2. Publish my next book, on sustainability leadership (in conversations with big publishers already)
3. Continue my mission: to help change American (and global) culture on sustainability and stewardship from expecting deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore to expecting rewarding emotions and lifestyles, as I see happen with everyone I lead to act for their intrinsic motivations.
In my case the emotions have been joy, fun, freedom, connection, meaning, and purpose.
The videos are short, informative, engaging, and thought-provoking. Hopefully action-provoking too, since my country, the USA, can use a lot of that change. People here act like it's impossible, but they thought so there too. It's possible and role models help.
Have you considered that the causation might be going the other way around?
It seems like you're saying that "My town has to be built for cars because we live so far away from everything. Obviously the Netherlands can afford to build for people because they live so close together."
It could also be the case that people in your town live so far away from everything because it is built for cars, whereas since the Netherlands is built for people they can live close together.
We don't live far away from everything, we just have less actual benefit from public infrastructure because there are less of us using anything we build. And I mean anything, because there are ~1/35 as many of us using it.
Right, the overall density is a coarse measure of the resources available for infrastructure (presuming that they will at least correlate with population and distance). If you have higher density, it is very likely there will be relatively more resources to deploy in a given area.
That is the same argument. The Netherlands is denser, so it makes more sense to put in public infrastructure, which makes the place with that infra being more attractive. And I guess there's a switch-over point for population density where being less dense also reinforces itself and vice versa.
The point is: sub-urban US could be designed to be more dense to be on the other side of that switch over point.
That hardly defeats the argument. Saying that 40% of "urban journeys" are <=2 miles does not convince me that I want to make the other 60% of "urban journeys" that much more inconvenient as well as the 100% of non-"urban journeys". In America, "practical everyday journeys (to school, shops, work)" are quite often farther than 2 miles, and it really shows that the author has never lived out here. Within 2 miles, I've got a pizza place, a sports bar, a Chevron, and a dentist's office. My old high school, grocery stores, heck even Walmart, just about everything is farther than 2 miles away. "The shops" are about 10-15 miles out. Ikea? That's about 35 miles away. Even when I lived in the city center, it was still 10 miles away! Now mind you, I actually don't mind how far things are, but only because we have great roads and a culture of driving fast. I just keep seeing these bike propagandists dismiss valid concerns by saying nothing more than "stroad bad, America bad", and it's honestly just annoying to see so many out of touch with my day-to-day reality
You miss my point. The Netherlands has really nice inter-city bicycle infrastructure, the thing my region lacks (it's easy enough to get around on quiet grid streets). They aren't in any way affordable, so we designate the US highway shoulder as a national bicycle route.
There's a not-yet-connected separated path growing between here and the smaller town ~10 miles away, but the local casino paid for a bunch of that!
That's an ironic reply in this context. 600 km of cycling infrastructure in my region would have a fraction of the users (and thus a fraction of the benefit) as the same 600 km built in the Netherlands. We have ~300,000 people occupying a slightly larger land area than the 17 million people living in the Netherlands.
> People choose platforms because of their functionality, not because of their code licensing status
I choose software based on the freedom behind their licenses and always will. I value my relationships with others over mere technical differences.
I hope you at least learn something of our existence, besides that without people who think and act this way, there'd be no Wikipedia, Linux, Wordpress, or alternative to Windows.
people chose those things due to superiority, not any dogmatic reason. i.e. wordpress was there and does what you expect it to. (besides, linux displaces windows on the server, but not on the desktop for reasons.)
imagine an alternate universe where wikipedia was a ghost town devoid of information, but hey, it's open!
Historically, this was true but no longer. There is a fraction of the life that the ocean used to support. A great source is the book Once and Future World, which describes captains' logs before steamship. They reported that ships at sea would be stopped in the middle of the ocean, far from land, by schools of fish that densely packed. Today, people are happy to see a whale if they visit the coast. Not long ago, people could see whales as far as the eye could see all day long some times of year.
Also, to call the waters "oxygen-starved" in response to climate change misses the cause and effect. Specifically, human behavior is causing these things. They aren't just happening. If we change our behavior, we can change the results.
Clarifying the cause and effect helps clarify what to do about it besides passively watch it happen.
Even farther back in history there have been massive anoxic ocean events in the fossil records. Based on what we've discovered they tend to correlate with other mass extinctions.
Also the difference between outdoors a generation ago and outdoors now. Depending on where you are, the decrease in birdcalls is huge, but happens so slowly that most people don't know what we're missing. That loss has been happening over longer than a generation or two.
Also, there are fewer places where you hear no car noises or planes at all.
I’m personally of an opinion that’s a good thing — that means progress and a more robust civilization.
I don’t think there’s a limitation on places that are relatively silent. In other words, you can get a relatively silent world even 30 min for nearly every place on this map.
That said, I support forest preserves and places like the boundary waters
Where they intentionally create preserves with no motors or human civilization.
I’ll also mention the decline in bird populations also startled me. For much of my life I went to the woods and heard so many birds. Even in the past few years I’ve notified the rapid decline.
That said, I always try to put it in perspective. 100% of the trees, grass, birds, bugs, etc in North America only came around the last 10,000 - 20,000 years. I’m not sure what is causing no the bird decline (I suspect it’s pesticides, with the protective agencies not regulating effectively or invasive species such as cats). I’m sure natural will adapt to fill the niche, but it’s definitely different.
Even as part of the normal seasonal cycle, I don’t notice how much less birdsong there is until it’s spring once again and the air is filled with bird calls. I don’t notice it getting quieter overs the weeks leading into summer.
Victims of Stockholm syndrome. They were conditioned to associate the pleasure of effortless movement - such as you get silently on a sailboat or downhill skiing or biking - with the noise of internal combustion contraptions.
I just got back from picking up litter, though I do it every other day too. People keep picking up the habit, so it's spreading. I've been on TV twice for plogging too.
Everyone thinks it will be dirty and ineffective, but then finds it oddly satisfying.
> Watching lecture videos is now a major part of many students’ university experience.
This sentence is the most important, describing a failure in education. Once I learned to teach through project-based learning, I'm never going back, largely because of student feedback, that they learn more and are more engaged.
I'm not saying we don't learn from lecture at all, but a lot less relative to other ways. Maybe some subjects or professors work with lecturing, but not subjects that I studied in college.
I can't believe people are downvoting your post. If they want to influence someone, understanding them is how to start. Saying "I'm right, you're wrong" provokes resistance. They want others to change to save lives but aren't willing to change themselves to save lives. Listening and making people feel understood goes a lot farther than facts, numbers, and orders.
First, no they don't. Look up successes in Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, South Korea, and other nations that lowered their birth rates through noncoercive means that improved health, longevity, prosperity, equality, and stability.
Second, not lowering birth rates involved billions of people suffering and dying. There is no option where we keep living above sustainable levels without consequence.
1. Keep building the podcast
2. Publish my next book, on sustainability leadership (in conversations with big publishers already)
3. Continue my mission: to help change American (and global) culture on sustainability and stewardship from expecting deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore to expecting rewarding emotions and lifestyles, as I see happen with everyone I lead to act for their intrinsic motivations.
In my case the emotions have been joy, fun, freedom, connection, meaning, and purpose.