Why Road Show? Climate Change & Fossil Fuels

[Part One in a series of posts about the Praxis Summer Road Show whys and hows]

As we race beyond new thresholds for what activity our planet can sustain, we are experiencing the beginning stages of dramatic and visible long term shifts in our climate. Drought, sea level rise, shifting seasons that local gardeners have certainly noticed, and more dire realities reflect a new normal that we must adapt to even if it is too late to mitigate. These are scientific, measurable realities that I am very comfortable affirming. Against this urgent backdrop, we’re racing to the bottom of the barrel of fossil fuels in hopes of keeping everything growing, moving forward, and turning a profit until…later.

A well-funded minority are amplified and prolong a false debate about human’s role in this process and this delays serious action on the part of business, other institutions, and individuals. It delays the possibility of resistance and exploring other options, and yet people are resisting and exploring regardless. The psychology of climate change denial interests me and I plan to focus on the cultural and interpersonal aspects of a fight like the one over fracking. We can talk about the science, the aesthetics, the impacts, but at the end of the day it will come down to the question of pursuing long term sustainability at the cost of short term economic and social risk vs. securing short term stability for the economy at the cost of destroying natural systems and long term planetary stability. Planet vs. Jobs. The emotional battle of hope and fear is the really interesting terrain here and probably the most useful frame for understanding how we can navigate our differences with empathy and tenacity and courage. I also want to be thinking about the contradictions inherent in this trip.

For instance, while focusing on the damage of fossil fuels, our dependence on them, and their inextricable link to climate change, I will be driving thousands of miles in a car around the rural west. The irony of that situation has not escaped me, but it’s the best option for ensuring flexibility in my itinerary while traveling in an area that really only supports infrastructure for cars. If the western rural U.S. had robust mass transit infrastructure, I would use it, but it doesn’t. On the eastern leg I won’t be driving because other options are widely available. But if I’m going to be fully honest, there’s more to the idea of a road trip than simple necessity.

Despite the fact that I don’t like car culture and am really uncomfortable with the individualistic mindset that leads to one person in one car using huge amounts of resources to get around and that I love my bicycle so dearly and love to walk and relish the street level interactions that I have as a pedestrian or cyclist that I don’t have as a driver, I am still susceptible to the romance of the road. The open road, the road trip, is part of our mythology and it’s deep in our cultural psyche even in my case as I critique it. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about that as I grapple with it. The best penance I can do is give other people rides and maximize the people per gallon ratio along the way. Car infrastructure, the interstate highway system, was the last major federal investment the U.S. made and as oil’s role in our lives necessarily diminishes, the antiquity of our system will likely be revealed. What kinds of adaptive infrastructure could we be building at that scale with the technology and knowledge we now possess?

Is it possible to adapt our societal designs beyond growth and fossil fuel driven models? How are we going to have to adapt socially to living together in different ways? If we are going to address climate change meaningfully, we will have to share more and move away from our highly individualized models. But what does it mean to live collectively and what are some best practices for that? To be continued.