“in my country we have problem, and that problem is transport”
The president is pushing for us to get off our oil addiction. To this end, he is pushing for an increased reliance on ethanol.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Are we really, fundamentally, re-thinking the way we move atoms across space? Or are we simply paying lip-service to something trendy? A friend of mine who works in an automotive R&D group scoffs at the hype that hybrid cars are getting. They are certainly not an end solution to the greenhouse problem, he says. It’s commonplace to overhear someone saying that “they’re doing their part for the earth” by driving a Prius. But my gut reaction is that we need to keep moving in our efforts to move more efficiently.
So another friend notified me that we bay area folks can pre-order the Smart Car.
http://www.retrothing.com/2006/06/why_the_smart_c.html
Other friends are finding some vintage two-seaters to drive efficiently.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/k7lim/316278934/
Is there a way we can rethink the conduits too?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
The Smart, eh? It’s the perfect car for San Francisco, because you can almost fold it and put it in your pocket, but it’s a death trap if you try to drive it in the freeway (it reaches 140 Km per hour, but I don’t know if you want to go at that speed on a paper car that is probably smaller than a golf cart - also, if it’s windy it sways a lot…). A fun car, definitively; but what I look forward to is the Nuova Cinquecento by FIAT (yes, yes, Fix It Again Tony, I know), which supposedly will be available in the US as well. That was a fabulous car. Tiny, with an engine that polluted as much as a third world chemical factory, with gears that required a mix of violence and prayer to be changed and wheels smaller than a bike’s. Fabulous design, though…
I don’t think hybrids are “lip service,” but like any technology, it can only go so far against the problems of oil. I guess in my perfect world we’d all live in villages and small cities interconnected by high-speed rail powerd by a solar/wind-supplied grid, and surrounded by spans of pristine countryside dotted with organic farms that brought their goods to market in biodiesel trucks, but making that economically feasible for the majority of people seems very hard. How can we make living closer to work both attractive and affordable? How can we do the same for living closer to other people? How do we transform our crazy idealistic visions of the future so they might actually work with the reality on the ground? Big awful questions that probably have no asnwers.
One nugget of hope (have I posted this before?): Youngstown, OH is shrinking, on purpose.
Heh, just checked WorldChanging after that last comment and their headline story is on Transportation, Food Security and Local Economies, and basically explores the link between economic access to transport and the ability to eat well (at least I think it does; I just skimmed).
Fortunately or unfortunately, the problem isn’t with “your” country alone.
apologies for seeming overly-america-centric.
May be the problem isn’t with your “country” alone. Its a problem with your (and my) home, neighborhood, county, state, country and the world. Its important to frame the global warming problem both locally and globally because there are actions that go both directions. As far the question of overly-america-centricity goes, yeah, liberals every where like bashing their countries (and the countries they like/livein) when they don’t stand up to the mark.
Beijing was perfect for a while: absolutely flat, so it was very easy to bike everywhere, dirt cheap, if crowded, public transportation and very cheap cabs, that roamed around in huge numbers. Ah, but everyone wants a car, and everybody is studying to get their driving license, no matter how remote the idea of ever driving or owning a car is. Cars are the quintessential symbol of modernity, and how can we - who always had cars, never experienced such a yearning toward them and what they represent - say: too bad, too late, too much pollution, bike and take the bus instead?