"if you love oil spills, keep driving your car..."

"...and if you care about the future of human beings on the planet, please kiss your car goodbye."  So argues Jason Henderson in an article for alternet.org about the irresolvable contradiction between caring for the environment and owning and operating an automobile.  Some exemplary paragraphs:

We need oil to make the "shift" to other energy paths. Yet the vast majority of oil that Americans consume is squandered for short drive-thru trips. We are seeking to expand drilling offshore and in remote areas to keep this system of automobility afloat. At the same time we as a nation expect to make a great leap to new energy systems but that will require lots of oil to build them. We cannot do both.

To any rational thinking person this should be an alarming state of affairs. But to people who identify themselves as political progressives and yet continue to own and drive cars on a routine basis, this should be an embarrassment. Any progressive-leftist-liberal-"green"-environmentalist cannot, with a clear conscience, drive his or her children to school and expect those children to find a planet they'll thrive on. He or she cannot smugly shrug that the transit system does not go where he or she wants to go, or that the distances are too far to ride a bicycle. Any able-bodied progressive who regularly exclaims "But I need to drive!" is in need of some deep reflection on his or her values and especially the idea of a green car.

The "green car" movement has been around since the rise in environmental awareness and recognition of resource scarcity. It reflects how American progressives have held a great discomfort in trying to balance the convenient automobile lifestyle enabled by oil against the messy work of extracting and refining oil. The Prius will not cut it. Engaging in some sort of medieval offset-indulgence scheme won't either. You are driving an oil-consuming machine made from polymers derived from oil and designed to carry you under 30 miles a day in an urban configuration.

According to Henderson, by driving a car you could be complicit in destroying the beaches in my home state, Florida.