A Reading From The Sustainable Book Of Knu-daw-neat

If you were here right now, you'd see us looking around suspiciously like we don't quite trust we're awake because we just read Knute Berger's latest deep thought over at Crosscut and we...agree with him.

While promoting green consumption might be politically more palatable than getting people to change their habits and expectations, promoting consumption still offers an answer that doesn't solve the bigger problem. Global warming's hawks have to be honest with us: Fighting the good fight isn't all economic upside. We're going to have to do more with less.

"Doing more with less" is often equated with "sacrifice." We're not sure when maximum impulsivity and maximum wastefulness conjoined to form an inalienable right, rather than theft from the commonwealth. But that does seem to be how people take being asked to cut back -- not on essentials, but on whimsical consumerism. On the other hand, whimsical consumerism keeps the economy humming, so it's pulling the reins in both directions to talk about restraint.

What consumerism doesn't seem to keep humming is us. Local mental health blog Furious Seasons mentions Bruce Levine on America's depression epidemic, how consumerism with a technology assist is conspiring to bum the hell out of us. And sell us more pharmaceuticals into the bargain.

Happily, the Slog blog just this morning is all about doing more with less. Dan Savage pull-quotes from Danny Westneat's column about canceling the widening of I-405 and using the money to rebuild 520 in a more reliably floaty capacity. Not only is this a great example of getting two posts out of just one column, but Westneat also has a way of pre-empting anguished talk of the Eastside's sacrificed mobility:

And we could devote the other $100 million to getting commuter rail running on the Eastside line. Forty miles of track are begging to be used. Happily, it runs next to I-405 -- the very place I'm stealing all this money. This week, a former BNSF official estimated it would cost nearly $40 million to ready the track for 40-mph passenger-train service.