Expensive gas will perhaps be the greatest thing to happen to this country since the industrial revolution. Personal cars have made our cities sprawl, disconnecting our citizens from each other, and making most suburban spaces look like every other suburban space.

When the average person can no longer afford to drive, we'll design cities smarter, live closer to where we work, build good public transit, walk, grow food locally, solve our environmental crises, and generally live better lives.

I make this comment again and again in pages like this where the hybrid car is seen as some sort of green saviour. If everyone in Berkeley drove a Prius, we would be way worse off then we even are now. This is because there are thousands of us that walk, bike, and take transit, and don't even own a car. Danger and devastation to our urban landscape aside, hybrids are basically no better than any other car, when factoring in manufacture, disposal, roads, etc. It is simply energy-inefficient to move thousands of pounds of steel around just to transport one person.

This current explosion of green thinking in the mainstream is totally missing the point. If you really care about your carbon impact, stop driving anything, hybrid or otherwise.

YOU are causing global warming, what are YOU going to do about it? Drive your car less, consume less? Even liberal Salon will not suggest that we as individuals need to be responsible and change our behavior. All we ever hear is what corporate and government money will do so that we don't have to adjust our lifestyle. Selfishness from the right, selfishness from the left.

Walking, biking, taking transit is. I don't care why you bought your Prius, other than that the materials and energy it consumes are basically no better than a normal car, compared with the ZERO IMPACT of not driving. Housing is a form of transportation: If you live too far away from work to get there sustainably, MOVE.

...they take public transportation, walk, and bike. They live close to their work and shopping so they can do these things easily. They can get by on much much less money than those driving any type of car, and pollute less and help congestion and sprawl infinitely more than any hybrid. They know their neighbors and neighborhood because they stay local and don't isolate themselves in a steel box.

Anyone who says otherwise is deluding you and themselves. How's that for smug, Rebecca Clarren?

There is no easy answer to this, but as someone who travels a lot, it gets really old having kids scream the entire flight. Those of us who aren't the parents are in no place to tell the parents what to do, but those responsible for the screamers need to do whatever they need to do so that everyone else can have a relatively quiet airplane.

Here's my letter to them and their response:

Dear Annies,

I love your food, but I have a problem with your Be Green bumper stickers. Simply put, bumpers stickers go on cars, and there is very little that is Green about driving. Besides the obvious pollution and huge consumption of natural resources for manufacture and fuel, cars are socially isolationist and have ruined the landscape of our cities. Roads take up huge proportions of public space, create noise pollution, and have a maddening effect on drivers, raging against one another, as well as harassing, injuring, and killing pedestrians and bicyclists, who are arguably much more Green. Hopefully with the Greening of America becoming trendy, one first step will be away from cars and toward more appropriate forms of transportation. Please try to devote some energy to getting people out of their cars instead of making them feel good by having a placebo bumper sticker to advertise while "sitting in traffic with noting better to do." I used to have a car with a Be Green bumper sticker, and now I have neither.

thanks for the open mind,

Dear Justin:

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail Annie's Homegrown. Here at Annie's, it is our top

priority to make delicious food that is safe and natural. We also do our best to be a good

corporate citizen by sponsoring programs that encourage people to be healthy by eating

organic and natural food, but also by helping the Earth be healthy. Our bumperstickers are

designed to reach out to people. Everyone reads bumperstickers, so we have chosen to take

advantage of this venue to promote Being Green to Help the Earth Live.

The comments you made in your e-mail are very good points. We support your efforts to Be

Green by leaving your car behind in favor of more energy efficient transportation options.

We often get requests for Be Green stickers from consumers who want to put it on their

bicycles, so please know that a car is not required to help spread the message. We also

participate in the Native Energy program, where we invest in a Green future by giving

money to build windmills so more renewable energy is available. For more information on all

of the programs we are involved in please visit the following links on our web site:

http://www.annies.com/programs/index.html

http://www.annies.com/annies/oct02_2006.htm

Your feedback is very valuable and I will definitely share it with the whole Annie's team for

consideration. We are always looking for better ways to be good to our planet, and we really

appreciate your suggestions!

Thanks again for your inquiry. We hope that you will continue to enjoy Annie's Homegrown

products!

Driving by nature is the worst possible aspect of this unsustainable society. Try walking, taking public transit, riding your bike. And housing itself is a form of transportation; live close to work and you won't have to drive.