{"id":4688,"date":"2012-04-11T00:56:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T00:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=4688"},"modified":"2012-04-04T16:59:26","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T16:59:26","slug":"year-3-month-4-day-11-ill-show-him-that-a-cadillac-is-not-a-car-to-scorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/year-3-month-4-day-11-ill-show-him-that-a-cadillac-is-not-a-car-to-scorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 3, Month 4, Day 11: I’ll Show Him That A Cadillac Is Not A Car To Scorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guy named Randy Salzman writes an op-ed in the New York Times that’s well worth a read<\/a>. It’s titled “Invitation to a Dialogue: Our Addiction to Cars.”<\/em> The final few grafs:<\/p>\n

While oil worldwide costs the same, other nations put higher fees on gasoline and diesel consumption. Japan\u2019s high gas taxes make its 127 million people a huge test market for energy efficiency, while our lower taxes cajoled Detroit into selling gas-guzzling S.U.V.\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Of course, decreasing driving in a culture famed for its \u201clove affair with the automobile\u201d is difficult. No one, yet everyone, is to blame for our national default position of key in the ignition to get anywhere, everywhere and \u2014 often \u2014 nowhere. Our politicians are not willing to tell us the most inconvenient of inconvenient truths.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019d use our cars smarter, we\u2019d mitigate a host of problems and prevent our grandchildren from following our children in fighting wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

To begin using our cars intelligently rather than habitually, we need a rational federal gasoline \u201cuser fee\u201d rolled in slowly over a decade.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time politicians led an adult conversation with America. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Couldn’t have said it better myself, though I tried, in this letter, sent April 4:<\/p>\n

From the stories of the early pioneers and Horace Greeley\u2019s \u201cGo West, young man,\u201d to Kerouac\u2019s Beat generation tales, the freedom to get up and go wherever we please is a formative element of the American myth. But the individual liberation implied by the automobile is chimerical; our society rightly castigates those who would abdicate their responsibilities to family and community, and our collective responsibility for the past century\u2019s profligate consumption of fossil fuels is not something from which we can simply drive away. There is no freeway that will let us avoid the environmental consequences of introducing so much extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. <\/p>\n

Yes, contemporary America\u2019s social infrastructure is utterly dependent on the automobile \u2014 but this cannot be an excuse for inaction. If we are to steer in the direction of planetary good citizenship, we must change our oil economy, and the myths that lend it credibility.<\/p>\n

Warren Senders<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guy named Randy Salzman writes an op-ed in the New York Times that’s well worth a read. It’s titled “Invitation to a Dialogue: Our Addiction to Cars.” The final few grafs: While oil worldwide costs the same, other nations put higher fees on gasoline and diesel consumption. Japan\u2019s high gas taxes make its 127 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,44],"tags":[1104,680,153,241,1044],"class_list":["post-4688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-politics","tag-automobiles","tag-corporate-irresponsibility","tag-corporate-personhood","tag-sustainability","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4689,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}