Sri Lanka has dramatically cut its fossil fuel emissions, completely involuntarily. We don’t use diesel, petrol, or natural gas simply because we can’t import any. We have no natural reserves and no credit to buy. The country has literally run out of gas.

Transport For The Rich

For a sense of what that’s like, my family has a diesel jeep which is now an expensive lawn ornament. It has a quarter tank of gas and the only time I touched it was to move an appliance. Instead of taking the kids to school in that car, I now take the bus. This also runs on diesel but carries 40+ people and is vastly more efficient.

Taking the bus used to suck because there was so much traffic, but now there are dramatically fewer cars on the road and the trip takes about 15 minutes as compared to a sweaty 30 before. The cost has, however, doubled. There are also far fewer people on the bus because economic activity (ie going to work) has generally collapsed.

Our extended family has a plug-in hybrid with about 18km of electric range and we use that sometimes, but mostly we actually just don’t go anywhere at all. The school run is our only essential travel and beyond that we just don’t. We got bicycles and I went to visit a friend on that at night and that was fine, though I had to ride shirtless cause I got so hot.

Now the fact is that most of the country did not have a car, most were taking public transport anyway, but all the investment and ‘development’ went to the assholes with cars. Now all those highways, flyovers, and even the cars themselves are dead assets and everybody’s suddenly depending on the public services we neglected for so long.

Transport For The Poor