"Despite protestations that this lifestyle is to be modelled on the land husbandry methods of the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin ("we will, like the Menominee, figure out what our world can productively offer us rather than considering only what we want"), Mr. Bevan's initiative seems in one respect to be a little half-asscetic. If he were truly committed, should he not move his family to the woods - perhaps to the plot left vacant by Mr. Kaczynski - and resume his efforts there?

"The problem with this, of course, is that an apartment in "an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue" is as hard to come by as a Menominee in the Bronx - and there's no way they're giving up theirs! Besides, it's not really a lifestyle change per se - it's just a career move ("he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell").

"And yet ..."

Read the rest

Let's be honest: any movement, whether it be pro-life or environmentalism, is significantly about marketing. You need to make other people aware of your cause, and motivate them to join it.

In making your case, metaphors are useful. No Impact Man there is one such great, easy-to-understand metaphor. Does he get some of the details wrong? Of course. Will he make errors along the way? Definitely. Is it a great story that the media loves? Obviously, or you wouldn't be writing about it.

The same, ironically, goes for Gore--it's a blessing and curse. He's been using symbols and metaphors for years to rally people to his cause. Now his lifestyle has become a useful metaphor for his critics.

We find a similar, though reversed, phenomenon in the recent controversy surround Reverend Ted Haggard.

Nobody's perfect, regardless of their political stripes. Everybody's fallible. I think Colin, Al and Ted would all agree to that, and would never claim otherwise.

It's unwise, then, to expect any of our public heroes, whether they be pastors or Presidents, to be perfect.

Since World War II, North Americans invested much of their newfound wealth into suburbia. Suburban development promised a sense of space, affordable living, abundant prosperity and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded over the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life became embedded in the American consciousness.

Suburbia, and all its promises of a better life, became the definitive American dream.

But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions have emerged about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its future prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, and as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels are clear signs of how the dream is over and the end is coming.

The silly stuff described in this article highlights the stupid behavior of people with half-baked ideas of how to reform the world.

But the unsustainability of the western "lifestyle" is real. It is less a matter of using fossil fuels than of misusing them to the detriment of our own health. it is my firm opinion that if we do what is best for nature, we will find that it is best for us as well.

Making changes are not easy. In fact they are very hard - and expensive. But we have the choice between the "cheap" and "convenient" hell we've created for ourselves now and the less convenient world of normality we can attempt to attain.

Wait until these two try a 19th century dentist.