Road ecology and the normalized violence of transport networks, ft. Ben Goldfarb
How might we reimagine transport systems?
“This is in so many ways how we ended up where we are: a fearsome new technology appears on the scene, people roundly reject it, [but still], ultimately, corporate power causes its success and proliferation. You can see that influence reflected in road ecology.”
With a significant part of the global population now reliant on paved road systems for the daily functioning of our lives, it is easy to overlook the impacts they have on our human and more-than-human communities. But how did so many of us become seemingly locked into this dependence on the “normalized violence” of these networks? And what does it mean to support harm reduction in the context of built infrastructures — or even dare to lean into possibilities of regenerative road ethics?
In Green Dreamer’s latest episode #430, we welcome Ben Goldfarb, who we previously hosted a few years ago for an episode on beavers.
Drawing upon his recent book, Crossings, Ben calls on us to confront the harmful-by-default impacts of our road systems. Join us as we uncover the various forms of highway pollution that communities of color are disproportionately subjected to; how roads impact our more-than-human communities beyond roadkill; what road decommissioning projects have entailed in practice; and more.
What does it mean to alchemize change for transport systems that are quite literally being rigidified as they further expand — entrenching us deeper into these status quo ways of world-making?
View the episode transcript and references here, and dive into the extended version of this conversation via our Patreon here.
“We're not going to save wildlife by trying to convince [people] to drive slower. We're going to save wildlife by physically changing our built environment to make it more amenable to wild animals.” – Ben Goldfarb
Ben comes full circle sharing…
a recommendation: “My favorite book ever is Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. It's about the concept of island biogeography, the idea that islands are inherently biologically strange places. By fragmenting the landscape with roads and farms and cities and towns, we're turning the whole world into a series of islands with all kinds of chaotic ecological consequences.”
a practice: “I recently took a wildlife tracking course. It was beautiful and enlightening to see the tracks and signs of bobcats, skunks, ... coyotes, and all of these creatures who we share the landscape with and mostly don't see. It's also a fantastic way of getting away from your screens and being fully present with the ground beneath your feet.”
a personal inspiration: “I'm inspired by my wife. Her name is Elise. She's a healthcare provider. She does so much more than I do to make a difference in the lives of people every day, including disadvantaged people who would struggle to access healthcare without her clinic. I'm really grateful for all that she's doing to make our world a better place.”
and an invitation into deeper inquiry…
“One of the challenges I grappled with while working on this book was finding the balance between being radical and pragmatic in my prescriptions. At times, I felt that by advocating for things like wildlife crossings, I was essentially foreclosing a more radical future. I was suggesting that we could maintain our big interstate highways and all our traffic by simply building a few underpasses and overpasses to help — instead of calling for mass-scale road decommissioning… and a return to a more locally-oriented society.
I appreciate the green dreaminess of your questions and your daring to imagine a roadless or at least less-roaded future. I think that's a wonderful vision to aspire to.”
Ben Goldfarb is an independent conservation journalist. He is the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
What inspirations or curiosities are still lingering with you from this episode?
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