A couple of years ago I moved to the small town of Avalon on Catalina Island. I discovered that like any place there are advantages and disadvantages to living there. I must admit, Avalon is very appealing in many ways. It’s a small town of about 5,000 people living in a one square mile area. It’s picture perfect with a beautiful harbor to view every day. People greet each other. There is no commute time except for the 5 to 10 minute walk to work. There is hardly any crime and it seemed to me a haven from the “real world”. This “paradise” did not come without a cost and that was the extremely high cost of living with very few jobs that could sustain those costs. But in my conversations with people, they would reply that this was “the price of paradise”. I disagreed and moved back to the mainland to continue my search for paradise. But my experience raised an interesting question: if the world is to become the utopia we all hope for, what will be the costs and will people be willing to “pay” for our paradise?
What if the price of paradise is a world with no private cars. As a major source of pollution, an intense user of resources and a source of economic division (see “Rethinking the Sources of Poverty”) its very likely the world will need to depend on mass public transportation to achieve a sustainable and equitable world without poverty. Will people be willing to give up this symbol of freedom and individuality? I would definitely give up the costs, the frustration of traffic and pollution and crime cars create for a paradise that has affordable, accessible and safe mass transit.
What if we each have to “pitch in” a little more to achieve our paradise? Speaking for myself, I get bored doing the same types of activities and enjoy being both a thinker and a laborer. I look forward to picking grapes of helping on a farm. Now if that were my only job it might get old, but such chores were a community effort as it is in a Kibbutz, I would rather do that than pay taxes or exorbitant food prices to avoid that chore. I’m not sure where people develop these notions of what jobs are important and which are not, but every job fulfills an important place in modern communities. It seems to me that such distinctions are a result of ego and to achieve paradise we each will have to recognize the essential needs of each role, job and task and “pitch in” to achieve equality and sustainability.
What if we each have to tolerate the ridiculous beliefs of others? It seems that our paradise will be defined by peace. But peace does not happen just by itself, it happens through our choices. Peace could be achieved by a benevolent dictator, but I don’t think any of us want to be told how to live. Peace could also be achieved by creating a homogenous population – one religious belief or one race, but I think diversity is a resource and offers strength. And, once again, I get bored being around people just like me, don’t you? Perhaps in paradise we will just have to choose to be tolerant of each other which means we will also have to exercise restraint in the public sphere. I think the great freedom we seek will require great responsibility from each of us (see “Lost in Freedom”).
What if we each have to eat more fruits and vegetables to make our paradise a reality? It may sound silly to contemplate, but our food habits are causing many of our health and ecological problems. For example, beef production is a major source of methane gas and our overfishing is depleting stocks in the oceans. Our agricultural system is overly complex relying on fossil fuels for transport and toxic chemicals to increase yields. And, in general, we overeat because we are depressed and lonely and the excess weight fuels high healthcare costs. Paradise will have none of these problems, but that is because the solution is to buy more locally available organic produce and in general rely less on resource intense meat and fish. In fact, in paradise we might each have to grow a small vegetable garden so as to take on some of the responsibility ourselves.
What if we each have to better educate ourselves and think before we act? We all want to be needed, to be heard by others and contribute to the solutions – the ideal of a direct democracy. But, the founders of America knew that a democracy required a well educated public to make informed choices. It seems to me that in paradise we will each need to be educated. We will each know when to speak up and contribute and when to be quiet and listen. None of us are equal in our gifts, but we each have something special to offer. In our paradise we will all be empowered to achieve our potential (see “Educationally Challenged”).
A key notion of paradise is that it is something different from how we live now. And, in order to achieve this paradise there needs to be change. The distance from where we are now to achieving that paradise is the time it takes us to make those choices. I'm not saying that what I've outlined is the price of paradise, but if it were would you pay it?
Showing posts with label automobile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label automobile. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
Rethinking the Sources of Poverty
What do we know about the sources of poverty? Well, simplistic as it may sound poverty results from systemic failures of the economy. The traditional point of view of poverty stems from our historical past and so do our solutions. The modern response is to create more jobs. However, in our new and global reality this seems to be a catch-22; more jobs create more economic activity resulting in more environmental degradation. I call this solution the “Captain Kirk response” because it reminds me of the Star Trek Captain demanding “more power” to get them out of trouble. As any trekkie knows, sometimes this tactic only resulted in greater problems. What a provocative idea! Maybe if we want to solve the issue of poverty, we need to tackle it differently.
One of the fundamental causes of poverty in the world are the costs of participating in our greater society. In my opinion, a great many of these additional costs stem from our inefficient transportation system. While cars are fun and have even become extensions of our ego and identity, they are probably the most resource intense form of transportation imaginable. This fundamental societal structure necessitates the individual’s need for higher incomes to meet the costs of car ownership. In this way, an entire society needs additional productivity to produce incomes capable of sustaining a transportation system: the cost of automobiles, fuel, insurance as well as the taxes that create and maintain the enormous road infrastructure. The cost of this infrastructure even extends into our private homes in the form of garages and driveways.
A transportation system is the foundation of any economy, however ours has consequences that are rarely discussed. For example, the ability of an individual to go and live wherever that can drive also means that government follows them to provide the services we all expect and demand. Although liberating for the pioneer, it has quietly raised the cost of living for the rest of society who foots the bill for these scarcely utilized roads and services. More importantly, this ability of people to sprawl has had environmental costs in how we continually attempt to change the native landscape according to our whim. And, slightly off topic, but not irrelevant, did you know that 1.2 MILLION people die every year as a result of automobile accidents?
I believe a transportation system based on rail technology and alternative energy sources would help eliminate poverty by eliminating the enormous barriers that the current transportation system incurs upon them. In the same fowl swoop it will also contribute to resolving the environmental issues that stem from it. Of course most modern communities, especially in America, are built around the presumption of the automobile. So how communities are designed and organized would have to be rethought in order to make such a system feasible. However, it does not take a genius to recognize the health dividends of a pedestrian friendly system.
Before we dismiss this proposal, one question we might think about is what’s more important? Tackling the issue in a way that can positively affect billions of people both now and in the future while moving our system to a more sustainable one? Or, maintain a fundamentally flawed system because some of us are already “sitting pretty”? Remember, solutions to problems exist in what we can do, not in what we can’t. While one solution to poverty may seem simplistic just because it can be stated so clearly (i.e., lower the cost of living) that doesn’t discount the elegance of the solution. The problems facing the world can seem overwhelming, and likewise so can the solutions. One thing is certain; the world we hope for will not come about through the will or wishes of any one person, but through the actions of a great many acting in common hope.
One of the fundamental causes of poverty in the world are the costs of participating in our greater society. In my opinion, a great many of these additional costs stem from our inefficient transportation system. While cars are fun and have even become extensions of our ego and identity, they are probably the most resource intense form of transportation imaginable. This fundamental societal structure necessitates the individual’s need for higher incomes to meet the costs of car ownership. In this way, an entire society needs additional productivity to produce incomes capable of sustaining a transportation system: the cost of automobiles, fuel, insurance as well as the taxes that create and maintain the enormous road infrastructure. The cost of this infrastructure even extends into our private homes in the form of garages and driveways.
A transportation system is the foundation of any economy, however ours has consequences that are rarely discussed. For example, the ability of an individual to go and live wherever that can drive also means that government follows them to provide the services we all expect and demand. Although liberating for the pioneer, it has quietly raised the cost of living for the rest of society who foots the bill for these scarcely utilized roads and services. More importantly, this ability of people to sprawl has had environmental costs in how we continually attempt to change the native landscape according to our whim. And, slightly off topic, but not irrelevant, did you know that 1.2 MILLION people die every year as a result of automobile accidents?
I believe a transportation system based on rail technology and alternative energy sources would help eliminate poverty by eliminating the enormous barriers that the current transportation system incurs upon them. In the same fowl swoop it will also contribute to resolving the environmental issues that stem from it. Of course most modern communities, especially in America, are built around the presumption of the automobile. So how communities are designed and organized would have to be rethought in order to make such a system feasible. However, it does not take a genius to recognize the health dividends of a pedestrian friendly system.
Before we dismiss this proposal, one question we might think about is what’s more important? Tackling the issue in a way that can positively affect billions of people both now and in the future while moving our system to a more sustainable one? Or, maintain a fundamentally flawed system because some of us are already “sitting pretty”? Remember, solutions to problems exist in what we can do, not in what we can’t. While one solution to poverty may seem simplistic just because it can be stated so clearly (i.e., lower the cost of living) that doesn’t discount the elegance of the solution. The problems facing the world can seem overwhelming, and likewise so can the solutions. One thing is certain; the world we hope for will not come about through the will or wishes of any one person, but through the actions of a great many acting in common hope.
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