Beds of Sin (i)

"People just keep coming here," a relative of mine once said indignantly, and as if she wasn't talking to one of the more recent emigres. Who wouldn't want to live in Los Angeles? I have feared straight through from the moment the first seed of temptation sprouted in my mind all the way through the present moment that the answer might be: "anyone with a conscience." I've hidden from no one the fact that the climate was always a consideration for me, but I have plenty of better reasons for coming to live here, and so far I'm content that they're all in evidence. And contrary to that peculiar form of midwestern conjecture one is bathed in upon declaring the intent to relocate, I've yet to feel the shadow of the entertainment industry stalking my every artistic move, and I remain unconvinced that people here are, as a group, any more or less superficial than they are back home.

It could not be more transparent, on the other hand, that the whole operation is enabled by a constellation of environmental and humanitarian atrocities the sum total of which I'm not sure many people I've met here know or care much about. Some of the blankest stares I've ever seen have followed what I thought were innocuous questions about water issues, made to people who have lived here their entire lives. Several co-workers of mine have the infuriating habit of taking their lunch breaks in their cars with engines idling and air conditioners blasting away for 30 minutes at a time. These are low-wage earners in the era of $4 per gallon gas; clearly there's no deterrent strong enough to combat animal instincts.

Naturally, my footprint is smaller, but I am an animal just like everyone else, a walking entropy machine complete with central nervous system and reproductive organs to assist in the task. I'm drawn to year-round outdoor basketball, musical communities that are large and informed enough to be self-policing, and double-digit personnel options on just about every instrument I'll ever need to form an ensemble to play my music. The extent of my impact on climate change, air quality, clogged freeways, depleted water supplies, and housing shortages remains to be seen, but this much is (and always was) clear: owing to geography and sociology alike, it will necessarily be larger here than it would have been in Minneapolis or virtually any other place I might have gone; it will be leveled against an environment which is under siege in a way that Minneapolis, despite its own notable sprawl and the alarming recent emergence of its own air quality issues, has never experienced and probably will not experience for a very long time; and it will be leveled at the expense of more desperate, aggrieved and oppressed people than the entire Twin Cities can claim in either number or degree. For all of that, I never had a perfectly clean conscience about coming here, and I never will.

No matter what sorts of high or trying times might await, my living here will always be "me time" through and through. It is a concession to the voice that says "do something for yourself for once" and in direct contravention of the one that says "you've had it pretty good to start with; leave something for everyone else." People just keep coming here, and I didn't have to be one of them, but here I am competing against all the other transplants and quite a few natives of myriad vintages for just about every known resource and privilege a human being might require. I'm crossing my fingers that we don't run out.

Easy For Me To Say

From an article in The Nation about high-rolling conservationists:

World-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle was there by Seligmann's side, as was Stone Gossard, rhythm guitarist for Pearl Jam. Gossard and his girlfriend were hoping to explore ways, through support of CI's work, to offset the 5,700-ton carbon footprint Pearl Jam was about to create with an upcoming world tour.

Now, over the years, I've probably moralized a bit out of proportion to my real efforts to balance making music with living green. I've also been known to chide others for the consequences of opportunities that I simply don't have (like world tours), which is easy to do since I'll never have to make those decisions myself. Among the many things music has made me into that I never thought I'd be (teacher, author, entrepreneur, union member, even bookworm for a brief while), car owner would be at the top of the list. I was raised in a family that didn't own a car, using a combination of bikes and public transit instead, and although I complained about it occasionally early on, I came to fully embrace the reasons why my parents made this choice.

Then I took up tuba playing.

I'm someone who believes the solution to the energy crisis is to use less, and to that end, I'd really like to know how the carbon footprint of the average itinerant musician compares to that of a depraved suburbanite commuter, or a bike-riding uptown hippie for that matter. And once again, it's easy for me to say that I just don't drive my car all that much when I don't have all that many gigs to drive to in the first place. I've given some particular thought recently to the question of touring. Among friends of mine who have made touring a priority, the collective purchase of a cargo van for the band seems to be something a rite of passage, a milestone that signifies coming into your own as a group. It's a rare acquaintance of mine that can afford to fly to a gig, but in fact, flying is even worse for the air than driving, or so I've been led to believe.

What I'm dancing around saying is that touring may be good for our careers, if less frequently good for our wallets, but it is never good for the planet, no matter how we attempt to "offset" it. It seems unfair to expect any given musician to swear off of it, but because the people who use more than their fair share are using enough for all the rest of us and then some, the very notion of fairness is difficult to quantify when giving up touring altogether as an individual or even a band is a mere drop in the bucket. Maybe someone with knowledge of such things can chime in as to whether the concept of carbon "offsetting" is a valid proposition; to me, it sounds a lot like "no net loss of wetlands," which is pretty much a worthless propaganda tagline.

Since I couldn't go on tour if I wanted to, I don't have to worry about it, and all of the noise I'm making over it here isn't really worth much. Meanwhile, it's comforting to know that of the top 10 most dangerous intersections for bikes in Minneapolis, there's one on my way to work and one on my way to teach. Hence, while my individual efforts at driving less aren't exactly Herculean, if we're factoring the risk to life and limb into the "offsetting" equation, then each trip though the Minnehaha roundabout ought to be earning me another city on my world tour (that is, if I can manage to get that popular before we run out of petroleum for good).