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Cars are only an incremental step towards an even more sustainable future. Once we get self-driving electric cars powered by nuclear, solar, wind, fusion - the
by ALittleLight 6y ago
Cars are only an incremental step towards an even more sustainable future. Once we get self-driving electric cars powered by nuclear, solar, wind, fusion - then they'll become pretty green. Self-driving cars will cut down on parking space too because we'll be able to have our cars drop us off and go somewhere out of the way while we shop/eat/whatever.
I'm also not certain how much cars are worse for the environment compared to horses. If we had to sustain similar numbers of people without cars we would have tons of horses (I assume horses emit similar amounts of methane to cows, which I know are a major contributor). We'd also have to feed our hundreds of millions or billions of horses. That agricultural effort would probably have a huge environmental cost. We'd have to deal not only with places to park our horses but also somehow manage the immense amount of waste that would come with packing a few million horses into a city and the accompanying health problems with that.
I think cars are a pretty good invention and wouldn't be surprised if, on net, they were better for the environment.
- chidg 6y agoICEs might be incremental, but its a long enough increment that it is having severely detrimental effects on planetary and human health, so I'm not sure if it counts. Cars, on the other hand, are not incremental - they have locked us into an urban design pattern that will remain problematic no matter what the form of energy generation that drives them is.