If you care to read my final Synthesis that proved:

"Bicycling is the New Paradigm Shift"
By;
Aurelio Garcia
Antioch University Seattle
Global Warming and Environmental Change ENVC390-1
Mary Lou Finley P.H.D., M.H.P
“Biking Is Environmental Justice”


The Pollution of Want

Many people would agree to create their life in such a way that it produces healthy, meaningful developments within their environmental zeitgeist. Even non-human creatures would need some kind of healthy environment that could support and ensure their species survival. However, at this very moment, our environmental sustainability is in jeopardy and the rate of inevitable peril has past the tipping point for any easy repairs to be made. Why has this been occurring? One of the main contributors to the destabilization of our climate would be excessive Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide emissions, along with other pollutant that contribute to global warming. Data relative to the negative effects of climate change and environmental shifts translate to a compromise in the importance of human and non-human livelihoods and is heavily affecting our natural resources. Current levels of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for the month of February 2010 are at 389.91 ppm (parts per million), the acceptable level should be at 350 ppm for a nominal dose of CO2, (Oxygen, 2010). Since February of 2008, the CO2 levels have increased at roughly 2.50 ppm to 2010. People will say that that is not much of a difference to the atmosphere. Consider that for every part per million of CO2 there is in the atmosphere, that has not dissipated, it would equal to about 2.13 giga-tons, that is floating in the air above, (CDIAC, 2003). Imagine that the sky may literally fall one day.
People who are mostly contributing CO2 to our environment are the ones trading in longevity of sustainable life on earth for the immediacy of wants in material goods and wasteful needs. It seems as though more people are shifting toward a wasteful culture, driving expenses of oil and electricity up, and adopting the more esthetically pleasurable super-consumer behavior. People seem to want growth fostering occupations that can support a wasteful lifestyle. The products of the archaic eighteenth century concept of industrial revolution or mechanical age need to come to and end. The earth cannot sustain humans any longer with old concepts. A new paradigm shift is poised for the podium at this moment. Transportation needs should reduce back to simpler methods. Because of misrepresentation and deception in the media circuit, people are led to think that material wealth can compensate for a lack of environmental awareness and compassion. Have humans forgotten how to be the responsible shepherd? What ever happened to the defenders of earth? The conservationist and activist group Sierra club has this to say about the preservation of out natural environment:
“To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources; To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.”
Sierra Club Policies-
The existence of responsible consuming is possible and would only require meager changes in personal behaviors and also some basic, affordable changes in reusable materials like metals, electricity and use more organic based products. Switching the transportation wants from an automobile leisure to a bicycle is one sure fire way to begin healing the atmosphere and decelerate the want to consume oil. The want to over consume should be restructured so that not over consuming would compliment toward repairing our fragile environment instead of clogging it with combustion engine bi-product emissions. Here are some percentages about the modern cars mechanical efficiency from the web site, www.fueleconomy.gov;
“Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories, such as air conditioning. The rest of the energy is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling. Therefore, the potential to improve fuel efficiency with advanced technologies is enormous”.
EERE, 2010
If this “enormous potential” for improvement of fuel efficiency has not been met since the first car was manufactured, why has it taken so long for a car to become efficient? The energy efficiency of a bicycle is exactly one hundred percent, you get exact amount of power output with every pound of input.
The Comparison of Mechanisms
The first bike was invented sometime in the eighteen hundred’s, arguably by a French son and father team who used to build carriages. The bicycle is without arguing the worlds first zero carbon mechanism ever invented. The first mass produced car, called the model “T”, was manufactured by Henry Ford. The automobile was obviously invented through a capitalist point of view. Henry stated that his reason for mass producing the model T was to, “make a motorcar for the great multitude”, which at the time was actually meant for the people who could actually afford one (Wiley, 1996). The cars invention is not practical and is a mere item of luxury and status. The invention of the car can be attributed to the expansion of civilization yes but it also invented urbanization, classification or separation of wealth, war, and marked the beginning of industrialized pollution (Evens D., Onorato M., Cengage, G. 1997). The bicycle was invented for exploration, activity, and for the natural health benefits that it provides. The bicycle is a safe and sane way to achieve self confidence. The car symbolizes a mental, mechanical and physical separation from interaction to society within a protective enclosure. A bicycle contributes to mental stimulation, symbiotic connectivity to surroundings, and sensible exposure to immersive environments. Humans can become healthy again and at the same time begin the depletion of harmful polluting emissions that are dominating our atmosphere in the giga-tons every year.
The late bicycling enthusiast Ken Kifer has dedicated an information web site that is conducive toward bicycling as an emerging cultural consciousness. On Kens’ web site he reviews an article from “Pedaling Health” which translates the beneficial aspects of bicycling in regards to a person’s mental health. Ken cites authors: Ian Roberts, Harry Owen, Peter Lumb and Colin MacDougall; who are all bicycle enthusiast as well, and who have also made contributions to the medical fields with respects to bicycling. They recommend; bicycling and walking as the best choice for exercise, bicycling being the most beneficial for the mind and body, (Kifers, 1999). Bicycling even in moderation can lead to lower risks of heart disease, cholesterol, heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes, (Kifers, 1999). Among the other leading causes of physiological death, the car contributed 41,611 people being killed in auto accidents in 1999, and an average of 114 people die each day in car crashes in the U.S, (NTSB, 1999). Where can the total average number of fatalities be at today?
A bicycle, tricycle, or even a unicycle, all have characteristics that offer the benefactor an increase of self confidence, mental stimulation, a decrease in depression and social anxiety, and more importantly is the stabilization of blood flow (Barr, Sallis, & Richard, 1985). Utilizing a bicycle daily can also facilitate in restructuring the car centralized mind-set to a velocipede centered mind set. A velocipede in etymological terms is broken down to, [velo=fast and ped=foot], which means “fast foot” in Latin. People would be very much appreciative of being addressed to being fleet-footed, as it can be interpreted as a compliment! Modernization is synonymous with words like advanced, quick, immediate, now, compressed, economical.
The American Paradox
The American paradox is: we grow the fattest people that any other country and prioritize consumer goods way past what is the recommended necessity, yet contribute to modernizing and efficiency the least. America is at the top in regards to inventing new wasteful cultures that produce the most pollution. Bigger is not better, bigger is cumbersome and wasteful. American waste cultures are based on the ease of accumulating unnecessary things for the wealthy and leaving nothing behind for the poor. “If Americans were not born liberal, as most of them are, they would become so through the riches readily drawn from resources that appear inexhaustible”, (Times, 1967). Oil and other fossil fuels are exhaustible, and so is our atmosphere. The want for increased automotive speeds to get from point A to B is not feasible and produces inefficient uses of resources that mostly get burned into the environment, where it lays for years, dissolving the earths’ ozone layer. American’s adopt economically biased slogans like; “Nothing says success like excess”, while other counties that cannot match America’s affluence, are labeled as being third world. What does that slogan say about America’s biases in regards to our enormous carbon footprint? The lion’s share of finite resources mainly goes to the wealthy and the “well to do” often translates to the accumulation and privatization of resources such as land ownership and consumer goods, which is estimated at about seventy six point six percent for the well to do. The small, wealthy percentile was about at twenty percent in 2008, compared to the poor who are the remaining percent and yet the wealthy pollute and consume the most of all. The pursuit of convenience and misguided concept of efficiency seems to be the American point of interest and yet the questions remain regarding origin of needs and wants. If people asked themselves before making a purchase; do I really need this new technology, car, house, and child? The conscientious consumer would most likely consider to option for sustainability rather that a whim. The waste cultures are not answers that compliment the American dream but a consumerist control system designed to enslave people to a daily need for work so that they can keep the capitalist economy running and in tune for a capitalist society. American’s spend most of their time and money, in the billions, prioritizing on needless materials like make up and war, while education and health care are suffering from lack of investment, as cited in an article titled Consumption and Consumerism, (Shah, 2008).
The Paradigm Shift is Ready Now
With the inherent possibility of a “zero carbon” lifestyle through the use a bicycle, environmental justice is validated on many platforms as described in this synthesis. A zero carbon, environmentally justifiable lifestyle is attainable through sheer human power and a bicycle. As stated, bicycling, as an alternative transportation mean, can provide for a healthier livelihood, optimal use of finite resources, if needed at all, and a reduction in the need/want consumer culture, plus there are guaranteed improvements on a sociological level, and transportation. Bicycling can help build sustainable, exploratory communities, and it is also poised to raise the development of new opportunities toward a more progressive and resourceful minded future. The American people’s interest in exploration and awareness for the environment is also piqued in that bicycling can offer a whole new perspective in transportation planning and open up new opportunities for unique tourism. The falsities created to disprove, deregulate and discredit bicycling as an advantage is primarily a deception. Capitalism can only thrive if the demand factor is always there and is exploitable for profit. Americans tend to disregard the fact that they are addicted to oil, and therefore will always produce the demand for it because we blindly believe that the economy is driven by money instead of people, which is an unrealistic and distorted sensibility. The concept of commerce and maximization of profit was created by those who invented the concept of capitalism. If more emphasis was directed away from planning new highways for cars and more toward a well designed transit system the demand for car would decrease. America does not need more goods and service what it needs is a more efficient plan to use goods and services for maximization. Bicycling would dissolve the need for oil and thus remove the need for demand of capitalized resources. The new bicycling paradigm shift would also expose distorted information that is devised as a detractor built to steer people away from self autonomous livelihood. Bicycling is the answer we have all been waiting to wake up to, and it is the very tool people must consider to begin building the proven validity of the bicycle lifestyle as a means for global re-stabilization. Bicycling is the new paradigm shift. Why? It is because people are concerned and accustomed to evolution in consciousness and are self motivated enough to make the necessary changes for a better lifestyle, if they want it. The existence of a mental fixation on oil is preposterous and concludes to the proliferation of ultimate climactic abolishment. People need to wake up from the ether of dependency and evaluate what progress means in terms of a lengthening a healthy human existence for generation to come. A bountiful future cannot exist when there is an over saturation of choices for consummation and nowhere to put the waste. Dangerous amounts of air pollution would not exist in a city that is planned around a bicycle. If there was no need for a car, there would be no need for tires, metal shops that create allot of pollution to make the car frames would be under control, plastic and glass factories would be smaller and possibly more efficient. If the earth had more oxygen and less pollution then people would be able to breathe more of the oxygen, which in turn would help the brain to develop efficiently with increased intelligence and reason and with higher intelligence comes optimal ways to create a sustainable civilization bent on the exploration of earths’ wilderness resource by bicycle or on foot.
Now we face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech”.
Leopold, 1966


CITATIONS


Barr, C.T., Sallis, J. F., & Richard, N. (1985). The Relation of physical activity and exercise to mental health. 100(No. 2 195), Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1424736/pdf/pubhealthrep00100- 0085.pdf --------(Barr, Sallis, & Richard, 1985)

CDIAC, . (2003). Carbon dioxide information center. FAQ Global Change Questions, 9. Retrieved from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html/

Club, S. (2010). Mission statement. Retrieved from http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/default.aspx

EERE, . (2010). Advanced technologies and engine efficiency. Energy Requirements’, Retrieved from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/atv.shtml/

"The Industrial Revolution in Literature - Introduction." Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Denise Evans and Mary L. Onorato. Vol. 56. Gale Cengage, 1997. eNotes.com. 2006. 14 Mar, 2010 http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century- criticism/industrial-revolution-literature

Kifers, K. (1999). A Review of pedaling health . Bike Pages, Retrieved from
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/pedal_h.htm

Leopold, A. (1966). A Sand county alminac. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc..

Litman, T. (2003). Reinventing transportation. Victoria transpotation Quality Institute, Retrieved from http://www.vtpi.org/reinvent.pdf

NTSB, . (1999). Annual report 1999. SPC-00(03), Retrieved from http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/SPC0003.pdf/

Oxygen, P. (2010, February). Earth's co2 home page. Retrieved from http://co2now.org

Shah, A. (2008, September 3). Consumption and consumerism. Global Issues: Social, Political, Economical, Environmental Issues that Affect Us All, Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/issue/235/consumption-and-consumerism

Times, N.Y. (1967). American wastefulness. Retrieved from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9904E4D8103AEF34BC4E51DFBF66838C679FDE

Wiley, J. (1996). Building a motorcar for the great multitude. Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. and Forbes Inc, Retrieved from http://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/subject/business/forbes/