mrchaotica t1_jbcfo5y wrote on March 8, 2023 at 1:07 AM

Reply to comment by upL8N8 in New data shows 1 in 7 cars sold globally is an EV, and combustion engine car sales have decreased by 25% since 2017 by FarmhouseFan

> As to what mrchaotica said... if rather than spending all our resources and time on plug-in EVs (aka more automobiles), we instead spent those resources on re-defining transportation by building the necessary infrastructure to reduce overall driving miles, we wouldn't even need to replace all the cars on the planet to rapidly reduce emissions. A PEV (e-bike, e-scooter, EUC, e-sk8) use a tiny percentage of the overall materials and battery cells of a plug-in electric car, especially long range BEVs, and use a tiny percentage of the energy per mile in comparison. If we really cared about rapidly reducing global emissions and pollution, there's your solution.

First of all, thank you for supporting my point.

That said, as insane as it sounds since global warming is a huge problem, emissions are actually the least of the problems with cars! The more basic issue is that car-centric development is the root cause for almost all of our other problems, from the housing crisis, to obesity, to poor mental health/lack of socializing (due both to the time/stress of commuting and the lack of "third places" that exclusionary zoning creates).

upL8N8 t1_jbgzzcj wrote on March 8, 2023 at 11:46 PM

Could take it one step further and suggest that the real issue is greed, laziness, self-centeredness, apathy, entitlement, and lack of forethought. Once you give a person a toy, it's hard to convince them to give it up; especially for a less convenient form of transportation or a smaller house/yard, regardless of whether that alternative helps them/humanity overall or makes their lives better.

Making matters worse, the auto / mining / fuel industries are major global industries. For large regions to suggest we back away from cars instantly leads to lobbying efforts to stop all movement in that direction.

It is interesting that the proposition of creating the option for alternatives is often pushed back against by people in the communities; they simply don't want to pay for things they won't personally utilize, even if many people will utilize it, it'll improve the area, and over time it'll lead to densification around the routes over the coming decades. They don't want to deal with driving around bike lanes, watching out for bikers, less parking, or slower speed limits.

In pushing back, they not only stymie progress, they push the infrastructure in the wrong direction, further towards car centric infrastructure, making it more difficult to install public transit / bike lanes in the future, making it relatively more inconvenient for drivers.

On the plus side, there are 'some' solutions that car companies and communities are having a hard time pushing back against. Namely working from home... WFH was different than bike lanes / public transit in that suddenly a huge percentage of workers were effectively forced to work from home over an extended period of time. Society as a whole all experienced the benefits of working from home, and as a community there was a huge push to continue it.

What if everyone was suddenly told they couldn't drive anymore and had to commute by bike? Over that period, it would no longer be taboo, and people could get a taste of the experience and realize it's not as bad as they may have thought. No fear of cars running them over would be a big plus too.

Given that such a thing will never happen with alternative forms of transit, the only solution is for people to deal with the bullshit infrastructure setup for cars that's a deterrent to bikes / public transit and be a role model and lead by example. If more people do it, communities will think it less weird / inconvenient and be more willing to entertain it, and there will be more people to push our representatives to start expanding the necessary infrastructure.

We're still many many years away before any real pressure can build up, which is sad because if we really wanted to transition today, we could. Everyone could just stop driving, dust off their bikes and ride them, learn public transit routes and use them. Thus my original paragraph... the real issue is greed, laziness, self-centeredness, apathy, entitlement, and lack of forethought.

If emissions / cars are such a massive cataclysmic problem, why are we doing the bare minimum to deal with it?

mrchaotica t1_jbhmyyy wrote on March 9, 2023 at 2:36 AM

> It is interesting that the proposition of creating the option for alternatives is often pushed back against by people in the communities; they simply don't want to pay for things they won't personally utilize, even if many people will utilize it, it'll improve the area, and over time it'll lead to densification around the routes over the coming decades. They don't want to deal with driving around bike lanes, watching out for bikers, less parking, or slower speed limits.

What's really interesting -- and I'm not faulting you for it, by the way, since it's a super common misconception -- is that this entire argument is backwards!

The real issue isn't that we're trying to spend extra money on alternatives; it's that we're trying to stop spending orders of magnitude more money massively subsidizing driving cars. In reality, those people are on the other side of the selfish spending argument because they're the ones forcing the rest of society to spend money benefiting them.

Remember, bikes don't need special lanes except to make them safe from encroachment by cars.

Driving places isn't inherently better; it only became so because we spent the last century demolishing our perfectly-good downtowns to build parking lots, spending trillions of dollars on highway projects, rewriting zoning codes to force private property owners to provide plentiful "free" parking at their expense, and otherwise bending over backwards to accommodate them.

In contrast, if property owners were free to build traditional development (i.e., if we abolished the government regulation restricting them from doing so) people would freely choose to walk and bike places instead of driving because those would be the quicker/easier/better option.