It's hard to be activist but not hypocrite

Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly.— Edward Abbey

I recently read a biography of Edward Abbey, the prolific pro-anarchy author of "Monkey Wrench Gang" notoriety who died in 1989. Among other revelations in "Edward Abbey, A Life," (The University of Arizona Press, 2001) is the fact that the gifted writer and sometime Utah resident — in addition to hiking, camping and running rivers throughout the state, he lived at various times in Moab, Logan and Green River — despised the paving of roads where he felt they didn't belong. Asphalt in deserts and wilderness areas bothered him to the point of "tossing his beer cans out the window onto roads he hated."

I admire Edward Abbey in many ways and greatly envy his talent with language, but I cringe at the hypocrisy in the image of a man driving 60 miles an hour down a highway tossing garbage out of his car.

It's not the pollution contradiction so much as it is using the road, period. Why is a person so opposed to the highway driving down it in the first place?

Being an activist can be such a tricky business.

Similar contradictions are inherent with the Wasatch Front's ongoing road controversy — the proposed 14-mile Legacy Parkway, intended to give some relief to the glut of traffic on the stretch of the I-15 freeway between Salt Lake City and Davis County. Opponents of the road are plentiful, vocal and passionate enough to make even Ed Abbey smile.

But how many of them make the trip from Salt Lake to Kaysville, and vice versa, in their cars and trucks, anyway?

I know their answer. They're OK with the existing road, they just don't want another one. They want light rail or expanded bus service or some other kind of mass transit alternative.

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is the loudest voice in this choir. As far as Rocky's concerned, it's his way or the highway. In a recent editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune, he said, "I oppose spending massive amounts of money for additional highways — in particular the Legacy Highway — before we invest in additions to our mass transit system."

In defense of his position, the mayor details the perils of continued reliance on the automobile: increased health risks, the high cost of maintaining a vehicle and further environmental deterioration.

Besides being intelligent and well-reasoned, his argument also appears to be an attempt to clean up a few beer cans he tossed out during his State of the City speech in the direction of Davis County.

Still, at the end of the day, how does Rocky get to Davis County? Or, for that matter, from his house to the mayor's office?