“Narrowboats,” improbably elongate and appropriately named, are relics of the Industrial Revolution, an event that required coal, and lots of it. If the weather was good and the road not a quagmire, a horse-drawn cart might carry a ton of it.

A quarter-century of environmental hijinks from the U.S.-Mexico border to Yale University — adventures that taught me about community development, got me celebrated on the front page of the New York Times or nearly killed — led me to London, where I’m learning they do things differently.