The word ‘Green’ is being overused and isn’t very specific, but it’s a widely used adjective seeming to mean cleaner ways or products. This web site is about exploring the intersection of “Green” and “Transportation” but goes beyond simply cleaner ways to transport ourselves around.
A better phrase than ‘Green Transportation’ would be ‘Sustainable Transportation’. The word ‘Sustainable’ clearly means activities that support the long term livelihood of our society.
The negative effects of our transportation system is large and the “greening” of the transportation system is very important. Unfortunately “Green such-and-so” is widely used in many areas, without a precise meaning. That leaves us lacking precision for “Green Transportation”. Even the phrase Sustainable Transportation is not very clear. Basically, sustainable means something that can survive for a very very long time. For example sustainable farming practices would produce food for several generations without applying external inputs like fertilizers.
There are a lot of issues with the current transportation system, it causes not just environmental harm, but bad land use practices, many sorts of economic problems, resource supply problems, health problems (both physical and emotional), and is contributing to fears that our society is not viable over the have long term. For a lot of people ‘Green Transportation’ would focus simply on decreasing negative environmental impact such as greenhouse gas emissions. What about all the other issues that are not greenhouse gas emissions? Should they be left unresolved in the rush to quell the fears raised by Al Gore’s movie?
How deep should “we” go with greening the transportation system? Should we only reduce carbon footprint?
For many, greening the transportation system is all about reducing carbon footprint. Why? High carbon levels have been identified as the culprit in climate change / warming. Therefore the policy makers have latched onto carbon reduction as the goal. But that leaves all the other problems unaddressed because we’re seeking to solely solve for carbon footprint.
What are some of the problems we’re facing with the existing transportation system?
•Global Warming
•Environmental Damage
•Health impacts (physical health, emotional health, mental health, spiritual health)
•Noise Pollution
•Land use
•Global economics power-plays and the fate of whole nations
•Release of toxic chemicals at essentially every step of producing, using and disposing of transportation machines
•Greenhouse gas increases are massively impacted by transportation
•Limited supply of oil and potential for society wide chaos when oil production capacity begins to decrease
•The majority of remaining oil supplies are located in unfriendly countries, making for a geopolitical nightmare
•Biofuels (an alternative) require massive amounts of land & diverts agriculture resources from food to fuel production
•Modern agriculture relies on fertilizers made from petroleum.. making for a strange situation in a few years when oil production capacity declines and the idea of using biofuels to replace fossil oil means more agriculture which depends on petroleum which would be in short supply
•Oil extraction from tar sands, oil shales, etc, are a horror story and give a very low energy return on investment
What are some solutions?
•Changing drive train of existing vehicle types
•Changing fuels of existing vehicle types
•Switching to other (more efficient) vehicle types
•Wiser (more efficient) vehicle use
If this intrigues you, read around on the site and enjoy. There are comment forms at the bottom of almost every page and I am interested in hearing from everyone.