Can’t decide if I like or hate the backgrounds.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
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If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
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Personally, I’m not big on the backgrounds. Because they are only half there in some of the panels it’s very disconcerting.
I’ve never understood this line of argument, but I hear it so often, I wonder whom exactly it is trying to convince. It strikes me as almost as ridiculous as the Republican argument of “You think taxes should be higher, you can almost pay extra!”
I mean, I think that most environmentalists agree, in general, with arguments of supply and demand. That’s why they generally prefer international treaties and things like the Kyoto Protocols. If one county unilaterally cuts fossil fuel use, with no agreement that everyone else does the same, that will decrease demand, lower price, and make it more cost efficient for some factory in China or Korea to use more fossil fuels. People don’t really think that if America uses 10 billion fewer barrels of oil, then there will be 10 billion less barrels used, right?
Now, I could see a global equity argument here. “You are driving your SUV, wasting fossil fuels that could be used by a third world businessperson to start a business. It’s not fair that your discretionary use is preventing poor people from having a livelihood.” Or, on a local level, if you run your air conditioning less, fuel costs will drop and more poor people will be able to run their air conditioning on hot days.
But the environmental argument about saving species — especially on the individual or local level like in this cartoon — just strikes me missing the point. They, and the West Coast of the United States, could stop driving altogether, and it wouldn’t save a single species. It would just be more the “fault” of poorer areas of the world when those species died.
The backgrounds are very good but they don’t fit the cartoon well – too much visual clutter. I think it would look better if they were in a park or similar open space.
I agree with Rich B; individual action to “save the planet” is like people not having kids to “stop overpopulation”. Thanks for freeing up resources for MY descendants! Now we can have TWO H3s apiece.
(Oh, and I love how the activist is haranguing her friend – without once mentioning what the activist is going to do. Not “what can we do” – “what are YOU going to do”. Good of you to include that bow to the reality of limo-cruising “Green” activism. ;) Probably just an artifact of your compressed workspace.)
Oh hell, while I’m criticizing – her facial expression in the first panel makes it look like she’s pretty damn happy about the ecocide. “A million dead species! And if you help, we can make it TWO million!”
I wonder if you could increase the editing function timeout? I wanted to amend my last post with:
ALL THAT SAID, I think this is a darn good cartoon!
Can’t…stop…editing…one final comment, and then I’ll shut the hell up.
I think you could improve this already good cartoon 100% by changing “you” to “we” in panel two, “would you” to “could we” and “your” to “our” in panel three, and “you” to “we” in panel four.
Wow, you know… I virtually never take suggestions. But I think I’m gonna take Robert’s suggestion, in this case. Let me sleep on it.
I thought of doing that, but I’ve used that particular background rather a lot lately, and I wanted to try something else. Hopefully, I’ll get better at drawing this sort of background if I keep doing it now and then.
I like the background, but I do find it a bit distracting in the last panel, where the disembodied (?) roof looks a bit like a scimitar …
(oh, and I think changing “you” to “we” simply makes this a discussion between a lesbian couple, which might distract from the main point.)
i like the backgrounds, because architecturally they seem to imply [unless i’m mistaken] the suburbs, and this looks and sounds like a conversation that would happen there. if i misread that particular visual cue, my apologies.
I revised the wording to incorporate Robert’s suggested changes, and I also touched up the 4th panel background in response to ACM’s comment (if you can’t see the changes, try hitting refresh). The previous version of the cartoon can be seen here, for folks who are curious.
r@d@r, I was thinking of it as being in a city, but a city more like Portland than New York, where there are more houses and fewer high-rises.
Nice cartoon. Like the language changes. Like the changes in the final panel’s background, but now I’d recommend eliminating the rest of the 2d-story window.
I agree with Rich B; individual action to “save the planet” is like people not having kids to “stop overpopulation”. Thanks for freeing up resources for MY descendants! Now we can have TWO H3s apiece.
I’ve notice this dynamic as well. It seems to reflect an American can-do spirit of individual self-reliance, combined with a Calvinist notion that at heart, all problems are problems of individual morality. Only now in Liberal flavor!
People don’t really think that if America uses 10 billion fewer barrels of oil, then there will be 10 billion less barrels used, right?
Depends if we produce cheaper fuel-efficient or renewable-energy technology.
Is that true, by the way – a million species? Because … damn.
Honestly, I can’t imagine the issue of global warming being resolved by the conscious choices of individuals to drive fewer miles, buy smaller cars, etc. People are just too selfish (as perhaps was the point of the cartoon). The efforts of a minority of people to cut back on fuel and such are too easily negated by the recklessness of the majority who don’t make such efforts.
That’s not to say that we should just give up and not make any effort to save the planet on an individual basis. Personally, I feel comfort in the fact that if a glacier melts because of all the greenhouse gases in the air, at least it’s not MY overuse of fuel that’s responsible. That’s on a personal level, however. At the same time, I’m still responsible for melting glaciers and such if I watched other people abuse the planet and didn’t do anything about it.
So yeah, this was kind of a meaningless post because when it comes down to it, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about this. I just know that the problem needs to be addressed on a nation-wide and world-wide basis, not just on an individual one. And in addition I know that carpooling won’t save the polar bears, but it certainly won’t hurt, either, so why not do it.
Oh, and I like the background, myself.
Madaline, it’s true that a study (published in the journal Nature) has predicted that, if current trends continue, about a million species will be made extinct by global warming by 2050.
Here’s an article about the study.
I agree that it’s more about group than individual solutions; I kind of nodded to that with the idea of a tax to pay for investment in alternative energies, but overall the cartoon is flawed in that it talks too much about individual level stuff.
I’m glad you liked the backgrounds – thanks. :-)
My response to the questions in panels 2 and 3, and I will paraphrase:
“Take the bus to work instead of driving”
I don’t take my car to work because I like to drive; I take my car to work because I have to drive. There is no public transportation between my house and where I work. And given how spread out the population and the various employment places there are in the suburbs, I don’t see how public transport could practically be implemented around here.
When I lived in the city, I didn’t own a car. And when I worked in Chicago, I drove 12 minutes to the train station and then took the train and a shuttle bus to where I worked. But they went bankrupt and I got sold (in an outsourcing deal) to a company that’s further out from the city than I am.
“Drive more efficient cars”
Sounds good to me. I drive a minivan that gets 18 MPG, but I work with kids a lot and often end up transporting either kids, gear or both on trips. Our other car is a 30+ MPG vehicle from the Land of the Rising Sun, and I wish I was driving one just like it.
Now, what kind of incentives/disincentives are properly part of public policy to encourage people to switch to more efficient cars? Taxes, subsidies, etc.?
“Higher taxes for investments in sustainable fuels”
Hm. Actually, given especially the current world situation I consider development of alternative energy sources to be a national security issue and thus favor taxes for this purpose as a legitimate function of government. Let’s try to make sure our money is being efficiently and effectively spent, though; government doesn’t have a particularly good record of that and some kind of partnership with private organizations will probably be needed.