Savannah Smith

This is a comment on CSL6 (Transportation). This chapter made me think about transportation in a way I haven't before-- in the area where I live, streets are for cars, and it's hard to imagine streets as gathering places for people. Fairfax County and Northern Virginia in general has one of the biggest traffic problems in the country, and every town (for example, this is happening in my hometown of Reston) has become so commercialized and congested with traffic that it is no longer safe to ride your bike along the roads, even in bike lanes. The sheer volume of traffic adds a serious risk for cyclists and pedestrians, and this risk was nonexistent when many cities in the area were originally established. For example, when I moved to Reston, VA in summer of 2000, the city was basically a forest with a few cozy neighborhoods and was the perfect place to live for anybody who loves being outdoors. Now in 2019, developers have come in and built so many new apartment and commercial buildings that the number of cars on Reston's roads has (at least) tripled. As a result, the focus of transportation in the town has shifted from cyclist/pedestrian safety and community events to ease of passage for vehicles. To combat this, the Reston Association recently repaved many roads with bicycle lanes (sacrificing a vehicle lane in the process), but because the same number of cars now have one lane in which to drive instead of two and congestion has increased as a result, many cyclists no longer feel safe riding their bikes so close to that many speeding cars. The solution (in my opinion) is to reduce or stop development and establish some sort of public carpool service within the city-- there are now more cars on the road than the city can handle.

CSL session 2 brought up an interesting concept with which I simultaneously agree and disagree. Paul Gilding says that we have the technology, funding, and knowledge to achieve zero CO2 emissions within the next 2 decades, and "the only thing we have to change is how we think and how we feel". I agree with this statement, but disagree with the direction in which we need to go concerning change. Gilding suggests that we as a species need to shift our collective mindset from individualism with emphasis on personal gains to community with emphasis on betterment of societies. I believe this will be relatively ineffective; instead we need to shift our opinion of humanity from willing and eager to make necessary changes (people are good) to self-centered and willing to promote their individual well beings (people are greedy). I think that the only way enough people are going to get on board with environmental sustainability enough to make a drastic global change is if we find a way to make sustainable practices profitable for big companies and people with money/power. I think that changing the basis for our goals will be much more possible than changing the way people see themselves in regard to the world around them.

This is not related to CSL session 2, but I've been eating a vegan whole food diet for almost a week for a session 3 challenge (food) and I feel so much better than I've been feeling lately. I have more energy, need less sleep, and have been losing weight naturally. The food is delicious too! After I complete this challenge I hope to continue with this diet, although it's getting mighty expensive, so I might have to make some adjustments.