I could go on and on, but I have to go to bed, and anyone reading this has
probably fallen asleep, so I'll stop for now. The important thing is to
give people choices on how to live their lives, and we'll probably end up
with the best city we can. Don't force people to live the way some utopian
thinks everyone should live.
Mark Anderson
Bancroft Neighborhood
You are right, Mark -- it is late!
Thank you for the thoughtful nature of your reply. While we may disagree on some things, I always look forward to reading your thoughts on the list because you make such an effort to reason carefully.
We do actually have a lot of common ground in practical terms. We both appreciate increased "active" transportation (bike & pedestrian) and look for more ways to accomodate and encourage that. We also both see the ongoing need to move people and cargo over distances in the urban area that cannot be done by "active" transportation at all. We both seem to agree that some pavement is necessary -- at least with the technology and design available to us. Actual reduction of paving and car-usage may be slow, and will involve radical design changes.
Increased active transportation will bring many aesthetic, social, economic, and health benefits. Meanwhile, we still need to accomodate all the people and stuff moving around. If you read the post I just sent in to the list -- "Minneapolis, Cars, and Terrorism" -- you will get a much broader idea of my concern with fossil-fuel burning cars.
I am not opposed to cars, Mark, but I am deeply concerned that our current addiction to fossil fuel machines is far more destructive than most people realize, and is tied not only to public health and social problems, but also to political and even geopolitical problems including terrorism.
According to my reading so far, the hydrogen economy will not bring us very many hydrogen-powered cars for 10 years or more. The technology to power vehicles using stationary fuel cells to charge power-packs for electric vehicles will likely come sooner and at less cost. Meanwhile, we do have reasonable hybrid technology. Even so, to replace the 600 million or so fossil-fuel-burning vehicles in this country will take a huge, concerted effort.
Even if we replace one million vehicles a year with clean machines, it will take over one hundred years to do it -- time we simply do not have in terms of the environment, human health, oil resources, or even in terms of the economic impacts of our current petroleum-based culture.
Furthermore, even if we take the worst polluting vehicles off the streets in the USA and replace them with clean vehicles, there are many more fossil-fuel burners all over the world, and more being added daily.
So, as we address the local issues of traffic, congestion, and pollution, I think we have a responsibility to do so in a global context. Surely we owe that much to our kids, who will inherit the environment we leave them?
I believe the difficulties associated with the petroleum economy are irresponsibly discounted, rationalized away, and dismissed because we in the USA have been made so comfortable by the availability of cheap and abundant petroleum. We have rationalized the greenhouse and health effects of our petroleum usage just as the tobacco industry rationalized away the negative effects of smoking, and just as addicts rationalize away the negative effects of any adiction.
You are right, too, I think in stating that some form of significant increases in gas tax (or various kinds of congestion tax as well) may be crucial to solving some of our problems related to excessive car usage. (Taxation is primarily a tool to modify behaviour, after all, and secondarily a way for government to raise revenue! Our various governments make choices about taxes which reveal more about who is in control and what values they hold than about our need for specific amounts of money to run the governments -- city, county, state, and federal. And that in turn says something about why gas is not taxed more heavily in the USA.) That aside, taxation is the possibly most direct and effective form of encouraging people to cut back on excessive car usage, especially in congested urban areas.
I think we'd best hold off on the ten lane highway stuff, Mark. we'd be so much better off investing in better energy, communications, and alternative transport methods in my opinion. Over the next 30 years, my guess is that we will sort out the ways in which cars (clean cars) can give us liberty from the ways in which they provide only an illusion of liberty.
Driving around the metro can be a way to avoid ourselves or relationships, distract ourselves, or fill ourselves with things and experiences which only serve to cover inner poverty.
We Americans do luxuriate in the petroleum-enabled ability to range far, but we not yet at all aware of the costs, I think.
Ah, well, it is late. Thanks for taking time to respond so carefully and thoughtfully!
--Gary Hoover
King Field
