Transportation causes 27% of U.S. global warming increase, but in Maine, with few public transit systems and large distances between small towns, research for the Maine Climate Council showed that transportation causes 47% of Maine’s climate warming. Maine Department of Transportation, towns and cities must continue to innovate with reducing vehicle miles traveled and making incentives to carpool, van pool to work and adopt electric vehicles charged with renewable energy.
Do you realize that when you burn a gallon of gas to go 30 miles in your 3,000-pound, internal-combustion vehicle you used the power of 48 work horses? Americans consume and pollute as if each of us were a king in historic times, entitled to drive anywhere at any speed we want, polluting our communal air, drastically changing the climate to warmer and drier, and destroying western forests that can’t regrow due to the more arid climate we have produced.
Evidence of the huge effects of this careless behavior is now undeniable, affecting sea level rise and lobster migration; making many areas of Africa, coastal zones and the American southwest unlivable; and driving huge human migration to areas farther from the equator that still have fresh water, regular rainfall and milder climates.
Immediate cultural change in America is essential to slow this assault on Earth. You can now use regular, excellent train and bus service between and within Brunswick and Portland. Instead of valuing speed, efficiency, convenience and lowest cost, Americans need to slow down. Please recognize that walking and biking are both good for our health and have the lowest effects on the planet. Buses are the next most efficient form of travel. Take on the carbon-reduction challenge using carbon calculators from Environmental Defense Fund (edf.org) to compare different modes of travel when planning a trip. Since most of us have cell phones, let’s use them to network with friends and colleagues and ride share to work and meetings, even to leisure events. Wait until you need to visit several places to start that car, reducing your number of trips. To double the efficiency of your fuel use, who could you offer to share a ride to work, meetings, groceries, concerts, programs, art walks and doctor visits?
Brunswick residents can ride the Brunswick Link hourly from the Amtrak station through Brunswick Landing to Midcoast Hospital and back. Three times a day this bus connects to Western Maine Transportation’s Blue Line commuter service to Bath, the Topsham Fair Mall, Lisbon Falls and Lewiston. Transfer to the Blue Line at the Rusty Lantern at the entrance to Brunswick Landing. Find schedules for these routes at wmtsbus.org or at the WMTS office in the Brunswick Amtrak Station. It’s pleasant to read, look out the window or talk with passengers, and not have to drive, saving money and lowering your carbon footprint.
Consider what we could create if each of us wished for others to have their basic needs for food, shelter, safety and relief of pain met. We can find satisfaction in helping build caring communities of businesses, farms and social services that steward the land, where taxes and social networks allow people to have their basic needs met. We can walk and bike and encourage our towns to fund more public bus routes or carpool with friends and neighbors.
Towns need to start working together to create public bus and van options to move along the Route 1 corridor. Residents of Bath, Topsham and Brunswick can urge their town leaders to extend existing bus routes both by distance and seasonally and increase their frequency. Let’s build support among potential users on our town leaders to provide an alternative to excessive cars and trucks on the road, reduce traffic jams, air pollution and climate warming.
Air travel now emits four times the carbon in the U.S. as in 1966 and is growing at 4%–5% yearly, with 70% of the emissions from passenger flights. We can stop flying for pleasure, using this most wasteful form of transportation only for necessary trips over 2,000 miles for which air travel is more efficient than gas vehicles. When I flew across the country in the 1970s to college four times a year, only 10% of Americans flew. Now 60% of us waste precious fossil fuels to visit family or go play in a warmer or snow-covered area, acting like it’s normal to emit 10 times the carbon emissions per mile of train travel. In Europe, where tiny cars have always been the norm and train travel is frequent and fast, people drive very little and were amazed at the huge Plymouth station wagon my family of six used to live in Dublin and camp across Europe.
If you have to drive a fossil fuel vehicle, less aggressive driving can increase your fuel efficiency by 15%–30%. Avoid speeding up to intersections or rapid acceleration and anticipate stopping to reduce braking. Medium-sized sedans that get 33 miles per gallon at 40 mph will lose 15% of their efficiency at 60 mph and a whopping 40% of their efficiency at 80 mph. If Americans were willing to book slower air flights, they could increase the efficiency of air travel. Taking direct flights when possible also reduces carbon emissions, avoiding the huge fuel needed to get heavy planes off the tarmac.
Nancy Chandler studied Animal Behavior and Anthropology at Stanford University, then received her master’s in biology education in her home state of North Carolina at U.N.C. Chapel Hill. She is passionate about teaching energy conservation and hopes to get you thinking about how to use energy use efficiently to save both money and reduce greenhouse warming gases.
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