Traffication with Paul Donald
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In his groundbreaking book, Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It, scientist and researcher Paul Donald synthesizes dozens of studies to help us understand what cars and roads do to living things. Paul makes the case that cars ruin more than cities—they also ruin the countryside by fragmenting habitat and creating a neverending barrage of threats and stressors for animals of all kinds. The danger posed by the car to nature, he suggests, is existential.
We talked with Paul Donald about his book, why he coined the term “traffication” and what he thinks we can do about it.
This episode is produced with support from Radpower Bikes and Cleverhood. Listen to the episode for the latest Cleverhood discount code.
LINKS:
Pick up a copy of Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It as well as books by other guests of The War on Cars at our official Bookshop.org page.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Think about how much money you spent driving last summer. |
| 0:07.0 | There was gas, there was parking, tolls, insurance, all that unexpected maintenance. |
| 0:12.0 | It probably came out to a lot. |
| 0:14.0 | This summer you can travel differently with an electric bike from Rad Power bikes. |
| 0:19.0 | You can skip the pump, you can avoid all those other pesky expenses, |
| 0:22.0 | you'll save time, and have fun. |
| 0:25.8 | Right now you can go to radpower bikes.com slash war on cars and explore the latest deals. If you like saving money, you can get a new e-bike for up to $700 off. |
| 0:38.0 | Rad will even cover the shipping. |
| 0:40.0 | Again, that's Rad Power Bikes. dot com slash War on Cars. |
| 0:45.3 | Just remember, summer is better when you don't have to drive, |
| 0:48.8 | and it's a lot more fun on an e-bike. Do you like bird song? I do. This is some tape I got in a field in France this spring. |
| 1:14.0 | You have to listen closely, but what you're hearing are things like the corn bunting, |
| 1:19.2 | the European goldfinch, and the zitting systichola. But it isn't always easy to hear birds. Even in the |
| 1:28.4 | ridiculously bucolic French countryside where I spent the month of April, I couldn't get away from the deafening sound |
| 1:36.5 | of cars. The birds can't get away from that sound either. This is the war on cars. |
| 1:54.0 | I'm Sarah Goodyear in for my co-host Aaron Napaestack and Doug Gordon. |
| 2:09.6 | We talk a lot on this podcast about the effect of cars and roads on people. We don't often talk |
| 2:16.2 | about the effect on non-human animals. Most of us don't spend much time thinking about |
| 2:21.8 | it unless maybe we pass the corpse of a road-killed |
| 2:24.7 | deer or groundhog on our commute or an excursion into the countryside. |
| 2:31.0 | In his groundbreaking book, Trafffication, how cars destroy nature and what we can do about it, |
| 2:37.0 | scientist and researcher Paul Donald synthesizes dozens of studies to help us understand what cars and roads do to living things. |
... |
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