Bike Lanes, Recycling, And Electric Cars - The Happy Life Of Doing The Right Thing

Del Barrow was a bike advocate - from dedicated lanes, rails-to-trails, and cycle-friendly rules of the road he was a passionate partisan.  He spent long hours preparing his bike-friendly petition before the City Council, contributed time, efforts, and money to 'Bicycles Are Our Future', the leading bike advocacy group in the Washington metropolitan area. 

 

According to Del bikes could do no wrong.  As inheritors of the climate change legacy, in the avant garde to reduce vehicle traffic on the nation's roads, and the new Thoreau, Walden Pond, Emersonian poets of the soon-to-be pristine urban environment, bike advocates were insufferable  They were pedantic, insistent, hectoring, critical, and tedious.  And yet they never stopped their hammering about the new world of bicycles. 

Bikes were a nuisance. They slowed traffic, caused accidents, and forced unnecessary public investments in bike infrastructure - boondoggles and public scams by green authorities anxious to show their commitment to a better, more verdant, considerate world.  The famous Montgomery County 'bike lane to nowhere' rankled commuters every rush hour as they funneled into a one lane thoroughfare, reduced by half because of bike lane of 500' that ended in traffic, that no one used, and was an example of politically-inspired waste.

Bikes were vehicles when they felt like it, pedestrians when it suited them. Prejudicial laws favoring cyclists passed in the days of radical environmentalism made drivers automatically, ipso facto, guilty in any accident involving cyclists.  This sense of undue privilege and entitlement, particularly when cyclists disobeyed all rules of the road dared cars to hit them. 

Yet Del never once wavered.  Those who complained about bike-share racks lined with unrented bikes, confusing on-off, only sometimes downtown bike lanes on the capital's busiest streets, play-as-you-may observance of traffic laws, the lack of any of the safety equipment standard on cars are ignoramuses, said Del, troglodytes, throwbacks, and inconscient fools.

Bikes made life more worth living, said Del, who suited up in his brand-festooned Lycra biking suit for his weekend peloton, or strapped himself into his beater Schwinn to pedal to the Metro, or volunteered up at Cabin John to fix flat tires.  'Bikes 'R' Us' was the lawn sign Del had put on the front lawn with a bar code and a number to call for more information. 

His wife, initially supportive of Del's efforts to promote cycling was becoming tired of what had become his obsession.  While she approved of the principle, she had become annoyed at his non-stop banging on about bike lanes, car fools, and the dilatory attitudes of government authorities.  From dawn to dusk, Del whinged and complained, and it had become a tedious slog.  He needed help. 

Del wasn't the only one in the neighborhood who had gone 'round the bend for doing the right thing. Margot Billings was a terror about recycling.  Not only was she careful about sorting - she was proud to never mix cans with glass, paper with organic waste, and newspaper with packaging, but she meticulously washed every can she recycled, removed every last bit of dried tomato paste, stray lemon seeds, and stray plastic wrap. 

 

She ran out into the alley at Christmastime to give the garbage men generous tips, arranged her bins so that that they would have an easier time hooking them on to the forklift, and waved to them every Thursday morning as they came by. 

She, like Del, was passionate about her cause, but carried her obsession a step further.  She was a recycling vigilante who called out her neighbors for irresponsible mixing. She left signs on those recycle bins with indifferently sorted trash (she peeked under the lid on her neighborhood walks).  

This vigilantism came naturally, for she was a veteran of the COVID wars during which she was the first to shout j'accuse! at neighbors without masks, disregarding the six-foot rule, or waiting unconscionably long before getting vaccinated.  She was known as The Harridan of Butterworth Place, a woman who still in her bathrobe, but double masked, gloved, and wild, stormed out of her house to confront a COVID denier. 

 

It felt good to be part of a movement to save the environment, and both Del and Margot were happy people.  Because their anger at those who did not comply with biking or recycling was righteous, it was not the bilious kind, the kind that kept you awake at night.  It was part of the passion, the commitment, the progressive faith.

Shannon Biggs drove a Tesla and her husband a fully-electric Toyota; and they were as outspoken and determined as Margot and Del in their desire to help others join the mission for a more livable planet. She wrote letters to the editor, spoke at formal and informal gatherings, and distributed reading material at libraries. 

Now she, like Del and Margot took her cause at face value.  A car with no carbon emissions was ipso facto good.  There could be no doubt, denial, or objection.  Of course this was all idealistic fantasy. Lithium mines were just as environmentally invasive as open copper mines, child labor was used in nasty, war-addled countries like the Congo, coal-fired plants generated the electricity needed for recharging, the added weight of electric cars because of their batteries took its toll on tires and roads, and much more. 

 

Cost-benefit was a fiction for recyclers, electric freaks, and bikers.  Their good was taken as a matter of faith, and no comparative economic analysis of waste disposal or reconfiguration of traffic for a desultory interest in bike travel was necessary.  In fact to do so was to challenge the very premise of a warming climate. 

That - the warming climate - was the issue that brought Del, Margot, and Shannon together.  Despite growing evidence that global warming might not be the apocalyptic threat it has been touted to be - ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are increasing not decreasing; new evidence from sophisticated AI analysis suggests that man's influence on climate variations is far less than concluded by climate activists - environmentalists are more passionate than ever, and have dug their heels in even more deeply.  Climate change is not received wisdom.  It is fact. 

So, not only does involvement in sectoral environmental issues feel good - biking, recycling, and electric cars - but that advocacy for a reversal of global warming feels even better.  It is the big tent, the big issue, the one idea that puts it all together.  The fact that the three neighbors were one on climate change added to their sense of identity and purpose and gave them a universal camaraderie.  

Hobbes's famous notion - 'Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' - may well be true, but social activism is a good anodyne.  It may not change the existential nature of a penitential life, but it at least takes your mind off it.  So, although the excesses and febrile enthusiasm of people like Del, Margot, and Shannon might be amusing if not laughable to some, some credit is due.  How different is climate activism any different than a round of golf or bass fishing?

University Park, the neighborhood where all three live is an amusing place thanks to its very visible political commitment.  Hate Has No Home Here, BLM, Democracy Matters lawn signs are everywhere.  Compost bins are place in front (not in the invisible alley) of houses, electric cars are charged up on driveways, and bikers pedal up and down the main streets.  

There is nothing quiet about political philosophy there.  Own It, Show It is the mantra, commitment requires evangelism, good works are impactful.  

Yes, it can all be tedious at times, but a side show right around the corner? A must.