Tag: Sustainable living

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:
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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

An eco-friendly Christmas?

Shopping frenzy to show our love?

Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and togetherness. For many it’s a happy, joyous time of year. But it’s also a time when we drive around madly, feeling obliged to shop for everyone on our list. Each year we also use millions of plastic bags, throw out tonnes of packaging and food, and try to buy just about everything in sight.

Is this good for us? Our children? Are there better ways to show our love for each other and the world?

Continue reading “An eco-friendly Christmas?”

Don’t despair: the climate fight is only over if you think it is

“After the panicky IPCC report on climate change, it’s easy for pessimism to set in — but that would be conceding defeat. Climate change is an inescapable present and future reality, but the point of the IPCC report is that there is still a chance to seize the best-case scenario rather than surrender to the worst. A bunch of her friends posted variations on “we’re doomed” and “it’s hopeless”, which perhaps made them feel that they were in charge of one thing in this overwhelming situation, the facts. They weren’t, of course. They were letting understandable grief at the news morph into an assumption that they know just how the future is going to turn out. They don’t.”

There’s no time for wallowing in denial or despair! It’s time for individual and collective action, not avoidance! Our lives depend on it.

Full story: Don’t despair: the climate fight is only over if you think it is | Rebecca Solnit | Opinion | The Guardian

Guardian: ‘Feeling “This is too big for me” is no use to anybody’ 

Grist: U.N. climate report shows civilization is at stake if we don’t act now