If our society had embraced mass transit instead of the car culture, we would not be experiencing the environmental devastation and chaos we face today. If you know me, you’ve heard my endless stories about this.
My best explanation of this can be found in my blog post, Life Without a Car.
One of the many things I’m more aware of from what I’m learning about Indigenous ways is the Spirit is in all things, including animals, plants, water, sky, and mountains. I felt this deeply when I was in the forests and mountains. I’ve heard others express this in various ways as feeling closer to God, and that was how I felt.
This spiritual connection I developed with the mountains, lakes, and forests had profound consequences in my life.
When I moved to Indianapolis in 1971, the city was enveloped in smog. This was before catalytic converters, which began to appear in 1975. When I saw the polluted air, I had a profound spiritual vision of the Rocky Mountains being hidden by clouds of smog. The possibility that I would no longer be able to see the mountains shook me to my core.
I was thinking specifically about the photo above, and how terrible it would be to no longer be able to see Long’s Peak. Although I now have many photos of the same view, I was thinking of this black and white photo specifically when I had that vision even though the quality isn’t near what I get now with a digital camera. I developed the film and the print of this in a darkroom. This is the image connected to my vision.
From that moment on I saw cars as evil because of the damage they were doing. I decided I could not be part of that and have lived without a car since then. I began my lifelong study of environmental science and work to try to bring awareness about the catastrophic damage being done to Mother Earth. Although I give thanks that catalytic converters took care of the visible smog, I knew of the continued damage and consequences of the tons of carbon dioxide and other invisible gases coming from the exhaust of ever-increasing numbers of cars.
So, it is really traumatic to see the clouds of smoke from the wildfires in Canada obscuring the view all over the country. My nightmarish vision came to be, but from the smoke of wildfires rather than directly from automobile emissions. Auto emissions are an indirect cause of wildfires, which increase greenhouse gases and worsen environmental conditions.
I moved to Denver in October 2020 with all my stuff in a UHaul, never having been there before. After traversing the seemingly endless plains of Iowa and Nebraska and eastern Colorado, I was looking forward to watching the mountains rise up on the horizon, a sight I had been told was magic. But that moment never happened. The mountains were curtained by a thick layer of smoke.
Wildfire smoke has become something of a fact of life in the West, but the smoke that has descended upon the East Coast is truly unprecedented, sending New York City’s air quality to its worst level since the 1960s and making it unsafe for millions of people to spend time outdoors. The smoke originated from hundreds of wildfires in Canada and serves as a visceral reminder of the health and environmental effects of unchecked climate change.
Summer has developed an apocalyptic tinge. I wonder how long the smoke would have to linger over Washington, DC, for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to realize that the threat is real—and that the only solution is immediate and dramatic decarbonization.
Mother Jones Daily by Abigail Weinberg, June 7, 2023
A thicker wave of wildfire smoke from Canada is blowing into Colorado by Joe Wertz, CPR News, May 22, 2023
My story of Cars as weapons of mass destruction was included in this book by my friends at Sustainable Indiana.
https://jeffkisling.com/2015/09/13/cars-as-weapons-of-mass-destruction/
Photos I developed in my bathroom darkroom.
Quakers and Mutual Aid 