The Rewards of Wealth
Yesterday I had the privilege to go on set while a TV commercial was being shot. The car that was the main focus of the commercial was worth $750,000. It was not the most expensive car the shop made. Next to the aforementioned car was another one, not finished yet, being built for a famous country musician and his equally famous wife. In another room was a Ford Model T, with the original frame, built in 1911. When I put my hand on the steel of that frame and closed my eyes, I thought I could hear the iron smelting and men yelling over the sounds of metal on metal hammering. It nearly me tear up.
In the design office was a man in a picture with Jay Leno. The picture right next to it was the same man, standing in front of a VERY flashy sports car and Hugh Hefner. The $750,000 car was being built for a man in his twenties who inherited about $3 billion.
During the commercial shoot the entire workshop was filled with exhaust from the car as the builder revved the engine. It was loud! When they opened the engine compartment it was so elegant in its design that my friend said it looked, “like it doesn’t work.” The undercarriage was a piece of art equal in its efficiency.
On the drive home, at around midnight, I got to thinking: I wonder what kind of miles per gallon those cars get. When I posted that thought on twitter, a friend commented that anyone with a billion dollars probably doesn’t care how much it costs to fill the tank. But I wasn’t getting at the economic price of gas; I was thinking about its ecological price.
I bought a 2007 Honda Civic. It was more expensive than any car I had ever purchased before, but I liked the way it looked. It’s looks weren’t what swayed me, though. The car, on average, gets 40 miles per gallon, when I average 70 miles per hour on the freeway, with the air conditioner on. It is also certified as an “Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle” or ULEV. I bought that car because it was comfortable and because it was reasonable environmentally friendly.
But the cars I saw last night, not one of them was designed with the environment in mind. They were beautiful to look at and amazingly powerful. But they were nearly cruel to the earth.
And then, while I rode my bike to the bank this morning, I started thinking some more: why do the rich get to own cars and jets and yachts that flagrantly pollute the environment? Does being rich mean that when they will be protected when the leaves fall off the trees because the air is more carbon monoxide than carbon dioxide? Do they simply not care?
On my bike ride, I passed street after street, car after car, almost all of which cost less than $30,000 new, and nearly universally got better gas milage than those commercial cars.
In the movie A Bug’s Life the villain explains that their enemies (the ants) out number then a thousand to one, and that when they realize that, the villain and his plush life of living off the poor ants would come to a swift and horrible end.
Let the rich have their Bugatti Veyrons, their Gulf-stream Vs and their Wallypower yachts. We out-number then a thousand to one. If they choose to squander the environment, well, we people who can’t afford yachts and jets and super-cars will change the world, making in cleaner for our children. And when the rich have consumed the world’s resources and all the trees are gone, and all the poor have died because we couldn’t afford all new space stations complete with beef-vats and hydroponic gardens, and a small metal room they can never leave, they will have their reward.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. After all, you can’t fix anyone. You can only change yourself, and even that’s hard!