Americans live on a huge chunk of geography. It’s one of the reasons we have evolved such an unfortunate dependency on the passenger vehicle.
College road trip! Thanksgiving weekend, 1975. Round trip from
Cleveland to Atlanta. We drove 1,400 miles.
As the infant USA pushed its borders further West onto American Indian Land, European settlers satisfied their curiosities by moving further into wilderness.
In 1983 I spent three months traveling to Alaska and through the Great West. Madison to Fairbanks to San Diego to Madison: 9,207 miles.
Word spread in the 19th century that a new country was open to settlement. Immense European emigration followed, enlarging Eastern cities and states and extending into the old Louisiana Purchase.
I attended four years of college in Ohio; 746 miles round trip from home in Buffalo, NY. Sixteen round trips during the college career (girlfriend was in Buffalo). 11,936 miles.
Freedom of travel within the United States and the installation of the railroad allowed individuals to come and go to all corners of the nation. Members of family units found themselves living in different regions.
I’ve lived in Madison, WI for thirty years, while my parents remain in Buffalo, which is a 1,380 mile round trip. My brother has lived in New York City for this time period @ 1,930 miles per round trip. My sister lived for a time in Laramie, WY. That’s 1,914 miles round trip.
The automobile industry begged for the Great Roads Project of the early 1900’s (begun by bicycle proponents) and later the Interstate Highway System of the mid-1950’s. The network of concrete and macadam across the nation became more and more dense. (47,000 miles of I-System alone as of 2006)
My last guzzler, a GMC van, had 213,932 on the odometer when it was traded 4 years ago. It had 92,000 when I bought it. I owned it for 7 years. You do the math.
A Few More Zeroes for Good Measure -
The current average annual mileage for a passenger car is 12,334, a number collected from 247,000,000 registered passenger vehicles. Of course, some of these cars sit the full year in a barn while others are out ticking off 100,000 miles. We all sit somewhere in between. (1960 = 9,000 miles per vehicle.)
Total miles driven by passenger vehicles in the USA per year is this obese figure: 3,049,047,000,000
Groping ad nauseam through these and other statistics, we know that the automobile is embedded and in control of our daily movements, both local and distant. The fuel consumed, the emissions ejected, the infrastructures that cover natural spaces, and our mobile life styles are well beyond near-future sustainability. CAUTION is not just another road sign.
Shrinking Down -
So, what would be the effect, then, of sizing-down distances in everyone’s lives? What if, overnight, the interstate highway system evaporated into thin air; our quick-track roadways to everywhere were eliminated. Imagine, for a moment, that our personal borders were condensed to the size of Portugal or Ireland or Costa Rica or Cambodia. Of course, people travel outside their country boundaries for many reasons, but typical cultural movements of life can fit into these national borders.
What if United States automobile mobility ranges were generally reduced to the size of our own states? Choices for colleges remained closer to home. Choices of work were based on a maximum radius from the home town. Family members settled within closer proximities. Consumer goods were available locally. Choices of recreation were aimed at one’s own region. Multiple-car families were reduced. Multiple-rider trips were rewarded. Mass transit alternatives were networked within the region.
Think of the unrenewable fossil fuels and emissions that could be conserved; will need to be conserved.
To prepare for the tightening of oil availability in the near future, families and individuals will need to concentrate on this shrinking geography lifestyle. The sooner shorter distance patterns are established the easier a future transition may be. We can't sustain that three trillion mile figure above.
I'm not going to try to extrapolate figures into carbon tons, but the fact is that after the mug is produced in Beijing, it and its little buddies must travel, as the crow flies, 10,400 miles to Madison. I might as well use a cup made from recycled paper that comes from a sustainable forest in northern Wisconsin!
