One reason you don't want me for president.
I spent the weekend in Pasadena CA in a conference on quantum information at Caltech. It was a blast. I was kind of in charge of our little caravan and I paid all the gas bills for our van. The total was $192 for gas going there and back. It took us about 11 hours each way not including breaks.
On the way when I wasn't driving I was finishing "Let my people go surfing" by Yvon Chouinard. He founded and grew Patagonia kind of by accident and ended up making it a company with a mission. The mission is to slow down the destruction of the earth. I loved the book.
Anyway, Gina and I decided to become conscious of how much we use of different resources like electricity, gas, gasoline, water, and so on. Over the years we hope we can find ways to cut our use of each one in a reasonable fashion.
But that and our van dying yesterday morning got me thinking. Our life here in Albuquerque would be nearly impossible without our cars. Stores are all miles away. School is far away. Public transportation is slow, rare, and inconvenient. Biking around town turns out to be quite dangerous because of the way the roads have been made and the way cars drive. The whole thing is a waste.
I know what I would do about it if I were in a position to act. I would start hiking taxes on all products based on fossile fuels. I would do it now, but in a small way. I would increase taxes by 3% each month and I would keep up that policy of increases for the next several years. All proceeds from the tax would go toward building infrastructure for mass transit solutions and bike trails. In other words I would systematically and gradually make mass transit cheaper and safer and individual motorized transit more expensive and let people adjust their lifestyles accordingly. I'd like to think that perhaps within 10 years of such a policy the Salt Lake Valley would stop filling up with crap every winter . . .
On the way when I wasn't driving I was finishing "Let my people go surfing" by Yvon Chouinard. He founded and grew Patagonia kind of by accident and ended up making it a company with a mission. The mission is to slow down the destruction of the earth. I loved the book.
Anyway, Gina and I decided to become conscious of how much we use of different resources like electricity, gas, gasoline, water, and so on. Over the years we hope we can find ways to cut our use of each one in a reasonable fashion.
But that and our van dying yesterday morning got me thinking. Our life here in Albuquerque would be nearly impossible without our cars. Stores are all miles away. School is far away. Public transportation is slow, rare, and inconvenient. Biking around town turns out to be quite dangerous because of the way the roads have been made and the way cars drive. The whole thing is a waste.
I know what I would do about it if I were in a position to act. I would start hiking taxes on all products based on fossile fuels. I would do it now, but in a small way. I would increase taxes by 3% each month and I would keep up that policy of increases for the next several years. All proceeds from the tax would go toward building infrastructure for mass transit solutions and bike trails. In other words I would systematically and gradually make mass transit cheaper and safer and individual motorized transit more expensive and let people adjust their lifestyles accordingly. I'd like to think that perhaps within 10 years of such a policy the Salt Lake Valley would stop filling up with crap every winter . . .
posted by Douglas H. at 7:34 PM
2 Comments:
I don't know. Maybe we do want you for president. I have been wishing we had more viable options for mass transportation as well. I think London spoiled me. And even with mass transportation, there are still ample opportunities for walking--something it is harder to get here at home. It just isn't practicable to pull a shopping cart to the grocery store and back. But I am going to try to drive less and walk more. If it just didn't take so much time!!
I agree. I'd love to walk here but things really are far away. I think that another part of the solution will be to change city planning. The strict separation between commercial and residential could be relaxed and roads could be made more hospitable to non-vehicular traffic.
There is also an implicit subsidy for car traffic in the building codes which require that parking places for a given number of people be built when you put in a commercial space.
On the other hand, I just read this morning about when Freeman Dyson and a friend in a wheel chair (Oscar Hahn) walked from Cambridge to London. It took 17 hours.
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