More to Come

I've been mulling over exactly what it is that motivates me, and how I would present a coherent philosophy of being carfree should any more reporters come calling. Central to my philosophy, and to the way we live our lives, is a belief that we have been investing in a series of diminishing returns since the end of World War ll. The ideas relevant to the way I think about culture and the automobile in general can be found in James Howard Kunstler's critique of suburbia, The Geography of Nowhere. I believe that by simply disinvesting in the automobile, we can begin to repair the damage done by automotive culture, but we do that, basically, one person at a time. It has to be a cultural shift and not a government mandate, and I see the beginnings of that shift in sites like Copenhagenize, and in the actual behavior of the people I see out in the streets -- on bicycles, on foot, out of their cars. I would say I'm much more of an urbanist than a back to nature sort, though I believe some measure of food production should take place in the urban environment. I can't elaborate too far now. I have to go do the parenting, good-night reading thing, and tomorrow I have a full day, but I have plenty of ideas, and I'll be writing about them soon.

In the meantime, this article from the Humanist should introduce you to Kunstler's ideas if you haven't heard of him, and you should listen to the KunstlerCast podcast. By the way, I'm not one hundred percent on board with Peak Oil, though I do believe we're going to run into a long downturn in energy supplies. I'd prefer to think of it as the Long Restructuring rather than Kunstler's "The Long Emergency." But whether we are about to fall off the top of Hubbert's bell curve, or if suddenly someone discovers that we can run our society off pet hair, restructuring our lives around human beings rather than around automobiles will only make life better. The automobile is a tyrannical presence in our culture. It is no longer one in our family life.

Here's the article: Deconstructing the Human Habitat