Earth Day comments

The following was originally published in the Stump on the OregonLive.com website a while back. Unedited.

On a spring day in 1970 I bicycled to my high school as I usually did, rain or shine.  This was a semester where my first class started second period, so I was one of the last students to arrive.  I usually had my choice of where to park at the bike rack, as there were maybe ten other bicycles in the rack at a school with 2,000 students.  But on this particular sunny spring day I was shocked to see about 200 bicycles in and around the bike parking facilities.  There was no place to park, and I wound up leaning my bike against the side of the school, a distance from my usual site.

That was the very first Earth Day, and since then, I have occasionally wondered what happened to those 200 bicyclists?  What do they do during Earth Day now— buy compact florescent light bulbs?  Set their printers on duplex?  Combine their errand trips so they aren’t making as many trips to the strip mall?

It seems that there is more traffic now then there was in 1970.  Where are all the bicyclists?

On that first Earth Day in 1970 fifty-five percent of the population was registered to drive motor vehicles. In 2003, according to the US Department of Transportation, 67 percent of the population is registered drivers.  In 1970 there was less than one vehicle per driver.  Today there are one and a quarter vehicles for each registered driver.

Clearly, the trend is toward more drivers and more vehicles.

In 1970 there were very few sport utility vehicles.  Today, approximately fifty percent of the vehicles sold are SUVs and pick-up trucks.

I suspect this all has something to do with the increase in population, but not entirely.  For example, in 1998 only 14 percent of the population under 18 years of age owned a motor vehicle.  In 2008, a mere ten years later, about 43 percent of that segment of the population owned a motor vehicle.  Why should somebody under 18 even need a motor vehicle?  Can’t they share their parent’s car or truck?  Couldn’t they continue to travel as they had before they (or their parents) bought the vehicle?

Bicycles should be a major part of the transportation infrastructure of the twenty-first century.  Yet, most Americans think of them as quaint relics from the past.  I have been bicycling for over fifty years, and I still can’t get over how great it is to bicycle.  In addition to being efficient, inexpensive, and I can fix nearly anything that may go wrong with the bike, I can also get a physical workout, which helps to keep me healthy.

There’s no doubt that Earth Day has made more people more aware of environmental problems over the past forty years.  But has it made a difference?

“Widening roads to overcome congestion is like loosening our belt to solve obesity.” -John Norquist, former mayor of Milwaukee