jackandthecitylights.org

I spent almost 100 days riding my bicycle across North America, propelling myself progressively further and further from my home, everything I knew, and many ideas I had about it. Each day I talked with complete strangers, made new friends, and called a new town home for the night. To say the least I took a few things away from this experience. In fact this experience, quite unexpectedly, completely changed my entire view on my country and the people within it.

Where were all the axe murderers, thieves, and “bad guys” that are supposed to be out there? Didn’t find any. But I did find some of the most amazing, beautiful human beings I have ever met. Ones that took me into their home, fed me, gave me everything I needed, and sent me off with well wishes and extra parcels of food. Conversely on a few occasions people mistook me for one of those “bad guys” and reacted with fear or anger towards me whilst I was doing anything from eating on a sidewalk to helping a kid fix a flat tire. I never took these encounters personally, and for the most part never gave them a second thought. Who could blame them, I had a full beard, dirty clothes, smelled bad, and just generally looked out of place. Textbook bad guy profile right?

So as an American now living in Europe and looking back on my experiences, interactions with Americans, and years of being submersed in American society I will say with a fair bit of certainty that Americans have a lot of fear. Fear of this country, fear of that group, and ironically fear of itself. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out where the majority of this comes from if you’ve ever switched on a TV in the US. I’ve had hard time finding people that don’t on a regular basis. Blah blah blah TV is bad, big brother is watching you, I’m a crazy hippy… though any of this may be true to varying degrees that’s not really where I’m going with this.

What I have seen is that fear isolates us all from each other. The more isolated we become the less connected we are with each other, the rest of the world, and ultimately ourselves. The less connected we are the more we search for connection by buying the latest this or that, following this trend or that. People are so unconnected they need someone, or something rather, to tell them what to wear, to eat, to think, to buy, etc. In the towns where it seemed that this fear was the least prevalent I felt the most human. Strangers smiling and saying hello in a grocery store or along the roadside, initially a shock to me, exposed an invaluable concept that all of my experiences both here and there perpetually reaffirm.

So where does sustainability fit into all this? I’ll explain by proposing another question, “how can people create a more sustainable future without cooperation or the skills and help of our friends and neighbors?”. Not one of us posses all the skills and means it takes to build a new more sustainable world, country, city, town, or even community.

The concept of sustainability and interest in such fields of “environmentally aware culture” is seemingly well established on the west and east coasts of The States and is steadily creeping inwards. This is apparent by such examples as the concept of the Trek developed in Seattle to the barista in Nebraska who wanted to start a grassroots network encompassing music, bicycling, and organic foods to the Waterpod in New York. Also worth noting is how much the Waterpod inspired me. It, obviously in combination with the Trek inspired me to seek out sustainability beyond New York, and to continue learning everything I can that I might one day find something useful to do with all my accumulated knowledge as the Waterpod was doing.

Another influential experience on my journey was seeing first hand how beautiful the countryside is in all the different climates and regions I passed through. Confined to the PNW my whole life I had no idea how beautiful all the different parts of America are, and I was anything from shocked to inspired to angered by the incredible beauty of the land and how we* are completely destroying it. Such examples would be the insanity that is happening in West Virginia. Where coal companies steal peoples land, pollute waterways killing not only the wildlife but people as well, manipulate the youth to either leave the state or work for the mining companies, keep the local economy at the edge of collapse, destroy vast areas of beautiful wild forests, and completely level entire mountain ranges.

Sadly in the case of coal every time you flip on a light switch in America you are contributing to all of the devastation from both the mining process to the burning of the coal into the air that we all have to breath. Ironically most people are opposing the Cap and Trade policy that Obama pushed through because it will raise their electric bill. The Cap and Trade on CO2 emissions bill might not be perfect but is it really better to just do nothing instead and let all of this continue unchecked? Would being more mindful of your electricity consumption really be such an inconvenience that you would rather are planet be destroyed and people’s drinking water poisoned instead?

Unfortunately it’s not that black and white. Fortunately you can make a difference by limiting the need for coal by using less electricity. I lived the entire time on the road in the states without any electricity at all aside from what I used to charge up my batteries, and surprisingly I survived… at times I even began to understand how people have survived without it for so many years. I’m not trying to be irrational here and tell you to go flip the breaker box in your house. I’m just suggesting that we all put more consideration into how much you really to use electricity here, there, when, and how. One could even turn it into a fun project of figuring out where and how to reduce one’s consumption. All you really stand to loose is a digit or two on your electricity bill…

So in closing I guess I have more suggestions than conclusions. More solutions than condemnations. In the words of a very wise man “The power is yours!”.

Energy Conservation link 1
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*”We” refers to anyone and everyone who is made aware of the great atrocities and ecological injustices that are being carried out by the corporations we support in buying their products and ignore it by carrying on with our irresponsible consumerism. An old quote comes to mind, “The triumph of evil requires only that righteous men to do nothing.”