Traveling without driving

Could you have used two bags,a backpack, and a duffel bag? Put the backpack on, and strap the duffel bag to the bicycle. :P

I'm sure in the USA we will need to be thinking a lot more about things like this once our lifestyle dissolves. It's amazing what can theoretically be carried on a bicycle.

Amtrak will always let you take a folder on the train. This is the precise reason I bought a Brompton, but hauling stuff is another problem. I just pack what will fit on my shoulders. In summer a backpack is enough. In winter I need a duffel.

I like your breakdown of the pros and cons of hitchhiking train travel. It will usually be slightly less convenient and more time-consuming, but infinitely more sustainable. I just don't see how individual, 3000lb cars can be the way most of us get around in the future. With mass transit much more economical options are open. Riding trains and buses now I consider a vote with my pocket book for a more sustainable future.

Hi David,

I admire your dedication to preserve what's left of the oil, reduce your carbon footprint, etc.. If only everyone was as conscientious as you. I live my life the same way, although not to a degree where if the whole world lived as I do we'd be ok.

What I wonder all the time is why bother? My reduced consumption has no significant impact on the macroproblems. Yet if everyone thought this way, nothing would get done for sure. It's almost like voting, as an individual your vote isn't going to decide anything, but if everyone thought that and didn't vote...

What it does have a significant impact is my life. It's a lot more convenient even cheaper to live on the grid. It's often quicker and more convenient to drive. To throw everything out in the garbage can vs clean your cans and recycle, is more of a hassle then throwing it all in a big thick plastic bag. It can go on and on, you get the picture. So if all you're doing is radically changing your own life, while the rest of the world continues its environmental destruction at breakneck speed why bother?

Any solution needs to be top down. If a politician advocates long term sustainability, vote him in office. The free markets can't be depended on to protect the environment. Pollution is socially undesirable, but has no effect on what the polluting firm's profits. The key problem is that there is not a market on which pollution (or the rights to pollute) is traded. If the market for that existed (and is transparent heh), they would not fail to produce a socially optimal outcome. Creative destruction could take place. Rich countries have to provide solutions and incentives to get developing countries to limit their pollution/environmental destruction. We'd need global cooperation, I'm sad to say I don't think enough of humanity is ready for that yet. Call me crazy, but having a radically democratic future makes so little sense when the people with power have been improving their ability to control the public mind since the dawn of advertising.

I saw Michael Moore's new film Slacker Uprising. He's going around the country trying to get everyone who normally doesn't care about politics to vote for Obama. Each side tries to get the most politically ignorant part of the population to vote. If one side does it, it becomes a necessary evil in a close election for the other side. All is fair in love and war right?

So where does that leave us? Living green gets you nowhere in achieving your macrogoals. The world is too passive to force politicians to achieve the macrogoals. What is left? Move to a country where the general level of education is higher, greed is lower, and work with them to make the necessary changes to make a smooth transition to a post oil world?

But I think this pattern is interesting: a) explore, b) demonstrate, c) publicize

How long do you give this strategy to work? How much time do we have? What is plan B?

Has the open source software revolution been a top down imposition of freedom? No.

Well, I think the internet did come about with some government help. ;-) Usually it just takes a little government push to get these balls rolling. In fact, once the government gets into the business of starting balls rolling, investors take a wait and see approach before they start investing. This was very evident in the latest energy bill.

What has really gotten me down is after all the press global warming has gotten, a movie, the cover of Science Magazine (or was it Nature? saying "Global Warming Is Real" (or something to that effect)), the UN panel, whistle blowers at the EPA, on and on, people still are doubting it's real and something needs to be done about it. What more will it take?

The crisis we're in now is so intense because Bush and friends didn't invest in infrastructure that would for the short term raise employment, and in the long term generate wealth back when we had a budget surplus. Actually since Carter no one has done enough to lower our dependence on foreign oil. No one did enough to fix lower education. I say the top down solution is necessary because taxing emissions will be worthless unless all cities, states, countries, do it in concert. I say top down because major infrastructure projects is financed by govt. I say top down because society tends to take the shape similar to the laws which govern it. Will finance change now that we had the biggest shocks since the great depression in a bottom up sort of way or will we want gov to step in and say, this system is rigged too badly in favor of the extremely wealthy. No matter what top down or bottom up, we're talking about the actions of individuals, or how individuals behave in a group.

Open source is a great example of what people will do when given the opportunity to utilize their talents, for hardware to be used in novel ways that corporations wouldn't take risks on or didn't think of. I'd like to see a plan to give whoever invents an amazing battery a large cash reward, so long as they make it open source.

What are the limitations of this freedom of information? The Soviets spent so much energy controlling information. Controversial scholars, writers, all faced severe consequences for doing what we do in this society every day. Turned out not be such a threat. The internet didn't help us get better public officials. It didn't threaten the two major political party's dominance. It didn't solve our energy problems, or pollution. So what's limiting the rEVolution now? Too low of signal to noise ratio. Public indifference. Lack of empathy. Other larger countries, like China and India, not learning from our mistakes.

How can you stay optimistic?

I agree, a mix of top down bottom up solution is ideal. What has been driving me crazy is the amount of people here analyzing the current economic situation and giving their uninformed two cents. Suddenly every talk show host thinks they have a good enough grasp of economics that they can help the country by saying into the microphone what ever comes to their head. For the last 5 years at least, I've been on a mailing list called the Global Justice Movement. This group was forecasting the credit bubble bubble burst and discussing for five years how to go about reform. Five years of debate over very intellectual matters, from people who spent much of their life learning the history of economic thought, and now every slacker is shouting into the microphone. That's what I thought slacker uprising meant. I think to myself thank god this won't be a bottom up solution.

It's kind of indicative our society. It is ever more complex. We'll need ever more specialized people to maintain it.