Parking Places and Moving Spaces

Driving a car has become a joyless, inefficient and expensive way to get around. Cars predictably  kill on average 3,500 people and injure 200,000 people in the U.S. every month. At the current rate, CO2 from cars is the largest source of end-use sector emissions and has already or will soon push global warming over the tipping point and trigger runaway climate change. In just a decade or two, space to drive and park the car in the big cities will run out and the problem of gridlock will surpass the question of what type of energy should power the car.

Much of America and increasingly the world have become so dependent on cars that the predominant issue we must face is no longer about what kind of fuel should power the car. The overriding concern is that the massive amount of metal, plastic and other materials used to build automobiles for so many individuals, fueled by any form of energy amounts to a rate of consumption that is unsustainable. No matter how “green” the manufacturing and fueling process is, such levels of production-consumption associated with personal transportation, our planet cannot sustain.

Another reason the car-dependent way of life will come to an end, if not for the lack of energy, is the lack of space to drive and park the car in the cities. There is an urgent question we will soon have to answer: Will the transition from car-dependent to car-free living be orderly or disruptive? The Transition Race to Peace and Sustainability is proposing an orderly transition.