“A Bold Ambitious Plan”

Windsor Ontario has a new active transportation plan that will increase commuter trips made by walking, cycling or public transit from 10% to 25% by 2041. Brian Patterson, a consultant who advised the city called it “a very, very bold, ambitious plan.”

I suppose this is good news in a way, especially in a town that has been described as “the epicentre of the Canadian automotive industry.”

But in the context of the UN report on climate change, which predicts truly terrifying consequences if we do not limit average temperature increase to around 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, it doesn’t seem so bold. UN Secretary General António Guterres said that reaching that goal will require “urgent and far more ambitious action to cut emissions by half by 2030, and reach net zero emissions by 2050.”

Transport is a key sector in any plan to mitigate climate change. The Windsor plan and our own efforts here in St. John’s to promote walking (scroll down, it’s at the bottom of the linked page), cycling and public transit show that there are costs involved. It will be hard in some ways. But we don’t need new inventions, research or huge sacrifices to just get out there and start doing it right now.

I read this in an article about responding to drought in South Africa. A long way from here but we are all in this together:

“‘The wound is where the light enters,’ said Rumi. Maybe we know society’s long contemporary holiday of development and self-enrichment will soon be over. Maybe more of us than admit it are sick of it, and know we can’t pay for it much longer. Maybe we know, deep down, that we will have to go back to the work of being humans embedded in nature, and not above it. Maybe parts of this will be a relief to some of us, even a joy. We might turn out to be more willing than we expect to live a harder way.” (Eve Fairbanks)