Living Car Free - Top down or bottom up?

I watched an entire 2-hours documentary last night on climate change on PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/). I was surprised that the whole discussion about our transportation and environmental issues seemed to stem solely from a lack of "top down" strategy.

It's hard to argue that the US government's approach has been completely negligent.

Yet I was surprised that no mention was made of any efforts from the "bottom up". Like grass roots organizations. Or even enlightened individuals. No one talked about citizens overwhelming the legislatures. No one mentioned the things that were already happening to reduce CO2 emissions, like those who choose to ride a bike instead of an SUV.

And yet I have the feeling that much of what the current crop of presidential candidates are talking about stems from the ideas of a great many individual citizens who are extremely concerned.

So my question is: how would climate change, poor urban planning, the glut of cars be solved? Will it be from government action ("top down") or ultimately from citizens who take things into their own hands("bottom up") ?

I saw only the last forty-five minutes of the program. Much of it was about transportation. It is true that most people don't want tiny fuel efficient cars if they can afford to operate larger ones. Not everybody is eco-conscious. I would guess that everybody wants clean air, water, and less traffic but not everybody is willing to do their part to help.

It will take leadership with an environmentally friendly attitude to make such changes. Whoever is at the top will also need enough members of congress to have the same attitude. That won't happen for another twenty years. There are too many old dumb-ass money grubbers in government at all levels for a truly environmental movement to take hold within government.

There also aren't enough environmentalists at the ground level to make sweeping political changes. There are plenty of money grubbing pollution causing businesses that won't spend the money to make their business environmentally friendly.

Until the next generation gets into power politicians won't change much. The bottom up will meet the top down many years from now. So as cyclists who live car-free and car-light we are part of the bottom up people. We should just keep doing what we are doing and setting examples for others to follow. All changes in society look different and unusual in the beginning. Eventually enough people begin participating and the change becomes accepted. Not long afterwards the change is considered normal.

Just an hour ago a neighbor I've barely spoken to called out to me about my bicycle. He noticed I was on a different one. He said that he should start doing something like that (bicycling) for exercise. I encouraged him saying it was easy. I had just come from grocery shopping and told him that I can get to the store in only seventeen minutes and that it takes only eleven more minutes than taking a car. Shopping and exercising at the same time. I invited him to come over to my place when he was ready to learn more about different types of bicycles. It would be fun to show him all the different types and help him choose the best one for his needs.

So my question is: how would climate change, poor urban planning, the glut of cars be solved? Will it be from government action ("top down") or ultimately from citizens who take things into their own hands("bottom up") ?

seems like there are related, but distinct things here:

climate change: takes govt planning, lifestyle changes to solve (e.g. both)
urban planning: too late, in most cases
glut of cars: bottom up - e.g. lifestyle changes to use cars more efficiently

in the end, i think an oil shortage/crisis would be a strong catalyst for change.

Top down.

The fewer "visionaries" we have trying for the same goal, the better the focus will be, and it'll be more likely to succeed.

Bottom-up would end up with "too many chiefs, not enough Indians", as the saying goes. Too many people trying to pull in different directions gets nothing done.

The trick, though, is for the top to sort out the knowledge that the bottom has gained, then put it together coherently.

BF is a great example of bottom-up thinking and how it has a tendency to deteriorate into chaos.

It's about money. The governments of the world are trying to make more of it, and they profit when people are more productive. It's in their best interest to have us driving cars and spending money and pushing the "economy". Every time a unit of currency changes hands, the government gets a little bit of it. They know all too well that if everyone went and got rid of their car the economy as we know it would collapse.

It's about money. The governments of the world are trying to make more of it, and they profit when people are more productive. It's in their best interest to have us driving cars and spending money and pushing the "economy". Every time a unit of currency changes hands, the government gets a little bit of it. They know all too well that if everyone went and got rid of their car the economy as we know it would collapse.

+1

Also people won't change unless they are forced to by high energy prices. We are many years away from any meaningful changes.

... if everyone went and got rid of their car the economy as we know it would collapse.

That's true, but the trick is to refocus the economy... and that's not going to happen without help from the top, which would have to take a stand and say, "THIS is what we're going to do..".

That's true, but the trick is to refocus the economy... and that's not going to happen without help from the top, which would have to take a stand and say, "THIS is what we're going to do..".

Makes a lot of sense, but what scares me is that many people will punt on acting responsibly if they accept that the answers will all come from the top. I get the impression that many citizens are kind of waiting for government to carve out an answer to energy independence, global warming, etc. Yet, it's obvious that no government initiative will go anywhere unless folks can accept that they've got to reduce their expectations... for example, a lot of discussion about the need for "clean coal technology" (:eek:) would probably evaporate if we weren't burning through so much of it.

This is probably a tenuous comparison --

Think of the TV industry in its infancy. Basically, the government settled on a standard and said, "THIS is what everyone is going to use to broadcast television signals." All stations and all TV sets were immediately compatible with each other, and there was soon a television in (nearly) every household.

The cell phone industry in the US, however, has been left to "let the market work it out," expecting that competing standards will do like VHS and Beta, eventually leaving one to stand while the other disappears. Instead, the consumers are stuck in long contracts with severe cancellation penalties, discouraging the competition that the so-called open market was designed to create. This is very different from other countries who have specified the data system (a CDMA phone is utterly useless in most of Europe) and have many carriers with feature-laden phones and wide-open service contracts.

The technology pioneers will still do their work and come up with better answers, but it's going to take a national effort -- one person at the head of one federal agency, effectively the "Chief" like I mentioned earlier -- to finally choose what to do and inspire everyone else to follow.

We put people on the Moon because one person said we should. We got out of the Great Depression because one person said so. We need someone to say, "Enough is enough, no more of this 'clean coal' nonsense, no more turning perfectly good corn into fuel -- we MUST use sustainable energy or we're dead meat."

We put people on the Moon because one person said we should. We got out of the Great Depression because one person said so. We need someone to say, "Enough is enough, no more of this 'clean coal' nonsense, no more turning perfectly good corn into fuel -- we MUST use sustainable energy or we're dead meat."

Hey... I like it. It's that's simple.

If you run, you'll have my vote.:thumb:

Hey... I like it. It's that's simple.

If you run, you'll have my vote.:thumb:

I ain't gonna run -- I hate being on my condo board, let alone any real public office.

Besides, that was as inspirational as I'll ever get. :lol:

Yet I was surprised that no mention was made of any efforts from the "bottom up". Like grass roots organizations. Or even enlightened individuals. No one talked about citizens overwhelming the legislatures. No one mentioned the things that were already happening to reduce CO2 emissions, like those who choose to ride a bike instead of an SUV.
Riding a bike is a personal choice. So is walking or ditching the SUV. We don't need governments to make those choices for us. We also don't need government initiatives in order to turn down the thermostat, cut back on the air conditioner and turn off lights we're not using. At the most effective level, changes begin with personal choices and individual decisions.

Where we can use government help is in bringing about the infrastructure. But that won't happen until people start making changes at an individual level. If governments see more people getting out of their cars, they will make some efforts to add cycling services, transit and sidewalks as those things are now important to the public. But if there isn't much of a move away from driving, governments won't sense the need to make improvements for alternate transportation.