House of Eratosthenes

The show at Giant Stadium in New Jersey is finally underway. Performers are playing on a stage built of recycled tires. At this point, the tires outnumber the fans in attendance.

Okay, so there aren’t even that many people going to the New Jersey thing. Which raises the question…although I’m sure it’s been raised before…what exactly is this supposed to do? Because if global warming is indeed caused by human activity, putting on a rock concert wouldn’t exactly mitigate the effect would it? There’s all those cars coming in, some of them Hummers…there’s electricity to be churned up, concessions to be sold, people talking and breathing hard and what-not. Rock concerts are just little hotbeds of human activity.

Who’s more hypocritical. The guy who drove the Hummer, or the folks who put on the show in the first place?

As I’ve said before: I make a futile effort at getting rid of my middle-age pudge, on a 24-speed hybrid bike in Northern California. It’s a “blue” part of the country, although others are bluer. It’s a socially trendy region, although others are trendier. And it’s a valley, so we tend to have hefty local concerns about smog and what-not…although other municipalities may have heftier concerns.

But we’re very “hip” around here. We say all the right things. We have “Spare The Air” days, and we look for ways to conserve and recycle and carpool…or at least we’re supposed to…

…and I’m constantly amazed how many places I can ride, and get some not-too-subtle reminder that I’ve ridden into a location where I’m not expected to be riding. You know. No sidewalks, no shoulders…none…garbage cans being left out all days of the week, to the point where you eventually give up trying to figure out what days they’ll be hauled back in, because they never are. Intersections without crosswalks. Oh-so-trendy coffee shops without bike racks anywhere.

If I bike to work, I have to get there early because a building with 200 people in it, has a stairwell where six bikes can be locked up. No more than that. And you guessed it…no bike rack. Bikes don’t have air conditioning, so this time of year, early doesn’t mean “before 8:30” — it means early. Six out of 200, and Number Seven has to leave his bike wherever and take his chances, or go back home.

I live in a place where everybody is supposed to be concerned about the environment.

I live in a place where people are expected to drive wherever they go. Big, BIG cars. To go car shopping, and demand more than 20 miles a gallon, is looked upon as insanity. Cars are supposed to be big.

I live in a place that is freakin’ hypocritical. But it’s nothing special. I drive too…I fly…I travel…I go to other states. And I could be talking about something going on in any one of them. Environment, pollution, emissions, blah blah blah…oh, I’m so concerned. But nobody acts like it. Nobody really does anything. If they do something, it’s got a lot more to do with getting attention than having any beneficial effect on the environment.

I think they should keep having these concerts, but they should call them something else. Truth-in-advertising, ya know. Call them “Let’s pretend to care” concerts or something.

Hey…how many bikes are being locked up at these concerts? I’d really like to know.

Update 7-8-07: I think this is the most overly-simplistic test of individual common sense and critical thinking that there could possibly be. It’s as if some divine Kismet devised some test for us, and smacked us down with it. Suppose, just as a hypothetical, just to take all the emotionalism out of it…suppose there was something else going on with all this blue-blood celebrity hypocrisy.

Suppose instead of polluting, it’s something else we all “know” we’re not supposed to do, but that a lot of us do anyway. Something that’s regarded as neither conservative nor liberal.

Let’s say you’re at the city aquarium, and you’re tapping on the glass to get the fish to move. There. That’s perfect.

You’re tapping on the glass, and as if someone yelled “Go!” all of a sudden you’re being confronted face-to-face by Al Gore, and Laurie David, and Madonna, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz. And they’re all getting after you, telling you not to tap on the glass. Scientists are unanimous in their convictions that the fish are getting pissed off, and are about to retaliate against humanity. You’re making it worse by tapping on the glass.

And here’s the funny part. All the time they’re talking to you, they’ve taken off their shoes and as they’re lecturing you, they’re pounding their shoes against the glass they’ve told you not to tap.

And when you get a chance to get a word in edge-wise…well, you don’t of course, but assuming you do…you say the first common-sense thing that comes to your mind. “Hey, thumbdicks, why are you banging your shoes against that glass you told me not to tap?” Because, y’know, if there really is a problem with the fish getting all pissed off over the glass-tapping and getting ready to overthrow humanity, and because of that you’re not supposed to tap on the glass, isn’t it evidence that the Gore/Feinstein/David/Diaz loudmouths doubt their own rhetoric, when they’re banging their shoes against the glass?

So Al Gore explains, patiently, and somewhat condescendingly: We have to bang the glass. It attracts attention from the other humans in proximity, and don’t you know our message is so very, very important.

For emphasis, he bangs his waffle-stomper hiking boot against the glass three more times, bang bang bang.

Now I know that is so very, very ridiculous. But answer me this: How is my utterly ridiculous hypothetical different from the global warming…uh…well, let’s call it what it is. The global warming craze.

It’s not different. We’re told there is a crisis looming, and it’s connected to our everyday activities, therefore we are to cease and desist. We’re told this by all these big stars who, in the middle of the syllables in which they tell us this, do a whole lot more of that very thing they’re telling us to stop doing.

Blogger friend Buck comes up with an article in the UK Daily Mail that shows just how bad this situation has gotten. And yes, all across this globe there are millions, and millions, and millions of people being told to stop tapping the glass, by politicians and Hollywood heavyweights who are banging crowbars and hiking boots and seldgehammers against that very same glass. And they’re listening. Ooh, they’re saying, I’d better stop tapping the glass, and you’d better stop too. But the politicians and celebrities can keep on hammering.

How many different ways can you get the attention of the public, when your message is that important, besides hammering on aquarium glass with a crowbar?

How many different ways can you do it, without a rock concert?

Lest you think a rock concert is “clean” in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, Pajamas Media helps put it in perspective.

So you see, it isn’t any more complicated than that ludicrous aquarium analogy after all. The only meaningful difference, is this: We can preserve our lives, and the quality thereof, without tapping on glass and irritating the damn fish. But we do need to consume power in order to do that. And we can’t keep living without throwing off carbon dioxide…in very modest amounts compared to the Diaz/Gore/Feinstein/Kerry/Paltrow crowd, but we do still need to emit. Methane, which we emit indirectly through our demand for agricultural products, has a much higher greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound basis. But we produce carbon dioxide more directly, and through our industrial-sector activity. And what do we do to get this snotty lecturing from the politicos and the jet-set? We consume through our industrial sector…and emit carbon dioxide. Relatively neutral compared to methane in greenhouse gas effect.

Eh. People have attacked industry as long as there’s been industry. It’s us everyday folk who are acting all weird, by buying into this and believing it. It is every bit as silly as feeling guilty over tapping on the aquarium glass, as a result of the lectures being delivered by a man smacking the same glass with…a freakin’ manhole cover. It is as simplistic and as direct of a test of our ability to think critically, as could ever be devised, by man or by deity.

Snookered. We’re being snookered. The snookerers aren’t even doing that good of a job of it. But so far, it’s an effective job.

“Hey…how many bikes are being locked up at these concerts? I’d really like to know.”

The answer for New Jersey, I can tell you, is zero. Anyone insane enough to attempt to bike to Giants Stadium wouldn’t survive the attempt. Seriously, there are no roads leading there that are legal for bicycles nor would it be in any way, safe.
- Duffy | 07/09/2007 @ 09:02
Well then in my book, in New Jersey, having a rock concert to educate the public on the global warming problem, makes as much sense as having a paint ball fight to protest a war. With real bullets.
- mkfreeberg | 07/09/2007 @ 10:01
Ah… Morgan, Morgan. Tsk-tsk. You missed the point, my friend. It ain’t all those private jets and Hummers, it’s the meat. The answer is clearly go vegan!

😉
- Buck | 07/09/2007 @ 13:30

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