I?ll always remember the evening a
candidate for local political office, an environmentally minded and
intelligent citizen whom I liked and admired, passed me on the
highway between Cortez, Colo., and Mancos. I was traveling
somewhere between 60 and 65 mph, my usual cruising speed. He blew
by me — passing over a double yellow line — as if I were a slug
crawling along the asphalt.
When I mentioned the incident
to him later, he said, “I was tired and I wanted to get home.”
Not long ago, I listened to a woman active in a
conservation group bragging about how many times she?d been stopped
for speeding and laughing about how often she?d been able to talk
her way out of a ticket. Every time I encounter someone like this,
someone ostensibly “green” who takes great pride in driving like a
crazed fugitive in an action movie, I have to smother the impulse
to club him or her over the head with a rolled-up newspaper from my
recycling bin.
“You?re hurting the movement,” I want to
say. “You?re hurting the earth. What are you thinking?”
A
vehicle?s most efficient speed varies a little according to what
type of vehicle it is, of course, but everyone agrees that the
further the needle on your dashboard leans past 60, the faster your
fuel consumption rises, largely because of wind resistance.Driving
75 instead of 55 mph can cause you to burn as much as 45 percent
more gasoline, depending on what you?re driving, according to the
Federal Trade Commission. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates
that fuel efficiency drops 7 percent, on average, for each 5 mph by
which you exceed 65.No matter the exact figure, it?s clear that
greater speed burns more gasoline and produces more climate-warming
emissions. It also contributes to more car crashes and increases
the severity of those crashes ? not to mention that it causes us to
mow down more birds, butterflies, prairie dogs and any other form
of wildlife that might step into our path.
There are many
forms of environmental hypocrisy, of course, and we?re all guilty
of a few. Maybe we take long, hot baths sometimes when we could get
by with brief showers. Or we occasionally buy a bottle of water
instead of remembering to carry some in a reusable container.
Nobody?s perfect, or even consistent.
But our driving
habits are one of the simplest, easiest, most obvious things we
could change in order to help the planet ? yet most of us simply
won?t do it.
An ultra-conservative woman I know once told
me about a meeting of an environmental group that took place at a
local community center. “After it was over,” she chortled, “they
all ran out to their SUVs and drove four blocks down the street to
the brewpub.” I don?t doubt her tale, because I see similar
examples all the time. A friend of mine who rescues abandoned
animals and supports environmental causes once was ticketed for
doing 90 mph near South Park, Colo. She then made a 200-mile round
trip back there to fight the ticket in court on the theory that her
appearance would lessen her fine, a theory that, sadly, proved
untrue.
Many people who bristle at the idea of new oil
and gas wells or coal-fired power plants are far more likely to hop
in their cars and drive to a meeting about the subject than they
are to do something far simpler to reduce emissions: Slow down. No,
they?d rather boast about how fast they can drive, say, from Grand
Junction, Colo., to Moab, Utah.
After the Arab oil
embargo of 1973, the federal government ordered states to cut their
speed limits to 55mph. Partly as a result, the United States?
consumption of gasoline stopped increasing — as it had done every
year before — and stayed level for years. But in 1987, speed
limits went up again, and so did gasoline consumption. Now, the
idea of reinstating the 55-mph limit is considered outrageous.
I?m not sure what prompts this obsession with speed. Is
it a residual anti-authoritarianism left from the ?60s? Does
speeding make us feel like we?re bucking the system somehow? Maybe.
But this willingness to toss aside our ethics when they become
inconvenient just gives critics reason to doubt our sincerity on
any environmental issue. Personally, I?d rather buck the system by
buying fewer gallons of gasoline than by dodging deer at 80 mph
while listening to NPR.
Gail Binkly is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). She writes in Cortez, Colorado.
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