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Consuming less would definitely rescue the planet but everyone not having a 1.5 ton hunk of steel to ferry a 70kg person from robot to robot while throwing away

Consuming less would definitely rescue the planet but everyone not having a 1.5 ton hunk of steel to ferry a 70kg person from robot to robot while throwing away 40% of food produced goes against our hardwiring of having more and more. instead we hold out for some unproven brilliant technical innovation to save us instead of thinking about using resources rationally.

iamgopal 7y ago
Lots of mindsets to overcome, but I'm sure, sooner or later we will forced to get rid of automobile and completely relay on public transport. May be in 50 to 100 years, but there isn't any alternative.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Or bicycles, which offer the personal freedom of an automobile but not the catastrophic environmental impact.
  - Yetanfou 7y ago
    Plus the additional health benefits which come with the job of conveying self plus bike from a to b as well as the cognitive benefits of mens sana in corpore sano [1] Bikes won't carry everything but they go a long way in solving day to day commuting problems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano
    - sunstone 7y ago
      Yes, particularly e-bikes. That's why the Netherlands now buys more e-bikes per year than they do traditional bikes despite that e-bikes cost about twice as much.
      - derekp7 7y ago
        We just need to get past the mindset that e-bikes are cheating. This is one of the big impediments for anyone that I've talked to about e-bikes, they say they would feel embarrassed riding them (since the main purpose of a bicycle that many people see is as a form of exercise, not transportation). The answer to that, of course, is e-bikes aren't cheating, but driving a car is.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    This is only true for some lifestyles. Elderly people with limited mobility, freezing climates, and rural, spread-out areas are examples of reasons cycling might not be appropriate. As someone who cycles to work year-round, I'd love to see more bicycles and infrastructure, but I don't think bicycles are a panacea.
    - vinni2 7y ago
      You’re right but bicycles + public transport could go a long way in most of the cases you mention. The other problem is also the city planning most of which were made assuming ownership of cars. I don’t own a car all my commuting happens on a bike. I live in a city with not so good public transport so when needed I just rent a car for the weekend or so.
  - sfifs 7y ago
    Probably yes for single adults in their 20s and 30s without any small kids or elderly parents to take care of who live in a small (possibly European) city with low enough population density that it allows bicycles on public transport. Doesn't describe most of the world unfortunately.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      The trick is to move to Europe. Plenty of families in bakfiets, or older folks cycling.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      Also you need high population density, not low.
    - vinni2 7y ago
      I know families with 3 kids who don’t own a car. But of course they live walking distance to supermarket, kids school and the parents commute by bike. In case Of emergencies they don’t hesitate to take a taxi. From their point of view yearly taxi costs are lower than car ownership costs. But of course the city you live in must support bike paths etc.
- mijamo 7y ago
  I don't think you should be sure of anything at a 50 or 100 years horizon.
- weberc2 7y ago
  Honesty question for everyone proposing bicycling and public transit: are these feasible in rural environments? (Especially WRT cycling if you have a disability or young children and/or have to commute long distances in very cold or very hot weather)
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    I continued cycling with a young child, though less often and usually only solo trips. Bicycle trailers can help but it's still more work than putting the kids in a car, and with kids there is already less time for everything to be done.
  - stretchwithme 7y ago
    Not everybody can use a car either. There's always exceptions to every proposal. But I don't think bicycles and mass transit will take over ultimately. But self driving electric vehicles a bit larger than a bicycle could do it. These will only need one seat and minimal storage. They'll go directly from home to work without stopping at every bus stop or train station along the way. And they'll be 1/4 the cost of today's car. And, yes, they won't work for everybody and every situation, just like everything else.
  - dashundchen 7y ago
    Bicycling and transit doesn't have to be feasible for everyone, it just has to be made an option for trips where it makes sense, which is most trips. Nearly half of trips in the US were under 3 miles, 72% of those where done in a car. 60% of trips under a mile were made in a car or truck (!). Accommodating all those trips requires a ton of pavement, parking, gas stations to be built. https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel-survey-short-trips-analysis https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel... The vast majority of people making those trips are able-bodied people in urbanized areas (80% of the US lived in an urbanized area as of 2010). https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-sta... So if you can get bike infrastructure to where people are living, you've attacked a big chunk of the auto problem. Per your second point, yes, it can be feasible. The modern rural US is very sprawling in terms of the built environment but it wasn't always that way. Rural areas in the US used to revolve around small villages and points of density that service a wide area, complete with transit connections. Many German rural villages are extremely bikeable and have regular transit through their regions and to larger cities. You still can accommodate people who need vehicles, just the demand on infrastructure (parking, number of lane miles, subsidies and costs) would be greatly reduced. As it is now, the children, the disabled, and frequently the poor can't drive themselves and rely on other people driving them. Cycling can be done by almost anyone, is much cheaper and therefore much more accessible than driving.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  This is impossible in the U.S. unless the costs of building public transportation falls by a couple of orders of magnitude.
- V-2 7y ago
  Self-driving cars will blur and in the long run, possibly invalidate the distinction between "private" and "public" transport.
  - npo9 7y ago
    I strongly disagree with this idea. While not having to park, consuming electricity, and more efficient road usage will make cars much much better, this future car will still be significantly less efficient than modern trains in several key metrics. Examples include efficient land usage, efficient energy usage, maintenance requirements, raw resource requirements, max speed. As the process of urbanization continues trains are the most logical next step in transportation for our cities. While side driving cars will play a role in less traveled routes, we’ll see heavy investment in trains as cities try to find ways to allow more and more people access to their most busy business districts.
    - jupp0r 7y ago
      What you leave out of your calculation is the value of peoples time. Non individualized transport currently has the advantage of people being able to work instead of having to operate the vehicle. Once this goes away with self driving cars, the only advantage non individualized transport might have is price. Looking at current ticket prices, I doubt that it will be able to compete on that alone.
      - npo9 7y ago
        Sure, self driving cars will be common in a lot of places, but the most dense places will require more.
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  I'd strongly suggest finding a source of predictions for the 50 to 100 year future made 50 to 100 years ago, from any source you care to look for, and enjoying the spectacle of just how completely absurd 99% of them were, then thinking much more carefully about your own predictions for anything that far ahead.The vast majority of such predictions made today, either by professional scientists, "forecasters" or laypeople all suffer from the same two core defects: 1. they're based far too much on current assumptions and worldviews. and 2. they completely fail at taking into account unknown unknowns, even if they claim not to do so. By definition they can't do otherwise anyhow.
trothamel 7y ago
Or, you know - we could not lower our standard of living. It's good to be able to visit friends in the next town over in a few minutes, in any weather, rather than having to walk and then transfer in some distant location. It's good to be able to have our choice of food, rather than having to accept what's left of what the comisar of production allocated to are area. The nice thing about technology is it will allow us to improve the future, rather than having to don the hair shirts of the past.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Is it good to be able to do those things when it is killing us? Lots of things are "good" in the short term if you ignore long term effects.
- adamsea 7y ago
  You kind of went from zero to one hundred there - pretty sure what the previous poster mentioned can be accomplished without a communist dystopia and with don’t way to still travel swiftly to visit friends, etc.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  I don't mean to be rude, but aren't you being a little short sighted here? You can talk about how pleasant these choices are to have, but unless we look really hard at what's critical and preserve that immediately, there's not going to be a functional society and industrial framework in which these guarantees can be delivered. We should strongly consider things like redefining energy security rather rather than wallowing in our base loss aversion. We'll need to develop alternative ways to deliver all of these improvements that don't assign an unpayable environmental debt to our future generations.
  - trothamel 7y ago
    I don't think so. I mean, fifteen years ago, electric cars weren't a thing. If we had abandoned cars in favor of bicycles then, Tesla wouldn't have gotten off the ground. And I think I'd rather ride around in a Tesla than on a Schwinn. Basically, I think we have to find climate solutions that allow us to maintain our standard of living. And I think by accepting that's what we need to do, we can and will find those choices, and not divert attention to unpalatable options. I'm an optimist, but the post-enlightenment world routinely justifies such optimism.
KirinDave 7y ago
Okay, but consumer cars aren't actually the largest polluters by far.
- npo9 7y ago
  Both agriculture and consumer transportation are non-trivial contributions. We should go after military and cooperate polluters first because of their larger impact, but that’s easier to do when you gain moral high ground.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    Agriculture wasn't really mentioned. But one way to drastically improve this situation is to improve public transit and alternative transit (e.g., welcome electric scooters if they can leave they're sustainably designed and sourced). Most people live in cities, so improving that story for cities is the most impactful way to reduce civil emissions. As for corporations, I doubt any moral high ground will be impactful. It will almost certainly come to violence (or if we're lucky, implied violence via state action) over that in one form or another.
buboard 7y ago
> goes against our hardwiring It doesn't ; if anything our hardwiring is always for efficiency and less effort. It's just that there is no easy and low-effort way to avoid those things.

iamgopal 7y ago

Lots of mindsets to overcome, but I'm sure, sooner or later we will forced to get rid of automobile and completely relay on public transport. May be in 50 to 100 years, but there isn't any alternative.

CalRobert 7y ago
Or bicycles, which offer the personal freedom of an automobile but not the catastrophic environmental impact.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Plus the additional health benefits which come with the job of conveying self plus bike from a to b as well as the cognitive benefits of mens sana in corpore sano [1] Bikes won't carry everything but they go a long way in solving day to day commuting problems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano
  - sunstone 7y ago
    Yes, particularly e-bikes. That's why the Netherlands now buys more e-bikes per year than they do traditional bikes despite that e-bikes cost about twice as much.
    - derekp7 7y ago
      We just need to get past the mindset that e-bikes are cheating. This is one of the big impediments for anyone that I've talked to about e-bikes, they say they would feel embarrassed riding them (since the main purpose of a bicycle that many people see is as a form of exercise, not transportation). The answer to that, of course, is e-bikes aren't cheating, but driving a car is.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  This is only true for some lifestyles. Elderly people with limited mobility, freezing climates, and rural, spread-out areas are examples of reasons cycling might not be appropriate. As someone who cycles to work year-round, I'd love to see more bicycles and infrastructure, but I don't think bicycles are a panacea.
  - vinni2 7y ago
    You’re right but bicycles + public transport could go a long way in most of the cases you mention. The other problem is also the city planning most of which were made assuming ownership of cars. I don’t own a car all my commuting happens on a bike. I live in a city with not so good public transport so when needed I just rent a car for the weekend or so.
- sfifs 7y ago
  Probably yes for single adults in their 20s and 30s without any small kids or elderly parents to take care of who live in a small (possibly European) city with low enough population density that it allows bicycles on public transport. Doesn't describe most of the world unfortunately.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    The trick is to move to Europe. Plenty of families in bakfiets, or older folks cycling.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    Also you need high population density, not low.
  - vinni2 7y ago
    I know families with 3 kids who don’t own a car. But of course they live walking distance to supermarket, kids school and the parents commute by bike. In case Of emergencies they don’t hesitate to take a taxi. From their point of view yearly taxi costs are lower than car ownership costs. But of course the city you live in must support bike paths etc.
mijamo 7y ago
I don't think you should be sure of anything at a 50 or 100 years horizon.
weberc2 7y ago
Honesty question for everyone proposing bicycling and public transit: are these feasible in rural environments? (Especially WRT cycling if you have a disability or young children and/or have to commute long distances in very cold or very hot weather)
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  I continued cycling with a young child, though less often and usually only solo trips. Bicycle trailers can help but it's still more work than putting the kids in a car, and with kids there is already less time for everything to be done.
- stretchwithme 7y ago
  Not everybody can use a car either. There's always exceptions to every proposal. But I don't think bicycles and mass transit will take over ultimately. But self driving electric vehicles a bit larger than a bicycle could do it. These will only need one seat and minimal storage. They'll go directly from home to work without stopping at every bus stop or train station along the way. And they'll be 1/4 the cost of today's car. And, yes, they won't work for everybody and every situation, just like everything else.
- dashundchen 7y ago
  Bicycling and transit doesn't have to be feasible for everyone, it just has to be made an option for trips where it makes sense, which is most trips. Nearly half of trips in the US were under 3 miles, 72% of those where done in a car. 60% of trips under a mile were made in a car or truck (!). Accommodating all those trips requires a ton of pavement, parking, gas stations to be built. https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel-survey-short-trips-analysis https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel... The vast majority of people making those trips are able-bodied people in urbanized areas (80% of the US lived in an urbanized area as of 2010). https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-sta... So if you can get bike infrastructure to where people are living, you've attacked a big chunk of the auto problem. Per your second point, yes, it can be feasible. The modern rural US is very sprawling in terms of the built environment but it wasn't always that way. Rural areas in the US used to revolve around small villages and points of density that service a wide area, complete with transit connections. Many German rural villages are extremely bikeable and have regular transit through their regions and to larger cities. You still can accommodate people who need vehicles, just the demand on infrastructure (parking, number of lane miles, subsidies and costs) would be greatly reduced. As it is now, the children, the disabled, and frequently the poor can't drive themselves and rely on other people driving them. Cycling can be done by almost anyone, is much cheaper and therefore much more accessible than driving.
JamesBarney 7y ago
This is impossible in the U.S. unless the costs of building public transportation falls by a couple of orders of magnitude.
V-2 7y ago
Self-driving cars will blur and in the long run, possibly invalidate the distinction between "private" and "public" transport.
- npo9 7y ago
  I strongly disagree with this idea. While not having to park, consuming electricity, and more efficient road usage will make cars much much better, this future car will still be significantly less efficient than modern trains in several key metrics. Examples include efficient land usage, efficient energy usage, maintenance requirements, raw resource requirements, max speed. As the process of urbanization continues trains are the most logical next step in transportation for our cities. While side driving cars will play a role in less traveled routes, we’ll see heavy investment in trains as cities try to find ways to allow more and more people access to their most busy business districts.
  - jupp0r 7y ago
    What you leave out of your calculation is the value of peoples time. Non individualized transport currently has the advantage of people being able to work instead of having to operate the vehicle. Once this goes away with self driving cars, the only advantage non individualized transport might have is price. Looking at current ticket prices, I doubt that it will be able to compete on that alone.
    - npo9 7y ago
      Sure, self driving cars will be common in a lot of places, but the most dense places will require more.
shadowprofile77 7y ago
I'd strongly suggest finding a source of predictions for the 50 to 100 year future made 50 to 100 years ago, from any source you care to look for, and enjoying the spectacle of just how completely absurd 99% of them were, then thinking much more carefully about your own predictions for anything that far ahead.The vast majority of such predictions made today, either by professional scientists, "forecasters" or laypeople all suffer from the same two core defects: 1. they're based far too much on current assumptions and worldviews. and 2. they completely fail at taking into account unknown unknowns, even if they claim not to do so. By definition they can't do otherwise anyhow.

trothamel 7y ago

Or, you know - we could not lower our standard of living. It's good to be able to visit friends in the next town over in a few minutes, in any weather, rather than having to walk and then transfer in some distant location. It's good to be able to have our choice of food, rather than having to accept what's left of what the comisar of production allocated to are area. The nice thing about technology is it will allow us to improve the future, rather than having to don the hair shirts of the past.

imgabe 7y ago
Is it good to be able to do those things when it is killing us? Lots of things are "good" in the short term if you ignore long term effects.
adamsea 7y ago
You kind of went from zero to one hundred there - pretty sure what the previous poster mentioned can be accomplished without a communist dystopia and with don’t way to still travel swiftly to visit friends, etc.
KirinDave 7y ago
I don't mean to be rude, but aren't you being a little short sighted here? You can talk about how pleasant these choices are to have, but unless we look really hard at what's critical and preserve that immediately, there's not going to be a functional society and industrial framework in which these guarantees can be delivered. We should strongly consider things like redefining energy security rather rather than wallowing in our base loss aversion. We'll need to develop alternative ways to deliver all of these improvements that don't assign an unpayable environmental debt to our future generations.
- trothamel 7y ago
  I don't think so. I mean, fifteen years ago, electric cars weren't a thing. If we had abandoned cars in favor of bicycles then, Tesla wouldn't have gotten off the ground. And I think I'd rather ride around in a Tesla than on a Schwinn. Basically, I think we have to find climate solutions that allow us to maintain our standard of living. And I think by accepting that's what we need to do, we can and will find those choices, and not divert attention to unpalatable options. I'm an optimist, but the post-enlightenment world routinely justifies such optimism.

KirinDave 7y ago

Okay, but consumer cars aren't actually the largest polluters by far.

npo9 7y ago
Both agriculture and consumer transportation are non-trivial contributions. We should go after military and cooperate polluters first because of their larger impact, but that’s easier to do when you gain moral high ground.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  Agriculture wasn't really mentioned. But one way to drastically improve this situation is to improve public transit and alternative transit (e.g., welcome electric scooters if they can leave they're sustainably designed and sourced). Most people live in cities, so improving that story for cities is the most impactful way to reduce civil emissions. As for corporations, I doubt any moral high ground will be impactful. It will almost certainly come to violence (or if we're lucky, implied violence via state action) over that in one form or another.

buboard 7y ago

> goes against our hardwiring It doesn't ; if anything our hardwiring is always for efficiency and less effort. It's just that there is no easy and low-effort way to avoid those things.