After spending the majority of the past year living on my bike traveling through beautiful locations around the world. I find myself back in the almighty United States of America, it's great to be home and I have come to appreciate so many things about our wonderful country. However it has been a little difficult to reintegrate into the American lifestyle. For instance I have been having some serious resistance coming to terms with the need to buy a car. Partly because I am relatively poor and can think of countless other things that I could spend my money on. But also because I find that your average person is completely dependent on their personal motorized vehicle to get around. To me this is kind of sad and ridiculous. Not because I think that owning a car or driving a car is wrong or irresponsible (I love cars). It is because driving a car has become the only option for your typical sub-urban dweller. It has been said that the urban development in our country over the past 50 years or so has become "the greatest miss-allocation of resources in the history of the world". That is quite a statement, but look at the reasoning.
We have designed a living system that does not have a future either economically or morally. It is estimated that your average family spends 25% of their disposable income on maintaining and operating their vehicle. For less than wealthy families this is more than they can afford but if you live in the suburbs of any city and you don't own a car then you are in trouble. I don't think that this is about the choice between public transit and the automobile. It is about coming to terms with the need to develop both sustainably so that people can make informed choices and have access to opportunities that make their life better.
There is a lot of talk these days about the need for energy independence. One major step to becoming less dependent on foreign energy would be to build a public transit system like most other civilized nations. This will create an alternative to driving, decongests our roads, reduces pollution and helps people become more engaged in society.
Other countries around the world are aspiring to live with the same level of comfort and freedom that we enjoy here in the United States. As a result they are also increasingly using more energy. For example there are roughly 2.8 billion people in China and India and both of these countries have a growing middle class that are buying cars and enjoying the freedom and flexibility that comes
with owning a car. Worldwide we consume roughly 80 million barrels of oil per day, it is estimated that by 2020 we will be consuming 120 million barrels per day. Hopefully by then we will have developed a new approach to energy consumption that has a long term vision which is sustainable and will allow future generations to live with a higher quality of life.
I recently watched a very revealing and informative movie called "Sprawling from Grace" where I took a lot these ideas from. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in this topic. You can watch the full length film HERE.
