out like an old sponge.

You environazis make me SICK! All your blah blah blah about conservation and protecting the little bunnies and flowers - fuck em! If plants and animals are too stupid to get out of the way of the steamrollers and concrete trucks, too fucking bad for them - BOO HOO!

God gave us this world, and said we could do anything we want to it. I don't give a shit about what a mess it will be after I'm dead and sitting on a cloud in Heaven with Jesus. So go ahead use it ALL now - before some other fucks use it all up before us!

Ban plastic and styrofoam, and replace them with more paper made from trees! Love that. Tear down freeways and, what, landfill the scraps? We have a congestion tax - we pay it when we buy gas.

I completely disagree with your premise, Erica. Trying to change "the system" without changing people is a waste of time. It can be done for a while, but it won't last (see also: USSR, fall of). Change yourself and the sliver of the world where you have influence. That's all you can do.

What are YOU doing and how has it improved your life?

Is there a better metaphor for the futility of life than watching some boob with a leaf blower on his back blowing a couple of dozen leaves from one corner of a parking lot to another, and then going over to the other corner and blowing them back? He can and does do that all day long. What is that supposed to accomplish? I've never seen a situation where a leaf blower actually solved any leaf problem that wouldn't much better be addressed with a broom or a rake. You can do a lot with a broom in just a few minutes if you have a clue.

And a broom doesn't make everyone within a quarter mile want to rip your esophagus out and throw it out into the street.

+1 Hating leaf blowers.

Erica,
It's inspiring to read that you are in favor of good cliches and against bad ones.

I'm afraid you've all completely missed the point of the leaf blower.

The leaf blower is not about blowing leaves. It's about elevating the status of the laborer. Put a rake in my hand, and I'm nothing but a lowly janitor making minimum rage. Give me a leaf blower, along with the requisite safety goggles and gloves, and now I'm the mighty operator of a noisy and powerful machine. See the leaves scatter before me like a herd of antelope spooked by the scent of a lion. Watch the passers-by cover their ears in deference to my roar. With a leaf blower in hand, I am a force to be reckoned with. I, the common man, will be heard!

Please, senior, do not take my leaf blower away.

What if I were to push the leaf blower operator out of the way when I'm walking down, say, Broadway or whatever. Would that be considered assault?

To the first poster: Cassandra was right. Her curse was always to prophesy rightly but never to be believed.

In fact the free wooden horsey of subsidized roads and cheap energy is too good to be true.

Equo ne credite, Teucri!

Beware of Republicans even when they bear gifts (and ask you to measure your cock).

Nor is Cassandra's message entirely negative at least in Vergil's version:

...but who could then have thought
That Phrygian gods to Latium should be brought,
Or who believ'd what mad Cassandra taught?

(Dryden's translation)

I just want to thank Erica for making precisely the point I would have made upon seeing this Seattle Metropolitan issue.

I recall seeing that some folks in Phinney Ridge were going to organize a group of some sort to address global warming. One of the ideas they threw out there was to switch to a different kind of lawnmower.

And my first thought was, "If you airheads really gave a *#$% about climate change, you wouldn't have a bleepin' lawnmower and a bleepin' lawn in the first place." This is a bit like searching for a more slave-friendly plantation owner because you're concerned about the plight of the slaves.

Obviously, though, it's kinda hard to tell people they need to pack up and downsize or else they don't really care about global warming. Some people -- many people -- are determined to have a lawn. And this is where we get into Erica's point about how societal policies and values are more important than individual consumer choices.

We can at least have policies that discourage people from pursuing what is, for all practical purposes, an automobile-dependent lifestyle. I don't mean banning automobiles or anything draconian or socialist. I mean policies like they have in Europe that encourage people to drive less and which would, in the long term, make a small but significant portion of the population give up the whole lawnmower lifestyle -- which is only feasible on any kind of scale through automobile dependence.

Sam: why doesn't anyone get that factory farming is the number one polluter in the United States? switching to veganism//vegetarianism will help combat a lot of the global warming problems we are facing. and it's much healthier: less heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. read "The China Study" by Dr. Colin Campbell to educate yourselves.

Sam, I imagine you're coming at this statement from an animal rights perspective, not an environmentalist or health perspective. If someone is concerned about global warming or their health (if not necessarily the ethics of eating other sentient creatures), they would do a lot of good for the earth and themselves just by cutting down on their meat consumption, not necessarily giving up meat entirely.

To follow this same logic, I'm not saying that if you don't give up driving entirely, you don't care about global warming. I'm advocating that society have transportation and land-use policies that encourage people to drive less.

By the way, if you are going to make a global warming argument against meat consumption, the really important point to make is that producing food from cattle or pigs or chickens requires many times the land/resources/energy/crops as producing food directly from crops. I vaguely recall with cattle and pigs, it's a factor of 10 or 15.

The need for systemic change is a point they make frequently over at Sightline.org. It's fantastic if individual people are willing to make lifestyle changes in the direction of sustainability, but until the government stops rewarding non-sustainable behavior, change is going to be limited by existing infrastructural and energy flows.

This isn't my idea, but since we're discussing consumerism, we could agree that manufacturers will take back everything they sell when a customer is finished with it: TVs, furniture, clothing, cheap bookshelves. Not only does it direct used products away from landfills, but it encourages manufacturing with recycling in mind.

Do the people that hate leaf blowers also hate gas powered lawn mowers?

Good luck! I can't even get my coworkers to recycle! I can't believe how many times I have seen cans and bottles in the trash. It makes me sick-one of the easiest things to do, and people (in Seattle of all places) are too lazy to do it. I don't have high hopes for us....

"I mean policies like they have in Europe that encourage people to drive less"

What are you talking about? People drive less in Europe because:

a) Gas is more expensive
b) Cheap and efficient mass transit exists
c) Travel distances tend to be shorter
d) Cities are not car friendly because they were designed long before cars existed.

It has nothing to do with ridiculous anti-car policies.

Mostly b).

A lot b).

Face it, when you can take the TGV from Paris to Nice and get there in the same time it takes to fly (counting boarding and exit and travel to/from airport), you'll understand why they use less energy.

When it's quicker to ride the metro than to take a taxi - you'll understand why they use the metro.

Maria@27:

For an average normal lawn, I hate gas-powered lawnmowers. I hate using them, maintaining them, hearing them, and smelling them. They're a waste of...everything. I have a push-mower that does just as well as a power mower, quietly and cheaply.

But for a while I had to regularly mow two-plus bumpy acres and I wouldn't want to do that without a riding mower.

Me: I mean policies like they have in Europe that encourage people to drive less.

Sean: What are you talking about? People drive less in Europe because:

a) Gas is more expensive

b) Cheap and efficient mass transit exists

c) Travel distances tend to be shorter

d) Cities are not car friendly because they were designed long before cars existed.

Actually Sean, a) and b) are precisely what I'm talking about. And how do you think they pay for the cheap and efficient mass transit? With the gas taxes. I do allow that d) is a factor. As for c), it's not that different when you're comparing Europe to the coastal U.S. states, where most Americans live.

Sean: It has nothing to do with ridiculous anti-car policies.

Actually, these policies could just as well be described as pro-car as anti-car. Why? Because sitting in massive traffic jams isn't exactly doing drivers any favors. Toll highways, give people competitive alternatives to driving, and you'll find that commuting becomes a lot more satisfying not just for non-drivers but for drivers as well.

How about biodiesel leaf-blowers ? Or can we make them solar somehow? Any tinkerers out there? (a joke, it's a joke..)

More seriously:
-- Stop subsidizing the price of beef so it rises to it's natural level of $20~30/lb.
-- Stop the gov't from engaging in war, and using depleted uranium munitions.