1) Better transportation will make our economy more efficient because it allows goods to be transported easier and faster. If there is a more efficient way of transporting goods it will keep the costs of goods down. Also, these goods could reach even more people and help branch out to new buyers throughout the world.
2) Better communication would be if electronics could run on less energy. We could use solar power to power our electronics and not need to have them plugged in all the time. With better communication people would not have to travel so often. They would be able to talk from their homes or offices, which would cut down their use of cars, trains, planes, etc.
Questions
1) Why does America use transportation for everything we do? Why do we not bike or walk like people do in many other countries?
2) Why is there not more talking about the improvement of public transportation? if people took the bus or subway more often would it make a big impact on the use of our energy ?
Here is a link that talks about the future of transportation:
The video is interesting. I could see Zipcar as one part of a reworking of our cities and habits in a low-energy future, but we shouldn't see it as a silver bullet. If it's as effective as its promoters say, it will reduce the cost of driving, causing even more driving and potentially pushing total energy use _up_.
ReplyDeleteBiking and walking are transportation, so presumably your question is about _mechanized_ transportation. And we use that so much because it's convenient and it's been cheap. We've also built up an ideology that says that cars are the normal way of getting around, and that they provide independence and freedom. Yet we've made a series of decisions, starting after World War II, to favor driving over public transport, walking, and biking, that have had in some ways the opposite effect. If you own a car and can drive, you have a degree of independence. Yet there are many, many places in America where distance, lack of sidewalks, lack of nearby stores, lack of public transit leave people with no practical alternative to driving. And what if, for some reason, you can't drive? Too young, too old, blind, certain medications, too poor to afford a car. By some calculations that covers almost 50% of the US population, yet they almost never figure in our discussions of how transportation dollars should be spent and what makes a city a good place to live in and get around in. Highly dysfunctional.