Dirk Lynch

Dear everyday driver,

Dear everyday driver,
Why does your passing face seem so bleak? I’m sure you’ve got your favorite tunes playing in the CD player. You’re headed home from a long day at work to see the family you love in your own personal transportation pod, complete with temperature control and heated seats! You must not be aware that as you are steaming down the highway, you are in command of energy that equals 2000 humans working in unison. It was only a little more than one hundred years ago when the type of vehicle you control had not even been conceived of. Your grandparents could have thought them to be as space-age as teleportation. Do you not enjoy the whipping wind in your face as if you were upon a mountain top, or does it just not come off that way to you?

Oh I see, the car no longer seems like a privilege to you. You only drive it because you have to. You are content only while in the points A, B, C and the drive just stands in between you and them. That, and it surely is risky too, the fact is, that in the twentieth century double the amount of people died in car accidents in the US than have US soldiers in all past wars. This means, by driving, you take an average of 7 months off your life span. And its not just you that you’re endangering, another fact, one million animals are road kill everyday in the US. Do these innocent forest dwelling fuzzy things deserve to die on your wasted time? Could it make you smile to run over one? The thump could assure you that your species has risen to the top of the food chain. I mean, you have employed thousands of pounds of steel, through which you detonate more decayed organic matter by the slightest fall of your foot, in order to repel all food that is no longer to your liking.

What about this decayed and processed organic matter? It is a hydrocarbon, the products of which, when burned, are carbon dioxide and water. It just so happens that you and most of the rest of your fellow Americans produce these things everyday. All I will say about carbon dioxide and the atmosphere is that it accounts for 60% of the trapped heat radiated from the sun. The more we add, daily, the hotter things become. What’s the problem with that? Exactly, we have few specific ideas concerning what will happen in the long run. One thing we do know is that it can change everything about the habitats on this planet, fast. Well, what’s wrong with change you ask? The problem with change is that right now, we, as the common people of this country that puts the most CO2 into the air each fleeting day are mute on ideas for changing or curtailing our means of transportation. If we are unable to change in order to fix something inevitable while things are good, what do you expect our change aptitude will be when everything we know has changed drastically, possibly and more probably for the worse?

So I beg of you, could you just look a bit more cheery when you drive?