I smoked one or two cigarettes in my teen years, decided there was no pleasure in it, and stopped. Now I'm indoors to avoid the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. The air alert here is presently "unhealthy". The counterclockwise flow of air from a low off the Atlantic Coast is pumping the smoke down from the North where Canada is having a record early wildfire season. I'll leave it to the climatologists to work out attribution but I've never experienced anything like this until last year with the smoke from the Oregon fires. This is worse. Even indoors, I can feel it, though I'm of good health. My eyes are slightly stinging. Outside, the sky is a homogenous white. At times, it gets dark with the skies colored what I would call apocalyptic orange.
The northeast has been relatively free of climate change effects but now we're seeing drier conditions and now this. We have to change our way of life, our system. We may have to give up things we take for granted. I think the car must disappear. Population clusters that put what we need within walking distance and linked to each other by rail. I don't think electric cars will do it.
The thing about changing our way of life to reverse or arrest climate change is that there is such a wide turning radius that no one living today would see the results in their lifetime. As an act of will, we would have to do it out of altruism, concern for generations who would come after us. I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more likely is that there are going to be a lot of events like what is happening in California. Insurance companies are starting to decline to insure property in California because they are losing money with all the wildfire and flood damage. If property isn't insurable we will see a drop in property values and people leaving instead of moving there. Which may mean a larger concentration in places where there is less climate related damage. Maybe that will result in more people living within walking distance of work and shopping, I don't know.
Rail service? That would be nice. We used to have a decent amount of it here, in my lifetime. Now if we want to ride on Amtrak ( the only passenger train left here) , we have to drive hours to one of three places in the state where you can board the train in the middle of the night. The schedules and transit times are pretty iffy. There are trains carrying freight but they barrel through towns at 80 mph. A lot of freight is carried by semi trucks. Just about one out of three vehicles on the interstate are semis. Makes it really fun to drive to my hometown for four and a half hours dodging those guys. I don't see that changing until it no longer makes economic sense.
Unfortunately it’s unlikely to happen, Stanley. The PTB will not invest in that kind of infrastructure. Especially since the GOP is in charge of most state governments, and may be fully in charge of the federal government for decades to come. (And the costs would be prohibitive) Effective libertarian control of the entire country will happen if the GOP wins the 2024 presidency and controls Congress. They won’t waste any time passing legislation that effectively destroys our democracy, giving them a long term authoritarian hold on what happens in this country. Look what has happened in Florida and Texas already - systematically destroying freedom of speech, academic freedom, religious freedom, and dictating to corporations about selected HR policies and programs being prohibited, and dictating the companies’ investment policies. They are systematically changing election districts, procedures, and laws to ensure their permanent hold on government at all levels. They’ve been spending a lot of time in Hungary to figure out how they can pull off something similar here. The SC is in the pocket of the libertarians and are already undoing regulations that protect the environment. Planning mitigation strategies for climate change will not be part of their agenda! They don’t even want to invest in fixing up the decaying and dangerous infrastructure we have now. And you can’t pile the millions of people who live in the suburbs and in small towns across the country into cities. As is true in most major cities in the US, DC condos and apt rents are already unaffordable for most people. Row houses and single family homes are even more expensive. Few people want to live like Manhattanites, crowded into shoebox sized apartments and crowded everywhere, including just walking on a sidewalk. Having driven coast to coast seven times during the last 25 years, including a trip only two years ago, I know that a good bit of this country is pretty empty. The first step would be to make sure the current railroad system is strengthened and improved to link major urban areas with high speed trains and the tracks that would be needed to support them. They might be able to revive some of the dying rust belt towns with incentives to corporations to build plants and office complexes in them and support local infrastructure development, along with high speed rail connections from them to regional hub cities. But it costs a fortune and takes a very long time. In the DC suburbs, in 2017, construction started on a new 16 mile light rail segment of the DC Metro systems to connect suburban communities in Maryland. The project has already cost billions and is currently 4 1/2 years behind schedule with the projected total cost between 50-100% higher than originally planned. The funding is a combination of state and federal. Most corporate development in the DC metro area has been in the suburbs for more than 35 years. Most people living in the suburbs here also work in the suburbs. The DC Metro was designed as a spoke system with all lines going into the city - back when most jobs were there. Now they are in edge cities in the suburbs of DC.
ReplyDeleteSecond might be to encourage building a permanent virtual workforce whenever possible. That would mean beefing up the internet system, extending it to places with poor internet services now. But none of this will happen during my lifetime except perhaps increasing the size of the virtual workforce permanently.
We have yellowish smokey clouds here too. Air quality is Code Red, meaning people should avoid strenuous exercise outdoors or stay inside if they have asthma or similar.
Katherine, most people in Florida, and pretty much up the east coast near the ocean to NC cannot get homeowners insurance anymore except from government operated entities. Now it’s happening in California.I’m guessing some of the flood prone interior areas of the country, including in the mid- west may be next.
About encouraging a virtual workforce, that is already happening. That may be one of the few good things coming out of the pandemic, that we found out a lot of people can work from home just as efficiently. Schools? Not so much, that is a different story. But fewer people commuting will definitely cut down on carbon emissions. And more people can choose where they actually want to live.
Delete"About encouraging a virtual workforce, that is already happening."
DeleteIt's kind of on-and-off. When COVID was in full swing, every office worker was sent home to work. It went against every fiber of supervisors' beings (supervisors universally believe that no work gets done unless supervisors are yelling, abusing and breathing down employees' necks all day), but they put up with it for as long as they could, which was about 18 months. Then they put their foots down. (Feet down?) So for the last 18 months or so, office occupancy has been going up, in part because some employees miss the office camaraderie, but much more because supervisors believe workers are more productive in the office and insisted they work at least part-time from the office. But now, more recently, return-to-work has plateaued. Some companies want their workers to stay home (and in fact have downsized their office spaces); and the workers who actually are willing to return, have returned by now, so the ones still working home are the recalcitrants (like me).
Columnist Mona Charen had a little different take: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2022/5/6/23060026/climate-catastrophists-global-warming-environment-mona-charen-column
ReplyDelete"We need to adapt, improvise, and innovate, we should switch to nuclear power as fast as possible, and stop terrifying the kids.
The failure of serious people to grapple with climate change with balance, maturity, and realism is nearly as serious a problem as climate change itself."
However, I would add that we need to make cold fusion happen. For a lot of reasons ramping up conventional nuclear power in a big way isn't going to happen.
Anne, not just cities but small towns can do the job. I grew up in a row home outside Philadelphia, not an apartment. Philadelphia itself was mostly row homes. As a kid, I walked to pharmacies, supermarkets, movie theaters, school, church. As a teenager, I could ride on subways into center city and visit the Philadelphia library. No car in the family until 1961.
ReplyDeleteThe Repubs won't do anything but the Democrats aren't much better. They're part of the box in which Americans trap their minds.
I just see a lot of the "fixes" for the problem to be more self-delusion. People don't want to give up cars but cars are unaffordable for more and more people. Electric cars are not getting cheaper. Availability of cars is following the money which is becoming more and more concentrated.
I grew up in single family homes - first in the LA suburbs, then in a tiny, rural community in the mountains. Nobody walked anywhere. Row houses weren’t around in either community in those days, although there were row houses in San Francisco. When I was a freshman in college I went to SF for the first time. It was also the first time I ever saw row houses. Most houses in LA were single family, including in the neighborhoods where the less affluent population lived - whites, African Americans and other less affluent minorities. I’m a Californian - pretty much everyone had a car, usually two. We can’t go back and redo the development that occurred organically due to local conditions over the last century and more ago. There was lots of space to spread out, once away from the east coast cities. There still is. People like space, they like backyards where the kids can play, where they can entertain, and they do need cars. My husband is an aerospace engineer, but he also had to be flexible in his tiny company that worked mostly on futuristic concepts. So he once worked on a project for Ford to do basic research into development of a fuel cell engine. Their work didn’t lead to a product - then - but I believe that since people don’t want to give up their cars, technology will eventually produce a solution. Bikes aren’t the panacea that some want them to be. They have built bike lanes everywhere around here - in the suburbs, not just downtown. They have put up racks of rental bikes everywhere also. Most of this bike culture infrastructure is seldom used. On week-ends I see that some bikes are gone from the rental racks, and occasionally a biker or two in one of the bike lanes, but mostly they are unused. It’s tough to do the grocery shopping for a family with three kids in tow - on a bike. The new suburban developments around here are much farther from the city, but they are attempting to emulate small towns with little town centers with nice parks, and where shops and services are located. But even then, most of the homes are single family and too far away for walking to these new town centers. But bike paths are being integrated from the start in the new developments, separated from car traffic - safer- so they might be more frequently used in the future.
DeleteTwo of my husband's cousins have had children killed in bike accidents. One was a teenager delivering newspapers in his small PA town. The other was a college professor, about 35, riding to the university in Edinburgh Scotland where he taught, as he usually did. Lots of bikes mixed with traffic there. Lots of fatalities too.
Yes. Once cars are in the mix, things get dangerous. I had an uncle who was mentally diminished. He was hit by a car when he was playing in the street when he was four. How many cars were around in 1918? I'm glad my car has some pedestrian protection.
DeleteI forgot that my own son was in an accident when he was riding a bike. He did grad school in England. Most English towns are centered on the High Street where the shops, services, restaurants, pubs and churches are. The students all ride bikes everywhere. The High Street in his town was pedestrians and bicycles only, with one exception - buses. He turned a corner and had slowed down for a moment. A bus turned too and ran into him. Fortunately his injuries were minimal - a few stitches from being knocked off. Even in European towns where bikes are everywhere, riding one can be a risk unless ALL vehicles are banned - including buses!
DeleteWhen I lived in Chicago, we lived in apartments. As Stanley describes, I was able to walk virtually everywhere; and for the trips that were too far to walk, I took the bus or the el train. I lived in high-density neighborhoods that were well-served by many bus routes with frequent buses. It worked fine.
DeleteIn this suburban area, there was better bus service 20 years ago than there is now. Even in dark-blue Illinois, the government funding is lacking to have the critical mass of public transportation to make it viable.
What did work, for a while, was Uber and Lyft. They offer car pooling options which are less expensive, but I've never heard anyone say they have utilized it. But they are less expensive than cabs. If they could reach a critical mass, they could present a way of getting around in which people would basically rent a car service, only for the times they actually need a trip. We're a one-car family for now (so far, it's working out okay), but because we both work from home, our car sits idle in the driveway, often for an entire day or longer. In the US, we probably could get by with 1/10th of the number of cars in the road if we could get people to adopt an order-Lyft-when-you-need-it mentality.
I ride a bicycle, and use it occasionally for running errands. But the stars have to align: the weather has to be clement; and I have to have sufficient time to get where I'm going and back; and the errand can't require me hauling something which is too heavy or bulky to be carried on a bicycle; and I have to be going by myself (because so far, I haven't succeeded in getting the rest of my family to adopt the bicycle lifestyle); and I have to be going somewhere where nobody cares too much if I'm hot and sweaty. Our suburban town is sort of bicycle friendly, but much more could be done regarding road safety and bike racks.
There's one thing that cars represent, and that is freedom. I wasn't able to drive for six weeks, and now I can. And that was a cause for celebration. I have a better understanding of how people feel when they get to the point where they have to surrender their keys.
DeleteKatherine, congratulations!! Your leg has been freed and so have you!
DeleteThanks Anne. Still have a few weeks of PT but things are much better!
DeleteIt's a lot different if public transportation is available. On my first vacation to Germany, I rented a car. I did ok. I rented a stick shift because it was cheaper. But I enjoyed the following vacations more since I eschewed the rental. I felt more free since I didn't have to figure where to park this hunk of metal. But Germans love their cars, too, and can be nutty sometimes. For that reason, their "öffentliche Verkehrsmittel" is still underutilized.
DeleteWe’ve made somewhere around 15+ trips to Europe over the years. We’ve hit many major cities, including Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Munich, but we prefer driving between cities and throughout the countries, seeing smaller cities, towns, villages and countryside. Having a car in the big cities like London or Paris or Rome ( especially Rome,) is a pain. So we park it and leave it until leaving the city. We can both drive stick shift cars and they are cheaper so that’s what we rent. Most Europeans drive them too. The cars are usually small compared to what Americans drive. They get outstanding gas mileage which is a good thing since gasoline is 2-3 times more expensive. The towns and villages were built long, long ago, so streets in the old towns of cities and in the villages weren’t designed for big cars - too narrow. In some historic centers they get so narrow that only walking is possible. It’s never been a problem to find car parks. Big cities around the world look a lot alike except for the old city neighborhoods - not too different from big American cities with high rises. Boring! There is a constant battle to protect the architecture and beauty of many European cities - to keep the modern stuff out. But of course the money chasers want development. I hope the preservationists continue to fight and win. (So far we’ve managed to prevent DC from being turned into a clone of so many American cities by having a building height limit - nothing taller than the Washington Monument.) But having a car in Europe gives us freedom that isn’t possible when dependent on public transportation outside the major cities - except for the excellent long distance train system. Tourists can buy car- rail passes to cover long distances by train and pick up cars at each destination. But I still generally prefer driving in Europe - we change itineraries at the drop of a hat after conversations with locals to follow their suggestions. Our most memorable experiences were those that hadn’t been planned. Generally we hadn’t even known about those places but the locals told us. We see beauty and amazing sights that are sometimes missed if confined to a train. And driving in Europe is so much easier than driving here due to the rules that tightly regulate trucks on highways and in cities, rational speed limits ( not too slow on highways) the high quality of pavement on highways, the frequent rest stops on highways that actually provide real food and good coffee - not just an array of fast junk food and undrinkable coffee, and excellent signage - a GPS isn’t needed once outside the downtowns of cities. So, I must disagree with you a bit Stanley - driving through Europe is the best way to see it - once outside the major city centers.
DeleteMy hat is off to you stick shift drivers. I never mastered driving a manual transmission. Dad tried to teach me on his "three on a tree" pickup when I was sixteen, but it didn't work out. Our school car was a 1963 Dodge Polara with a push button transmission, which I really liked.
DeleteIn the unlikely event that we ever make it to Europe, we'll be taking public transportation. My husband has driven an army "deuce and a half" but that was a half century ago and more.
When I worked at Frsnkford Arsenal in Northeast Philadelphia, they had a WWII jeep for tooling around the arsenal. I was a co-op so they'd send me on errands and told me to use the jeep. I never used a stick shift but I had a model of it inside my head, so I taught myself. I did a lot of gear grinding but you couldn't kill those old jeeps with a stick.
DeleteKatherine, public transport in big cities and trains between cities located more than a two or three hour drive make sense as long as you don’t mind seeing more of the country. The rail- car rental passes are good. You can rent automatics but they do cost more. A high school friend ( a boy, but not a boyfriend) taught me to drive his VW bug. I’ve been forever grateful !
DeleteDon’t mind NOT seeing more of the country…. The small towns and villages are often the best part of our trips, so we drive. But if we go this summer, which is possible, we might train the longer distances and pick up cars at our destinations.
DeleteAnd now the PRC building warships as fast as cell phones and building an electronic spy facility in Cuba. We've been pushing people around for over a hundred years and beat up on Cuba while ironically giving China favored nation status and moving our manufacturing there. Thank you, capitalist geniuses. If anybody cries about it, I say shut up and learn Chinese.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to affect airline service and make life dangerous for those with pulmonary conditions. But now this is getting serious: the Yankees had to cancel their game with the White Sox yesterday. Someone do something, now!
ReplyDeleteThey are playing a double-header today, so either the conditions improved, or the revenue from the game was so exigent that the teams went ahead and played anyway. You know what they say: if the cancel ball games, the terrorists win.
DeleteOne fellow on the Chicago team just hit a home run, despite wearing a mask. (Not an N95, as far as I can tell; looks more like a turtleneck collar pulled up over his face.) So maybe face masks aren't as lifestyle-inhibiting as the MAGA types insisted.
Physically, the smoke doesn't have any real effect on air resistance to the balls. Main factors are temperature and humidity. Cooler temperatures yield higher density air. Hit balls don't travel as far. Humid air has the opposite effect since water molecules (atomic weight 18) replace diatomic nitrogen (atomic weight 28) and make humid air lighter than dry air.
DeleteIt has cleared up here quite a bit. Airnow.gov has downgraded to "moderate". Still may return if rains don't quench the fires and the wind blows wrong. There's no doubt that increased average temperature and droughts from the CO2 will make this more common.. And this is nothing compared to the suffering that poor equator people are experiencing already.
ReplyDelete