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...and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle How are the central planners planning that one?
by Bizarro 7y ago
...and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle
How are the central planners planning that one?
- CydeWeys 7y agoIf you correctly price in the negative externalities of burning gasoline, then the suburbs suddenly get a lot more expensive, and it makes more sense to densify.
- Bizarro 7y agoAll your solution does is hurt middle-class and poor people.
- Scoundreller 7y agoWrite them a cheque. Or increase the amount of income you can earn before income tax is paid. Then they get all the benefits of conservation without being poorer, while particularly punishing those that don’t rearrange their lifestyles.
- selimthegrim 7y agoDoesn’t Canada do this?
- Scoundreller 7y agoYes. I don’t quite trust the government’s accounting, but yes.
- SauciestGNU 7y agoI am largely opposed to regressive measures like this, but in this case I tend to believe the continued survival of our species and our planet supercede concerns about temporary inequalities imposed by our solutions.
- noonespecial 7y agoStill we must be vigilant that our solutions don't accidentally (or intentionally!) factor down to "there's too many humans, lets starve out some of those poors".
- SauciestGNU 7y agoI completely agree with you about that. There are a number of climate change solutions (particularly around population control measures) that land uncomfortably close to eugenics. As a side note, my wife and I are not having children precisely because of the climate crisis. We don't want to bring children into a world that is looking increasingly unsurvivable.
- wait-a-minute 7y agoThere are much better solutions that target the actual large polluters. People living in suburbs is a small percentage of total global emissions, especially when you consider transportation of goods. Transporting goods across the oceans is a far larger percentage of emissions than people living in suburbs. If the goal is to continue to survive as a species, there are much more effective strategies to implement.
- kasey_junk 7y agoYou can (and we need) to do both. Suburban living on average doubles the climate impact of the same number of people in a city. The OP notes correctly that this externality is not correctly priced in the current market.
- wait-a-minute 7y agoHow do you calculate the value of such an externality? Even if for argument's sake I were to just accept that it's double the climate impact on average, doubling a very small value is not really meaningful. The average American carbon footprint is roughly the same regardless. You also haven't considered that as you move people into cities you need to scale up infrastructure in the city itself. Living spaces, transportation around the city, supply lines for supermarkets. Everything needs to scale. It's not black and white that moving everyone into a tightly packed city is going to make a meaningful difference to global emissions. What would make a tremendous difference is turning the entire grid into a green smart grid powered by solar, wind, geothermal, etc. That would change things regardless of where people live, because the sources of energy are decentralized and can exist basically anywhere that natural resources like solar and wind exist.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xondono 7y agowhatever you do with fossil fuel prices, it won’t do much if you don’t price in the negative externalities of zoning restrictions
- wait-a-minute 7y agoThe amount of carbon emitted from people driving to and from suburbs is actually a small amount compared to the real big polluters. It makes no sense to target such a giant restructuring of society for so little gain.
- antoineMoPa 7y agoAny data supporting this statement?
- falcolas 7y agoHave a look at a google search on “cargo ship pollution” and draw your own conclusions. Simply moving cargo, the lifeblood of our economy, across the oceans burns hundreds of tons of fuel oil - releasing more (and more varied) pollutants into the atmosphere and oceans. One ship, by some reports, emits as many emissions as some 50 million (or more) cars. And there are well over 9,000 on the ocean.
- lorenzhs 7y agoThose numbers are for some very specific substances (which are also bad, nobody's contesting that), but not for CO2-equivalent emissions. It's the same kind of dumb number as that cloth bag reuse count vs plastic. Technically true for some aspect, but utterly misleading.
- wait-a-minute 7y agoAnd that is why researchers are proposing we bring back Zeppelins! Zeppelins that are 10x as long as the Empire State Tower is tall, to be exact. Way better for the environment, can be operated autonomously, and cheap to produce. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/zeppelins-stopped-flying-after-hindenburg-disaster-now-scientists-want-bring-ncna1043911 https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/zeppelins-stopped-flyin...
- hanniabu 7y agoYou figures are incorrect, this is taken directly from the linked article: > As proposed in a recent scientific paper, the new airships would be 10 times bigger than the 800-foot Hindenburg — more than five times as long as the Empire State Building is tall
- DennisP 7y agoAlso makes more sense to stay in the suburbs and get electric cars.
- asdff 7y agoHalf the lifetime pollution from a car happens during manufacture. Lets not buy more shit that does the same a-b.
- DennisP 7y agoBuilding the physical infrastructure for all those suburbians to live in the cities would also have a carbon impact. In practical terms, in five years or so it's not going to be hard to get people to buy electric cars instead of gasoline, but it will still be practically impossible to get them to give up their houses, back yards, and cars to go live in the city.
- scottlocklin 7y agoIt's not working well in France with the Giletes Jaunes. Basically taxing the suburbs told a large social class of working poor people they have no right to exist. I suppose you could try warehousing them in the projects, but good luck with that.
- nostalgk 7y agoAs well, is this really something that harmful to the environment? I get that people driving > people not driving when it comes to climate harm, but I don't want to live in a city and I feel like there are much larger climate concerns (in manufacturing, for example) that outweigh passing the blame onto suburban commuters.
- asdff 7y agoSmog from freeway traffic is very real and harmful to public health.