Sick Suzerain

Rethink, recycle, reuse, reinvest in what's sustainable. Eventually, you scrub not only the dirt away but surface, too, and what's beneath. Nothing lasts forever. Been seeking Zero Carbon Footprint for a decade: darned difficult and negligibly effective. Must target enormous populations and processes to influence global issues. Yet must quit relationships with things once they outlived their purpose, too. A car is not a pal, pet, or protege carrying on your legacy. Cars are comfortable, masculine, but temporary vehicles struggling through liquid air and solid traffic, period. Cars are too complex to last; simple methods persist. Alternatives already exist that don't burn petroleum, but comedians are already ridiculing electric plug-ins as effeminate.

Biggest budget busters are fuel, insurances, taxes and transportation. To afford, Americans collectively fritter away enormous effort, resources, and time: 300 billion work hours plus 50 billion driven hours. Maintaining roads costs upward of $100 billion every year and increasingly marginalize cyclists. Protecting nation against enemies created by evil corporations or foreign jealousies costs $900 billion/year. Smoking is a net loss (after profits) of $150 billion a year. Thousands, both traffickers and users, die annually because narcotics are illegal. Cardiovascular diseases from overeating and using lazy ways, both mere choices, kill more people than anything else. After cancer, the third biggest killer is car accidents. More have died in collisions in the last century than in wars. Motoring is war on multiple fronts with enough collateral damage to infect society with insanity.

Earth is so vast that human vermin teeming along ocean shores seem an insignificant irritation easily neutralized by hurricanes and tsunamis. Yet they're reporting Greenland's permafrost melting this winter and record high temperatures down under this summer. Is there another reason? Ozone depletion? Sun irregularity? You might drill down to root causes, but what do you ever make of evidence? Bike&Chain instead skips self serving conclusions and sticks with is-ness. Freedoms do increase proportionally with responsibilities assumed. But you don't need some fussy suzerain ruling from afar or sick writer waxing moralistic who knows nothing of your customs or desires telling you what to do. Embracing technological convenience will always cost more; just makes sense. But "more" could mean mammals become extinct. Inevitably, insects and simple microbes will inherit earth, but sooner if mankind lets them.