Because we seem to be trying to turn a planet that supports life into one that does not, I’m posting a question or topic here every week to see if together we can work out some nuts and bolts of how to survive.
Prior questions were:
Do You Stay or Do You Go? What Is Your Timeline?
What Skill Do You Need To Learn? How Will You Deal With Flooding?
What About Potable Water? Got Energy?
What Are Your Preparations For A Food Emergency?
Do You Have Enough Nutrients? What Are Your Plans For Fire?
What Will You Do About Medical Care? What Are Your Plans For Mental Health?
Do You Have Community? Will You Kill Invasive Species?
What Are You Doing About Information Access?
Will You Assist Migration? How Do You Dress For Extremes?
This week’s question is How Will You Get Around?
The options are getting very limited.
Planes
Leaving aside the immense fossil fuel fallout from flying, the act of being a human in the air is getting a lot more dangerous and a lot less likely, due to climate chaos. Melting runways, increased turbulence, enormous weather — each of these by itself is a danger. But, with climate chaos, these aren’t happening as solo incidents anymore.
Trains
Trains are much better than planes in terms of CO2 output, but heated tracks bend and buckle, trains can cause wildfires, lots of miles of track are in flood zones, the U.S. has done a bad job of maintaining our train infrastructure and almost nothing to expand it, and the fascists give all indications of wanting to kill rail travel (not making it run on time).
Automobiles
Leaving aside CO2 from ICE engines and mining for EV batteries, cars cause wildfires, require infrastructure that is both polluting (in runoff) and a heat trap, become toxic junk after they’ve been in floods, and kill people, animals, rivers, ecosystems, and communities. How long are communities going to be able to maintain the miles of roads buckling and breaking in heatwaves, washed away in landslides, burned in wildfires, and flooded by extreme precip events? How useful will cars be without roads?
Mass transit
At every level of U.S. government, guess what’s one of the first things on the chopping block when there are budget problems. This is because transit is for the poor — the rich have cars, and the system was designed this way. Climate chaos is expensive and transit is suffering already.
Bikes
If you’re a cyclist (or skateboarder or scooter rider or pedestrian, etc.), you’ve probably noticed that getting around has gotten more dangerous since the start of the pandemic. Bikes are excellent transportation options that produce very low CO2 while providing a decent range, let you cart stuff, are easy to park, and have the greatest efficiency of any form of transportation. But governments fund car infrastructure, not so much bike infrastructure even though the cost/benefits analysis favors bikes.
Walking
This is how we spread from east Africa across the globe. But it’s relatively short range per day, incredibly dangerous in heat, incredibly dangerous because of cars, there’s a huge lack of infrastructure for pedestrians and this, also, is because walking is considered to be for the poor. After all, you are what you drive, and nobody walks in L.A.
What else is there?
Horses? They have the same problems with heat, need space and food and water, are expensive to keep healthy, and don’t do all that well in cities. Wheelchairs are fantastic if a location has the infrastructure to support them, but a wheelchair user in the street is in a dangerous situation.
So how are you planning on getting around?