On the Road Again

In an era where going green is a necessity, we should extend conversations every chance we get and on every front, so as to reduce our current carbon imprint.

And to minimize the deleterious impact of hyper-inflating oil, gas and diesel prices.

Large communities have different challenges and opportunities than our neighboring smaller towns. We can, nonetheless, be creative.

No, the truth is, we need to be creative.

Some off-the-cuff recommendations for Fargo-Moorhead come easily to mind. Car-pooling, for example. Improved mass transit, for another. Dramatically increasing bicycle and pedestrian passageways.

If push came to shove, we could be ultra-creative in re-inventing mass transit as we know it. In some parts of the world, you can hail a ride from public vehicles going your way. We could do that here, too. While that sounds ridiculous now, it will not be so crazy when gas, like diesel, approaches $5 a gallon and people are parking their cars because they cannot afford to drive them.

They won’t be able to afford gas to get to the grocery stores that by then will be passing on their burgeoning costs of business to customers, in higher prices for practically everything on the shelves.

Folks in rural North Dakota and Minnesota are in a Catch-22 because they have to drive every time they do anything. Car-pooling at primary intersections is something we’ve seen in the past and should be resurrected now. Lower speed limits, albeit an unpopular concept, should perhaps be mandated on an urgent basis.

It is daunting to contemplate the implications of a continued upward spiral of fuel and energy costs. Airfares will skyrocket. Transportation fares will climb higher and higher. Daily travel habits could and maybe should turn upside down.

While backbreaking costs for gas and the like are testing our personal and collective spirit, it does not mean we have to throw in the towel or roll over and play dead. Ingenuity is what people from our parts are sometimes best known for. Or, in words more familiar, necessity is the mother of invention.

We should approach the energy circumstance facing us today and down the road as an absolute emergency. That’s the first thing. Because it is an emergency. It is urgent. It is critical and imperative we act.

A goal is to minimize individual negative impact at the family and household level. Another goal is to maximize cooperation and sharing of limited resources.

Short-term we shore up our defenses and cut losses. Long-term, we embark on a plan that never again sees humanity so stupidly and short-sightedly at risk over out-of-control consumption coupled with a magnitude of greed never witnessed before.

Fargo City Commissioner Mike Williams is known for his Go-green, Go-Fargo advocacy. Perhaps there should be a working summit to pool people and ideas to help ordinary people work through the financial upheaval they are experiencing.

We could develop Go-green, Go-Fargo ideas that save money for all of us. People respond to crises: and if they are not in one now, they very likely are on the brink of one.

A people summit followed by an immediate and unfolding plan of action. There are resources galore if we tap into them. It may well be time to do that, lest others control our destiny.