Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 10:23:24 -0500
Reply-To: wlail@OU.EDU
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Warren Lail <wlail@OU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Diesel Fuel vs Gasoline
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Joy,
We already have Bill Frist and Tom DeLay as our moral and ethical guides, so I think we have enough moral guidance for right now.
My guess is that many people on this list share your concern for environmental and other issues, but I don't think that berating listmembers - many of whom may have come to your rescue during the past year or so - accomplishes anything.
No doubt about it, US consumption causes problems worldwide, so do our bombs, guns, etc. Some things we do are bad, and some good. Our consumption fuels the world economy, but in the long run it is not sustainable. Our guns help some people achieve freedom, but in other cases we contribute to tyranny. Our agricultural complex feeds much of the world, but again, it is not environmentally friendly and is not sustainable in the long run. In fact, in the global economy in which we now live, there are few things that we do that don't reverberate throughout the world.
Closer to home, there are things we can do to help, like traveling no more than necessary, or riding bicycles, walking, etc. I commute to and from my office 9 days out of 10, winter or summer, rain or snow, daylight or dark, on my bicycle. Maybe more listmembers ought to be like me and ride their bicycles to work. I recycle aluminum. Maybe more listmembers ought to be like me and recycle aluminum. I'm a Democrat. Maybe more listmembers ought to vote Democratic like me. I believe in God. Maybe more listmembers ought to be like me and believe in God. Maybe more people ought to just think and act like me. People all over America, if they would just wake up and be like me the world's problems would all be solved, right??? No. In the end, I am just one man, eternally fallible, for whom life is a constant balancing act - I'm always somewhere between being the man I "ought" to be and the man I really am. I already know this, so I really don't need someone to tell me how to
think or act or feel.
I believe in letting people make up their own minds. If we present people with enough good information, most people, but not all, will make good decisions. I simply resent moral batterings, particularly from someone who, presumably like everyone on this list, owns and enjoys driving one of the most inefficient vehicles on the road. Oh, I know some of us own a second vehicle, possibly a very efficient one, and so that makes it okay, right? Sort of like having a donut in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other.
Don't take this too personally, but like you, I just could not let this one slide. Moral battering is an affront to me, whether it comes from the left or the right.
Warren Lail
88 Westy "Billy Bones"
>>Sorry, I'm not willing to let this one slide.
I don't consider having a realistic concern about the harm we are causing to
air quality and the world's climate to be "having a chip on your shoulder
about environmental issues."
Consumption patterns in the US are causing major harm to the whole world.
Now, not hypothetically in the future. Most of this country seems unwilling
to acknowledge that, or seems to feel that their own self-interest outweighs
any conceivable obligation not to harm other people. Would that more of
this country, and perhaps some people on this list, felt a moral obligation
to keep from causing further environmental harm!
Joy<<
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