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Alan Durning's experiment of severing his family from their car has gotten a good deal of ink from Seattlest, other places, and Seattlest again, not to mention his own experiences recollected at the Sightline blog. Heart-throb news stud Anderson Cooper has jumped in the mix, though, with a segment on his CNN show devoted to "low-car diets."
This should be a direct link to the segment.
Durning says Cooper spent seven hours with him on Friday to get the 2.5 minute clip. There's also a post about the segment on Cooper's 360 blog:
When 19-year-old Gary Durning totaled the family car, his parents made a deal with him and his two siblings. "If we didn't get a car, then we'd get cell phones, and for me that was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's so awesome,'" 12-year-old Kathryn Durning told me.So the Durning family has stopped spewing greenhouse gases from a car and now commutes mostly by foot, bus or bike. Once in a while, they'll splurge and rent a hybrid car for $8 an hour. These are cars that neighbors can share once they buy into the "flex car" rental plan.
I asked Alan Durning if he really thinks one family can make much of a difference when it comes to global warming.
"Absolutely ... We're making a quantifiable difference because we're not burning anywhere near as many gallons of gasoline," Alan told me.
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Isn't it weird how the story ducks the whole part about Alan working for an environmental institute? I mean, did I miss that part? To my mind, that makes the story more real, that it took his son crashing the car to prompt a environmental leader to consider going without it.
What the hell? That is kind of an important point isn't it. Alan's not just some jerk off the street. He's an environmental professional. You'd think that should be mentioned at some time.
I think the "common man" would write the story off if Alan Durning's profession were mentioned in the report. They made the story more real (for their viewers) by neglecting that fact.
They didn't actually make the story more 'Real.' But hey made it more impactful, by omitting the certain truthes. Both versions of the story will impact different people in different ways. That's just good (or bad) spin, I guess, depending on your biases.