Posted on Jun 9th, 2007
by 
CT
A couple of weeks ago, I accepted an invitation to house/dog sit for friends of mine here in Tucson while they were out of the country. As their house was a bit too far for me to ride on my bike, especially with getting back and forth to my house and school every day, I had to use my truck more than I had in previous months. So, for a couple of weeks, I had to get back into the "real world". It's interesting, as I have been going about my daily life of reducing, reusing, recycling, etc, that I didn't realize how out of touch I had become with the world still out there, the one still going on, despite my meager efforts. Those two weeks really brought me back into thinking about the reality of the world that the majority of Americans live in.
Traffic in Tucson is much like, well, traffic. As is probably true with a lot of cities in the US, Tucson has grown at a rate that the city has not been able to manage effectively or efficiently. There are many stoplights in this town that take 2 or 3 light changes to get through the light. As a consequence, many people have opted to take side streets to get around the congestion and then they become small...and fairly dangerous....throughways. One of the things that I've noticed about these workarounds is that the people who seem to use them most are the most hurried, and probably the most frustrated people behind the wheel of a vehicle. And so, they race down these little side streets at breakneck speed, well over the posted..or unposted...speed limits. For those that remain on the main streets to get around town, I've noticed a disturbing trend. People actually race from one stop light to the next. This is interesting to study. I could understand this a bit if people were trying to beat the next light from turning red before they could get through it. But, most of the time what I see is people stopped at one red light, it turns green and they charge off almost at full blast in their car, truck...mostly very large, heavy and massively powered SUV... all the while with the next light in plain sight. Now, usually what I see is that the next stop light down the road a bit turned green just before the one we are all sitting at turned green. And so, by the time everyone who has gunned out of the starting gate is halfway to the next light, the crosswalk sign has started blinking indicating that that light is about to go yellow and then quickly red. There really is no way to beat this light. We are all going to get stuck there and have to sit and wait for it to turn green again. But, this doesn't deter anyone. They just charge right up to the now red light and pretty much slam on their brakes. And so it goes...all down the road...racing from one red light to the next.
I did a little experiment while I was on this break from eco-land. When I had to stop at a red light, I waited patiently and, when it turned green, instead of gunning it to get up to a fast start, I eased onto the gas pedal and slowly got up to speed. My truck has one of those mpg monitors on the dash so I watched it carefully. Not very scientifically measured, but the gauge showed that I averaged an extra 5-8 mpg if I slowly accelerated instead of flooring the pedal out of the stop light. But, here's the kicker...as I'm doing the thing that I percieve to be the most economical, less wasteful, less petroleum intense thing with my truck...I'm really pissing off everyone behind me who, apparently, is in a much bigger hurry. So, I would watch as one by one, everyone in the lane behind me got frustrated that I was taking too long to get up to speed and they would step on the gas harder and zoom past me. Many of these people would pass me quickly, just to pull back over in front of me and then signal to turn right. So, they saved what? About 2 seconds. And that 2 seconds probably cost them about a half gallon of gas? Ok, maybe less but seriously. Is where they are going a matter of life and death? The hospital is on the road that I took daily, but only one car in two weeks actually turned in there. Most seemed to be going to McDonald's or some shopping center. So, maybe there was a big huge sale that was about to expire and they just had to buy that thing and save 50 cents? And, what were the unintended consequences of my trying to save on gas? Did I just cause more people to use more gas than I saved by pissing them off?
The other thing that I got a good look at during the two weeks was the many ways we have become so addicted to automobiles and convenience that we just don't seem to be able to live without anymore. The most striking example were the drive-thru's at the fast food places and banks. Once upon a time, this was supposed to be for very quick and easy service. Now, the lines at these places are stretching out to the streets. It can easily take someone in their car up to 30 minutes to get up to the window for service. Banks to me, are the worst of this. Drive ups should be for quick and convenient transactions. Quick deposit, quick cash back kind of things. But it just seems that some people are trying to take out home loans or some other incredibly work intense transaction at the drive up. And, the banks don't do anything to discourage this behavior. My feeling is that a teller who has been doing this for a while knows when a transaction is going to take more than a couple of minutes to process and they should require the customer to go park their car and go inside. I'm sure they put up with this behavior because they don't want to lose customers. But, I've become increasingly sensitive to poor customer service...my customer service. If you are being so customer service oriented to the person that's holding up the line that you are neglecting those behind in line, your customer service policy needs a huge overhaul. I'm just as likely to take my business elsewhere if you inconvenience me by overly-conveniencing the customer in front of me who can't get his act together. I've been there and there are more diplomatic ways of handling situations like this while still making everyone happy.
But, the point at hand is this. Why would you rather sit in your car, wasting precious petroleum, polluting the environment and all the other things that we've come to know about caused by combustion engines, instead of drive up, park and walk inside? Do you pay $50/month for a gym membership? Do you get too much exercise there and you would be over your exercise quotient for the week by getting in a little more exercise? I really don't want to sound like I'm a huge treehugging ( although I am) fanatic but what's the logic here?
Ok, that all said, as I pondered all of what I saw the last few weeks, I could only come to one conclusion. We really don't have an oil problem. The problem isn't really that we have too little oil, declining resources, and vast amounts of pollution in the environment. The real problem is that we have WAY too much of something. And that excess isn't something that just started with the discovery of oil and the development of the internal combustion engine or plastics or any of the hundreds of other things that we all seem to now be jumping on the ecology bandwagon about. We simply have way too much of one thing. And that one thing has been around for a millenia in overabundance and really seems to me to be the root of all the problems we have ever had, have now and will ever have.
Simply put, we have way too much testosterone on Earth.
I say this as a guy. A guy who has a normal testosterone level.
But, when I sit back and take it ALL in and look around at the world as it was and as it is now, all I see are testosterone induced decisions, testosterone produced products, testosterone wars, testosterone plagued environments, testosterone focused marketing, testosterone soaked crimes, testosterone mandated birth control....ad infinitum.
Yeah, I know there are guys out there that have done some incredible things. Beauty, spirit, peace, bliss....there are men of the world that have done and are doing some wonderful things and continue to do so. I've met some very great guys who work hard at not letting their boys drive their behavior. But, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the ones who live and lead with their testicles. These seem to be the ones that we've let take over. And these are the ones, with their products, that we now seem to be railing against. And yet, what are we doing about it? Why haven't we elected a female president yet? Are we afraid that estrogen will let us down? Are we afraid that estrogen has been usurped by testosterone?
I often used to joke that we should genetically engineer a way to ensure that a male's testicles don't descend until they are over 30 and have gained some wisdom. I'm not so sure that's not a bad idea. Not popular though, I'm sure.
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sustainability
June 2009 
