Road 50, Days 3 and 4

Pierre Matile
2 min readAug 25, 2022

Climate sceptics, I understand some of their motivations

Photo: C. Matile

Sorry for not having witten yesterday. We arrived at around 8PM in Hannibal, having driven all the way from Chicago. A long day. When we arrived, we had to organize our camper for the first night, not an easy task.

Today we drove from Hannibal to Independence, in the neighborhood of Kansas City, another long day on the road. For the first time, we drove on Road 50, the road that will bring us to San Francisco. We are feeling the excitement of being on the road again.

On the way to Independence, I understood why some Americans, especially in the countryside may be climate sceptic. Indeed, from Hannibal to Independence, we saw only fields, on both sides of the road. Fields and very few cars and trucks. Fields and very few houses, villages or cities. Just a more or less straight road and nothing but fields.

Compare this to Europe. In Switzerland for example, it is almost impossible to drive 5 minutes without seeing a house, a village, a city. The road is so crowded that oftentimes the average speed on the highway is about 40 miles, 40 miles per hour on the highway. Driving is very stressful to the the much higher speed and the number of cars, trucks and buses on the road. At night, the sky gets polluted by the light of the cities, at day, by the chimneys of the production…

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Pierre Matile

Author of the “Dictatorship of the Expert Systems”