I was just skimming through Ben Goldfarb's book, "Crossings" (which is about roads) and ran across this:
"Pavement itself blankets less than 1 percent of the United States, yet its influence—the “road-effect zone,” to use ecological jargon—covers a full 20 percent. Park your car on the shoulder and bushwhack half a mile into the woods, and you’ll still see fewer birds than you would in an unroaded wilderness. Hike two miles more, and you’ll still see fewer mammals. If you’re a Kerouac reader, you grew up steeped in the dogma that highways represent freedom. If you’re a grizzly bear, they might as well be prison walls."
Thank you for this informative post, so many people have bought the lie that we can "save our civilization with sustainable development tech" (which typically means a lot more mining of rare minerals and destruction of rare ecosystems).
For anyone interested in learning more about how scaling up EV production is degeneratively impacting the boreal forest, lakes and rivers of northern "ontario" and "quebec" (the north-eastern woodlands of Turtle Island) I put together some info on that in this post:
I look forward to studying the links you provide here in more detail to expand my understanding of the variables I may not have considered fully yet and strategize effectively for the future.
You're welcome, Gavin! And that's a great article you wrote. I'm a forest lover my whole life, but especially after I lived in the Pacific NW of the US.
Thanks man, yes me too, even before I could walk I was getting carried around in the backcountry in backpack in the pacific northwest (my parents were backcounty park rangers) and then my entire youth was spent in the midst of the coastal giant rooted beings we call Douglas Fir, Cedar, Hemlock and Spruce.
Did you ever explore Vancouver island when you lived up there?
Try to get up there soon if you can man, the ancient memory and living library of health, resilience and symbiosis that exists there may not remain for much longer if people do not stand up against the corrupt government and corporations in unison. The war in the woods rages on there, the very last pockets of Primary (ancient, never clearcut) Temperate Rainforest watersheds on Earth which exist there are being targeted for annihilation, for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enF8Zf4EPNg
The Fairy Creek watershed in particular, will be opened up for clearcutting by the government starting next month
Please stay on top of this topic Kollibri. There are so many aspects of it that need to be brought to the surface. Living on a single lane state highway that use to have 2-3,000 cars a day 25 years ago and now has over30,000 a day, the difference is very striking. Noise is the first thing one notices. I cannot carry on a conversation in the front yard for the competing volume of the passing logging trucks, semis and other vehicles. When I moved here, the locals knew where to slow down for the deer crossing paths. The state even posted deer crossing signs. Now that is all history. The deforestation and sprawl of the housing developments, not to mention poaching has chased the remaining deer almost out of existence locally. This is to say nothing of all of the other the native flora and fauna that is gone forever from this local. I cannot understand how people accept how loud gas vehicles have become in recent years. They are all so much more noisy than they were even just a few years ago, when there were state laws to 'keep the peace' or be fined. And of course sirens of all kinds are a daily occurrence. All of this is happening, while there is another parallel state highway less than a mile away! And very sad to say that both of thee highways have terrible accidents quite regularly. We have TV ads of trucks and cars racing through cities and thru off-road terrain and then we wonder why there are weekly reports of young boys stealing cars to do the same thing and smash into stores to steal whatever they can. We blame them or their parents ... but who blames the car companies for suggesting this behavior in their ads? As I say, I applaud you for addressing this very big topic on all levels!!
I'll be hitting this topic more for sure Sandy. So many of our environmental problems can be addressed by changing how we organize our built environment. There's lots of great ideas out there already being tried, too.
That's a sad story about your road. Especially hearing about how the locals knew where to slow down for deer! I'm in a remote rural area for the winter, and there's a curve on the road nearby where a Roadrunner often crosses, so I slow down and keep my eye out there. (Roadrunners have regular routes and rounds they do!)
I totally agree that the marketing of cars plays a huge role. Truck ads, especially, purposefully manufacture a mythology.
Interesting to know that roadrunners have regular routines. Makes sense. Many of the birds I see have daily routines, too. Though I have never thought about it before. :-)
I have never lived where roadrunners do and appreciate your concern for them.
I am happy to tell you that Washington state has created a few elevated and under roadway animal crossings on the highways in the upper elevations. I-90 in particular. Here are a couple links created a few years ago about how the crossings were designed.
These may not be a perfect solution, but I still am very happy to see that they were created and that the many agencies involved found the money to do it!
Thanks for this. About the silence of EV and the requirement that they produce some sort of sound as a warning. Have you noticed what they came up with? It's a kind of ethereal "music of the spheres" type sound, which seems meant to indicated the arrival of angels or some other transcendence. Downright creepy. Whenever I hear it, it gives me a chill.
Thanks for sharing. That's a much better way to think of things in the long-term, and hopefully some governments can already take some of the steps that you highlight (e.g. improved public transport) in the short-term.
I know that Canada faces some of the same challenges and has too much car dependent infrastructure and planning, but I wonder if it's a little better? I certainly hear great things about Vancouver BC.
I don’t follow Vancouver closely… Canada’s energy intensity is higher than the U.S because of cold climate, energy intensive industries (mining, oil&gas) and geographic size. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/canada
Thanks very much, Elisabeth! I admire and appreciate your work on these topics so a compliment from you is quite meaningful to me. I'll check out both links, thank you.
The issue with greenhouse gasses is that they change thr earth’s energy budget, allowing less energy to escape than otherwise would.
If we start drawing a lot more energy into our system through solar panels, without also creating a system that expels it, we have exactly the same problem that CO2 is creating.
EVS solve nothing in terms of our planetary energy budget.
We need to use less energy and make sure the energy we use is recyclable in a livable planetary budget.
Idyllic urban utopias are still dependent on transportation infrastructure because of importation. Having a “store on every corner” sounds less appealing than a “self-sufficient community”. Local food and necessities producers, self-sufficiency and sharing, community gardens, concierge healthcare, etc. will do much better for the environment (and people) than continuing a consumer-centric convenience-first framework. Unaffordable but walkable metropolitans are still terrible if they are entirely dependent on everyone else doing the “dirty work” of environmental pollution to get them their goods.
It’s “easy to get get lazy” in a city, and speaks to the privilege of many who like to impose policy on those who are not (privileged nor in a city). This is seen with EV’s since they have become a status and virtue symbol as much as they are a legislative honey pot all while ignoring the needs of the end customer in the endless pursuit for market share. The age old story of making empty promises for profit.
I agree with so much of this, but.... for those of us disabled by chronic illness and who are chemically damaged, not having a car would mean eliminating most of what makes our lives liveable or even worth living. I would be trapped, unable to visit with friends or ever get into nature, etc. Having a car means I can get food, go to doctors, and get to forests with animals because it's impossible otherwise. A ten minute car ride would be hours by bus, plus walking, if they even went to where we need to go. Also, no public transportation can be safe because of the horrific stinking toxic products people use. (Imagine if everyone on the public transportation chain-smoked and that doesn't even come close to how excruciating it would be for us.) Having neighborhoods with "salons" or laundromats or anything else spewing toxic stink would make our homes unliveable. (Even a block away is intolerable. It's bad enough with the stench pouring out of most neighbors' laundry vents.) Going to any public place means being exposed to carcinogens, but at least we can go home in a car. As it is, I can never travel by plane again because no place is safe to stay.
The most important thing people can do to help the earth is stop reproducing. And stop buying toxic scented products that we are exposed to against our will.
Good stuff. I got in a YouTube tube a couple of years back--got sucked into Not Just Bikes somehow, and then followed the trail to CityNerd and Strong Towns. I love that stuff. I'm inspired to dive back in and try some of the names you listed that are new to me. Thanks for this.
Great essay. May I add the impact to wildlife, from migrating butterflies to deer to bears.
Absolutely true.
I was just skimming through Ben Goldfarb's book, "Crossings" (which is about roads) and ran across this:
"Pavement itself blankets less than 1 percent of the United States, yet its influence—the “road-effect zone,” to use ecological jargon—covers a full 20 percent. Park your car on the shoulder and bushwhack half a mile into the woods, and you’ll still see fewer birds than you would in an unroaded wilderness. Hike two miles more, and you’ll still see fewer mammals. If you’re a Kerouac reader, you grew up steeped in the dogma that highways represent freedom. If you’re a grizzly bear, they might as well be prison walls."
As I have been saying for some time, the tunnel vision on tailpipe emissions misses all the other consequences that accompany EVs…
https://open.substack.com/pub/stevebull/p/todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-f93?
Good article!
Thank you for this informative post, so many people have bought the lie that we can "save our civilization with sustainable development tech" (which typically means a lot more mining of rare minerals and destruction of rare ecosystems).
For anyone interested in learning more about how scaling up EV production is degeneratively impacting the boreal forest, lakes and rivers of northern "ontario" and "quebec" (the north-eastern woodlands of Turtle Island) I put together some info on that in this post:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-a-new-series-befriending
I look forward to studying the links you provide here in more detail to expand my understanding of the variables I may not have considered fully yet and strategize effectively for the future.
You're welcome, Gavin! And that's a great article you wrote. I'm a forest lover my whole life, but especially after I lived in the Pacific NW of the US.
Thanks man, yes me too, even before I could walk I was getting carried around in the backcountry in backpack in the pacific northwest (my parents were backcounty park rangers) and then my entire youth was spent in the midst of the coastal giant rooted beings we call Douglas Fir, Cedar, Hemlock and Spruce.
Did you ever explore Vancouver island when you lived up there?
What a lovely upbringing!
No I never made it up to Vancouver Island. But I would like to.
Try to get up there soon if you can man, the ancient memory and living library of health, resilience and symbiosis that exists there may not remain for much longer if people do not stand up against the corrupt government and corporations in unison. The war in the woods rages on there, the very last pockets of Primary (ancient, never clearcut) Temperate Rainforest watersheds on Earth which exist there are being targeted for annihilation, for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enF8Zf4EPNg
The Fairy Creek watershed in particular, will be opened up for clearcutting by the government starting next month
For more info on Fairy Creek:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/death-by-a-thousand-clearcuts
Please stay on top of this topic Kollibri. There are so many aspects of it that need to be brought to the surface. Living on a single lane state highway that use to have 2-3,000 cars a day 25 years ago and now has over30,000 a day, the difference is very striking. Noise is the first thing one notices. I cannot carry on a conversation in the front yard for the competing volume of the passing logging trucks, semis and other vehicles. When I moved here, the locals knew where to slow down for the deer crossing paths. The state even posted deer crossing signs. Now that is all history. The deforestation and sprawl of the housing developments, not to mention poaching has chased the remaining deer almost out of existence locally. This is to say nothing of all of the other the native flora and fauna that is gone forever from this local. I cannot understand how people accept how loud gas vehicles have become in recent years. They are all so much more noisy than they were even just a few years ago, when there were state laws to 'keep the peace' or be fined. And of course sirens of all kinds are a daily occurrence. All of this is happening, while there is another parallel state highway less than a mile away! And very sad to say that both of thee highways have terrible accidents quite regularly. We have TV ads of trucks and cars racing through cities and thru off-road terrain and then we wonder why there are weekly reports of young boys stealing cars to do the same thing and smash into stores to steal whatever they can. We blame them or their parents ... but who blames the car companies for suggesting this behavior in their ads? As I say, I applaud you for addressing this very big topic on all levels!!
I'll be hitting this topic more for sure Sandy. So many of our environmental problems can be addressed by changing how we organize our built environment. There's lots of great ideas out there already being tried, too.
That's a sad story about your road. Especially hearing about how the locals knew where to slow down for deer! I'm in a remote rural area for the winter, and there's a curve on the road nearby where a Roadrunner often crosses, so I slow down and keep my eye out there. (Roadrunners have regular routes and rounds they do!)
I totally agree that the marketing of cars plays a huge role. Truck ads, especially, purposefully manufacture a mythology.
Interesting to know that roadrunners have regular routines. Makes sense. Many of the birds I see have daily routines, too. Though I have never thought about it before. :-)
I have never lived where roadrunners do and appreciate your concern for them.
I am happy to tell you that Washington state has created a few elevated and under roadway animal crossings on the highways in the upper elevations. I-90 in particular. Here are a couple links created a few years ago about how the crossings were designed.
https://youtu.be/9cO9NXD3Ynw
https://youtu.be/Cf5nMLrlgW4
These may not be a perfect solution, but I still am very happy to see that they were created and that the many agencies involved found the money to do it!
Thanks for this. About the silence of EV and the requirement that they produce some sort of sound as a warning. Have you noticed what they came up with? It's a kind of ethereal "music of the spheres" type sound, which seems meant to indicated the arrival of angels or some other transcendence. Downright creepy. Whenever I hear it, it gives me a chill.
I have not heard that yet! Sounds spooky.
Thanks for sharing. That's a much better way to think of things in the long-term, and hopefully some governments can already take some of the steps that you highlight (e.g. improved public transport) in the short-term.
We've got to rewild half the pavement out there.
Totally. It's a beautiful sight when "weeds" come up in the cracks in the pavement.
Yes, but I really envision pulling up pavement. Especially in cities. Make the streets one way and plant trees on the other half.
Very insightful read!
Thanks, Bree! I'm glad you appreciated it.
I know that Canada faces some of the same challenges and has too much car dependent infrastructure and planning, but I wonder if it's a little better? I certainly hear great things about Vancouver BC.
I don’t follow Vancouver closely… Canada’s energy intensity is higher than the U.S because of cold climate, energy intensive industries (mining, oil&gas) and geographic size. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/canada
Excellent article. EVs are not part of the solution. Reducing our overall and wasteful consumption is.
Thanks! And you said it!!
This is excellent, thank you Kollibri.
I also recommend people listen to Derrick Jensen's Bus Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNy6047i4Y4
And here's a report about mining I wrote while with the Protect Thacker Pass campaign:
https://www.protectthackerpass.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/HowMiningHurtsCommunities_Spreads.pdf
It has lots of data about mining requirements for EVs and so on.
Thanks very much, Elisabeth! I admire and appreciate your work on these topics so a compliment from you is quite meaningful to me. I'll check out both links, thank you.
Great reading, thank you for sharing!
It's incredible how the car has become such a staple of our lives. Highly recommend having a look at GCN's video regarding moto-normativity.
I would add one more thing that gets Worse with EVs. Albedo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
The issue with greenhouse gasses is that they change thr earth’s energy budget, allowing less energy to escape than otherwise would.
If we start drawing a lot more energy into our system through solar panels, without also creating a system that expels it, we have exactly the same problem that CO2 is creating.
EVS solve nothing in terms of our planetary energy budget.
We need to use less energy and make sure the energy we use is recyclable in a livable planetary budget.
Idyllic urban utopias are still dependent on transportation infrastructure because of importation. Having a “store on every corner” sounds less appealing than a “self-sufficient community”. Local food and necessities producers, self-sufficiency and sharing, community gardens, concierge healthcare, etc. will do much better for the environment (and people) than continuing a consumer-centric convenience-first framework. Unaffordable but walkable metropolitans are still terrible if they are entirely dependent on everyone else doing the “dirty work” of environmental pollution to get them their goods.
It’s “easy to get get lazy” in a city, and speaks to the privilege of many who like to impose policy on those who are not (privileged nor in a city). This is seen with EV’s since they have become a status and virtue symbol as much as they are a legislative honey pot all while ignoring the needs of the end customer in the endless pursuit for market share. The age old story of making empty promises for profit.
I agree with so much of this, but.... for those of us disabled by chronic illness and who are chemically damaged, not having a car would mean eliminating most of what makes our lives liveable or even worth living. I would be trapped, unable to visit with friends or ever get into nature, etc. Having a car means I can get food, go to doctors, and get to forests with animals because it's impossible otherwise. A ten minute car ride would be hours by bus, plus walking, if they even went to where we need to go. Also, no public transportation can be safe because of the horrific stinking toxic products people use. (Imagine if everyone on the public transportation chain-smoked and that doesn't even come close to how excruciating it would be for us.) Having neighborhoods with "salons" or laundromats or anything else spewing toxic stink would make our homes unliveable. (Even a block away is intolerable. It's bad enough with the stench pouring out of most neighbors' laundry vents.) Going to any public place means being exposed to carcinogens, but at least we can go home in a car. As it is, I can never travel by plane again because no place is safe to stay.
The most important thing people can do to help the earth is stop reproducing. And stop buying toxic scented products that we are exposed to against our will.
Good stuff. I got in a YouTube tube a couple of years back--got sucked into Not Just Bikes somehow, and then followed the trail to CityNerd and Strong Towns. I love that stuff. I'm inspired to dive back in and try some of the names you listed that are new to me. Thanks for this.