I was pretty surprised to find only one recent diary that mentioned the trashing of a DC area Hummer. Kathy in Virginia's diary, while well-written, isn't really even about the hammering of the Hummer, although the incident is mentioned to help her make her larger point.
My point is entirely different, and it relates to the means by which people turn something that is deemed "acceptable" into unacceptable. Follow me over the fold, if you please.
I had totally missed the story about the vandalism perpetrated on a DC-area Hummer owner until a neighbor was helping me change a blown fuse in my hybrid and we launched into the whole subject of fuel efficiency and how and why I was moved to make a BIG change and trade my SUV for a Camry Hybrid. As conversations go, he mentioned the trashed Hummer and indicated that it had received quite a bit of press attention.
Sure enough, the trusty Washington Post had the whole story:
So he [the Hummer owner] parked the seven-foot-tall behemoth on the street in front of his house and smiled politely when his eco-friendly neighbors looked on in disapproval at his "dream car."
It lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and scratched into the body: "FOR THE ENVIRON."
::snip::
"I'd say one in five people who come by have that 'you-got-what-you-deserve' look," said his friend Andy Sexton, 27, who is visiting from Arkansas and has been helping Groves deal with fallout from the crime.
::snip::
He said he wants to get it towed and repaired but fears extremists might not be done making an example of him.
"I'm worried about what I do now," he said. "If I get it fixed, do I put it back in the same spot three weeks from now?"
I'd be worried, too. Look - I have to be totally candid and tell you that I'm conflicted on the issue of the trashing of this particular Hummer. I don't condone violence against people or against their property. Yet at the same time, what are the remedies for people who are not only offended by the image-only who-cares-about-the-environment (not to mention national security) mentality that Hummer owners must possess but are also concerned for their own health and well-being? This isn't a canard - there are people out there who are legitimately concerned every time they see a pollution emitting gas-guzzler drive by them on the road, and I'm one of them. Yet owning a Hummer isn't illegal and parking it on the street in front of your home isn't illegal.
There was an interesting follow-up Letter to the Editor two days later:
I certainly don't condone vandalism, but there is an adage that turnabout is fair play. This appears to be vandalism directed against vandalism.
If you read the entire LTE (it's short), you'll see that its author is railing against not the pollution that Hummers and other vehicles spew into the atmosphere nor the amount of fossil fuels they consume, but rather is railing against large, modified loud vehicles and their large, loud and inconsiderate owners.
Yet I still find the "vandalism directed against vandalism" statement incredibly astute. Hummers vandalize the environment. They vandalize national security. They vandalize the cost of gas by increasing (in part) the demand for gas. The increase in gas prices in turn causes costs on virtually every other thing you and I buy to increase as well. Hummers are offensive, and the people who drive them do so at the expense of your clean air and add the bonus of making you pay more for what you buy.
I have been thinking for a while about the legal ramifications of polluting the environment. While we try to pressure Congress to increase fuel efficiency standards and tighten emission requirements (and we should continue to do this), I wonder if there isn't a parallel effort we should be undertaking (and perhaps this is already happening).
Think about the cigarette industry. True, smoking cigarettes is still legal. Yet the places you can smoke (if you smoke - I used to) dwindle every day. Some time long ago some enterprising people decided to file lawsuits on the premise that second-hand smoke was dangerous to the health of non-smokers. I don't remember when the change actually came - I can vaguely remember, in the 80's, my mother's office still allowing cigarettes in the workplace. Yet by the time I came into Corporate America in the 1990s, you couldn't smoke in an office. Some years (and likely many legal battles) later, you saw cities, counties and eventually entire states passing laws restricting or eliminating smoking in public places. Entire hotel chains try to gain a market advantage by being entirely smoke-free.
As a former smoker, I was still a smoker while all of this went on around me. And you know what? I totally understood and supported it. I believe absolutely that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other health complications in non-smokers. Yet even the Wikipedia entry on passive smoking points out arguments against the science that says that second-hand smoke makes non-smokers sick. In spite of that, however, prevailing public opinion was turned against smoking. I defy you to find a current or recent former smoker who hasn't experienced the sidelong glance of disapproval from random passers-by.
My point is this: the anti-smoking campaign is a model that the pro-environment crowd can study and use. This guy's Hummer being vandalized, it seems to me, is kind of a first shot across the bow. Those big gas-guzzling vehicles are dangerous to everyone - the greater public health is at risk. It doesn't matter that people try to knock down the science that shows that emissions contribute to global warming and that global warming can have deleterious effects on the health of all life on Earth - there is enough science out there to expand to the court system and start letting citizens and advocacy groups lead the charge to stop compromising and polluting the environment we all share.
Although I'm still conflicted, I don't condone trashing that guy's property if for no other reason that it's not something I would do myself regardless of the frustration and anger Hummer owners inspire in me. But I can't help but think that it's a sign - one that we need to heed and to learn from, and take the fight for our environment to the next legal level.
Thoughs? Suggestions? Any lawyers/legal types out there who know if there are groups already pursuing these types of efforts??
Thanks for reading my ramble!