Comments on In Defense of Urban Hipsters

"Nikea"? i hope her parents were compensated for branding their child.

here's an email i just got from a cohort dealing with the music biz, hard-working eco-hipstress, sea weekly new artist of the year:

YOUR POEMS: Hi my dear friends, I wanna let you know that I have a
space on myspace page for anybody to post their poems and comments.
Please post yours there :@;@'

TEXAS: I'm so happy to say that I'll be back for a few shows in the
end of October (Oct 25th - 31st), including a Halloween show in
Houston! I'll be sharing the stage with my great friends Mary and El
Gato Negrito from Houston, and Bob Livingston from Austin. Please go

BREMERTON SAT SEP 1ST

Well, we are not playing Bumbershoot, but will be entertaining on the
other side of the Sound!
SAT SEP 1ST
PAULA MAYA @ the Blackberry Festival,
by the Convention Center.
Noon - 1:45pm All ages!
http://www.blackberryfestival.org

SEATTLE SAT SEP 1ST

And, for an evening cocktail:
SAT SEP 1ST
PAULA MAYA @ JAI THAI - 1st SAT every month
9PM - 12AM - We'll be playing new songs.
235 Broadway E & Thomas, on Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA. No cover, &

RAIZES RADIO SHOW: I'll be spinning Raizes Sat Aug 25th from 2-4pm
Pacific time at KBCS 91.3fm and on line

*****************************************

JAI THAI MUSIC

This Fri Aug 17 - Tom Varner trio
The foremost jazz French horn player of

This Sat August 18th - Amy Read.
She captures the humor ... of life...her lovely voice keeps us
listening.

*******************************************

See ya soon!
paz,
p

Did they analyze Nikea's mercury footprint, with all those compact flourescents? Did they calculate the amount of energy Nikea would use to cool that jug in her fridge, or to wash the glasses she drinks out of? If only things were so simple.

@3, not to mention the environmental cost of manufacturing (and later disposing) of Melissa's new hybrid? And what will she do with her current vehicle -- sell it (presumably), send it to the dump, or turn it into a flower bed?

@3 and @4, sounding a little desperate, I must say. Why wouldn't a carbon footprint assessment take into account in-house energy use? And what does urban living have to do with owning a Prius? It's like saying that rural living causes someone to become a NASCAR fan. If anything, urban living would cause one to not even need to own a Prius, or any car.

The point of urban living producing a smaller carbon footprint, at least from the transportation standpoint, is that you don't have to drive as much, either because you have alternatives to driving or you just don't have to drive as far. I bet a non-hybrid driver living in a city tends to consume a lot less gas than a hybrid driver living in the exurbs.

Now, I will offer this qualifier. A "urban hipster" will have a greater carbon footprint than your typical suburbanite/exurbanite if the hipster drives off to their far-flung dacha every other weekend and does a lot of flying too. You have to make a lot of driving trips to have the same global-warming impact as you would with just one cross-country plane trip, even when you calculate all the other folks sharing the plane.

Yeah, it's a complex problem, just the kind of problem that vested interests can easily muddle so that the public can just throw their hands up in the air and hope for some technological deus ex machina.

I walk to work.

Suck on that, cressona.

Uh, Will in Seattle @7, I may not quite understand the meaning of the expression "suck on that." I thought it was something you said when you disagreed with someone, not when you wanted to give evidence backing up their point.

But hey, if you want to keep seconding my pro-density arguments, you can tell me to go fuck myself too for all I care.

suck on it, hippies.

TRUE Seattle hipsters hail from small-town Idaho or Montana, Cressona, and therefore don't have far to fly. Furthermore, said hipsters may own cars but they leave the cars parked and rusting in the same curbside spot for weeks on end because parking is too hard in the city. I think maybe you've mistaken the hipster for the yuppie, who hails from California, leases an '06 Toyota, and flies home to Mother and Dad six or seven times a year.

PS stereotypes are fun AND familiar!

Katelyn @10, thanks for making that distinction. You're right.

I think the larger point you're making is that poor people, on average, have a much smaller carbon footprint than rich people. Well, no kidding. So is the answer to global warming that we should all be poor? I'm sure a lot of psycho-conservatives would love for us to come to that conclusion.

Here's a fair comparison though. Say three siblings grow up in a small town in Idaho. One decides to stay. One decides to move to Kent. One decides to move to Capitol Hill. I bet (if you could average things out), the one in Capitol Hill is going to have a much smaller carbon footprint than the one in Kent. Now compared to the one who decided to stay in Idaho? Well, it takes a lot of driving trips around the Puget Sound to add up to a round-trip flight from here to Idaho, never mind a drive.

(I'm coming to the conclusion that global warming is the kind of problem that only scientists, economists, and Al Gore are capable of discussing in any constructive way. Yeah, we're all doomed.)

@6&7: I was actually referring to Melissa, the "rustic hippie," and the article's suggestion that she buy a hybrid for her daily commute. My point was that this analysis -- along with too many others -- totally ignores the net environmental cost of purchasing a new hybrid: constructing the new vehicle, disposing of it once it's aged (what happens to the battery?), what happens to her prior vehicle, etc.

Seems to me that too many folks buy brand-new hybrids in an effort to reduce their impact, when keeping that '89 Civic may have actually been better on a net basis.

Sorry for misunderstanding, joykiller. I agree. The reasonable Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat (yeah, there is such a thing as a reasonable Seattle Times columnist) discussed this very sort of "Prius paradox" when trying to decide whether to sell his old car and buy a new Prius.

Only the choice is: ancient gas guzzler or new Prius? Or biodiesel?

You'd think it'd be obvious I should junk the toxic rattletrap. But even Rock, who's in the business of persuading people to green up, said he was surprised at the result.

It turns out that because I drive the 24-year-old Volvo so little — less than 5,000 miles a year — I would have to drive a Prius for nearly six years just to make up for the fossil fuels burned and greenhouse gases emitted by Toyota when it builds the Prius.

On the whole, I agree with this argument, although it can be carried too far. At some point, you're going to have to replace your beater.

The Prius drivers that make me sick, though, are the ones who (A) just drive, drive, drive everywhere, and think that the fact they're driving a Prius makes it fine, and (B) view their Prius as some sort of badge of environmentalist honor. BTW, my mother's is one of these pious Prius drivers.

Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson came up with my favorite phrase, "Prius politics": The Prius is, I think, a parable for the broader politics of global warming. Prius politics is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.

@10 - word. although i'm from small-town BC myself.

Cressona, SkyMaul (the fake parody of the SkyMall catalog) lists a "Hybrid magnet", which you can stick on your Hummer. That's kind of how I feel about Priuses, or worse, those hybrid SUVs they make now.

I'm not sure it's universally true that poor people have smaller footprints than rich people, though obviously it often is. Poor people drive just as much as rich people, and poor people are actually much more likely to live out in the sticks where carbon emissions are a way of life.

My point about the water bottles and the light bulbs was simply that any kind of calculation like this is always going to get bogged down in minutiae. No one really knows whether water bottles cost more energy to make than cup-washing, or what the true carbon costs of manufacturing a Prius are, or whether plastic bags are "better" than paper or not. What we're seeing a lot of is "for show".

Fnarf @16, this is a good point: Poor people drive just as much as rich people, and poor people are actually much more likely to live out in the sticks where carbon emissions are a way of life.

I'd been thinking about this factor -- and Reagan Dunn's infamous "drive to qualify" line. And while I realize it is a factor, I would bet that, when you add everything up -- on average -- the wealthier you are, the greater the carbon footprint. I figure means is a greater counterweight on human behavior than conscience. But hey, maybe I'm wrong.

Regarding the "for show" part, I think at this point most Americans who are concerned about global warming are not so concerned that they're changing their behavior; it's still more about validating their existing behavior.

Guess who is more likely to have a subscription to Marie Claire?

Do hippies commute? I thought they lived in communes, tended gardens and waited around for Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper to show up.