Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For a few days last week, global news agencies pursued the peculiar story of the world’s worst traffic jam, which was reported to have lasted for around nine days and stretched across about 100 kilometres of a major highway leading to Beijing. China’s latest instance of leading the world, now in the scale and size of traffic jams, is a direct consequence of the modern uses and abuses of energy.
Walking is how we belong to the world. It’s how we belong to each other. It’s how we see best what’s coming—for us, not for people half-way across the country or the world—and how we know what to do about it. It’s how we begin tuning ourselves to the frequency of a post-oil world.
Transport Revolutions presents an ambitious vision of a world, 15 years from now, that is well on its way to kicking oil and being run on renewably produced electricity. The book’s authors, internationally recognized transport policy experts Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, readily acknowledge the enormity of this challenge, with transport worldwide currently 95 percent dependent on oil.
-Is the U.S. turning a corner on high-speed rail?
-Transport study call to slash carbon emissions
-The Big Lie: Highway Projects Help the US Economy
-Will the Aviation Industry and Climate Change Come in for a Smooth Landing?
London’s Do-It-Yourself Approach to Safer Streets
Host Tamara Banks takes a look at the Transition Cities movement that is working for a way of life that is environmentally friendly, supports the local economy and conserves natural resources.
Below are excerpts from two recently released reports on transport. The first, Towards a Zero Carbon Vision for UK Transport, from a UK based team offers a pathway to a reduced carbon scenario for the UK transport sector based on a variety of strategies already in place in Europe. The second report has been produced for the American Public Transportation Association and addresses the links between public health and public transport.
In Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service James McCommons seamlessly weaves the history of passenger rail in with his artful travelogues as he describes the scenery he sees, the people he meets, and the problems and joys he encounters during a year of train travel that covers nearly every major Amtrak route. Frequently, McCommons takes train trips to meet people who are actively shaping passenger rail in the United States. That’s the part of the book about the future.
– Guardian: Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?
– VOA: South Asia superbug is potential global problem
– Fears of a new superbug from Asia may be overblown, experts say
– Conflict of interest in ‘superbug’ report: Indian health minister
On August 19, 2010 a fleet of twenty human powered boats will leave Eugene, Oregon to pick up locally grown grain and beans in Harrisburg and carry them to Corvallis. This is a nod to the history of using the river as transportation and distribution for the products grown in the valley as well as a promotion of the rich variety of grain and beans raised today in the Willamette Valley.
If human civilization is to make the move to a steady state economy that provides prosperity without growth, it must meet people’s basic mobility needs without reliance on fossil fuels. The U.S. requires a revolutionary transformation of its transportation systems, and recent experience with the downsides of oil provides a potent political push to overcome inertia.
Once people get into their heads that maybe the personal automobile is not really such a good idea — in other words, after they have moved beyond the biodiesel/electric car phase, as if the only problem with the personal automobile is the fuel it uses — they usually fixate on bicycles. I say “fixate” because this often becomes an eco-fetish like so many other such things, as if more bicycles were better, and if you could just get enough bicycles in one place, you could “save the world.”
-Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers
-Testing a London ‘Cycle Superhighway’
-Festival transforms autobahn into world’s longest street party
