A Room with a View

Ted Folkert

December 30, 2016

The novel by this name took place about 1908, a love story of two people in love with each other. It has been the basis for movies and stage productions for generations.

This story is about hundreds of millions of people in love, not with each other, but with going places.

From the southwest corner – seventh floor office at the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Beacon Street in downtown Los Angeles, if you have binoculars, you can see the activities of upwards of several million people every day. You can see all the way from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the large hill to the south near Long Beach, to the Santa Monica Mountains on the west, to the Hollywood Sign in Hollywood Hills to the northwest. Most of these people are in their cars going and coming, coming and going. Like a roulette wheel, round and round it goes and where it stops, nobody knows. People are constantly, one plane load after another, descending to land at LAX.  They are whirling by in numerous helicopters each day. They are driving by on the 110 Freeway, traveling north and south, to and from downtown and to and from places to the south toward Long Beach and Orange County in a steady stream of hundreds of thousands of cars per day. They are traveling east and west on the 10 Freeway to and from downtown and to and from the Pacific Coast in a steady stream of hundreds of thousands of cars per day. They are traveling east and west to and from downtown on Olympic Boulevard and dozens of other streets and thoroughfares in cars numbering hundreds of thousands per day. The view at night turns into a sea of headlights and taillights dominating the view in every direction.

Where they are going and why doesn’t matter an iota. What does matter is that they are all, either willingly or unwillingly, burning hydrocarbons and exhausting the remains of the spent and unspent fuel into the atmosphere, the atmosphere which enabled we humans to evolve on the planet initially hundreds of thousands of years ago, and enables us to continue to exist today. And they are all, either willingly or unwillingly, shortening the length of time that humans will continue to exist on the planet. Not those of us causing the contamination of the atmosphere, but those who will try to breath the air in future generations. Let’s face it, it is easy to ignore something if it doesn’t affect you personally or presently. I guess that is what we call human nature.

This description of the view from one small office, in one building, in one city represents only an infinitesimal amount of the problem. You can multiply this by millions when expanded to identical views the world over, every hour of every day of every year, the world over. We not only emit this pollution from our vehicles into the atmosphere but the incessant demand induces the exploration, capture, removal, and distillation processes of the fossils planted in the earth millions of years ago, to make the fuel available – all of which geometrically exacerbate the pollution problem. And the magnitude becomes greater every year as more and more of the planet’s population become mobile in their own vehicles in India, China and other developing countries.

And preventative and corrective measures available and under research and development get inadequate consideration from those who could bring them about, simply because there is no immediate reward for such action. Oh, there are solar panels and electric vehicles, but even these measures require hydrocarbons in their development, manufacture and use. There are simply no market forces with monetary rewards driving the demand for the salvation of the planet, so nothing substantial gets done. Our leaders are not elected because of save-the-planet measures, they are elected because they say they will create more jobs or raise the standard of living for those of us who are causing this pollution problem or build more weapons of mass destruction to be used against uncooperative neighbors.

Can we expect any movement in the direction of corrective measures soon? It seems either unlikely or impossible for the next few years since we so astutely elected a “useful idiot” (as Paul Krugman would call him) to be our president. Trump thinks global warming is a hoax and is packing his cabinet with wealthy moguls who either believe likewise or don’t give a hoot about the matter since it doesn’t presently effect their enormous personal wealth. Besides, if they did want to do something about it they couldn’t bear the thought of being taxed for part of the cost. So, screw future generations, that’s the attitude we can expect in the Trump future.

It’s too bad this love story couldn’t end like “A Room with a View” did in 1908, with everybody living happily ever after.

But this one may end with no one living at all ever after. From this room with a view there may be no one left to view it. Not a happy ending of a love story. And any movies made about it will be tragedies, not romances.

Think about it!