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It's not conflation so much as a plain assessment that cars sit at the nexus of a lot of interrelated problems: congestion, local pollution, global warming, pub

It's not conflation so much as a plain assessment that cars sit at the nexus of a lot of interrelated problems: congestion, local pollution, global warming, public space usage, and access to transport. If I'm ignoring a '10%' of the population, it is probably that portion (in reality, much more than 10%) that cannot drive, for medical, age, or economic reasons, who gain absolutely nothing from cars, but nonetheless subsidize their usage (taxes to maintain roads, etc). The root of the problem is physical: moving about a ton of metal, glass and plastic for every passenger is extremely inefficient. Having a single engine for every passenger is extremely inefficient. Taking several square meters of road space for every passenger is extremely inefficient. These inefficiencies are at the root of why they produce a lot of CO2, a lot of local pollution, and yes, a lot of congestion. Using road space inefficiently obviously causes more congestion. Obviously, it would take a concerted effort to bring public transport to the level where it could replace cars for all users. That said, if we imagine the intense social changes that cars brought about (the building of the suburbs, clearing people off the streets, etc) I think it would be comparatively mild, and compared to cars in cost, just going by the rule of thumb that inefficiencies ultimately cost money, it should be cheaper.

necovek 5y ago
It's funny how you are ignoring the fact that they do one thing extremely well: they decentralize transport. I, for one, like that: some inefficiencies ensure better resistance to systemic failure: for instance, I'd love to have my own solar/wind power generation locally even if it's not the most optimal way to generate electricity. Did you never hit an U/S-bahn line stoppage due to one broken train? I am with you that cars are maybe an avoidable convenience, especially in urban areas. But congestion happens without them too (if defined liberally, overcrowded trains you cannot get into are exactly the same as congestion, or at least have the same delaying effect for your trip), and cars can be used outside of congested hours and routes too. So they are not at the nexus of that problem. But roads where I am at usually detoriate faster where buses go (bus lanes need reconstruction more often), so while we'd need fewer roads if we switched exclusively to heavy vehicles, they'd need more maintenance: I am not convinced it would save on road maintenance just from throwing empty claims (neither yours nor mine) around on the internet. We've rehashed this already and I guess we need to agree to disagree: I see both benefits and drawbacks to cars, and while you claim to back the underprivileged by (almost) demanding car bans, I believe they'd be hardest hit outside urban areas instead.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  Aside from all the rehashing, my thought process is based on a few principles: 1. Capitalism is already centralized. Jobs tend to be concentrated in certain areas. That's why people commute. 2. The suburban-commuter lifestyle is based on very high fossil fuel usage, since it is more energy-intensive, both in terms of transport, but also service provision. There are no economies of scale anywhere in the system (e.g for heating and insulation). It's obviously possible to electrify all the cars, insulate all the houses, and continue this faux-decentralized sprawling approach to living, but it would be an uphill struggle, and far more difficult than just recognizing that, as a lifestyle, it should be expensive, because it has expensive externalities and requires a lot of expensive energy inputs. If you priced in carbon costs to the suburban lifestyle, instead of subsidizing it in a thousand subtle ways, almost nobody would be able to afford it. Even if you simply stopped subsidizing it, it would probably decline as a culture[0]. And it should decline, because it is wasteful and implicitly damaging to nature[1]. Other stuff that's on the table for fighting climate change (decarbonizing steel, electrifying everything, decarbonizing concrete, etc) is just way more drastic and expensive than just discouraging a style of living that necessitates an enormous amount of resource usage. What's more, all the drastic changes require frontloading CO2 emissions - and because global temperatures are a positive feedback loop, that's way worse than releasing CO2 later. [0]: E.g. Service provision costs more when density goes down, because you have to lay more cables, hire more police, run more pipe, etc. If they pay the same taxes as everybody else, that is a subsidy. There are a lot of examples like that. [1]: The simple presence of so many humans and their pets is a driver of declining biodiversity, sans any considerations of all the hummers. PS: If you're wondering how I would 'discourage' suburban living, I'd just do the same thing they did to cities in the post-new-deal US. Cut service provision. Cut police presence. Don't repair the roads. Make the suburbs subsidize the inner city, instead of the other way around.
  - necovek 5y ago
    As soon as you start talking about raising prices artificially (they are already dependent on real costs, but real costs are heavily influenced by supply and demand too) to discourage a certain lifestyle, you are essentially talking of making it "exclusive to the rich". What you are talking about is not about cars though, it's about changing the entire lifestyle of humanity. If only the rich can have their private gardens, then we'd need a lot more gardens (parks) in urban areas, perhaps some of them with private spaces for when you need some solitude. You are also going to discourage a new trend: work from home (though it's not so new for some of us, I've been WFH since 2006). All of your premises about subsidizing cars are false, in my opinion. Unless you move all people close to where they work, we need public infrastructure that's harder to maintain (as I said, buses destroy roads more than cars do) than what we already have for cars. And while we might need less of it, we'd still need more than what we need for buses and trucks today since more people and needs would move to use them, so it's not so certain we'd be spending less on maintaining and building it. You keep talking about energy optimization. Most optimal for energy use is hardly most optimal for human well-being. Shared apartments would definitely be most optimal: you only need a private sleeping room, and only if you are a family. Otherwise, why would you mind having a bunk bed in a bedroom that has 6 of them? This would optimize building, heating and cooling costs. Sharing kitchens or even cooking meals centrally (say, for an apartment block) and distributing to tenants would be even more optimal. I hope you don't want your own kitchen when it's more optimal to have someone cook a large quantity at once. It's easy to see where that is going, and that's not the future I want to live in. It's been a theme of not just one dystopic book or story or movie. While people frequently bring up an argument that humans are already taking up too much space on this planet, they fail to remember that it's not because of our settlements. It's mostly because of agriculture. Human settlements are a tiny fraction of the land we use for agriculture, and sprawling settlements are not the biggest issue (sure, they are an issue locally where humans might be pushing other species out, but not so much on a global scale). So, while you proclaim how getting rid of cars will solve a bunch of problems (CO2 included, even though cars contribute 6% of CO2 emissions annually[1]), I don't see it. And I don't buy the subsidy argument either (fuel throughout Europe is taxed at at least twice the price: compare prices in EU vs US): it's an attempt to attribute entirety of the cost for infrastructure to cars when we'd need some of that infrastructure anyway. [1] As per https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electricity-heat-and-transport-73-2 https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electr..., all road transport contributes 11.9%, of which 60% is passenger transport which includes other forms of road transport like buses

necovek 5y ago

It's funny how you are ignoring the fact that they do one thing extremely well: they decentralize transport. I, for one, like that: some inefficiencies ensure better resistance to systemic failure: for instance, I'd love to have my own solar/wind power generation locally even if it's not the most optimal way to generate electricity. Did you never hit an U/S-bahn line stoppage due to one broken train? I am with you that cars are maybe an avoidable convenience, especially in urban areas. But congestion happens without them too (if defined liberally, overcrowded trains you cannot get into are exactly the same as congestion, or at least have the same delaying effect for your trip), and cars can be used outside of congested hours and routes too. So they are not at the nexus of that problem. But roads where I am at usually detoriate faster where buses go (bus lanes need reconstruction more often), so while we'd need fewer roads if we switched exclusively to heavy vehicles, they'd need more maintenance: I am not convinced it would save on road maintenance just from throwing empty claims (neither yours nor mine) around on the internet. We've rehashed this already and I guess we need to agree to disagree: I see both benefits and drawbacks to cars, and while you claim to back the underprivileged by (almost) demanding car bans, I believe they'd be hardest hit outside urban areas instead.

pasabagi 5y ago
Aside from all the rehashing, my thought process is based on a few principles: 1. Capitalism is already centralized. Jobs tend to be concentrated in certain areas. That's why people commute. 2. The suburban-commuter lifestyle is based on very high fossil fuel usage, since it is more energy-intensive, both in terms of transport, but also service provision. There are no economies of scale anywhere in the system (e.g for heating and insulation). It's obviously possible to electrify all the cars, insulate all the houses, and continue this faux-decentralized sprawling approach to living, but it would be an uphill struggle, and far more difficult than just recognizing that, as a lifestyle, it should be expensive, because it has expensive externalities and requires a lot of expensive energy inputs. If you priced in carbon costs to the suburban lifestyle, instead of subsidizing it in a thousand subtle ways, almost nobody would be able to afford it. Even if you simply stopped subsidizing it, it would probably decline as a culture[0]. And it should decline, because it is wasteful and implicitly damaging to nature[1]. Other stuff that's on the table for fighting climate change (decarbonizing steel, electrifying everything, decarbonizing concrete, etc) is just way more drastic and expensive than just discouraging a style of living that necessitates an enormous amount of resource usage. What's more, all the drastic changes require frontloading CO2 emissions - and because global temperatures are a positive feedback loop, that's way worse than releasing CO2 later. [0]: E.g. Service provision costs more when density goes down, because you have to lay more cables, hire more police, run more pipe, etc. If they pay the same taxes as everybody else, that is a subsidy. There are a lot of examples like that. [1]: The simple presence of so many humans and their pets is a driver of declining biodiversity, sans any considerations of all the hummers. PS: If you're wondering how I would 'discourage' suburban living, I'd just do the same thing they did to cities in the post-new-deal US. Cut service provision. Cut police presence. Don't repair the roads. Make the suburbs subsidize the inner city, instead of the other way around.
- necovek 5y ago
  As soon as you start talking about raising prices artificially (they are already dependent on real costs, but real costs are heavily influenced by supply and demand too) to discourage a certain lifestyle, you are essentially talking of making it "exclusive to the rich". What you are talking about is not about cars though, it's about changing the entire lifestyle of humanity. If only the rich can have their private gardens, then we'd need a lot more gardens (parks) in urban areas, perhaps some of them with private spaces for when you need some solitude. You are also going to discourage a new trend: work from home (though it's not so new for some of us, I've been WFH since 2006). All of your premises about subsidizing cars are false, in my opinion. Unless you move all people close to where they work, we need public infrastructure that's harder to maintain (as I said, buses destroy roads more than cars do) than what we already have for cars. And while we might need less of it, we'd still need more than what we need for buses and trucks today since more people and needs would move to use them, so it's not so certain we'd be spending less on maintaining and building it. You keep talking about energy optimization. Most optimal for energy use is hardly most optimal for human well-being. Shared apartments would definitely be most optimal: you only need a private sleeping room, and only if you are a family. Otherwise, why would you mind having a bunk bed in a bedroom that has 6 of them? This would optimize building, heating and cooling costs. Sharing kitchens or even cooking meals centrally (say, for an apartment block) and distributing to tenants would be even more optimal. I hope you don't want your own kitchen when it's more optimal to have someone cook a large quantity at once. It's easy to see where that is going, and that's not the future I want to live in. It's been a theme of not just one dystopic book or story or movie. While people frequently bring up an argument that humans are already taking up too much space on this planet, they fail to remember that it's not because of our settlements. It's mostly because of agriculture. Human settlements are a tiny fraction of the land we use for agriculture, and sprawling settlements are not the biggest issue (sure, they are an issue locally where humans might be pushing other species out, but not so much on a global scale). So, while you proclaim how getting rid of cars will solve a bunch of problems (CO2 included, even though cars contribute 6% of CO2 emissions annually[1]), I don't see it. And I don't buy the subsidy argument either (fuel throughout Europe is taxed at at least twice the price: compare prices in EU vs US): it's an attempt to attribute entirety of the cost for infrastructure to cars when we'd need some of that infrastructure anyway. [1] As per https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electricity-heat-and-transport-73-2 https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electr..., all road transport contributes 11.9%, of which 60% is passenger transport which includes other forms of road transport like buses