That's quite striking: it's a conflict between what are supposed to be the top two "values" in Canada currently, The Environment and Health. (But it's also a more banal conflict between what-to-do-for-others and what-to-do-for-yourself.)
I wonder if anyone avoids using gas-powered machinery or solvents on "smog advisory" days. Funnily enough, days that will almost certainly produce smog advisories (and actually on your first point, my impression is that these things are highly predictable: if the temperature exceeds 30, it's at least partly sunny (which it almost always is when the temperature exceeds 30), and the winds aren't coming from the north or northeast (which they usually aren't when the temperature exceeds 30), there will almost certainly be a smog advisory--air pollution levels very tightly correlate to temperature, sunlight, and wind direction) are also the best days for putting down driveway sealants. I'm not sure whether hot and sunny days are also the best for outdoor painting, but I guess they're better than most.
The thing about that sort of stuff is, hardly anybody wants to cut the grass (etc.), anyway; almost everyone who does it is doing it because they owe it to someone else (if only the neighbours). So it's not a straight matter of ethics vs. self-interest; it's a matter of balancing obligations, and your more particular obligations to more particular people to cut the grass are going to win out over your more abstract obligation to The Environment (with its very general and indirect obligations to other people) every time--unless you're exceptionally deeply committed to The Environment, in which case you're unlikely to have a lawn, let alone use a gas-powered mower, in the first place.
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zvi
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-28 02:42 am (UTC)I wonder if anyone avoids using gas-powered machinery or solvents on "smog advisory" days. Funnily enough, days that will almost certainly produce smog advisories (and actually on your first point, my impression is that these things are highly predictable: if the temperature exceeds 30, it's at least partly sunny (which it almost always is when the temperature exceeds 30), and the winds aren't coming from the north or northeast (which they usually aren't when the temperature exceeds 30), there will almost certainly be a smog advisory--air pollution levels very tightly correlate to temperature, sunlight, and wind direction) are also the best days for putting down driveway sealants. I'm not sure whether hot and sunny days are also the best for outdoor painting, but I guess they're better than most.
The thing about that sort of stuff is, hardly anybody wants to cut the grass (etc.), anyway; almost everyone who does it is doing it because they owe it to someone else (if only the neighbours). So it's not a straight matter of ethics vs. self-interest; it's a matter of balancing obligations, and your more particular obligations to more particular people to cut the grass are going to win out over your more abstract obligation to The Environment (with its very general and indirect obligations to other people) every time--unless you're exceptionally deeply committed to The Environment, in which case you're unlikely to have a lawn, let alone use a gas-powered mower, in the first place.