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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Can you point to another tool whose required infrastructure occupies the same amount of space, we spend as much time and money on, where those who won’t or can’t spend that time or money are treated as second-class citizens, that directly kills as many people, that we fight wars over to ensure we have the needed fuel, that people define their entire identities around, and that causes as much environmental destruction as the automobile?
Think it through, and I’m sure you can see what makes cars different from any other any other tool. Most societies on earth are completely warped around maximizing the use of the car everywhere and for everything, at any cost. It is truly an obsession.
A multiuse path (based on local data) costs 10% the cost of one lane of road.
I've been trying to gather momentum to implement 0.5km of path built for every 1km of road. Construction costs only go up 5% and it would add massive amounts of mobility. Paths don't necessarily need to be near where the roads are.
It's also a tool that would force road and infrastructure planners to think about how people move around not in cars.
There was a time when I spent more on Petrol than I did on food for myself. Yes, rent was more expensive, but putting that aside, adding up the on-road costs like insurance and registration, and I was well and truly spending more on my car than I was on myself. That's without taking my taxes going to roads or my rent being higher because cars are monopolising more space. Society relies on cars today to the extent that we are faced with cars having life destroying potential in this planet and most of us look the other way most of the time. We need cars and we let them walk all over us.
Transport is not an obsession, it's a basic necessity. It's a huge deal regardless of what mode. But I think your point with cars is that there are alternatives that don't cause as much harm. I can think of a few other similar examples.
Housing - Suburban housing. It's worse than cars in many of the ways you outlined. Typically cars and suburbs come as a double punch.
Food - Meat. At least as damaging to the environment as cars, causes huge amounts of suffering, and it's also pointless because there are great alternatives.
Cooking - Gas stoves. Fairly minor, but there's no good reason they should still exist. Same story with gas heaters instead of heat pumps.
Suburban sprawl I would consider to be part of the same issue—it’s development that is warped around the primacy of the automobile.
Meat is a good example of something that comes close though. Certainly a lot of problems associated with meat production. But I think I would say that is a condemnation of meat culture, not a defense of car culture.
Gas appliances are a problem but so much more minor than the car. And we’re far from having the same obsession with them as we do with cars. I think they will disappear in coming years and few people will even miss them.
I know about all the trade offs you mentioned. Personally I'm happy with my coil electric stove because a bit more difficulty cooking is a good trade off to avoid cancer and climate change, but that argument has been moot for decades anyway because induction stoves are better than gas in every way.
Modern heat pumps work fine at the vast majority of locations where humans live. If you happen to live at the north pole, you can supplement your heat pump with electric resistive heaters or even, god forbid, gas, and still come out far more energy efficient.
You're absolutely right that people won't do the right thing voluntarily, as seen with all these examples. That's why we need governments to encourage them. That could be through regulation, taxes, subsidies, and building the right infrastructure to make it easy to do the right thing.