The First Sustainable-Friendly Race Track?
Posted by admin on 01 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: Wheels in Motion

Don’t worry that the rich are not doing their small part to improve this otherwise polluted world. Why on July 30, the Atlanta Motorsports Park, described as a “private motorsports country club that offers a memebership for motorsports enthusiasts looking for executive level priveleges and amenities” (I’m reading this as “snobs who like cars, martinis and hookers”) is unveiling a new Tilke track, that they claim will make the park the “only eco/green/sustainable-friendly motorsports park in the world.” The press release goes into no details about what particular aspects will make this new track (God, I love this term) “sustainable-friendly,” but even if it were made out of native plants, it’s a race track! It is a big, circular track for inefficient, souped-up race cars to barrel around, and around, and around.
I may be a bit sensitive here, what with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay’s What We Leave Behind, sitting on my bedside table. The authors make a similar point about the much-lauded William McDonough, the cradle-to-cradle designer behind the Ford Rouge Dearborn Truck Plant. The plant has a 10-acre “living roof,” the largest in the world. The site describes it as: “a glimpse of the transformative possibilities suggested by this new model for sustaining industry.” Jensen and McBay point out: it’s a massive truck factory. There is nothing even remotely “sustainable” about it. But don’t let these inconvenient truths dissuade you from joining the apparent hordes who are signing up for AMP’s exclusive offerings (they write that the club has sold $400,000 worth of memberships in the last 35 days)–including automatic faucets, a computer with internet access and “biometric fingerprint technology to access members only lounge.” Grey Goose models will be there, as will Atlanta Falcon’s wide receiver Michael Jenkins.





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