Living Car Free - ****

I awoke from a nap not too long ago.

As I strolled out of my room, I couldn't help take notice of the orange glow emanating from my window. I knew there was a killer sunset, as Arizona can sometimes provide.

I opened my 2nd story apartment door. The colors overwhelmed me. In front of me looked the Catalina Mountains, basking in the orange yellow sun. I took a few more steps out, to see the sun itself, as it lowered into the sky. The view was amazing.

But the entire experience was completely dominated by something else. Everywhere in my vision I saw cars. Fast moving things that wanted to steal the slow-moving beauty of the sunset. The smell... the smell of the exhaust....

And the number one thing....the noise. A constant barrage of non-natural high decibel annoying noise... drowning out any sign of natural life.

Maybe it I was 500 feet in the sky, I would be able to experience the beauty of a sunset. But not from ground level.

The car is raping our ****ing environment.

Have we gone too far in to even realize we need to turn back?... have we dumbed down our senses and blinded our sight too much, to even realize the impact the automobile has on our environment?

It disgusts me. The sad thing is people grow up with a ****ty car-dominated environment. They couldn't recognize silence if it sat on them. Maybe its all they know.

But things need to change.

When one spends a lot of time in a car, one spends a lot of time in a climate-controlled, isolated mini-environment. One tends to forget that nature is not so easily adjusted, and forget that their little personal bubble is causing so much damage.

Its ****ing ridiculous. Seriously, I can be blunt like this, and not even 0.00001% of my statement is overboard...thats how serious I am, and how serious the issue is.

Its sad what is happening to the planet. It will get worse too. Methinks we are fast descending into the worst of Kali Yuga, and the Earth will be an early casualty.

And if you ever read anything by James Lovelock, you'll know that our current ecological configuration (nature as we know it) is towards the end of its natural lifespan anyway--we are hastening it.

Quite depressing really.

I agree...I think its kinda cool how biking puts you out in the environment, and really makes you more sensitive to it....at least in my experience. I guess I can understand now why alot of surfers are environmentalists.... you don't know your f'in up your environment when your in your bubble...totally.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I heard something interesting on the radio a few years back. They interviewed a couple people who were going all over the planet making audio recordings of nature--bird calls, babbling brooks, what have you. Well, the problem was, there was almost no place in the entire world these people could record without picking up the background sounds of machinery, especially cars and airplanes.

Notice this for yourself the next time you're way out in the woods, the desert or mountains. Be as quiet as you can and listen. I bet my bike's front wheel that you'll hear a machine!

Of course one of the coolest things about bikes is that they're silent when well maintained. When I'm riding, if I hear any noise at all from my bike, I stop and check to see what's wrong.

you just made me play "when the world is running down (you make the best of what's still around)"
by the police. ahhh, armageddon seems almost fun now.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I heard something interesting on the radio a few years back. They interviewed a couple people who were going all over the planet making audio recordings of nature--bird calls, babbling brooks, what have you. Well, the problem was, there was almost no place in the entire world these people could record without picking up the background sounds of machinery, especially cars and airplanes.

Notice this for yourself the next time you're way out in the woods, the desert or mountains. Be as quiet as you can and listen. I bet my bike's front wheel that you'll hear a machine!

Of course one of the coolest things about bikes is that they're silent when well maintained. When I'm riding, if I hear any noise at all from my bike, I stop and check to see what's wrong.It's true. I majored in film production, and this is one of the things we learned in sound recording.

I think we tend to block out all of that sound as background noise, but I've noticed just how bad it is when I'm talking on my cell while walking, because I can't hear anything over the roar of traffic. Engines and tires drowning everything else out.

And when you get to a really quiet location (yes, there still are places like that) your ears still ring for a while.

--J

Of course air pollutants add to colorful sunsets....

Well, I know what you mean. Where I live right now it's like that. But where I grew up (a town of 1200 people in Maine), you did get silence, all the time. That's why I'm moving back as soon as I'm done with college.

For us city folks it is strange to go visit rural areas. Less cars, less light, and less noise.
I know when I visit my mother in rural Ohio I find it quite peaceful.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I heard something interesting on the radio a few years back. They interviewed a couple people who were going all over the planet making audio recordings of nature--bird calls, babbling brooks, what have you. Well, the problem was, there was almost no place in the entire world these people could record without picking up the background sounds of machinery, especially cars and airplanes.

Notice this for yourself the next time you're way out in the woods, the desert or mountains. Be as quiet as you can and listen. I bet my bike's front wheel that you'll hear a machine!

Of course one of the coolest things about bikes is that they're silent when well maintained. When I'm riding, if I hear any noise at all from my bike, I stop and check to see what's wrong.


Check it out: a very rare thing: http://www.onesquareinch.org/

Check it out: a very rare thing: http://www.onesquareinch.org/

Very interesting. Thanks for the link.

Notice this for yourself the next time you're way out in the woods, the desert or mountains. Be as quiet as you can and listen. I bet my bike's front wheel that you'll hear a machine!

Not around here. I love maine.

Check it out: a very rare thing: http://www.onesquareinch.org/
Thanks lala. I was there years ago, before it was designated as a soundscape. The rain forest was hushed and beautiful. I also remember the many beautiful smells there.

We have a few designated "Quiet Areas" here in northern Michigan too. In fact, there is one just a few miles from where I am now, in Traverse City, Sand Lakes Quiet Area. Unlike northern Maine and Squareinch, you can hear distant traffic here. The quiet areas in Michigan's upper peninsula are probably truly quiet, however.

it's terrible that many people live their entire lives without really being emersed in nature. how sad. i lived for 20 years in tucson, az and i watched the huge expanse of desert get backfilled with suburbs. i never thought that would happen, it seemed such a vast space when i was a child. now, the earth feels tiny to me. i have a really unsettled feeling in my gut as we progress into the future. the growth seems so fast and life seems to be speeding up like crazy in general.

Roody -

I can attest to the fact that you can definitely find silence up here, and it IS golden. :)

I love walking or riding the trails when it's so peaceful. Nature itself makes so many little noises that we often miss.

- belinda

It's implausible to predict the future. Personally, I doubt the planet will become uninhabitable in the forseeable future, but rather the natural world as we know it will gradually become non-existent. It's difficult predict how humans will react to this. I know people who have spent virtually their whole lives in the city and have little interest in 'nature'. It's possible that in the future people who are born into a world where nature doesn't really exist (no large areas of undeveloped land, etc.) won't know what they are missing b/c they don't know any different. For the rest of us, it will be very sad.

I'm reading a book right now by Jared Diamond called Collapse: How Socitities Choose to Succeed or Fail. In this book and others he's written, he demonstrates that there is an extensive history of human-caused environmental degradation, going back to the first human inhabitant of north America. One of the more depressing things he has pointed out is that as modern humans we know how our collective actions are effecting the ecosystem. Past civilizations probably didn't understand the environmental consequences of their activities. That we was modern humans understand what we are doing, and still aren't doing enough to rectify the problem is especially frustrating.

One thing my Chem/Bio teacher told me today was that there is something like 20-40% less sunlight reaching the earth these days. The reasons for it were that as pollutants rise into the upper atmosphere, they act as something for water to bond to allowing for more clouds to form. So, along ocean shipping routes there are plenty of clouds. This could explain why it used to be hot enough to grow watermelons here back when my father was a kid, but now it's not. Summers used to be a lot hotter.

Hopefully, Hydrogen fuel cells will become cheap and practical, as well as solar electricity. The reality for most people is "that once you have tasted the life of ease, there is no going back!" (to quote Mister Lunt from Veggie Tales). So, hopefully, alternative power sources will become widely implemented in the next 20 years, before it's too late...

Roody -

I can attest to the fact that you can definitely find silence up here, and it IS golden. :)

I love walking or riding the trails when it's so peaceful. Nature itself makes so many little noises that we often miss.

- belinda
Hey yooper! What's up, ey?

Sometimes those waterfalls in the UP can be pretty noisy. But I hate the snowmobiles in the winter!

From--
A Troll (cuz I live under the bridge) :)

Notice this for yourself the next time you're way out in the woods, the desert or mountains. Be as quiet as you can and listen. I bet my bike's front wheel that you'll hear a machine!

Last time I was in Joshua Tree, we stopped for a moment and drank in the complete silence of it. We had someone from Osaka with us and she had never heard such silence.

Last time I was in Joshua Tree, we stopped for a moment and drank in the complete silence of it. We had someone from Osaka with us and she had never heard such silence.

If you live in an area with a spelunking club ask them take you along on a trip. In a dry cave it is very quiet and very dark.

The noise of the traffic is bothersome to me when I think my bike is making a sound and I want to listen for it.

One thing my Chem/Bio teacher told me today was that there is something like 20-40% less sunlight reaching the earth these days. The reasons for it were that as pollutants rise into the upper atmosphere, they act as something for water to bond to allowing for more clouds to form. So, along ocean shipping routes there are plenty of clouds. This could explain why it used to be hot enough to grow watermelons here back when my father was a kid, but now it's not. Summers used to be a lot hotter.

Hopefully, Hydrogen fuel cells will become cheap and practical, as well as solar electricity. The reality for most people is "that once you have tasted the life of ease, there is no going back!" (to quote Mister Lunt from Veggie Tales). So, hopefully, alternative power sources will become widely implemented in the next 20 years, before it's too late...

"global dimming" is a regional phenomenon, because it is caused by aerosols that have low persistence in the atmosphere. its especially strong in places like china and india that have tons of particulate air pollution. it has nothing to do with co2. clean up the particulates, and it gets hot again.

while alternative energy is important, it can't really be done on a big enough scale to meet current demand, especially if you want people in the third world to have even a fraction of our lifestyle. people in rich countries need to use much less.

Snowmobiles are obnoxious, as are most of the people that ride them.

The waterfalls are pretty darn cool though. :)

- b