Monday, July 6, 2009

Graffiti and the environment

Graffiti "artists" like to promote themselves as hip young things, in touch with the urban groove.  Or whatever.  Environmentalists also like to imagine that young people are more caring and sharing and nurturing, especially when it comes to all things green.

Here is an object that is both green in colour and "green" in the sense that it promotes environmentally friendly transport - push bikes.  Yet this is the 2nd or 3rd time that it has been covered in random graffiti scribbling this year.  The scribblings were presumably applied by teenagers, rather than 50 year old capitalist running dogs.  

I have never understood this idea that young people care more for the environment than their elders.  They've just had less opportunity, given their age, to consume their share of resources. Young males in particular are a decidedly narcissistic and uncaring bunch of people, with "me, me, me" being the order of the day.  However, they have enough smarts to mouth all the politically correct platitudes when asked, whilst carrying on in an environmentally destructive manner that would cause your average lentil-chewing inhabitant of Glebe to break out in hysterics.

That is all beside the point.  I finally managed to track down a single contact detail for what I hope is the group that manages these lockers - an email address at the Ministry of Transport. I've emailed them and asked them to come and clean the graffiti off.

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