Faulty Logic and the Act of Cutting Off Your Nose

I just found this article in the Trim.

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_10287763

I looked into this Rob Anderson, apparently, he thinks that San Francisco is not not liberal enough and wants to "flank SF democrats on the left." There is enough in just that sentence from his blog to keep me occupied for days. But I don't want to digress. I would rather use this line from the article as a jumping off point:

"Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more time idling and more pollution."

On its surface, that seems like a legitimate statement, which is the most pernicious thing about it and other statements of its ilk. Such as, if you look at the embodied energy in our food, then riding a bike to the store is worse for the environment than driving a car, because you eat more food when you ride a bike, which outweighs the gains of bike v. car.

The problem with these types of statements is that they are too esoteric for their own good, and quite often either blatantly wrong, or slightly true, but just on the surface (the worst kind). They are made by people who are either so enlightened as to see that the only good mode of transportation is walking, or, they are so jaded and cynical that they think no effort anybody makes will help our desperate situation.

Either or, they are not helpful. This type of statement is the kind co-opted by those who do not believe there is a problem/do not want to do anything to fix the problem.

Sadly, we are our own worst enemy. One of my first reading assignments for a planning class was "The Death of Environmentalism" by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. The short version is that environmentalists are going at environmentalism the wrong way and end up hurting their causes more than they help. Which is easy too easy to do. When problems are not shown to be human problems, or are portrayed as so helpless that we may as well not even try (I'll write a post sometime about Michael Pollen's article "Why Bother" it's a good one), more people are lost than gained. The adage "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is as true for environmental issues as it is for salesmen.

Do I believe we are doing the best we can? of course not. Does than mean that I want to sabotage everything but the best plans? that would be silly. Paradigms do not change overnight. Cultures do not reinvent themselves in a weeks time. Change is slow. Sometimes it is brought on quickly and people are forced to adapt (where did I hear that?), but that usually involves tragedy. It is one of the oldest cliches, but there is real validity to the idea of thinking globally, and acting locally. We (environmentalists, humanists, concerned citizens, whatever name you chose) need to get behind plans that are a step in the right direction. Is Daybreak the messiah of planning in Utah? no. There are a host of things that could have been done better or differently. But is it a step in the right direction? Yes. Has it already helped change views? Indeed.

I understand the habit of only doing the minimum is equally pernicious. Settling for the lesser of two evils when you could insist on an option that is actually good, not just less bad. And there is a fine line between the two. Support and striving. But sometimes, the decision is simple; do I cut off my nose to spite my face?