An Inconvenient Truth Indeed

Sorry, readers, for the delay in posts. As you can imagine, I spent a day reading Deathly Hallows (for me, the day was yesterday; I had kid stuff and a slightly hungover husband to attend to on Sunday). I won't provide any spoilers here -- like John Oliver, I say that anyone who posts Potter spoilers online must have designed a car that runs on the tears of children. I will say, however, with a bit of smugness, that I correctly guessed Snape's true character. And I will also say that the fact that I feel smug about that shows how much I admire Rowling's ability to plot. Me -- I can write characters, but unless they already know what to do and start acting on their own, they'll have trouble finding a plot coming from my pen.

Speaking of cars running on tears, I suppose I should respond to one reader's matter-of-fact comment, pointing out that I grimaced about greenhouse gas emissions and then, later in the very same post, blithely discussed the relative merits of my next SUV or minivan. I can see how this might facially appear hypocritical. Let me try to dig myself out of this one, and preface the first spadeful by establishing some green creds, albeit a bit dog-eared and aged. I went through a period of rather extreme greenishness in college, during which as an RA I tried to convince my hallmates to flush the toilet only every third or fourth use; I actually marched on Earth Day, 1991; for senior day at Penn, I bought a cloth fisherman's hat rather than wear the free styrofoam hats they gave to everyone [this was an annual ritual at Penn -- the seniors parade through campus wearing these hats, getting drunk, and taking bites out of each other's styrofoam], and covered it with eco-feminist sayings in permanent marker; I own a copy of "Earth in the Balance;" and I once actually attended a lecture by an author whose book made the argument that eating meat and treating women like pieces of meat were of a kind [I don't really remember much about the book or the lecture, except for one transparency slide showing, on the left, a line drawing of a cow divided up into its various cuts of meat and, on the right, a similar line drawing of a buxom woman -- I think it was probably from Playboy or something], and I was a vegetarian for a good few months after that.

So, my status as intellectual kindred to Al Gore thus established (hopefully without the irritating pedantry or bald spot), and my willingness to personally sacrifice for the benefit of the earth demonstrated, I'll try to explain my minivan/Congress commentary. I'm a Democrat. As such, I don't mind taxes & government, in theory. In fact, I like the idea that government should be the clearinghouse of the social contract, and the middleman for some kinds of charitable activity that don't really lend themselves to one-on-one kindness. One perfect sort of thing it seems government can do is boss around corporations for the benefit of everyone else, and considering that pretty much everyone agrees that greenhouse gasses are bad, I would love it if government would enact some caps, or at least a tax on emissions, if you prefer some more free-market stuff. I don't think that opinion is necessarily rendered completely suspect by the fact that I still have to find a way to live in society as it currently exists. I now flush my toilet every time, barring some confusion or calamity, but I use those supposedly energy-saving light bulbs in our house. We recycle, I try to keep my tires inflated and I went to work on the subway instead of driving in (though I hated every minute of it). But now, I've got a husband who also gets a say, and I've got 2.5 kids I have to worry about. The kids need to be in car seats, and I can't really lift, reach, or stretch very well, even when I manage to hobble my way to the car, so squeezing kids and their seats into normal cars is impossible. And you know what? -- I get headaches and need the kids to be able to watch Free to Be You & Me once in a while when we're in transit. Thus, my need for a gas-guzzler. If anyone made a hybrid minivan, I'd be all over it. When a hydrogen-powered minivan comes out, I'll be a big fan. And someday, when I can use my flux capacitor with some old banana peels to power my ride, I will be happiest of all.