Liz Phair and Eco-Nazi’s
I was tooling around the internet today, no big surprise there. Nothing really caught my eye in my normal news feeds, just that the FT-86 will be coming stateside, until I got to an article titled, “Exile in Greenville – What happens when a NASCAR race and an environmental conference converge“.
The article is by Liz Phair, yes that Liz Phair. I liked her early stuff when she was singing about watching TV while… well, you know, doing “boring” things. Once she went all poppy and mainstream I lost track of her. Well apparently she has become a writer for the Atlantic magazine and she took a trip to the Greenbuild Conference in Phoenix last year. Oh, and she also went to a NASCAR race, but she only talks about that for about two paragraphs. Usually I wouldn’t take the time to analyze an article like this, but neo-hippie-eco-nazi’s annoy me. Particular preachy celebrity ones who probably can’t read above a fifth grade level. Lets begin, shall we?
Phair leads off by talking about her drive from the Soviet Socialist Republic of California to Arizona through the Mojave desert. She mentions that she is so glad to be driving a Pious, err, Prius because the desert is an unforgiving place if she were to run out of gas. Maybe she should be glad that she filled up her tank before she left. Or perhaps that her vehicle is in proper repair since she is heading into an unforgiving landscape. No, she is just thankful for her Prius because they don’t run out of gas. I hate to break it to her, but the little ecobox isn’t any gas sipper when you’re wrapping it up to its top speed of 80MPH on the highway. The most respected automotive journalist in the world found that it only got 17.2MPG when doing that.
Next up we get the liberal, equality minded Phair spreading nasty stereotypes about NASCAR and how it’s fans are just a bunch of rednecks. In fact her whole report on what she did and saw at the Phoenix 500 is pretty pathetic. She is surprised when she’s asked to dress more respectfully while in the pits, rather than the slutty short-shorts she was wearing. When she is confronted by the fact that there are NASCAR drivers who are also environmentally conscience and that the sport recycles most of the fluids used she acts dumb and then claims to be “…sick of the brainiacs at NASCAR haranguing me about responsible waste management and alternative-energy sources”. What the fuck is that all about?
In her intro she claimed that she was going to ask NASCAR about recycling. Did she expect them to say, “Hell no missy! We just dump that sludge right into the stream over there and light dem tires on fire at the end of the race! Why don’t you just go ahead and bend over so I can get a look at that behind… Ye Haw!”
NASCAR is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been doing this for over 60 years. They know that their public image is environmentally unfriendly and if some little eco-bitch is coming along with a microphone they are going to show her all the positives they have going on. In addition, racing has been about recycling for decades. Long before Liz Phair figured out how to braid her hair, racing teams were figuring out how to keep parts running longer and harder, how to get the most efficiency out of engines and how to reuse everything in the pits to save money. I find it amazing that someone setting out to write an article dealing with NASCAR and environmentalism didn’t know that going in.
The majority of the article is her at the Greenbuild Conference, which is all about sustainable building products. You know, the companies who are exploiting all these dim-witted people who think that they have to go out and buy things to save the planet. Yeah, the conference is for them to show off their wares. And really, she doesn’t even talk that much about it either. She kind of glosses over the whole thing and talks about feeling “Eco-inadequate”.
She does record a conversation that she has with her jackbooted, goose stepping eco-nazi friend Kim. Kim gets mad at Liz because Liz wants to use the recycled plastic utensils and paper napkins telling her that they need to use less. This coming from a moron who drove from LA to Phoenix to attend a conference all about new eco friendly products for her to consume. Yeah…
The article ends with a quote from some guy saying, “…ultimately the society we need to create to sustain the planet depends on our ability to speak emotionally with some sort of comfort or fluency.” And Phair making a lame quip about how we all need to do our part and become more resourceful as a nation and use less stuff. And then she drives her little Pious back across the Mojave, which Kim has now convinced her is beautiful. Blegh.
The whole article makes me want to cut myself, but the last bit is the worst. First of all, speaking emotionally has nothing to do with building a sustainable planet. If anything its about being able to speak bluntly and often rudely. Talking about peace and love and happy birdies isn’t going to convince some logging company in Brazil to stop clear cutting the Amazon. Rather, explaining to them in cold hard emotionless facts that their business would be more profitable in the long run if they used more sustainable practices is going to convince them. Maybe. But this whole neo-hippie, Haight- Ashbury mentality of speaking about how we feel and that if we convince them that our feelings are more important then they will do what we want is total bullshit.
Then we have Liz Phair’s deal with how we need to be more resourceful. Which is honestly the only smart thing she says in the whole article. The problem is that she, and her ilk, are going about it in the wrong way. Rather than attending a Greenbuild conference, build something (or better yet refurbish something) with your own two hands! Rather than buy a brand new Prius, buy an old, reliable used car and keep it running for another twenty years.
You see this whole new sustainability movement is all about selling people stuff. Those of us who have been living this way our whole lives can’t help but be dumbfounded by people like Phair. I grew up with the mentality of if its broken, fix it. If you can do it yourself, then do. Don’t buy crap you don’t need and if you do need it, make sure it’s something that is going to last. Now we have people saying that your 10 year old perfect running car is a clunker and you need a hybrid. Your coffee grinder pulls too much energy, so you need a new low voltage one. All in the name of sustainability. It’s just another sales tactic for gullible people to buy into.
Phair should have been blown away by NASCAR. She should have gone in with an open mind and then seen how the whole event is organized, how they recycle, how the teams are so efficient, ect. Then she should have gone back to the Greenbuild conference and looked a little harder. Thought, “We already have most of this stuff, why can’t we just reuse what we have. Why am I being told that the only way to save the planet is to get rid of a bunch of old stuff that works fine and replace it with new stuff?”
But no, that would be too hard and wouldn’t conform to the ‘eco’ mindset.
