They paved over paradise, put up a parking lot

“They paved over paradise, put up a parking lot.”
- Joni Mitchell

Just a few months ago, it was a vast, green lawn. Not wild perhaps, but alive. Now it’s covered by crushed rock and weighted down by tons of metal, glass, and rubber. Nothing lives there anymore.

I used to come to the UofO Library and was lucky to find a seat at a bay window without someone already being there. Now only the last few seats to the left are taken – the seats that look out on the towering firs of the old graveyard. The rest are all empty. Who wants to look out on a parking lot?

I live in a small apartment near campus. Five guys live in the house across from me, each with his own car. The small parking lot between us is overflowing - bursting at its seams. It wasn’t made for this many vehicles. The neighboring lots are suffering from the same affliction. Car use among college kids is on the rise and that’s just the tip of the melting ice berg.

Over the last few decades, automobile use in America has skyrocketed. The number of registered vehicles in the U.S. has more than tripled from 74.5 million in 1960 to 247.5 million in 2005. But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening elsewhere.

In 1990, there were 1 million autos in China. That number has increased to over 17 million in 2007. That’s an increase of %1700 in less than twenty years. Automobile addiction isn’t just an American problem. It’s global.

I’m not talking about global warming either (though that is a serious issue). I’m talking about quality of life. I’m talking about life in general.

Cars require a support system – roads, parking lots, and concrete. As the use of the automobile increases, the amount of the Earth dedicated to it increases and the amount dedicated to anything else decreases. When I think of the current transportation system, I think of a grey slab of concrete reaching out with its crooked, deadly fingers and paving over everything in its path. That may sound a little extreme, but the tradeoff can’t be denied - more cars, means more pavement. More pavement, means less forests, less meadows, less prairies, less savannas, less wetlands, less habitat, less life.

So when I hear about new roads or auto-dependent developments such as Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, or suburbs further and further away from the urban core, I don’t get a warm fuzzy feeling about progress, jobs, new homes, and economic growth. I get a sad and sometimes angry feeling about what’s being lost.

Our auto-dependent transportation system is literally killing the planet. And each time we make a decision that adds to that system, we’re playing a part in that killing. Even if technological advances such as increased fuel efficiency, alternative fuels, and zero-emission vehicles could solve global warming, they can’t do a thing about the finite amount of surface space on planet Earth.

Ultimately, it comes down to what we want? Paradise or parking lots. If we choose the latter, we have nothing to worry about. We can go about our business and live life the way we’ve been living it for decades – more and more cars, more and more pavement.

If we choose the former, changes must be made. We need to get out of our cars.

Each and every one of us can do something right now to start that change. We can designate one day a week to ride a bike to work or take mass transit. We can car pool. We can combine trips. We can make informed purchasing decisions such as buying locally produced products or buying homes closer to where we work and shop. If we make it a priority, we can find all kinds of fun, healthy ways to make the world a better place.

Ultimately, it comes down to what kind of world we want to live in. And perhaps more importantly, what kind of world we want to leave for our children. One filled with green spaces and the diversity of life that depends on them? Or one filled with parking lots?

Fragile Truce?

While visiting my dad in Arizona, I spent most mornings reading the local rag - The Arizona Republic. Everyday there seemed to be an article related to the environment - a welcome surprise. Unfortunately, most of them were pretty wishy, washy. But it is a mainstream paper in a Republican state, so I guess that's progress. I wrote the following letter to the editor based on a cover story about climate change and the Southwest's drought. It didn't get printed - too radical and negative for a mainstream paper I suppose:

I appreciated The Republic's coverage of climate change (Sunday, November 25) and how it is already affecting Arizona. But I had to shake my head at the opening paragraph which describes how rising temperatures are breaking-down the water-delivery system and “upsetting a fragile truce between people and the dry land they inhabit.” What truce? Humans have taken what they want from the land with little regard of the consequences. That's why we're in this mess.

Every action has a reaction. It's the first law of thermodynamics. You cannot have 7 billion people on the planet clamoring for the resource intensive American lifestyle without major repercussions. And that's exactly what's going on.

There are no easy fixes. Until our society grows-up and realizes life-styles will have to change, the problems will only get worse. We can conform to the laws of physics voluntarily or the ecosystem will force us to do so against our will. It's our choice.