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Sunday, October 28, 2007

A Picket in Santa Cruz

Yesterday I witnessed a local picket against the planning of spraying Santa Cruz with a substance to avoid an allegedly dangerous moth. "Well, that´s fine that these people speak up" I thought, and payed no more attention to this until later the same day.

Then it struck me. "Ok, so these people are getting all worked up about these *possible* dangers. In the same time, the exact same people will after the picket go back into their cars and start spraying the entire planet with something they *know* is very dangerous. And they will not only do a one-time dispersement of a couple of gallons of chemicals, this little picketing group of fifty will generate hundreds of tonnes of particles, CO2 and NOX."

I have nothing against people speaking up about possible risks of spraying dangerous substances. However, the issue above is just another example of how deeply rooted our view is on our own lifes that it is always someone else that is the culprit.

We need to get out of our cars. Really. And the first thing to do is not to rush into Podcars or other kinds of technology - that will come anyway. It is to just start walking, going by bike and make sure that we use fossil based transport only when it is really needed.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Welcome

I am looking forward to inform about my interesting and difficult work in the field of sustainable transportation. I will cover Podcars, Light Rail, High Speed Rail, Bicycles, Walking and of course cars - and all issues surrounding transportation such as energy, pollution, estetics, social & behaviroural problems etc.

I recently made a speach at the Uppsala Podcar City Conference, please see
here