Your wishes and hopes are running into the brick wall of reality, also called peak oil. What's wrong with the bicycle?
I like my bicycle- it's a nice ride to the airport. But my bike doesn't fly well. I love my airplanes because I can get to the ocean, and another country in an hour, and at the hour of my choosing. I can survey my home ground, and know each and every field and glen below me, and marvel as the recognition of familiar and lovely home grows outward beyond the horizon melting into astounding varieties of terrain. On a bike I can't carve a big barrel roll around the moon, wheeling through a starry-night sky, because my bike doesn't have a playful
ET in its basket. Nor does my car have
flubber under the bonnet. But I have all sorts of real fantastic fun in airplanes, far exceeding mere echoes of wonder in words or pictures or movies.
On summer days I've slipped down into fresh-mowed fields far from my own nest. I've tucked under the wing for a nap, feeling as at home anywhere beneath the freewheeling sky as any free-traveling bird. In winter I draw gigantic
or
eace: symbols on the perfect blank canvas of snow-covered Adirondack lakes, using my airplane's skis as stylus, and knowing that some traveler cooped up in an airliner, or an astronaut, a satellite-image analysts, and other googlers of earth may glimpse what I've had to say with my airplane. I've switched on the "smoke" (would prefer non-petroleum smoke) to draw a big heart in the summer sky. When it hangs there long enough that I climb away to admire my great ridiculous skymoticon, I've torn back down through the middle to draw an arrow for anybody or nobody watching. A bike is nice, but you just can't do these fabulous things on a bike. I could never trade a decent flying machine for a bicycle, nor could I trade these privileges for a seat on a lumbering train or airliner. I will never concede that the limits of human exuberance and expression (or mobility, or gratitude, compassion and responsibility) are being overwhelmed or restricted by any "energy crisis". On the contrary:
I look forward to continuing and further exploring such freedom without fossil fuels, and I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation. The notion that personal mobility needs to be reduced for us to find our sustainable place as a species is to me a form of hopelessness and dangerous resignation. Throughout the petroleum era we've been harnessing energy in dirty ways, consuming it wastefully. Like at the frazzled end of any out-of-control party, it's time to clean up, and since the damage has been ginormous, now it's obviously time for us to figure out how to have our fun more responsibly. But it certainly doesn't mean our fun is done, or that we've had more than our share of it. We're just doing it wrong, that's all.
Some people want for all of us to reduce our expectations. I think that's bullshit, and a vestige of superstitions about what the fates will allow. We were fated to be born and to die, but everything in between is entirely up to us. So I refuse to forsake the freedom to move about the planet in very personal ways. I insist on earning and developing my means, privileges, and skills of mobility with ever more dedication and exuberance for as long as I physically and mentally can. I have confidence in human abilities to adapt- clean up, and thrive, and not only from an emotional standpoint:
We are genetically programmed to adapt and thrive, and that is the self-reinforcing theme of the miracle of living, struggling, failing, adapting, laughing, and advancing intelligence and consciousness. We will continue to develop more resilience and balance as we develop our technologies and our mentalities and there is no point in allowing ourselves to be stunted by regressive notions like Luddism. The ecological and financial challenges before us are no more insurmountable than the threats to our existence that we have struggled mightily against since before we were even self-aware. Our destiny is not to become the befouler of nature, and snuff ourselves out in our own filth. Our destiny is to join with nature in a far-distant Big Bang of supreme consciousness, and if we succeed as Humans, we'll magnificently represent our home and ancestry at the very end of time.
We're not going to get there on bicycles. Is petroleum power sustainable? No. Is unrestricted human population growth sustainable? No. Are there alternatives? Yes. Is human progress, in living happier and more fulfilling lives in the future sustainable? Call me a dreamer, but this I believe is not only possible, but already written in our DNA.
Syzygys loves cars, and will no doubt enjoy some very cool EVs in the future, as will I. It's because humans just really love to "go", just like dolphins leaping for joy riding our bow-waves, or dogs eagerly probing the wind outside the window of a speeding car or airplane (KoKo my lab-mutt companion prefers 60 knots or less for putting her face into the slipstream, and she barks exultantly at the echoing barks from below, experimenting in her dog way with sonar altimetry when I shut off the engine to glide). With my dog and other flying students, I've met hawks and eagles soaring high above their hunting altitudes, where it's obvious that these beings soar for the fun of it, too. When & if dogs, dolphins, and eagles ever evolve the technology to experience even more freedom and joy of motion than they already do, I know from looking into their laughing eyes that they certainly won't pass up the chance. Neither will we.
Years from now, I hope to still promote and maintain a particular "upward" mobility, with more success than ever- that is, to watch landscapes scrolling underneath, while leaving few traces of passage behind- maybe a soft wake and some water vapor. Sharing in exuberant cross-country adventures by air, we'll leave less evidence of our passage than on bicycle or car. Flying fuel-cell powered airplanes, we'll swim confidently and in good con-science in our great ocean of air. As more dream-machines become reality, we'll travel the surface, and under the seas as balanced beings who belong to this playground planet and to the stars out beyond.
Good times aren't really over for us. We're reaching a stage in our development when we'll stop behaving like selfish, messy, even maladjusted and destructive teenagers. We'll clean up our stupendous mess, because like responsible grown-ups we're learning that it's what we must do. We'll do what is necessary to ensure ourselves, ensure our companion beings, and ensure our environment the maximum of sustainable fun and fulfillment imaginable, and we're bound to exceed the best expectations of those among us who are presently suffering the worst effects of a sickening petroleum-party hangover.
Deep breath. Take in a future ride; feel it; be in it, and look all around. We can make all this happen. The answer is (has always been) at our System's center. Here comes the sun, always pouring out abundant energy in perfect form for life bountiful. Under its sustaining light we really can shape our real gifts by our own real hands, and take to the road, to the sky, and to the undiscovered universes beyond, just like we always really wanted: Free. (really)
