A social worker friend of mine was fond of saying “People tend
to wake up in the morning and do the same thing they did yesterday… even if it
hurts.”
Petalumans are hurting, according to the
April 10 Argus, feeling “Pain at the Pump.” Gas prices are high, especially compared
to January, when they reached a historic low. Adjusted for inflation they’re
about a third less than prices in the early 1980s. But people are still waking
up, relentlessly buying and driving gas guzzlers, and griping about the pain.
Marla Ruzicka, a North Coast
native and heroic peace worker, recently was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad.
Baghdad, home not to WMDs or Al Qaida
(at least not before our occupation), but home to the world’s 2nd
largest oil reserves. There’s a link between our cars and that car bomb: our craving
for Iraqi oil enabled Saddam’s rise to power, and then made his country our
target.
Why not compare our pain at the
pump to the pain of Iraq war victims, or to the pain of those whose lives are
lost or shattered when children try to satisfy their need for speed on the back
roads of Sonoma County? These young people saw the same TV images my 15 year
old sees: cars racing to rock and roll music, generating dust plumes and shock
waves. The kids are just *dying* to go faster; or getting obese, because they’re
too cool to walk or bike to school. (Decal seen on the back of a massive
pickup: “I’m here for a good time, not for a long time.”)
Last Friday was Happy Earth Day! The morning news covered the
House of Representatives’ approval of a “sweeping” energy bill that would
sacrifice an Arctic Eden to the oil companies so they can prolong our pain at
the pump. “They’re doing nothing about fuel efficiency,” complains a friend.
“’Let’s just drill the hell out of everything.’”
Bill McKibben had a provocative
piece in the latest Orion magazine (oriononline.com). Thanks to global warming’s thinning of the Arctic ice layer, scientists were
able to drill core samples in an undersea mountain range, discovering a thick
layer of fossil ferns. These aquatic plants were a result of warm fresh water
overtopping the cold salty water for about 100,000 years, 49 million years ago.
A Dutch geobiologist told the New York Times this was
evidence that “you can get a really strong cascade” of events toward global warming
that can last for eons. The reaction, writes McKibben,
wasn’t “Oh my gosh, let’s get to work on global warming. It was: Let’s find out
if there’s oil down there.” “Oil prospectors will be very excited,” said a
former Shell geologist, and the Times ran the story under the headline, “Under
All That Ice, Maybe Oil.”
The April 25 issue of Time had an
article about how global warming is beginning to drown the Maldives, the island
nation just south of India (average elevation: 3 feet above sea level. Punsters
should love the name “mal-dives”). This depressing piece was followed by an ad
showing an SUV wheeling over a rocky wilderness, with the tag line, “No Intelligent
Life Out Here. Just You.”
If this news makes you feel bad, let me suggest (with
another awful pun) you wake up tomorrow and confront another kind of “pain at
the pump.” Go to one of Petaluma’s fine bike shops and get a new pair of
wheels, or have them tune up your old ones. Then start using it instead of your
car whenever you can, and feel the metabolic burn as you pump your legs and
rediscover the joy of food-powered transportation. It may be a bit painful at
first, but if you gently persist, your gains in physical and mental health will
be undeniable. And economic health too: after about 20,000 miles, I had to have
my bike’s drive train replaced. Cost: $42.
Bike to Work Week is May 16-20; a great time to get started.
And to guide your way, there is a new printable version of the Petaluma Bike
Map at healthycommunity.info.