Where we reconsider transportation

David: Where are we?

To review, as your EcoDharma Doula, for the next four months, I will offer you a monthly contemplation on what is commonly called ‘Getting to Zero.’ Science tells us we have 25 years to reduce our emissions to Zero. We are looking at a carbon reduction diet, which begins by looking at the big picture. We wish to turn the right side to Zero by 2050 or:

(Lighting + Heating + Cooling + cooking + driving + refrigeration + embodied energy + heating water + utilities + gardening + vampire energy) – (Clean Energy we Produce or Offset) = (Everything we Use)

The list is narrowing considerably from when we began. This month, we are investigating transportation options. At some point in our decarbonizing future, your automobile will require excessive maintenance due to aging: it may be auto-hospice time. We have 25 years to reach Net Zero, and most mechanical contraptions must be replaced in this time frame. Fossil-fueled transportation easily accounts for 10% of your household’s carbon footprint. Purchasing an EV is a significant expense, as is a new internal combustion engine (ICE).

A little background: At the turn of the 20th century, horses were the dominant means of transportation. Despite horsepower’s drawbacks, the industry fought the nascent automobile challenger. Interestingly, the automobile industry had to decide between electric or ICE vehicles, and ICE won. The thing we call Range Anxiety, running out of battery, existed way back then.

Two of our fellow collectivists will discuss the subject with you this month: Paul Wegener and Gregory Webster, who will help us reduce our transportation footprint and inform us of our upcoming transportation decisions.

Paul and Gregory take the Wheel.

Version 17 Sept 2024

Commentary on transportation and climate change

Transportation and ego-clinging are intimately connected. Our desires drive us, as we know, and therefore they drive us to cause harm. I summarize the history, then the technical aspect, then discuss the personal implications. I hope you take them to heart. Renunciation is the foot of meditation, but it isn’t easy. A trash truck just passed with a sign on its side: “Being green is easy.” Ha!

Transportation is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the US and Canada, roughly 40% of US emissions. We have indulged in petroleum to move us for over one hundred years. This is not news. The house I live in was built in a new suburb in 1910; the streets were built 45 feet wide to accommodate the anticipated traffic. The neighborhood was served by street cars until the 1940’s, but the automobiles had taken over long before. Now this built environment dependent on petroleum has taken over the planet. I read how a farmer’s family decided in 1917 to buy a Model T instead of installing a bathroom for the same price. She said “It will get us to town.”

We have been getting around by walking for the 2 million years since proto-hominids first walked upright, 70,000 generations. Our new culture of speed began 200 years ago with the trotting horse, capable of sustaining 10 miles per hour. The horse population in the US peaked in 1917, by which time about 20 million cars had been built. Currently there are 300 million cars in the US.

Bicycles still predominate in some places; the safety bike we use today was invented in 1885. I visited a small city in Holland where the biggest problem was bicycle parking. They had an acre of two-tiered bicycle park at the train station, which overflowed. Bikes were pedaling along five abreast on their designated roads. The bicycle is the most efficient transportation invented and I have been using them for 65 years, but of course I also had a car for 30 of those years. Our built environment gives us no choice. We built this environment in the past century, a sliver of time, and now we must rebuild.

Technical aspects of cars and CO2 – for your interest if you want it

One gallon of gas contains 34 kilowatt-hours (KwH) of energy, so a car uses 1.1 KwH per mile at 30 mpg. But is also takes 48 KwH to produce that gasoline, from drilling to refining to your tank, so your car really uses 2.8 KwH per mile. A Tesla Model 3 uses 0.34 KwH per mile, plus .15 KwH to make the electricity, so 6 times as efficient. Speed is similar factor; the air resistance rises as the square of the speed, so 75 mph uses twice the fuel of 53 mph.

Gasoline is made of hydrocarbons, one carbon and 2 hydrogens strung together. When it burns, this becomes 1 CO₂ and 1 H₂O. The weight goes from 14 atomic units for gasoline to 46 units CO₂ because the oxygen weighs 16 units. A gallon of gas weighs 6 pounds and creates 20 pounds of CO₂when burned, plus takes 28 pounds CO2 to produce. Is it any wonder that cars represent 35% of US carbon emissions? Transportation accounts for 70% of petroleum consumption. (DOE) According to the EPA, the average car generates 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year at 22 mpg and driven 11,500 miles; the average American drives 14,500 miles per year now, for 14 metric tons emission counting production costs. Generating the juice the Tesla uses releases 0.4 KG of CO2 per mile; in a year that is 2 metric tons.

The purpose of considering the technical aspects is to create context for how we act.

Back to the personal, how do we deal with it.

Personally, I gave away my car 26 years ago and get by with public transportation and my bicycle; I also accept rides if we are going the same place. Public transportation is not convenient, but that is the only way not to emit carbon by traveling. If you want to understand “privilege,” you can experience it every time you get into your car. Your convenience is more important than the consequences. Many will still find driving choiceless, since they live in rural or sub-urban places too far to walk or bicycle and no bus. There are a lot of places you cannot go without a car, such as our land centers. We all share our Doula’s dream that we could walk to nice stores; this dream also has unintended consequences. I lived in Baltimore in the 1970’s, when the traffic became unbearable and many white people moved to gentrified neighborhoods downtown. Their suburbs became affordable refuges for the poor, but inaccessible. We see it today as exuburbs de-populate. The thighbone remains connected to the knee bone.

Rebecca Solnit said: “Let’s talk about climate change as violence. Rather than worrying about whether ordinary human beings will react turbulently to the destruction of the very means of their survival, let’s worry about that destruction—and their survival.” –The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness, 2014.

Benevolence, wishing the best for all beings, and acting accordingly, is the only sane approach. If you think I’m trying to make you feel guilty, you’re wrong. Anytime you have an ordinary problem you try to fix it. This is an ordinary problem. If you want to know how I feel: it’s heartbreaking. People just driving around. Discussing this with a friend, he said we cannot sustain our civilization without driving. He hasn’t seen the future; I try to live there.

Why go against the flow? As Buddhists, we have learned that Karma is what we produce with negative actions; it stays with us and ripens in the future. We have also been taught that a human birth endowed with positive aspects is as rare as a sea turtle surfacing every hundred years and surprisingly, its head emerges into a life-saver ring floating in the ocean. We need tremendous merit to get another favorable birth, which we get by refraining from negative actions and performing virtuous actions. Merit is a product of awakening to our own negativity and doing otherwise. The result of merit is greater clarity and love. These are vital to finding a favorable rebirth; Gampopa outlines the process in Chapter 5, Section B. (1) of the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. I discussed the difficulty of returning as a human with a well-favored birth and finding the Dharma with John Rockwell. He said he wasn’t sure how he found Dharma in this life, but he did, so he is confident about the next life. The number of human births is declining, and the deaths of millions is upon us in the next fifty years. Favorable births will be rare and the Dharma is also not prospering.

We can overcome the karma we have accumulated by acknowledging the negativity and refraining from doing any more. Gampopa gives a detailed description in Chapter 9, section II. A similar process happens in AA, where we acknowledge our negativity, reject our addiction and vow to remain sober, day by day. Does it work? My favorite story is about Angulimala. He was a famous bandit who murdered many people and wore a necklace of their fingers. When he reached 107 fingers, he thought that since 108 is such an auspicious number, he would murder the Buddha, who was famous by then. Someone warned the Buddha and he ran away; later Angulimala changed his attitude, took refuge and overcame his negative karma by this method.

I do not want to make you feel bad, but seeing our situation with clarity cannot be bad. When we transform anger and aggression and feel our heart, sadness comes. Reducing the harm is very quantitative; we can actually measure it and act accordingly, reducing our carbon and methane footprint. Personally, I don’t feel deprived just because I won’t drive, I still have plenty. Cutting back on meat, heating in winter, all the small ways we can reduce this footprint are fine. It is very personal, but also consequential.

Pass the salt, please…

David’s Summary Bookend

“The age of centralized, command-and-control, extraction-resource-based energy sources (oil, gas, coal and nuclear) will not end because we run out of petroleum, natural gas, coal, or uranium. It will end because these energy sources, the business models they employ, and the products that sustain them will be disrupted by superior technologies, product architectures, and business models. Compelling new technologies such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy industry as we know it.” ― Tony Seba, Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030

When I close my eyes and imagine the ideal world, the automobile industrial complex is limited to distributing resources to walkable neighborhoods. I no longer need an automobile; when I do, I car share. Everything I need is available at my village center, which is a walk away. To venture further out, there are abundant rapid transit options. My vehicle miles traveled approach zero, then go negative. I experience the local economy Magnifier Effect in action. There is a lot less rushing around and more deep appreciation for where I happen to be.

This opens a way toward a profound, brilliant, just, powerful, and all-victorious world. Baby steps, many of them, will help a lot.

And, remember:

“Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt