What kind of motoring is both sustainable and resilient? And what specific societal shift will allow us to move into it? Until now, motoring has not been fully considered as a means of environmental resiliency in production. Too often it is seen as a problem rather than the means toward shifting sectors into a more sustainable future. This is a blind spot because motoring is at the heart of production, manufacturing, and economics, and a foundational aspect of our systems of resiliency in wider society. Those systems dependent on motoring are matters of urban planning, infrastructure, policy, food and disaster systems, social and community disaster relief, etc., and yet many advocates of sustainability and resiliency within those sectors assume motoring is an obstacle rather than a portal into the change they desire. This paper examines that assumption and offers a model whereby we can turn this dissonance into collaboration, ultimately arguing that a cognitive shift about what motoring is and can do is necessary across sections if we wish to develop a sustainable future.

Motoring, which is any form of movement powered by energy that is not one’s own, includes internal combustion, diesel, electric, hydrogen, gas, steam, and solar sources, and is a necessary part of our systems of communication, nourishment, and disaster services. It could also become a tool towards resilience rather than its obstacle, though the necessary shift, as this paper argues, will be a cognitive one. For motoring to promote resiliency, we must have a clear understanding of what it means for motoring to be ecological, which means getting beyond the current either/or debate about fuel sources and focusing on use patterns and planetary motoring needs. In that respect, this paper establishes ecological motoring as that which “meets the motoring needs of all within the means of the living planet,” a definition inspired by and modelled upon the Doughnut model of economics by Kate Raworth. To move towards ecological motoring—motoring that is sustainable and resilient—we need to understand these motoring needs from a different cognitive perspective, which means releasing old judgements and debates, and reconfiguring our understanding of the needs and uses of motoring for the planet. Using the opensource tools and workbooks of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) as its methodology, this paper proposes four main quadrants of ecological motoring—system, materials, energy exchange, and scope—which can be understood as motoring’s core components of resiliency at various nested scales among sectors of society. Towards demonstrating these findings, it looks at the case study of Riversimple and shows how we might be able to shift (regardless what the fuel source of our company is) towards a more sustainable and lucrative reality by using these four quadrants.