Tag: Active Transportation

Tearing up bike lanes?

Or tearing up humanity?

Are leaders in your community threatening to tear up bike lanes, supposedly to improve traffic?

This is where it’s leading.

For drivers, pedestrians and cyclists — for all of us alike.

Why is our government actively encouraging us to choose a lifestyle that’s even more addicted to cars? Is it a clever lie, designed to grab votes from those who choose to remain ignorant?

But even if all our bike lanes and sidewalks are torn up, it won’t be a victory for drivers.

Don’t fall for the politicians who want to divide us — pitting drivers against cyclists — for their own profit.

Traffic, inflation, violence and climate disaster will continue to escalate. If we continue to make irresponsible choices like this. But there is a better way!

Think about it. Drivers will face the consequences as much as pedestrians, cyclists and everyone else. It’s destructive, even murderous, for all of us.

Please join and support a cycling, walking or climate action group in your community! Let’s work together for a greener, healthier world…

What can you do?

What can you do to support cycling and active mobility?  

Together we are strong! Join or follow one of these…

  1. Toronto:
  2. Elsewhere:
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Cool!?!

Fancy cars aren’t “cool”. They never have been. Shallow egos, destroying themselves and their world. #Wildfires #Tornados #Floods #Heatwaves #Famine. Our addiction to cars and consumerism is nothing if not murderous.

What’s really cool? People who spend their time and energy on life, not consumer stupidity. People who leave the wheels at home and find a better way.

Yes, in our self-destructed world — built with little foresight by the oil and motor companies — I too have a car, out of necessity. But it is a modest car and I use as little as possible. I would not spend one extra dollar on this fundamentally corrupt industry.

What is this paved, smoggy hell that our communities have become? Is this the best we can do? Will we work together to build happy, healthy communities from which we don’t to “hit the highway” and escape?

Yes, electric cars are a notch better, but only a notch. It’s still a highway to hell.

Cars are not cool. They are murder weapons, destroying our communities, our lives, our world. So the next time somebody drives by you in a BMW, Mercedes, whatever …give your head a shake. They are the lowest depths of society, absolutely nothing to aspire to.

But we are creatures of habit, most people haven’t begun to think this through. The bottom line: it is our climate that gives us air, water, food, life. Cars and materialist, consumer culture are destroying all this. Meanwhile, the illusion of a “life of leisure” and the “open road” have tricked us into a fatal situation.

Will you join the forces for change?

#driveless #flyless #depave #sustainableliving #degrowth #carfree #localism

If we are to survive what’s coming, we need to take our feet off the gas. And instead, learn to use the legs and brains we were born with.

No hell worse than cars

I picked up my son from work today, driving my “car”.

Why?

Because the air is so bad that it would be unhealthy to walk or cycle.

Bitter irony. The wildfires — caused by fossil-fool driving, flying, consuming — gave me no choice but to burn more fossil fuels. So I drive, only to cause more wildfires, more climate chaos.

Once in our car, temporarily sealed off from the world, my son says, “it feels like I’m cheating”.

“Everyone is cheating”, I replied. We’ve all been lured into a world where we’ve forgotten how to use our own legs, how to live in our own bodies, our own communities.

Instead we sit on our butts and press the gas pedal.

It’s killing us and our world.

There is a better way, a better life! Are we even looking?

Image: AndySinger.com

Beyond cars and collapse

I am both a cyclist and a driver. But much more than that, I am a father in the age of climate crisis.

Fiona. Ian. Derecho. Floods. Fires. Famine. It’s almost back to back, but we’re doing next to nothing about it. Can we face the elephant in the room and prevent runaway climate change, collapse? Can we pause for a moment and reconsider our obsolete, short-sighted, rat-race lifestyles?

“We fly where we want.
We drive where we want.
We eat what we want.
We buy what we want.
That’s what’s driving growth.
That’s what’s leading us to ecological & societal collapse.
Thats what needs to change.”
— ClimateDad

Do I love my car more than my kids? Not in a million years. We need to get most cars off the road to make way for real, people-centered community. When parents drive their kids to hockey practice, is it love? Or is it killing them?

The only way to survive the climate behemoth is much more radical change than most of us have even begun to think about.

Out of necessity I too drive when I must, in these crazy, suicidal times. But my heart sinks every time I turn the key. I’d love to park my car, share it, recycle it — anything but private car ownership for each of us.

Nobody knows for sure when we will cross the tipping points to runaway, unstoppable climate collapse. It’s not looking good. Those of us who choose not to drive might just be saving your kids lives.

But we can’t do it without you. It’s easy to be cynical… just a little bit harder to truly be alive. Besides, survival is so much more fun.

Let’s rebuild our lives, our world that the car has done so much to destroy!

– Peter Blanchard

#climatecrisis #climateemergency #climatecollapse vs. #climateaction #activeliving #activemobility #activetransportation #sustainableliving #degwowth | Wikipedia: Sustainable transport | Active mobility

@International Federation of Pedestrians @Canada Walks @America Walks @Walk Toronto @Walkable Ottawa @Centre for Active Transportation @BEST Vancouver BC @Car Free Day Vancouver @Twitter | @Facebook

“You may say I’m a a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” – John Lennon

10 tips for great urban walking…

We all know how to put one leg in front of the other. But how many have really learned how to walk? Once you’ve mastered the tricks of the trade, walking is fun, great exercise and good for the environment.

(1) Time of day. Mornings can be ideal… it tends to have the bluest skies, and is the best time to enhance your circadian rythms, e.g. a good night’s sleep. But anytime is good, whatever works for you. Once or twice a day is ideal, but if you can’t do that, aim for every second day. Continue reading “10 tips for great urban walking…”