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.
This is such a good episode! All the time I’m seeing new ways that cars cause catastrophic damage to us and our world and this just added a host of new things to the list and they’re easy to understand and convey thus providing clear counterpoints to people trying to justify increased car usage and infrastructure.