Well, of course. So let’s build communites in such a way that it isn’t a hassle.
And buying a coat isn’t really putting you out, is it? I mean, a whole lot less than making you buy a car and keep it maintained and fueled. Maybe it’s cultural, but it seems to me a reasonable expectation that people own clothes suitable for the ordinary weather where they live*. It’s a pretty minor point, really. Where I’m from, by the time you’ve got the ice off your car in the morning, you could have been at the transit station.
“There’s no such thing as bad whether; only inappropriate clothing” - My thermodynamics professor
But it’s more efficient to build a small number of large sewage plants and power them, and easier to place and monitor environmental controls on them. The three award-winning sewage plants in North America are in major cities: Ottawa’s ranks second (says my friend who works there).
I still want to know what the people that own all the land that is now off-limits are supposed to do with it. The U.S. is vast and most of it is in private hands. Are you telling me that they can’t build a house on their own property even though they still have to pay taxes on it? I suppose we should surrender this all to the government in the name of the good for all (because there is no way that the government could even a fraction of it. What is it supposed to be, millions upon millions of acres of preservation land?
Please answer this question because it is crucial to the argument.
Are we hearing from the braindead “property rights movement” now? There are already countless legal restrictions – federal, state and local – in place on what an owner of real property can or cannot do with it. The Fifth Amendment does not guarantee a landowner the right to make the most economically profitable use of his or her land in disregard of all considerations of public interest. And yes, the owner still has to pay taxes on it. That’s how it is. And I’m not proposing that the government forbid an owner of unbuilt land to build anything on it, only that one particular form of development, the automobile-dependend low-density suburb, be proscribed. We have too many of those already and their existence – I’m tired of saying it – constitutes a threat to our national security by rendering our foreign-oil habit ever more intractable.
Actually, I wasn’t being sarcastic about the benefits. I really did find that amusing.
On the other hand, I strongly agree with this:
But my main point was, as Voodoochile explained, that the plan put forth by BrainGlutton will always conflict with the main reason for living in the suburbs, namely vast tracts of land and open spaces. Even the most stringent environmental laws can’t resolve that.
Funny how train zealots only count the time they’re actually on the train, and not the time it takes to walk to and from the stations, and the time they waste standing on train platforms, and the time killed trying to make any necessary transfers. Sure, if you look a the commute time I used to have from Mamaroneck to Manhattan as only the time spent on the Metro North, it was only 35 minutes. So why did my door-to-door time average over an hour and a half each way?
Frankly, I’ll take my current commute by car and use the time I would have wasted on platforms and the like “catching up on my reading” – in the comfort of my own home on a big comfy couch, rather than snuggled up between two sweaty, smelly fat guys on the rail line.
But again, it is a matter of taste. So why do you want to use public policy to shove your tastes down my throat? If enough people want to ride trains and are willing to pay for the trip, the market will provide trains. If not, well, that’s your own dumb luck for having tastes outside of the mainstream.
Foriegn oil providers need our money more than we need their oil. Calling this a national security threat is just fearmongering. And besides, if you’re so concerned about this “threat,” why don’t you back exploitation of our own resources (e.g., ANWR)?
How would the Federal Government restrict this type of development? Are we going to pass new laws and create new Federal agencies or are we going to use those we already have in place?
And we’re working on alternatives to fossile fuels. I know you prefer trains but most of us would rather keep the autonomy provided by automobiles.
Overcoming peasant-superstition nucleophobia would be a major step in that direction. The other big piece of the puzzle is practical large-scale production of synthetic fuel and the infrastructure of using it.
Because the oil we could get out of ANWR is only a drop in the bucket compared to our consumption needs – we’ll still be importing most of it. And because we need to conserve our domestic oil reserves for non-fuel uses. Practically all modern synthetic materials and a lot of medicines are derived from petroleum. We can’t afford to burn it all up.
I have no objection to nuclear power – the latest technology makes power plants safe from meltdowns. (Waste disposal still remains a problem, but, what the hell, what else do we really need Nevada for?) But what do you mean by “synthetic fuel”? Is it possible to make some fuel a car can run on, without using petroleum products?
Not if the value is “taken” by regulations restricting the land’s potential use. I know the law in this area and it is not on the side of the “property rights movement.”
I think it has been made pretty clear that it is not always possible to do that. And it’s not the putting on a jacket that is a pain. It’s the standing around with my thumb up my ass for 30 minutes, rushing to make the train/bus/whatever timetable and waiting for people to get off and on at ten other stops that discourages me from riding with the unwashed masses.
Who’s to say what “too many” is? Does a peacock have “too many” feathers?
But you said it was a national security issue. Surely given that it’s such a serious threat to our well-being, every little bit will help, right? We should be moving on all fronts, right?
Last I checked, oil doesn’t spoil. Isn’t it better to have our reserves in production, where we can actually tap them if needed, instead of having to wait for the capital-intensive processes of exploiting a site to be completed?
Besides, this is all a chimera anyway. As I’ve noted, the Arab states (and let’s be frank, that’s who we’re talking about when we talk about dependence; no one’s worried about what the Canadians or Argentinians might do) need our money a hell of a lot more than we need their oil. They are far more dependent on us than we are on them.
For the love of Pete, stop your baseless fearmongering.
That was as true of Saddam Hussein as of any other Arab ruler – he was willing to sell Iraq’s oil on the world market, because what else was he going to do with it? Yet the U.S. wasn’t satisfied with that arrangement. We have more than 150,000 troops in Iraq now – and I hope you can see they wouldn’t be there at all if Iraq were not an oil-producing country in the middle of a volatile oil-producing region. In the judgment of our leaders, apparently, just having the money to buy Middle Eastern oil is not enough to guarantee our supply.
If you think invading Iraq was simply about securing an oil supply, you’re sadly mistaken. The US was the biggest proponent of the UN sanctions that restricted Iraq’s ability to sell oil for a decade. If we really only wanted Iraqi oil, we only needed to lift those sanctions – Saddam was aching to sell.
Brainglutton, you might want to put this on your back burner to worry about after you do in the two party system. In our current situation, if one party supports something that has as much public opposition as I’m sure this would, it would just give the other party a license to forsake the middle. If the Democrats were pushing this (I can’t forsee the Republicans touching it with a 40’ pole) that would just let the Republicans pander even more to the religious right, big business interests, neo-cons, etc. If you’re amazed at how the ‘Republican noise machine’ took advantage of 9/11, just think what they could do with this! I’m scared to imagine what kind of nutjob could sail into office if this was on the table. “The socialists are going to take your home and car and put you in a housing project riding a bike to work!” And you know they would do it.
That’s my point, Dewey. We could have just bought Iraq’s oil, but our leaders considered it a threat to our national security not to have a major, controlling military presence in the Middle East, where the oil comes from. I say it’s a threat to our national security to need that much foreign oil in the first place.
And if you think we would have invaded Iraq if it were not an oil-producing country in the world’s prime oil-producing region . . . “sadly mistaken” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
You need to stop listening to catchy protest mantras. Please explain how military action was in any way necessary to secure an oil supply. Every country in the Middle East recognizes they need to sell more than we need to buy. No one’s going to shut off the spigot because that would be suicide. Even if we had let Saddam keep Kuwait in 1990 – hell, even if we had let him march into Saudi Arabia – we’d still have a steady crude supply because that’s the only way Saddam could fund his endeavors.