Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 00:31:52 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: faux po


In message <l03102811b145c2d68179-AT-[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood-AT-panix.com> writes
>If gasoline were priced to reflect its full ecological and social costs,
>we'd be rationing by price.

But what if gasoline were priced to reward its social contribution to
metropolitanism, conviviality and human intercourse - then a socialist
government would give it away for free.

As it is I guess it will continue to be priced according to the
porductivity of the labour that drills and refines it, though in Europe
we like to finance our governments by taxing it.

I read in 'Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use' that one
plane trip exhausts your environmentally sustainable travel rations for
about two and a half years, so perhaps you'd better get your roller
blades out if you've been on a plane recently.

> But it's not, so we're not, and our atmosphere
>and landscape are so much the worse for it.

I must say that I did not find America to be so very choked up when I
was there, nor its landscape anything but spectacular, built and natural
environment both.

What I can say for sure is that the air in Britain is massively improved
from my parents' day, when deaths from the winter smog were commonplace
as they are now unknown.
-- 
James Heartfield


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