Ecologically and Socially Sustainable Transportation.

A very important issue is hardly ever mentioned now-a-days--that of what the ideal model of sustainable transportation should really be. Most ideas dealing with ecologically correct transportation merely suggest forms of transportation that would be less harmful to the environment--less polluting, less petrochemical resources based-- and also included might be improved mass public transportation, car pooling, and such. An attempt at a clear definition of what might a fully ecologically and socially sustainable transportation be should, perhaps, arrive at a model in which no transportation would be needed at all.

Consider: If everything that is needed for a comfortable life could be obtained within a walking distance of one’s dwelling, what transportation would be necessary at all? Ways of growing of all the food one might ever need have already been researched and are known, materials needed for construction of dwellings can be found and grown in the vicinity of one’s dwelling also, and the solution to visiting relatives and friends (that “normally” might involve traveling great distances across the globe, at times) would be solved by concentrating of all those within one’s walking distance, and if that could not be done, than walking the distance could be the way, providing that one could stop and work for one’s upkeep along the way with the understanding that a similar courtesy would be extended to any travelers passing through one’s own locality.

A good reason to consider non-transportation of person and goods as the best way of transporting is that no matter how much more benign any form of transportation could be made (be it by lowering fuel consumption, or by making mass public transportation more available), the result would be still doing harm to the environment, no matter how much lesser that harm would be. Consider the advantages of not having to support any heavy industry necessary for production of any means of transportation (even that of bicycles); an industry that could never be made sustainable even socially, if not only ecologically, because of the high degree of social organization necessary for sustaining of such industries. And the last, but not the least, reason for promoting non-transportation of anything (by the virtue of having everything necessary for life within walking distance) is that usually the simplest solutions are the most efficient and elegant ones.