Last post I reintroduced the idea of sustainability and sustainable transportation for those who may have lost sight in what it is. This post I would like to revisit William R. Black's Chapter two of his book Sustainable Transportation entitled "The Historical Problem of Sustainability in the Transport Sector."
Black begins that chapter by setting a standard that "On their face, nearly all transport modes are sustainable. This is true whether we are looking at a horse and rider or a Cadillac Eldorado, a sailboat or a 747 airliner. The problem is the coupling of these various transport modes with excessive demand" (Black, 13.) What Black is stating is that any has the potential to be sustainable and work, but only at a certain level, then once the demand for that system or the number of users for that system reach a certain level, it becomes unsustainable. Black continues to go into many examples over the course of the human race where this is true. The first example of this is the Mediterranean Empires where the use of plank timber and horses became unsustainable. Today it is almost impossible to find trees that produce plank timber because they were completely used for various uses including ships. The use of horses throughout the Mediterranean causes an almost impossible to manage fecal matter build up as well as so much dust that there was a constant level of particulate matter in the air. Later on in the time of the British Empire the same problem with wood and ships arose again as there was not enough available timber to continue to produce the number of ships that were needed. The horse droppings issue also continued in the 18th and 19th centuries in every major city in the world as the cities became overrun with horses for travel. Black continues to discuss the newer transportation technologies that include trains, planes and automobiles, as well as ships. All of these systems would be sustainable at a low use level, but due to the size of the world and it's demand, none of them are sustainable in just about every category of sustainable transportation from safety to emissions to fuel consumption.
So what is the problem here? The problem is that at every turn the human civilization has run into a major sustainability problem with it;s choice of transportation modes. Even our current system has already been deemed completely unsustainable, with it's inevitable collapse in the foreseeable future. So what has to be done? The transportation sector needs to begin an extreme overhaul on itself. It must begin to adapt to new technologies that might make some aspects of the system more difficult, but are more sustainable in the long run. The system also needs to be more diversified and able to adapt so that future ideas do not become the sole type of transportation and thus become unsustainable. A wide variety of sustainable transportation modes being used in moderation is the only way our system can continue to work.
Black begins that chapter by setting a standard that "On their face, nearly all transport modes are sustainable. This is true whether we are looking at a horse and rider or a Cadillac Eldorado, a sailboat or a 747 airliner. The problem is the coupling of these various transport modes with excessive demand" (Black, 13.) What Black is stating is that any has the potential to be sustainable and work, but only at a certain level, then once the demand for that system or the number of users for that system reach a certain level, it becomes unsustainable. Black continues to go into many examples over the course of the human race where this is true. The first example of this is the Mediterranean Empires where the use of plank timber and horses became unsustainable. Today it is almost impossible to find trees that produce plank timber because they were completely used for various uses including ships. The use of horses throughout the Mediterranean causes an almost impossible to manage fecal matter build up as well as so much dust that there was a constant level of particulate matter in the air. Later on in the time of the British Empire the same problem with wood and ships arose again as there was not enough available timber to continue to produce the number of ships that were needed. The horse droppings issue also continued in the 18th and 19th centuries in every major city in the world as the cities became overrun with horses for travel. Black continues to discuss the newer transportation technologies that include trains, planes and automobiles, as well as ships. All of these systems would be sustainable at a low use level, but due to the size of the world and it's demand, none of them are sustainable in just about every category of sustainable transportation from safety to emissions to fuel consumption.
So what is the problem here? The problem is that at every turn the human civilization has run into a major sustainability problem with it;s choice of transportation modes. Even our current system has already been deemed completely unsustainable, with it's inevitable collapse in the foreseeable future. So what has to be done? The transportation sector needs to begin an extreme overhaul on itself. It must begin to adapt to new technologies that might make some aspects of the system more difficult, but are more sustainable in the long run. The system also needs to be more diversified and able to adapt so that future ideas do not become the sole type of transportation and thus become unsustainable. A wide variety of sustainable transportation modes being used in moderation is the only way our system can continue to work.
I would be interested to hear more about the timelines of these transitions. In the present, we are faced with an unsustainable mode of transportation without a realistic alternative. However, in the past, it seems that the transition was possible because there was already an existing alternative. I wonder if the past modal transitions (e.g. horse to automobile) were driven by the poor conditions of the previous modes, or if the new modes naturally developed independently of the existing system. In other words, were previous new means of transportation developed with the sense of urgency that we face today?
ReplyDelete-Chris