I have found myself in the Midwest. A place that could have quaint small towns. Or at least cities that actually were cities instead of ghost towns. The East Coast is similar to Europe in that the cities can seem similar to those in Europe, except there are skyscrapers. Especially skyscrapers inside of cities. Philadelphia didn’t have them and Washington, DC still doesn’t. Midwestern towns seem to be that people just threw buildings wherever. Malls, Strip malls, and parking lots make up what I see of cities in this area.
Which gets to my next gripe: next to no public transportation. Driving in traffic is frustrating. Even more frustrating when the other drivers are impatient. Toss in that either a tram (light rail, trolly), metro (“subway trains”), or even trains in general can get you places much faster and efficiently than driving in a car. Also, a train can go from centre city to centre city, unlike a plane which requires an airport outside of town. Which requires some way to get into town.
There are a couple of reason I find myself finally writing this post. The first being that I am in the Midwest, where the sprawl will end up becomming decay. And looking at the landscape taking off from Frankfurt Airport. Like Paris, Frankfurt is an urban airport, but both of them are not found in sprawl. There are in rural areas.
Unlike the East coast, Europe has a difference between urban and rural. You watch a European show and see something which would look like it was far outside of town in the US and the town isn’t. You see small farms, towns, and cities when you fly over Europe. OK, not so much when you go to London, but I Brexited. Still, you can get into rural without having to drive a couple of hundred miles.
I prefer to keep my rural rural, and urban urban.
Food is less of an issue except in the midwest. I am a total baguette snob and finding one that is acceptable outside of France or Belgium is really hard. There are some that come close. Likewise, steak frites should be hanger or skirt steak, not strip steak. And no hope on moules-frites. But the beer can be pretty good.
But my real problems with the US are transportation and land use (urban planning).
I had writers block in a previous post on the topic of why I prefer Europe to the Americas where I had only come up with this stereotype on US food and Beer: that it’s basically tasteless and awful. The reality is that isn’t true. There are a lot of things I like about both places.
And there are some really good knock offs of Belgian Beers made in North America. And cheese.
I am also not alone since my French friends complain about Québecois culture as well. Québec City, well the old part, is super, but the rest of it leaves me wanting. I do like the Eastern Parts of the province since they are what I wish Brittany were like.
So, I am willing to trade space for crowded: especially since there are parts of Europe which can seem as spacious as North America. On the other hand, I like my old to be really old. There are settlements in the Americas which are old, but they are few and far between. Most of the early history has vanished for various reasons.
Which gets into transportation, especially high speed trains. The US was once a leader in that technology, but it made the mistake of believing what Charles Wilson was alleged to have said: “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” It would be nice if the US had a rail network that was equivalent to that of France instead of the reliance on cars and airplanes.
Still, I would rather be in Europe.
Maybe because it is far more acceptable to take my dogs everywhere.
On the other hand, I find my centre of gravity is located in Europe. It was formerly in Great Britain, but Brexit made it clear that I belong in Europe far more than North America or Britain. I would respond with far more places in Europe if you asked me where I wanted to go on holiday than any in the US/North America. I would respond with places in Québec if you limited me to North America, which I had to be more specific since some of Europe in in the Western Hemisphere. Given that choice, it would be a lot of places in France which are in the Western Hemisphere!
And St. Pierre and Miquelon are in the North America category and very much on the list. They are part of France.
The reality is that my centre of gravity and interests are in Europe, which really has nothing to do with the offerings from either.
I far prefer public transport to cars, but I currently live between two homes (the secret to a happy marriage–live separately). I have too much crap to take on the train: toss in they are now getting crowded. Loads of other whining.
Likewise, public transportation has the same problem: especially with two dogs. Even when they in bags since you take up way more space than is acceptable. Slightly more acceptable with that much crap on a train, but not when the train is packed out.
I’m happy as heck that driving is being discouraged, but there are now too many issues to car ownership to make it worthwhile (I’ve taken up leasing the past few years for a bunch of reasons). There’s congestion tax, parking, traffic, etc.
I live in a city which was not designed for automobile traffic and it shows. The average speed over a century ago was about 8 mph. My new car tells me my average speed and it’s 12 mph in the city! Of course, that’s due to traffic and traffic controls. Not to mention streets which were meant for horses, not cars.
Seriously, a trip of about 16 miles takes me an hour!
Anyway, I am currently mulling over getting rid of the car (again) for Zipcar since that takes care of most of the issues other than slow speed.
I should be happy that car ownership is being discouraged. Not to mention I’ve done pretty everything I can to reduce my carbon footprint.
Or as Lenin is supposed to have said, “When we hang the capitalists, they will have sold us the rope.”
One of the things the right and Libertarians like to push is the free market system, which they don’t really like. They like it as long as they can control the rules making it into a game of Monopoly: where they win.
On the other hand, they run scared when their market share is threatened.
The real problem is that there isn’t really a “free market system” out there. Governmental decisions can act as market forces even if they aren’t set forth as being economically based. For example, building highways rather than public transportation has effected US society in ways which have been detrimental to its interests (or “Detroit: the city that committed suicide by favouring one industry with a very limited lifespan”).
The right can continue to try to use emotion to sway people to vote against their interests, but that cannot go on for very long once people realise they have been had. Once that happens not only will people’s economic decisions change, but so will their voting decisions.
then you can bet they will do fuck all about their addiction to oil: let alone the fucked up economy. Which is kind of why I haven’t been posting lately
I had finally gotten around to watching the Panorama show BP: In deep Water that I mentioned in this blog post. And you can see here:
Add in the rather cynical line that BP stands for “Beyond Petroleum”.
I imagine that the US will get around to handling its Oil addiction when they are done with shooting each other. Gun rights are far more important than: education, health care, housing, the economy.
I’ve been wanting to mention public transit and how it is yet another thing where the US is crap. Not that the US needs to be so far behind the rest of the world. This article at the Huffington post gets into how the US’s PT infrastructure was trashed by the automobile interests. The amusing bit is that the highway infrastructure is now falling apart as part of the means for keeping petrol cheap. There is another interesting twist to this in that infrastructure repair is one of the methods for economic stimulus.
I find it hard to say the US is good at much of anything, other than firearms ownership, when it can’t provide decent health care, education, housing, public transportation, and other quality of living rights. The cities in the US don’t provide for decent nutrition for urban dwellers (think of all the brilliant excuses for this happening).
It’s really pathetic how easily distracted US citizens are from issues of real importance by wedge issues.
Let’s start with my carbon footprint. I have no effing idea what exactly the number is! I assume it’s low since Ilive an environmntally friendly lifestyle. It was small when I estimated it.
I no longer have a car. I’d love to say it was due to various green reasons. In reality, I did that after it was broken into in an allegedly secure garage. Although, various other green reasons (convenience of public transportation, cost of running the thing, the fact that I usually walk, and so on) did factor in to the decision.
I recycle so much that my house feels a bit like Alice’s Restaurant where they “didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time”. Well, I have to, but I am recycling all this paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and whatever else can be recycled.
I haven’t flown in ages, preferring trains to planes. High speed trains are the thing anyway!
I am amazed that people can be scammed about Global Warming:
In the climate field, there are a number of issues which are no longer subject to fundamental debate in the community. The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’. The attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion. To the extent that anyone has said that the scientific debate is over, this is what they are referring to. In answer to colloquial questions like “Is anthropogenic warming real?”, the answer is yes with high confidence.
Anyway, it seems that James Hansen, who heads the earth sciences division of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is critical of so-called “cap and trade” plans that would allow industries to continue burning fossil fuel as long as they offset their excesses by purchasing credits that would go to reducing carbon emissions elsewhere. He says that wouldn’t do the trick. What needs to be done is a shift in the sources of energy production from carbon based (coal and petroleum) to renewable sources. “Energy isn’t the problem, carbon is the problem.”
The science behind climate change isn’t a fad and it isn’t new. You might be surprised that it started back with Joseph Fourier. Of course, some people doubt evolution as well: “It’s just a theory”.
This video is super, but you need to watch it all the way through.
Hey, I’ve supported the Centre for Alternative Technology for nearly 30 years! I am sorry thet The Earth Centre in Doncaster is no longer fucntioning as a similar site. The Earth Centre’s most famous bit was that it appeared in the remade version of the BBC television series Survivors (2008 & 2009). I wish that alternative and ecology education centres were much more common.
Anyway, it seems that a lot of people are dragging their feet on the environmental movement because they are being conned by a highly charged right wing media machine. Contrarians employ such rhetorical devices such as arguing that the “science is settled” (what science is ever settled?). They are pushing public policy solutions that ignore the unsettled parts of the science namely all the uncertainties around the scope and net impact of AGW and downplay the tremendous costs and risks associated with such policies and the highly debatable long term benefits of keeping the environmental status quo.
Anyway, I haven’t been too impressed with the US leadership, in particular, Barack Obama. The British government has been slightly better. For some reason, the right wing fringe elements are not as powerful in the UK as they are in the US (Lord Monckton aside. But the whole world needs to get on board here as the future of the planet is at stake.
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