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Presumably at least some techno-optimists would agree, but suggest that transitioning to electric cars is a step towards making our bad situation better. Restru
by blacksmith_tb 11y ago
Presumably at least some techno-optimists would agree, but suggest that transitioning to electric cars is a step towards making our bad situation better. Restructuring our cities, getting everyone to bicycle, walk, or use public transit (and killing off the auto industry, which is a significant chunk of the manufacturing economy) would be much harder to accomplish in the near future.
- crispyambulance 11y agoThe path we as a society ultimately take isn't up to any one entity making decisions (not even Elon Musk :-) ). Certainly lifestyle transitions will require decades, after all, it took decades to cities to become car-centric. But can happen even within a generation. Many millennials eschew car ownership and are moving back to cities, whereas for baby boomers the car was a rite of passage as well as its concomitant house in the 'burbs. Transitioning entirely to electric vehicles will also take decades (admittedly it would be less time because car-years are much quicker than people-years). What will happen is some mixture of both of these along with random jags of reactionary fascination with the happy-motoring era and who knows what else. Ultimately, we only have a finite quantity of fossil fuels and there is no "free-refill" for the planet. At some point, lifestyles will have to change drastically to accommodate this limitation as population continues to grow.