The Trump Administration and Stone Age Thinking | Announces bike lanes are "woke" (and hasn't been funding transit infrastructure projects)

It goes without saying that to most people in the United States "Fuel" = Gasoline.  

General Curtis LeMay is famous for saying the US would "bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age" in the quest to "win" the Vietnam War.

The Trump Administration is reducing American resilience in many ways:

• Denying climate change
• Defunding science and medical research, especially at universities--programs are being cut, people are being laid off, and acceptance of new graduate students and postgraduate fellows are on the wane
• But also in various government programs, including the Park Service, the Forest Service, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research because it focuses on climate change("What the US Would Lose If It Eliminates the National Center for Atmospheric Research," Inside Climate News)
• Promoting anti-vaccine beliefs and easing vaccine requirements and guidance, thereby increasing people's susceptibility to diseases that once were rare, like measles
• Ceasing health surveillance programs such as for germ-free produce, which likely has contributed to the current mass problem of cyclosporidia ("How Trump admin cuts have compromised food safety," CBS)
• Paying wind turbine companies to not build sustainable energy projects ("Here’s where Trump has canceled wind farms – and how states are pushing back," Christian Science Monitor)
• Deemphasizing support for electric vehicles, which helps to reduce the demand and dependence on fossil fuels, and puts the US automobile industry behind in the development of new technologies and their ability to compete with EV-focused companies especially from China ("Trump’s Isolationism Is Losing the Great E.V. Races," New Yorker, "The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It?," New York Times)
• Although the foolish/fuelish War with Iran has led to major rise in gasoline prices and a disruption in production and supply chains that will take years to unravel and this is encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles despite the lack of tax credits and other inducements ("California hopes to lure a new generation to electric cars, with help from rebates, high gas prices," Los Angeles Times)

Source: "Explainer: In gasoline-guzzling U.S., high pump prices can be political poison," Reuters.

• Firing competent military officials in favor of Christian Nationalists, and boosting them with testosterone, instead of focusing on how drones are completely changing the military "battlespace"
• Eliminating graduate military education programs at "woke universities" like Harvard, which means that military personnel are less well educated and innovative
• etc.

This to me, is a form of bombing the US back to the Stone Age.  Related is what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Trump Administration's actions as a form of "Superpower Suicide" where the country through its actions is reducing its power and relevance on the world stage.

A new car showroom.  The US automobile industry spends more than $12 billion per year on advertising and marketing, from manufacturing companies to dealerships to ancillary organizations financing cars, selling car warranties, etc.

To the Trump Administration, energy is derived only from oil (and coal and nuclear).  Not from solar, wind, or geothermal sources.  From the Politico article "The Trump administration wants more gasoline made in idled refineries from California to sunny St. Croix":

Three industry executives told the news outlet that the White House has had discussions about reopening refineries ranging from the Virgin Islands to California. “Energy security is national security, and America’s refining capacity is essential to ensuring the United States has continuous access to secure, affordable, and reliable energy,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement.

“The President’s National Energy Dominance Council will continue supporting the reopening of shuttered refineries and the construction of new ones to lower prices and strengthen our national security,” Rogers added.

In the meantime, truly advanced nations are building their resilience, which among other actions means a big shift away from fossil fuels.  In fact, China's ability to reduce their consumption has reduced what are the already high costs for gasoline as a result of the Iran War ("China's oil imports have plunged during the Iran war. How much will they recover?," Reuters).

Sustainable mobility as a financial and health resilience strategy and tactic.  You might not think so, but every transit user, bicyclist choosing biking over driving for trips, and pedestrians walking instead of driving, reduces the demand for automobiles and gasoline, and increases their household resilience by reducing dependence on expensive cars and gas--a new car now costs not quite $12,000 per year according to NerdWallet.

This in turn reduces the demand for gasoline, which when your President has already f* up availability and cost, helps the nation in times of strife.

E.g., wrt biking and not owning a car, that supported $100,000 of our mortgage in DC.  It also reduced other costs and saved time for me.  Plus, there were major health benefits--granted I chose to bike in 1990 because I knew there were health benefits and I had a paternal line history of heart disease, but my cardiologists and oncologists attribute my survival from heart disease and two cancers in part to 30 years of biking.  So far I've outlived my father and other relatives by at least 12 years.

Suzanne doesn't bike.  But she used transit (aided by the federal transit benefit, which is a big help).

Hill Family Biking is a community group in DC's Capitol Hill, promoting biking over driving, especially in getting kids to and from school.  This event had 450 cyclists of all ages.

Trump Administration Hostile to Transit.  So in terms of "Stone Age Thinking" it makes perfect sense that the US Department of Transportation, which is already defunding transit by not acting on applications ("Congress Budgeted Billions for Big Transit Projects. Trump Isn’t Spending It," New York Times),

Trump Administration is now expressly hostile to Biking/Biking isn't hostile to cars.  The Administration has recently made clear its belief that bike lanes are "woke" pro-diversity/equity/inclusion initiatives that are antithetical to a dependence on automobiles and gasoline ("Trump Cancels Trail, Bike-Lane Grants Deemed ‘Hostile’ to Cars," Bloomberg).  Relatedly, the Trump Administration refused to sign on to a UN Declaration on the importance of road safety ("The U.S. Alone Votes Against A Road Safety Declaration," Forbes).

From Bloomberg:

The Trump administration canceled grants for street safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes in communities around the country this month, each time offering a simple rationale for yanking back federal aid: the projects aren’t designed for cars.

A San Diego County road improvement project including bike lanes “appears to reduce lane capacity and a road diet that is hostile to motor vehicles,” a US Department of Transportation official wrote, rescinding a $1.2 million grant it awarded nearly a year ago.

... the wave of cancellations issued Sept. 9 by the DOT demonstrates just how determined the administration is to promote the use of single-occupancy vehicles in cities and towns – and to thwart local governments’ attempts to develop other ways for residents to get around.

Hostile to cars?  Heterogeneous versus homogeneous mobility systems. What a joke.  This fits in with my point that while countries like Germany are fine with a heterogeneous approach to mobility--they are big on cars with big manufacturers like VW, Mercedes, and BMW, but at the same time they recognize transit is the best way to get around in cities, that traveling by train between cities is often more efficient and less environmentally costly than flying, and that biking is a good way to reduce demand for gasoline, parking spaces, space on the road, etc.

By contrast, the US forces as much as possible, policies to promote automobile and gasoline dependence, in part because the US is one of the largest producers of oil.  Germany is a big producer of automobiles, like the US, but they aren't much of an oil producer.  So they take a more balanced approach.

The US could hold up cities like NYC as a premier transit example, and Portland Oregon as a premier city for biking (there are many other best practice neighborhoods), and neighborhoods across the country as premier walking places, and accept a multi-modal mobility system, but instead it takes the one sided view and favors cars.

Even EVs, while better in terms of reduced fossil fuel demand, especially with the rise of sustainable energy generation complemented by batteries, are really just another form of automobile primacy--what I call "Next Generation Asphalt Nation."

The True Snowflakes are the Right.  The right has called the left "snowflakes" for promoting bike lanes, LGBTQ+ issues and the like.  But the right in shutting down all kinds of programs that challenge their narrow minded world view of what is "muscular" are the true snowflakes.

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Bike sharing/micromobility.  It's taken more than a decade but city bike sharing systems in places like NYC and DC have experienced a huge increase in take up over the past few years ("Citi Bike surge: Ridership increases, showing ‘critical’ need in NYC transit deserts, says advocacy group," amNY, "Bikeshare Beat: Capital Bikeshare breaks all-time annual ridership record," GGW).  

One factor has been expansion.  The other, increased deployment of electric bikes which are faster, easier to ride, and cover more distance more quickly compared to regular bikes.  

Plus, in cities bike sharing has the advantage of offloading parking/storage and security to a third party.

A person rides on an electric scooter on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin on Tuesday July 7th, 2026.  Photo: Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman.

Separately, "free range" bike and scooter sharing offered up by companies like Lime, Spin, and now Veo--sitting scooters further expand the willingness of people to use "micromobility devices" as primary forms of transportation ("What to know about the new rental scooters now on Salt Lake City streets," Salt Lake Tribune). 

These companies also provide coverage in cities without city-sanctioned dock based systems ("Austin riders turn to Lime, Bird scooters after CapMetro Bikeshare suspension," Austin American-Statesman).  

Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers

The Guardian has a chilling story, "A third of Americans are already facing above-average warming," about how many US counties (and the cities within) already are experiencing a warming of at least 1.5℃.

In the article, the map is interactive by county.

Hotter and colder temperatures, more virulent weather events, wildfires, flooding, drought conditions, sea level rise affecting coastal land, and an increase in heat- and cold-related deaths are all fallout from climate change.

Some cities are beginning to appoint "heat officers," creating positions within government to focus on climate change effects.  

Apparently, Miami was the first city in the US to do so ("Miami’s first-ever chief heat officer on the climate issues that scare her the most—and what gives her hope," CNBC).  The Guardian has a recent story about the activities of the heat officer in Phoenix ("America’s hottest city is nearly unlivable in summer. Can cooling technologies save it?"), a city that tends to have the US's highest summer temperatures.  From the article:

Almost 200 people died from extreme heat in Phoenix in 2020 – the hottest, driest and deadliest summer on record with 53 days topping 110F (43C) compared with a previous high of 33 days. Last year there were fewer scorching days, but the death toll remained staggeringly high, with people experiencing homelessness and addictions dying disproportionately....

Last year, after another deadly summer, the mayor announced the region’s first dedicated unit to tackle the growing hazard of urban heat, which also threatens the city’s economic viability. ...

Hondula recently submitted the 2022 heat response plan to city hall, in an attempt to coordinate the existing patchwork of services. “I’m impressed by the number of programs but the death and illness numbers are moving in the wrong direction, so there’s a disconnect we need to address,” he said. “If we mean to take a hazard seriously, relying on good fortune, luck and happenstance is not the best model.”

Mitigation will be focused on trees and infrastructure, which will be led by an urban forester and a built environment expert who are yet to be hired.

-- Heat Response Plans: Summary of Evidence and Strategies for Collaboration and Implementation, CDC

-- "Planning for Extreme Heat: A National Survey of U.S. Planners," Journal of the American Planning Association 

-- "Will more cities hire a Chief Heat Officer," NBCLX

I guess you can call them heat officers, but they are really climate change officers -- a few years ago the big term was "resilience."

-- Resilient Cities Network

For example, in Utah drought is a big issue, and Salt Lake City's efforts on reducing water consumption saved more than 2 billion gallons of water, according to the mayor ("Here’s how much water Salt Lake City residents saved this summer and what it means for next year," Salt Lake Tribune).

Although residential water use pales compared to agriculture and industrial use, and Utah in particular has few conservation systems in place for large scale water users ("Utah has a water dilemma," High Country News).  Some Utah communities have stopped approving residential building permits because they can't guarantee water supply to new housing ("First of many? Drought-stricken Utah town halts development," GreenWire).

A Climate Change Officer should be dealing with all of these effects, depending on what are the biggest problems in particular communities.

Citizenship culture in Bogota.  A previous mayor of Bogota, Andreas Mockus, initiated what he calls "citizenship culture." One of the examples was in a saving water campaign, he was filmed taking a shower with minimal water use ("Building "Citizenship Culture" in Bogota," Journal of International Affairs, 2012).  From "Academic turns city into a social experiment," Harvard Gazette:

When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.

Sustainability commissions as opportunities for rearticulating issues and increasing engagement.  10+ years ago, communities creating sustainability plans and citizen commissions to implement them were all the rage.  

While I am not sure how much progress has been made since, at the time I was impressed at how motivated citizens were to get involved in the issue, through commissions and other venues, and they were willing to think anew about issues that they had taken for granted, like solid waste, food waste, energy, and transportation impacts from automobility.

-- "Civic Engagement for Environmental Sustainability," National Civic League

South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure

A bill from Griddy for a few days last week. 

Given the debacle in Texas last week, with more than 4 million out of electricity, wrecked water systems, four day electricity bills of as much as $16,000, 30+ dead people, and billions of dollars of damage to houses and businesses, it's clear that the State of Texas government--legislative, executive, and regulatory--built an electricity system for most of the state that accentuated risk, rather than reduced it.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"

In a comment on an article someone likened it to Florida and hurricanes, always looking for FEMA and the federal government for disaster relief afterwards.

South Florida.  I didn't think that was fair, because, I guess given the increasing examples of government failure, shockingly, after Hurricane Andrew devastated so many South Florida communities in 1992, recognizing poor building practices accentuated damage and destruction, they fortified South Florida's building regulations to provide better protection against hurricanes ("After Andrew, Florida Changed Its Approach to Hurricanes," New York Times).

Not only did they improve regulations on paper, they built the inspection and regulatory regime to ensure that buildings were actually constructed to be stronger ("Fla. Building Codes, Revamped Since Andrew, Still Being Worked," Insurance Journal, 2007).

Today though, with climate change, Florida is discovering that stronger requirements need to be extended across the state, whereas before they believed the worst storm effects would be concentrated in South Florida.  

And some firms are building beyond minimum requirements out of a recognition that codes are behind the reality of climate change and ever worsening and extreme weather ("Lessons of Resilience From Hurricane Michael," Engineering News-Record).

Now, while we think of Florida as being Republican, the fact is the stronger building codes were enacted during a period of Democratic leadership.  

It's more likely that strengthening of the codes in the face of worse storms, such as demonstrated by Hurricane Michael in 2018, which severely impacted North Florida, won't be happening going forward, because anti-science Republicans control the state government ("South Florida’s Hurricane Building Code is Strong—And North Florida’s Could Be Stronger," Weather Underground, "Toughen Florida's Building Codes," Tampa Bay Times, "Florida’s building code is tough, but Michael was tougher. Is it time for a rewrite?," Miami Herald).

Because it was built far stronger than required by the building codes, this elevated house that its owners call the Sand Palace, on 36th Street in Mexico Beach, came through Hurricane Michael almost unscathed. [Johnny Milano for the New York Times]

Tulsa.  Historically, Tulsa was prone to bad flooding, resulting in deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage. While the city had been engaging in floodwater management initiatives since the 1970s, in 1984, after flooding which resulted in 14 deaths, the city created a Department of Stormwater Management and developed a Citywide Flood and Stormwater Management Plan, which provides for specific improvements across the city ("In Tulsa, a National Blueprint for Managing Floods as Cities Grow and Climate Changes," NPR). 

-- From Roof Top to River: Tulsa's Approach to Floodplain and Stormwater Management, City of Tulsa

 The primary focus of the plan is removing buildings from the flood plain and converting these spaces to greenways and parks as a way to absorb flooding while minimizing damage. The plan has been frequently updated--the latest iteration was approved in 2017--and since 1990, no structure built before 1987 has been damaged by flooding.

Unlike Florida today or Texas, this process occurred under Republican Administrations.  

Santa Fe, New Mexico. The watershed of Santa Fe's source of drinking water is particularly susceptible to wildfire. 

After nearby Los Alamos experienced millions of dollars of wildfire-related damage to their water resources, Santa Fe figured it would make sense to be proactive ("For a Warming World, A New Strategy for Protecting Watersheds," Yale, "Fire and Rain: The One-Two Punch of Flooding After Blazes," National Geographic). 

-- Municipal Watershed Management Program, City of Santa Fe

They created a watershed fire protection plan and a water fund to pay for various land protection initiatives. Originally, private and philanthropic donations paid for the program, now it's funded through dedicated taxes.

Conclusion.  It's possible for governments to react to disaster in ways that strengthen resiliency going forward.  (There are other positive and negative examples I could have included, from hardening buildings from earthquakes to ignoring coastal water rise and flooding.)

But Texas had two chances, in 1989 and 2011.  Now in 2021 there are 30+ deaths and $40 billion of damage which for the most part, could have been avoided had they responded like Florida after Hurricane Andrew, Tulsa after deathly floods in 1984, or Santa Fe, which acted proactively, after witnessing the devastating effects from fire on water resources in nearby Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Note that the US Government is taking a stronger position against construction in flood plains ("Climate Threats Could Mean Big Jumps in Insurance Costs This Year," New York Times), which has taken decades to come about, mostly as a result of legislative pushback.