Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Ah, yes, the old "consumers are the problem" rhetoric when, in actuality, they only account for 10% of emissions.
10% is 10%. I can't control what the CEO of an oil company does, but I can decide avoid using fossil fuels. (Maybe if enough of us did the same, we actually could influence an oil company.) We each have to do everything we can to reduce CO2. Dismissing something as rhetoric doesn't help.
I can't control the infrastructure that requires me to drive a car.
I can't afford an EV, transit is too unreliable to get me to work and housing/rent is too expensive for me to move closer to my work, so how exactly is my fault North American society is built around requiring a car while various social economic factors help reinforce it?
Who's talking about fault (besides you)? We each have to do as much as we can. Maybe you can help in other ways instead. How about cutting dairy/meat from your diet, then doing the four Rs with everything else?
I'm expressing that many of us are bound to fossil fuels by design and we need bigger more impactful change. I do what I can, i walk to get my grocceries, I rarely buy new clothing, keep my apartment cool in the winter even though I don't pay the energy bill. Its not even a drop in the bucket compared to millions being spent and made on oil and ensuring we all rely on it.
We made our cars bigger, we made our cities wider and less dense and we told everyone to drive everywhere. Buy everything wrapped in plastic, don't worry it's totally recycleable (but not really). No one can afford housing because multi unit housing doesn't exist in the vast majority of neighbourhoods, unless it was a big house renovated into apartments. Multi units are often more energy effecient compared to the same number of SFH, they loose less heat during winter due the shared walls. They are also denser which can support walkability and transit better than traditional suburbs.
We are beyond the points of individual change being meaningful. We need broad solutions from individuals, communities, nations and everything in between. Building a denser, more walkable society will naturally lower many people's oil and energy consumption while also preserving land.
We need both. Throwing up our hands and saying it's the corporations' fault is too easy an excuse for not doing everything we each can. AND living in a bubble thinking that recycling my plastic bottle will be enough, is not enough.
While I can respect the idea, pragmatically speaking, it would be too little too late. My 10 percent figure refers to global emissions from personal vehicles globally. In the US, these account for less than 2.5% of global emissions
Like another commenter mentioned, the majority of people (in the US) can't even afford EVs yet, and many can't afford environmentally conscious food replacements. If the government provided credits toward EV purchases/subsidized production/expanded public transportation, then it would maybe be possible. But given the current economic climate, it won't happen, and the rate at which it would change even if the government did wouldn't be significant enough to have a substantial impact. Not to mention that most of these policies are an attempt to disguise a lack of reform in the industrial/power sectors. The article above does a great job explaining why this sort of rhetoric is purposefully misleading.
I agree with your overall statement, but if by environmentally conscious food, you mean vegan, it can easily be cheaper than an omnivore diet. Don't use any of the meat or cheese substitutes or many highly processed foods, and it will likely be much cheaper (and healthier) than an omnivore diet.
On the other hand, industrial agriculture isn't very environmentally conscious; it basically turns fossil fuels into food (fossil fuel derived fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides; machinery, transportation, processing, and refrigeration powered by fossil fuels). Still more efficient than meat and dairy though, since the animals are fed the output from agriculture.
I think EVs are about on par with ICE on total cost of ownership now (but higher initial cost still).
Pretty sure it's "Fuck Cars" rhetoric
It's not the cars that are the issue. it's the politicians and lobbyists who have made it necessary to own one.
But it's also a 10% over which in western world we have quite a lot of control. You can vote for local governments that want to expand public transport. You can demand more bike paths and pedestrian friendly infrastructure in your neighborhood. There are multiple examples around the world (even in the USA) of communities or even whole cities significantly reducing car-centrism over several years.
It's wrong to blame people for using plastic packaging when there's no feasible alternative. It's wrong to force people to go beyond their comfort by using less electricity or heating because governments didn't transform the energy sources.
But each gram of CO2 matters and when reducing emissions doesn't require much effort or sacrifices (like voting) then we all absolutely should do our part.
That's exactly my point. Instead of pointing the finger at our curremt vehicles, we should be focused more on pushing for better legislation. The rest will follow suit.
That 10% created a demand that caused the 60% to happen. To decrease or even eliminate that 60%, the 10% have to change their behaviour as well, even after decades of being indoctrinated.
Not even remotely true. Most emissions are caused by factors completely indepedent from consumer vehicles. Nearly 60 percent comes from power generation, industrial processes, and goods transportation (Not to be confused with personal vehicle use)
Who those power generated for? What those industrial processes making? And who those goods is delivered to? It's all come down to over consumption.
We all need fuel to drive the car, if the oil is stopped today, what are people gonna do? They still have to change their behaviour regardless.
Same case everywhere. Stopping plastic and consumer has to change the way they purchase thing. Stopping beef industry and consumer has to eat less beef or eat another thing. It's a cycle, most of that 90% emission that link to big company emission is directly correlated to how the consumer act. You can't stop oil without first giving a viable alternative transportation everywhere, but you won't get viable alternative transportation and a properly build town/city if people being a little bitch with NIMBY mindset and want everywhere to be accessible by car and refuse to walk.
You said it yourself... It has nothing to do with our use of personal vehicles.
Our reliance on vehicles is a result of horrible city design, lobbying from vehicle manufacturers, and lack of public transportation. All of which have nothing to do with people's tendency to over-consume.
When you start creating impossible hypotheticals to justify your reasoning, it is a sign that your argument doesn't actually make sense.
Let's look at energy production, the single worst contributor to emissions worldwide. The consumers' propensity to overuse has no bearing on where the energy comes from. Switching to renewables comes from government intervention in the form of incentivizing/requiring green energy production. Unfortunately, due to utility monopolies (at least in the US), the consumer has no way of controlling that. So no, it's not all a cycle, if it were that simple, we wouldn't be having these problems.