Saturday, September 18, 2010

Idling Pickup Trucks

i was at safeway today and when i arrived, there was a man sitting in his oversized male enhancement pickup truck with it running. no, it was not cold outside especially by redneck-central edmonton standards. over 1/2 later when i came out, the man was still sitting in his truck with it running. what is the mindset of someone who first off buys such a gas guzzling monstrosity and secondly has so little regard for clean air that he would leave it idling for no reason other than pure thoughtlessness and laziness!? they might as well just have a bumper sticker (alongside their "support the troops" one and a canadian flag waving majestically in the breeze from their vehicle window as they advertise that canada means oil pollution, cutting down trees, hunting and buying disposable tim horton's coffee cups contibuting to already garbage laden streets and overflowing landfills) that says, "i don't give a shit about the environment"; and the city council in edmonton can't even trouble themselves with implementing a no idling bylaw like so many other municipalities have. even hinton, the hub of mining, has the good sense to pass such a bylaw. if these people love their polluting, cancer causing, child-killing destruction machines (there was a story a few years ago in edmonton about a man in a large pickup, who ran over a small child in a crosswalk because his truck was so big he couldn't see the child) i invite all of them, individually or in groups, to sit inside a garage with their precious truck running and breathe in the shit spewed out that everybody else has to endure outside, for oh say 1/2 hour to 45 minutes and we'll see how much they enjoy it!


unfortunately, far too many edmontonians, albertans and canadians in general act on the guiding principle that if an activity makes money, creates jobs, and stimulates the economy then that action is the morally right thing to do; completely ignoring the far more important point that an action is wrong if it causes harm to other beings who are capable of suffering! or even if a person would pause to consider the kantian categorical imperative which states, always act by that maxim through which you can at the same time (and under similar circumstances i would add) will to become a universal law, we would all live in a far more considerate and cleaner city, country and world.