To my way of thinking, if we addressed one issue with a true war-on intensity we would have a very real chance for positive change in the U.S. That issue is energy independence. By that I mean mostly weaning ourselves from oil imported from the Middle East.
Achieving energy independence would positively affect nearly every other important issue of our age: climate change, transportation, war, health care, jobs, economic recovery, and so on.
I woke up this morning with a bit of a speech on my mind — a speech I’d really like to hear from a president or some other powerful politician:
There is a trail to freedom, and it begins at the front door of most Americans. This trail is only a mile long. But if we walk that trail — or bicycle it — we will be free.
Political speeches are supposed to put on the rhetorical dog a bit (although I’ve spared you some of the popular tropes and schemes). No one wants to listen to bureaucratic droning. So as you read those lines you might want to “hear” them in a stirring voice and “see” them delivered in an appropriately patriotic setting.
I woke up thinking about the 1-mile Solution — an idea I’ve neglected lately. So here I am giving it a bit of re-invigoration.
We can’t achieve energy independence with the 1-mile Solution alone. But what we might be able to do with it is begin changing the culture to one in which it is understood as patriotic to walk a mile rather than fire up a 500-pound power plant burning a limited resource (that poisons our air and water) to travel a distance (in a dangerous machine) easily walked (for a great many — and becomes easier still over time) in a few minutes.
Comments 6
Your freedom-hating socalist messaging flies in the face of the fantasy of the American dream as sold to me in cinematically gorgeous pick-up truck and Budweiser ads. You know the one: chucking bales of hay into the bed of my rig, driving to the softball diamond with plumes of dust etching my trail across the great heartland.
If you force us all to start walking then the terrorists have won!
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 10:36 am ¶JAT… I’m evil that way
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 10:45 am ¶For the vast majority of Americans, walking and transit are completely impractical due to distance. This is of course because we painted ourselves into a corner by spending the past 50 years building sprawl. Bicycling is doable for many trips, but most people (falsely) believe that cycling amidst motor vehicles is an intense and immediate threat to their safety.
In any gathering of people if you ask them about the benefits of bicycling, they will identify most of them themselves. They’re just not willing to “risk their lives” to realize those benefits.
Then, of course, there are all the built-in benefits they realize as motorists that they don’t as cyclists, pedestrians, or transit users: “free” parking is the greatest; subsidized roads is the next greatest; then air quality, water quality…
We pay for most of the negative impacts of auto use not as motorists, but as customers, taxpayers, hospital patients, and just plain human beings. Government has known of those externalities for a couple decades, but the power structure likes things just the way they are.
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 10:55 am ¶Government will not “solve this problem.” Peak oil will.
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 10:56 am ¶Mighk… re: who will solve the problem
Agreed. That speech snippet is pure fantasy.
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 1:17 pm ¶Andy,
We dont even fight wars with “war on intensity.”
Posted 24 Nov 2010 at 10:10 pm ¶