Solarpunk Travel

We have lots of moral options for traveling over land, and even some options for relatively short oceanic trips, like across the Atlantic from W. Europe to/from N. America.

What are the current possibilities for traveling from e.g. USA to Taiwan? I'm willing to entertain options that don't have "mass market" appeal.

While it’s no surprise that the original concept of ecotourism has been obscured by less virtuous projects, they become more problematic when they block local communities from ancestral lands or even involve their forced relocation. A recent case on the eviction of 16 villages on Rempang Island, Indonesia to build a solar panel factory and “eco-city” illustrates this. While the need to increase renewable energy production is urgent, it’s harder to justify when it comes at the expense of local residents’ lives and territorial sovereignty.

To explore such questions, in June 2023 a group of researchers at Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) organised a dialogue with members of the Mbyá Guaraní community from Maricá, Brazil. Our motivation was to explore the relationship between business schools and the behaviour of multinational corporations toward indigenous peoples and their land rights.

(...)

The International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation has recently called for greater scrutiny on non-climate-related reporting, in particular societal and social issues. For multinationals, however, the temptation will always be there to find ways to minimise risks and continue business as usual.

Research has shown that lax reporting and the lack of enforcement mechanisms have led firms to shirk social sustainability and human rights requirements and favour bluewashing strategies. This regulatory environment has enabled MNCs to increasingly follow what historian Patrick Wolfe called a “logic of elimination” that erases natives from the land.

However, there is reason to think that attitudes can shift over time. A 2019 victory in Bahía of the Tupinamba de Olivença tribe over the Portuguese hotel giant Vila Gale created a legal precedent demonstrating that if local authorities license projects without involving federal agencies, it can backfire. For Juliana Batista, human rights lawyer for the Brazilian NGO Instituto Socio-Ambiental involved in the case, it is a matter of understanding the nature of indigenous land rights which, for her “take precedence over any other rights.”

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/226775

After living in a region that was (foolishly¹) designed exclusively for cars, I moved to a proper city: a city with public transport and a cycling infrastructure. Started using public transport and felt liberated. No more insurance burden, no maintenance burden, no vehicle registration, no traffic fines, parking fees & fines, no more financing unethical right-wing oil companies that are burning up the planet, etc. It was a weight off my shoulders to live cheaper and more ethical.

public transport also unethical

Then a colleague convinced me that using public transport needlessly is also unethical.. that the huge amount of energy required to power that infrastructure is still harmful & wasteful. Public transport needs to exist for various reasons like serving disabled people, but when able-bodied people flood onto it more vehicles must be dispatched more frequently. I was adding to that burden.

the winner: cycling

So after years on public transport I switched to a bicycle. It’s even cheaper than public transport. And it came with another upgrade to liberties:

• privacy— my realtime whereabouts is no longer surveilled & tracked (no license plate readers, no public transport card readers w/DBs, no insurance records which can then intermingle with other insurance & credit records & cause harm in other ways).

• independence— it’s easy to maintain one’s own bicycle. So I’m free of dependency on mechanics & free of dependency on public transport schedules (which can be unreliable). Dirt cheap and you only need to depend on yourself.

After evolving into a cyclist, I cannot stomach the thought of living again in a non-cyclable region. Those regions are encumbered by stupidity and addicts: people addicted to their perception of convenience (despite sitting in traffic that bicycles are immune to and despite looking for parking)… and people addicted to energy (from oil or power plants) because they think peddling their bike will be a notable effort.

Intelligence of car drivers

It’s been said jokingly (by Douglas Adams IIRC) that dolphins are smarter than humans because they’ve figured out how to get their needs met without investing crazy amounts of cost and labor to create things that work against them to some extent. Cyclists are like dolphins in this regard, as they see people work their asses off to be able to afford the car that takes them to work, where they earn the money to finance their car ownership so they can work more. At the same time they work to finance the oil politicians who work against them.

2023 research suggests cycling makes you smarter and apparently 2014 research suggests cyclists are more intelligent² (I suspect there’s the factor that people with naturally higher IQs favor cycling anecdotally. E.g. many profs cycle to universities).

self imprisonment

We all live in a prison of some kind. My new prison is being self-excluded from a big chunk of the car-dependent world and living in all those regions. But I prefer my new prison better than that of car dependency and being forced to finance companies that finance politicians who work against humanity.

footnotes

¹: it would be unfair to fault pre-climate aware municipal designs as foolish, but foolish that decades thereafter these shitty designs are still being maintained (unlike Utrecht who were wise enough to realize their mistake & fix it) while people continue rewarding the shit designs with their residency and tax.

²: I’ve not read the 2014 study myself. Some articles claim the research shows cyclists are perceived as more intelligent while other reports claim cyclists are more intelligent.

I don't know who else here has a history of long-distance bicycle touring, but the first time I did so, the Adventure Cycling Association maps were incredibly useful for understanding where I could expect to find food, bike shops, places to camp out, etc.

Though I'm not a fan of car focused infrastructure, I have to admit I'm fairly impressed with this little thing. If the range ends up being accurate and they become obtainable for the stated price, this seems like a decent stop-gap for American travel.

My partner and I have greatly enjoyed both hosting touring cyclists and guesting during our tours, so we made a podcast episode about it!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3460038

Fascinating story of a Danish traveler who visited every country on Earth, only by land and boat.

I collect transit cards from all the places I visit, and I just filled up my first display case! Looking forward to the next 20; what transit systems do you think I should try next?

EDIT: the transit agencies on display:

Luleå, Sweden (card missing, I didn't know at the time that I would want to collect them)

Stockholm, Sweden

Go-to card, Twin Cities of Minnesota

Ventra card, Chicago, Illinois

Breeze card, Atlanta, Georgia

Smartrip card, Washington DC

Orca card, Seattle, Washington

Hop fastpass, Portland, Oregon

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Eau Claire, Wisconsin

La Crosse, Wisconsin

COTA, Columbus, Ohio

mykey, Indianapolis, Indiana

Citibus, Davenport, Iowa

Winona, Minnesota

Corpus Christi, Texas

Smart Ride, St Cloud, Minnesota

Paul Bunyan Transit, Bemidji, Minnesota

Tri-CAP, rural central Minnesota

Rainbow Rider, rural western Minnesota

My husband and I got married earlier this year and figured we would plan a honeymoon later once wedding stress had passed. Now we've started planning and being in the Midwestern United States has us feeling frustrated about travel options that aren't planes, as we do not want to use them.

I discovered the Amtrak Rail Pass yesterday and was wondering if anyone had any experience (or knows of a blog, vlog, etc) where somebody talked about their experience using the pass to do a city-hopping sort of trip/honeymoon/vacation using Amtrak, or the pass specifically. Cursory research didn't show me anything, but I did see that the pass was on sale from $499 to $299 in January, so I am going to keep an eye out and see if they do that again. If so, it seems like a (relatively) cost-effective way to do a longer sort of trip, hitting 6 or so cities along the way.

Any perspectives welcome!

@solarpunktravel

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/what-does-slow-travel-mean