The obvious remedy for the oil-and-car problem would be to live in walkable towns and neighborhoods served by the kind of public transit that people are not ashamed to ride in. But it may be too late for that. We’re going to be a much poorer society from now on. We squandered the financial resources for that transition on too many other things. We’re stuck with our investments in houses and their commercial accessories, built where they were built, and no Jolly Green Giant is going to pick them up and move them closer together in an artful way that adds up to real towns. A reorganization of American life will occur, but now it will be on much less deliberate terms, a much messier and more destructive operation, a default to the smaller scale by extreme necessity, with a lot of losses along the way. The Deepwater Horizon incident only hastens the process.
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James Howard Kunstler (via azspot) (via robot-heart-politics > stfuconservatives)
Sprawl has to develop a stronger infrastructure (transport links, local grocery stores and workplaces). People need to downsize their lives (buy used/quit filling their houses with electronics, plastics and brand names). The foregone conclusion is that our methods of living are unsustainable, and it’s better to start now than be in for a sharp shock decades down the line. Grow vegetables, switch to basic cleaning products, compost your food, get a bike, eat less meat. I’m not saying I achieve this perfectly, and it’s been a long hard road over the last ten years, but it has to be done while we still have the choices available to us.
