Re: [asa] Global Warming, Ethics, and Social Sciences

>>> <Dawsonzhu@aol.com> 01/17/07 10:13 PM >>>wrote:

Public transportation is something we need to be thinking
about. You probably forget that the reason this works in
Europe and Japan is because life built up around the
railroad. In the US, it has built up around the freeway.
Bus service is inevitably poor and railroad transportation
completely forgotten. It would be quite difficult to fix
that in the wide open (suburbs) of the wild west and would
require an enormous change of life style.

Ted replies:
Actually, Wayne, I haven't forgotten that, not at all. That's *exactly*
what I was driving at.

In the 1950s and 1960s, we got exhuberant about cars and forgot all about
passenger rail. As you say, fixing this is going to require tremendous
lifestyle changes, esp in the "wild west" where population density is too
low to justify much passenger rail--but where far too many people now live
to be sustained very long by their water supplies.

The root problem here, IMO, is the absence of a common understanding about
land use. We all think that we have the "right" to do anything we wish with
our land, and live wherever we want to. That's fine, if our population were
a fraction of what it actually is; or if we didn't expect to use public
moneys to connect everything with roads, regardless of the long term
consequences. In the real "wild west" of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, of course, there were cars and paved roads, only rail and horses.
 It was tougher then, and not nearly as attractive to families with young
children. If we still expected people to fend for themselves once they were
off the "beaten track" of rail lines, we wouldn't be looking at a social and
economic catastrophe when the oil becomes too expensive for most people to
use it casually. And, we'd still have tons of excellent farmland that
hadn't been taken over for developments and malls that are off the "beaten
track."

As a nice example of how we created our own problem, I offer that of LA,
where they once had a giant network of electric trolleys all over the city.
Literally a conspiracy (this isn't one of those false conspiracy theories)
of companies in the petroleum, tire, and automobile businesses got rid of
those clunky old trolleys in favor of those .... well, you fill in the
uncomplimentary adjectives ... freeways. You do the math. The
environmental and social impact was enormous.

As you say, it will take "an enormous change in life style," and not just
in the "wild west." It isn't going to be popular, but the longer we
postpone it the worse it will be.

Ted

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Received on Thu Jan 18 09:31:30 2007