The Road Less Traveled

     While we were in Seattle recently, merging through huge freeways crowded with vehicles containing one environmentally conscious occupant, I began formulating a theory.  I believe people who live in big cities are using a disproportionate amount of the planet's resources. Many of these city dwellers are the ones attempting to legislate what those of us who live among the planet's resources must do, or not do, with them.  Cities are primarily composed of three things: people, buildings, roads.  In the small towns where most Americans live this is not a huge imposition on the land so there is plenty of room left over for farms, forests, and wildlife.  Big cities require many houses-which are often composed of lumber, and apartments-which are mostly concrete.  They are home to big businesses in big buildings-which block the sunlight by day and whose lights block starlight by night, as well as consume huge amounts of electricity for heating, cooling, lights, elevators, etc.
      In order for the many residents to get to the big buildings where they work, they need lots of roads-which destroy farmland and animal habitat and pollute the environment with noise and exhaust.  I just read that the average rural commute is about 15 minutes, average city commute 45. And in the 15 minutes small town commuters spend on the road our vehicles are actually moving, not sitting in traffic, so we are at least spreading out the pollution.  It would be interesting to research statistics on the energy/resource usage of city dwellers as opposed to rural but that sounds hard.  95 percent of statistics are made up anyway, including this one, so I postulate that city dwellers use 63% more of the Earth's resources than those of us thoughtful enough to live in small towns.
     I believe environmental movements spring from big cities because they feel guilty.  They are passionate about energy consumption because they are consumed with guilt over their own. In the poem "The Road Not Taken", Robert Frost said that choosing the road less traveled by made all the difference.  I suggest greenies who want to make a difference take that literally.  The freeway isn't free.  Move to the small towns where the rest of us live.  If you can find a town where environmentalism hasn't destroyed the economy, you will find the jobs don't pay enough to cover trips to climate summits or to lobby Washington D.C.  Most people on those less traveled roads are too busy getting by and taking care of their little part of the planet to have time to sue strangers on behalf of trees and animals.  On roads less traveled by, the best way to take care of the planet is to care for the people you share it with.