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Agree with the general sentiment that moving to electric is a great place to rethink the whole design. However a "make it electric" mentality doesn't address t

Agree with the general sentiment that moving to electric is a great place to rethink the whole design. However a "make it electric" mentality doesn't address the fact that a big chunk of the "its" (at least in the global North) are just overconsumption that shouldn't exist at all, if we ever want to find balance with nature. So instead of changing to an electric car that has a massive material footprint and takes up the same amount of space on the road as a petrol car, buy a bike (and vote for investments in bike lanes and public transport). Instead of living in a huge house and needing a lawnmower, move to an apartment (and vote for more compact housing zoning). Instead of buying vanity gadgets that relies on ocean cargo traffic, don't (and work less as you then need less money).

missedthecue 5y ago
what would make such a decline in my personal standard of living worth it?
- helmholtz 5y ago
  Let's begin with the notion that a biking world is a decline in personal standard. A car makes you fat and poor. A bike makes you fit and rich. You'll be healthier in bed with your wife. If not, women will check you out as you walk past them in your toned fit body. Living in a compact city means you'll meet friends more, you'll do more things. Your weekends won't be in front of a TV. They won't involve a 100 mile round trip to the strip mall. You'll hear the planet sing like a bird to the tune of your bike's bell. Fishes in oceans will celebrate MissedTheCue day and drink to excess in your memory. Polar bear will giving sermons holding you up as a shining beacon of hope.
  - abakker 5y ago
    I think this answer does as much to ignore the car owners POV as they are ignoring yours. Bikes are of course great, and fitness is great. But, here in Colorado, even an E bike is impractical for the vast majority of simple errands simply because of distance. If you respond with "move to a city" you are failing in empathy. The existence of long distance trips with probably bad weather make bikes not the right answer for the vast majority of people outside of major cities in America. The right answer probably does include public infrastructure at a vast scale, but, our government cannot afford it, and it is not a foregone conclusion that the environmental impact of major construction of infrastructure is better than that of electric cars. The reason this is not a solved problem is because simple answers like "buy a bike" are not actually answers, they are deflections. As are the answers like, "there is no solution except a pickup truck". edit: removed sarcastic comment.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      > The right answer probably does include public infrastructure at a vast scale, but, our government cannot afford it… I'm not convinced of that. If the will were there, I am confident we could totally afford it.
      - netsharc 5y ago
        I agree, the idea that the government can't afford it is odd. When the lockdowns started, both parties quickly agreed to the pandemic bailout, because well, saying no would've meant political suicide. The US will never suffer Greece or Venezuela-style bankruptcy because the whole world will go down with it considering the US dollar's status. And what is credit other than trust, if I loan Bob some money I trust Bob will be able to pay it back, now Bob might get hit by a truck or start a gambling habit and his ability to pay me back would be reduced/gone, but the USA will always have income in the form of tax from productive people paying them. Then again maybe that's too simplistic, the USA could suffer an even worse political gridlock than what it currently has and grind to a halt.
      - abakker 5y ago
        How much do you think it would cost to get the infrastructure necessary to ensure that the US didn't need cars?
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - collegeburner 5y ago
    A car does neither. I am in great shape despite having one. A bike does not necessarily do either of those things. And I'm pretty happy getting the kinds of exercise I like (mostly lifting with a little running and swimming) not the kind the feds think I should get (biking). Also, do you know how much it sucks to bike after an intense leg day? And regardless I'd much rather not show up places sweat soaked (will happen on the 100 degree days) I didn't meet a lot more friends in a compact city than out of one. I never spend weekends in front of a TV, and the people who do will probably do that no matter what. Doesn't the massive decline that is losing the personal space of a house of my own, having land of my own, a yard of my own, no shared walls.
  - ifokiedoke 5y ago
    Wish it were so simple. I (and my partner, an Urban Planning graduate!) had the exact same opinion as you until half a year ago my partner finally found a job out of school... in a small municipality. So we moved away from our very compact city of Toronto. The reality is just different here. We're not going to bike everywhere on the highway in Ontario in the winter, when it's -20C with windchill. We can't even get the government to bring internet to every street, much less bike lanes, street lighting, better infrastructure. My partner is really trying to make change at city hall, but it's just... difficult. And of course, we'd love to have kept living in Toronto, but it's completely unaffordable and this is where the job was. And thousands if not millions of other folks are living in similar realities. Perhaps we could convince everyone who lives in small towns to move to the city, but the city is already a difficult enough place to live. We should do everything we can as individuals to make this better, but that "everything" is getting the local government to actually do something to make biking a real possibility. Until then, blanket statements like yours are just humblebrags about either your city, your situation, or your amazing willpower.
- rollcat 5y ago
  You might have missed the cue, but we're rapidly approaching (if we haven't crossed it already) a point of no return in global climate change. There are many beautiful places to live on Earth where opting for a bicycle is not a compromise of any kind, but a practical choice. But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    > a point of no return in global climate change Every year is a point of no return, it's an adage that has lost it's original meaning. It's theoretically possible to reverse damage but we are a long ways from that to the extent that drastic cutting of emissions is necessary in the very short run. > But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians. It's possible to strike a balance. There's no reason suburbs have to be hostile to cycling and public transpo. On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore.
    - rollcat 5y ago
      > Every year is a point of no return, it's an adage that has lost it's original meaning. The hole might be too deep to get out of it, so let's keep on digging down. > On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore. It still matters, even with free energy I wouldn't want to live in a place where it's miserable to take a walk.
      - slothtrop 5y ago
        If we all lived in densely packed cramped apartments in strictly urban environments, it would surely be miserable to take a walk. The key point about free, clean energy is that carbon emissions would be nil even with increase in demand. That's what is meant by "it hardly matters". However, we need swift intervention right now to ensure climate doesn't descend into an uncomfortable range for many years.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  Do you need a cookie to do what you ought?
- user-the-name 5y ago
helmholtz 5y ago
Cue the million naysayers who will tell you that that's impossible, that they'd love to bike but it's just too dangerous as things stand, you see? Or they'd love to live in a compact city but cannot move for the forthcoming litany of good reasons. Meanwhile the planet burns, oceans die, and children are condemned to a shit world.
- Tade0 5y ago
  > Or they'd love to live in a compact city I for one wouldn't want to live in a city that's too compact (more than 4k people per square kilometre or about 10k per square mile) - chiefly because this means high prices per unit of housing area. I don't care if I have a corner store and a bar within walking distance if all I can afford is 60m2 at maximum while still making at least twice as much as the average in the area.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  (I'm just perusing the comments and throwing in my two cents) I live in San Antonio, and I went on a bike ride last night. On large community rides you don't have to think as much individually about safety - you have other people calling things out and there is some safety in numbers. But for most of my ride, until I got downtown, I felt a bit on edge in a way I wouldn't feel on the River walking. Why? Because you constantly have to think about cars not paying attention and hitting you, even when you're lit up and following the rules. I don't fault the everyday person for being skeptical about riding bikes in the suburbs, where there are even more bends and curves, no bike lanes, and even more aggressive asshole drivers who think bicycling is for loudmouth liberals. I wish we lived in a different world (or the Netherlands), but alas.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- md2020 5y ago
  I don’t see your point. I live in an apartment in a relatively urban area, and it is literally true that the bike infrastructure here is such that using a bike regularly puts you in much more danger than using a car. The city I live in isn’t going to build the infrastructure to ride a bike safely just because I stubbornly chose to ride a bike and put myself in danger. In the meantime, I’ll vote for candidates and ballot initiatives to support such infrastructure. But talking down to people who care about their personal safety is just going to alienate them.
bluescrn 5y ago
After the pandemic and lockdowns, good luck trying to convince people to move to much smaller homes in dense, noisy, overpriced, high-crime cities. Cities now seem obsolete to many, if WFH is the future. And these people now need homes with more space, to set up a more permanent home office.
- throwmeariver1 5y ago
  Sorry but it's the exact same sentiment of the 50s and 60s something disruptive happens people have a new way to attend work. Tada suburb/country culture. It's not that cities are obsolete it's just that cities are no longer as convenient for a big part of the working population as they were before.
  - bluescrn 5y ago
    If you want to relocate more people into cities in an increasingly-WFH world, you're going to have to make city living vastly less expensive, increase the quality of the housing, as well as dealing with the crime, homelessness, noise, and other difficult problems. It's not going to happen, is it? People won't accept being pressured to relocate into grim megacities while leaving the rest of the planet mostly uninhabited.
    - jeromegv 5y ago
      The point is to address why city is SO expensive while suburbs are so cheap. Even thought suburbs require a new set of infrastructure to be built in the middle of nowhere and where density of housing is rarely enough in the long term for the tax base to pay for the suburbs. Very often, this is the city that is subsiding suburban living.
      - slothtrop 5y ago
        You're referring to tax structure. It's a form of wealth redistribution; corporations in the city center, and businesses in dense strip malls all around, are the big earners in the city. Suburbanites already feel like they pay high taxes on their houses, at a discount, notwithstanding the obscene cost of mortgages. You could drastically revamp zoning laws and still living in the outskirts would be less expensive (See: Japan). Of course we should do this because it creates more options and opportunities for consumers and which NATURALLY increase density of cities without the need for senseless coercion.
collegeburner 5y ago
Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apartment not the land). I'll stick to living in a rural area. I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year. A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener.
- Starlevel001 5y ago
  If the worst thing that happens to you in the climate apocalpyse is having to live in a smaller apartment, consider yourself lucky.
  - jiggyjace 5y ago
    "Climate apocalypse"? Is that what we're calling it now? Global warming --> climate change --> climate crisis --> climate apocalpyse What models are you looking at that you're seeing doom and gloom in the next few decades?
    - ericmay 5y ago
      I think the person you are replying to was being a little hyperbolic, but you can look at human-caused climate change and the effects on a spectrum based on whatever information you've obtained in your life. For some, naively, it means nothing will happen and it's all a "big government liberal hoax". For others it's an actual "apocalypse" with tidal waves and volcanoes erupting or something (also incorrect). But just like in normal life, you can chop both ends of the hysteria off because they're not useful, they're just the loudest. Global warming was probably a bad name choice, but it described the "thing happening" and not the effects. Climate change is probably a better term for it. It is a crises. Places like the American Gulf Coast and West Coast are in for a rough time ahead that's going to require gigantic expenses that probably won't materialize to solve problems. Aside from the actual effects that will occur, the degree of severity and location can certainly be debated within some sort of reasonable parameters, we really fucked ourselves with this car-first infrastructure. It's a gigantic tax on productivity. All the money that goes into maintaining cars, roads, parking lots, etc. while losing natural habitats, gaining obesity, and unnecessary deaths because instead of walking a half mile round trip to a local grocery store you have to drive 30 miles to go to Costco. I've also noticed comments about "living packed like sardines", which shows me that those making these comments really haven't thought much about this walkability thing. While I'd argue something like Hong Kong is better than Houston on just about every metric except the illusion of having "land", it's also not a desirable outcome. Better to look at Europe where small towns and villages, and medium-sized cities dot the landscape. If you still want to live in a rural community or live on a property with a lot of acreage nobody is stopping you! What we're trying to stop is a top-down program that enforces suburbia, to the benefit of car manufacturers and government transportation budgets, and to the degradation of the rest of us. You should be looking at mixed-use walkable neighborhoods as your model for the future. This "either Hong Kong or Houston" discussion is nonsense. And us Americans know this at their core. That's why they all "love Europe" and "love the cafe on the corner". Building in this way solves just about every problem we have. It can't be stressed enough how fucked up urban planning and architecture are making our country.
igetspam 5y ago
I'll give on a lot of stuff but not space. We've cut down plastics, we compost, I'm the only one eating meat and then only fish, our scraps go to our pet pigs (anything not salted) and we've only ever had a heat pump. We recycle way more than we trash. I upcycle all kinds of things. But I also have a couple acres and the freedom to choose how I live, that comes with it. We've rescued a lot of animals and we couldn't if we shared walls in a box of boxes. My zero turn mower, like most of my tools, is electric and I only use it when and where I have to. Nature takes care of most of it.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  That's fine for you. We aren't talking of YOU, this is about societal changes so that the only choice encouraged by planners and tax policy is to own a home in a suburb. There should be a way to have more density in cities that doesn't involve living in a shoebox. Right now it's suburban houses or small apartment, there is a missing middle.
  - igetspam 5y ago
    Except we are. We're talking about all of the "you" here. My point is that we don't have to all cram ourselves together to do make positive change. We can course correct AND be happy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pid-1 5y ago
I have lived in apartments my whole life, but I'm not sure if that is necessarily the most green decision.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  It's alarming to see people on here entertaining the notion that coercing people to decimate their quality of life is going to put a dent in global emissions, let alone save the environment. We're at a point where the financial and industrial sector needs to be on board and on the hook for trillions to change global infrastructure, and we need innovative technology yesterday to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere. Even if you could convince most of your classist hippie/yuppie acquaintances to live in a cage, it would not make a difference. That is the infuriating part of the messaging, the projection of guilt onto consumers for not jumping on a hypothetical ineffectual bandwaggon. They sure like to talk the talk, but I don't think they would let their own consumer preferences truly open to public scrutiny.
fendy3002 5y ago
Your advice is good until billionaires blow up our emission reductions. Huge mansions, private yachts and jets with huge carbon emissions, luxurious high cylinder cars, etc. But still I don't advice the opposite. This advice is good as long as it doesn't really affect your life necessities.
bongoman37 5y ago
slothtrop 5y ago
This is only (barely) useful alleviating short-term pressures related to emissions, otherwise it's a race to the bottom. If not everyone can live a life of high satisfaction without throwing the world over carrying capacity, then we’re overpopulated. Ultimately the global growth rate is expected to stagnate, and we're expected to make strong gains in emissions reductions in the next few decades so it's a moot point except insofar as we need imperative solutions. In the very long run, environmental encroachment and destruction scales with population - only dampened by either innovation, or imposition of lower quality of life for commoners like us.
JodieBenitez 5y ago
I was with you until this: > Instead of living in a huge house and needing a lawnmower, move to an apartment (and vote for more compact housing zoning). Or stay on your land, learn to grow food, eat healthy and profit from selling your excess to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes. Because if my future is in an apartment I might as well get a better carbon footprint right now by killing myself.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Or stay on your land, learn to grow food, eat healthy and profit from selling your excess... Sounds great. But statistically, almost never happens. All they do is plant monoculture grass that they don't maintain anyway, filling the world with pesticides and other chemicals that ruin the planet. I was with you until this: ...to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes. You seem to be trapped in your tiny suburban fears. How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from. I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful. Much better to be "free" by living in a shack in the middle of a windswept prairie with no infrastructure, no culture, nowhere to go, no people to see, and crap internet service.
  - scarygliders 5y ago
    Your heaven is my hell. > How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from. I don't eat out - me and my family cook our own food. It's cheaper and you know what you're eating. We also enjoy eating at home as a family, and having conversation as a family without umpteen other families or singletons/couples either overhearing or participating in their own conversations at the same time. > I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful. Blinkered vision and sarcasm. Also, very selfishly subjective. Not everyone is like you. Not everyone wants to visit museums (I despise museums), go to coffee shops (see above), I don't visit even my local library. Sometimes it's suggested we go to some $entertainment_option and sometimes I'd like that but mostly having to mix with other people brings me out in hives - not due to being anti-social, but due to liking my peace and quiet (I don't like crowds). I'm in Scotland and prefer open spaces and spectacular mountain ranges to little artificial-landscape parks where the pod-dwellers walk to pretend they're in some kind of open and "green" space which is actually located in the middle of their dystopian metropolis. See, this is the problem with all the people who are proposing living in the pod in some metropolis somewhere - they're talking about their personal preference for such and haven't even considered either geographical location (which country outside of the USA, which part of said country, and so on) nor what _other people_ like to do, eat, or live with, or any number of additional factors. Everyone who is advocating/proselytising for the metro pod-life, needs to think outside of their particular box. Or pod.
psychlops 5y ago
With the caveat that I have no numbers to back this up I'll posit this. Even if everyone who reads this post or read any post here or even knows someone who has heard of hackernews takes your advice that it still wouldn't achieve a balance with nature (we can leave that undefined). I doubt the grassroots approach will work for anything more than superficial change and that governments and economies will need to change before any real progress is made in that direction. The system is designed to work with consumption.
- ttiurani 5y ago
  I'm with on on this, and agree wholeheartedly that fighting overconsumption is a system change, which needs a big political win (see my response on a sibling comment). At the same time, I do have a little hope that commenting this here can plant some seeds that might grow into something bigger later on.
  - psychlops 5y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to see the bigger picture. Many times the conversation stops with a self-satisfied individual carbon footprint discussion. While that's is certainly better than nothing and is absolutely an essential component, a global analysis and intergenerational goals would be the only true win in the area.
scarygliders 5y ago
You sound (write) like you live somewhere where the weather is always reasonably pleasant enough to be out on a bicycle. Here in Scotland, that kind of weather is rare. In fact it's so rare that we tend to remember the nice days. We just had a week of pleasant spring weather (actual sunshine and blue skies!) but it was still bloomin' cold as the air temperature was still low. Snow and icy conditions forecast for this week. Also, not everyone can cycle 15-20 miles from their home to their place of work and back every day - especially in the usual wet & windy conditions we have here. Nor would families be prepared to uproot from one of your proposed living pods to another one closer to any new place of work. I'm quite adamant that I will refuse to take part in your proposed Dystopia, for that's what it will turn out to be.
- oblio 5y ago
  The list of places where biking is not realistic is actually the opposite. It's hot places, especially if you don't have easy access to showers after biking. You can always put on warm clothing, you can't really shed skin. For cold places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU + you know, the Netherlands, which has a cloudy and rainy and chilly climate. Besides that, places that aren't a flat are obviously a challenge, but even that's solvable with electric bikes. More than that, to be completely blunt, most places are not Scotland. You have a reputation for a crap climate, for a reason.
  - scarygliders 5y ago
    The video you cited made me feel both ill and annoyed. The smug proclamations from some guy who judges everyone else was nauseating. It's also based on urban life within a city. Cities with invariably flat landscapes with no hills. The Netherland you cite is basically flat compared to Scotland. Scotland is _very_ hilly. And cold. And _rainy_. Your proposals would NOT work here. Apart from Glasgow and Edinburgh, most towns, villages and other cities here are not suitable to forgoing cars in favour of cycles - electric or not - and that's not down to a lack of cycle lanes or tracks, it's down to the practicalities of life here. Your Utopia cannot happen, and in fact would eventually turn into a dystopia.
tomp 5y ago
This right here is the biggest issue with "anti-climate-change agenda". Mainstream climate change activists employ a "motte-and-bailey" technique where the motte is "saving the planet" and bailey is "regression of human civilisation". The fact is, our civilisation depends on energy and will depend on even more energy if we want to progress further. I don't want to live in smaller places, travel less, eat less (and worse) food and overall enjoy life less. Progress is Africa becoming more like Europe, regression is Europe becoming more like Africa. I want progress. I don't disagree with the existence or seriousness of (anthropogenic) climate change. I simply disagree with most proposed "solutions". Build nuclear!
- spaethnl 5y ago
  I don't see the rhetoric you are talking about used by mainstream climate change activists; I see reasonable changes: 1) Power most things with electricity instead of fossil fuels. 2) Generate electricity with sustainable technologies like solar, wind, geothermal. (There is division on nuclear power, but many still support that, too). 3) Reduce the amount of power wasted overall. Most people don't need huge trucks. Fewer people don't even need personal vehicles. Very few people are saying "Take away your choice", most people are saying, "stop subsidizing the bad choice, and make the public transport option at least an actual option by fixing the way we build cities". This also extends to "stop subsidizing rural lifestyles" where people waste energy on driving 20 miles to the grocery store and back and every trip they make, and deliveries, and all of their infrastructure which has a much higher per-capita cost, while cities subsidize them. If people want to live there fine, but make them pay for it, or at least make those costs more transparent. In other words, subsidize for the public good (environmentally sustainable things) instead of the externalized costs (environmentally disastrous things), and let the market drive consumer choice. In most cases, really, it comes down to: STOP subsidizing bad behavior and things will probably get a lot better. That is what I think most experts expect.
  - brippalcharrid 5y ago
    It's not an extreme position; there are various activists extolling the benefits of an Intermittency Economy that would spring up in society once power companies introduced load-shedding and brownouts when renewable power sources become unavailable unexpectedly. "For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism." https://bostonreview.net/articles/david-mcdermott-hughes-battery-trap/ https://bostonreview.net/articles/david-mcdermott-hughes-bat... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/29/intermittant-solar-wind-energy https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/29/intermit... It's not really a big deal in the bigger scheme of things; it's just asking people to adjust their lifestyles and habits to take into account the available resources at a given moment against the background of a deadly threat to humanity. It's certainly nothing that a billion or more people in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Lebanon don't already have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
foxyv 5y ago
You don't NEED to move to an apartment. There are suburban neighborhoods that don't suck. Also, lawns are optional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
- relaytheurgency 5y ago
  This video had me laughing a bit. I live in Kansas City and will fully admit it's not a model for anything good. But the shot of a Home Depot parking lot off of the Grandview Triangle as an example of my city? It's bogus. I live in a completely walkable neighborhood in Kansas City that is, essentially, the kind of suburb this video claims to support. I can walk to a grocery store, several bars, coffee shops, restaurants, a library. All in five minutes. All from my 1930s construction home with a back yard and a two car garage.
  - dr_spicy 5y ago
    One thing that guy generally complements is interwar construction. Maybe a failing on his part for not recognizing it in KC, a probably a question of what portion of KC is from that time period and what portion is as pictured.
thisisnico 5y ago
When you live up north you quickly realize that a bike is not a all-season practical mode of transportation. Additionally, when you have kids, everything changes.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I'm all for reducing our overconsumption, but asking everyone to give up their cars and homes and get bikes/apartments doesn't make sense outside of big cities. Of course, some people will argue that everyone should move to cities--it's true that cities are more space efficient, but it would be immensely depressing both literally (cities are associated with significantly increased levels of depression and other mood disorders) and figuratively regarding the loss of cultural and lifestyle diversity. Perhaps most importantly, this is never actually going to happen, so maybe we should just focus on minimizing the volume of useless, toxic garbage we import from China (which relies on subsidies in the form of pollution and slavery).
tejohnso 5y ago
Pushing these responsibilities onto individual consumers is not going to work. You're not going to win anybody over by saying "buy a bike and vote to make it more convenient". Instead, the change needs to come from above, and it needs to compel people to switch. Make a bike-only life desirable, or even preferable, then people will choose it. Of course there's a chicken and egg problem, and several financial, and political problems. We need the equivalent of an eco-dictator. And on a global scale. And that would bring its own set of problems of course.
antattack 5y ago
The way apartments are built they are not good for peace and quiet. On top of that, many apartment complexes lack play/park areas near by. It's entirely different living than in a house.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> So instead of changing to an electric car that has a massive material footprint and takes up the same amount of space on the road as a petrol car, buy a bike And/or maybe we need to rethink the size of the "cars" (actually SUVs) we're driving around in. Not all trips are doable by bike (weather, health, etc are limiting factors). Instead of electric SUVs we should be looking at smaller vehicles like the Aptera [1] which uses much less power than most other electric cars (less than half the power / mile than a Tesla) and as such is practical to charge overnight with only 110v. (I hear the objections now - "but it's only got 2 seats", sure, but that's fine for like 99.9% of my trips. "But you can't go grocery shopping with that thing", take a look at some of their videos where they go shopping at Costco and get more stuff in there than most of us would need in a month.) [1] https://aptera.us/ https://aptera.us/
cptskippy 5y ago
That's nice on the surface but the whole "don't create clean alternatives in the short term, instead influence city planning that will take multiple decades to bare any fruit if at all" is worse in my opinion. You're also asserting that everyone should live the same when the the reality is that we're all different and want/need different things. A lawns are largely a waste but yards, gardens, and green spaces are very important and in many ways culturally ingrained in people. Telling people to live in shipping container sized spaces a short walk from their job is delusional at best.
notacoward 5y ago
> buy a bike "Same but pedal powered" isn't really all that much different than "same but electric" though. As the contentiousness in the replies clearly shows, doing just that without addressing the fundamental issues with how we manage various kinds of consumption - especially but not only of land - simply will not work. Many people will not go along. Ever. Some of the alternatives create their own problems, or wouldn't make a significant dent in climate change, pollution, etc. The 90% solution for young, childless, non-disabled, crowding-tolerant people is nowhere near the 100% solution (or at least 99.9% solution) that's really needed. "Rethink the whole design" (your words) means more than "move to the city and ride a bike" leaving cities and bikes and practically everything else almost entirely as they are or even making things worse. Hint: cities are prone to all sorts of problems from supply to waste, from crime to disease, even at current sizes and densities let alone those which would result from everyone following that prescription. When we think about reclaiming all that land wasted by suburban sprawl, a better solution might be making small- to medium-size town centers more nearly self sufficient (i.e. living + working + shopping + recreation and food supply around the edges). Thousands of those, well connected to one another, would be far better than dystopian dozens of NYC/LA/Beijing clones with no human habitation in between. It's a larger change, but both more likely to appeal and more likely to make a difference.
nmz 5y ago
Riding a bike makes me sweat like a madman, by the time I get to work, I would be completely drenched in sweat. making the entire workday terrible
throwaway684936 5y ago
Bike vs. cars or public transport and house vs. apartment are both accessibility issues.

missedthecue 5y ago

what would make such a decline in my personal standard of living worth it?

helmholtz 5y ago
Let's begin with the notion that a biking world is a decline in personal standard. A car makes you fat and poor. A bike makes you fit and rich. You'll be healthier in bed with your wife. If not, women will check you out as you walk past them in your toned fit body. Living in a compact city means you'll meet friends more, you'll do more things. Your weekends won't be in front of a TV. They won't involve a 100 mile round trip to the strip mall. You'll hear the planet sing like a bird to the tune of your bike's bell. Fishes in oceans will celebrate MissedTheCue day and drink to excess in your memory. Polar bear will giving sermons holding you up as a shining beacon of hope.
- abakker 5y ago
  I think this answer does as much to ignore the car owners POV as they are ignoring yours. Bikes are of course great, and fitness is great. But, here in Colorado, even an E bike is impractical for the vast majority of simple errands simply because of distance. If you respond with "move to a city" you are failing in empathy. The existence of long distance trips with probably bad weather make bikes not the right answer for the vast majority of people outside of major cities in America. The right answer probably does include public infrastructure at a vast scale, but, our government cannot afford it, and it is not a foregone conclusion that the environmental impact of major construction of infrastructure is better than that of electric cars. The reason this is not a solved problem is because simple answers like "buy a bike" are not actually answers, they are deflections. As are the answers like, "there is no solution except a pickup truck". edit: removed sarcastic comment.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > The right answer probably does include public infrastructure at a vast scale, but, our government cannot afford it… I'm not convinced of that. If the will were there, I am confident we could totally afford it.
    - netsharc 5y ago
      I agree, the idea that the government can't afford it is odd. When the lockdowns started, both parties quickly agreed to the pandemic bailout, because well, saying no would've meant political suicide. The US will never suffer Greece or Venezuela-style bankruptcy because the whole world will go down with it considering the US dollar's status. And what is credit other than trust, if I loan Bob some money I trust Bob will be able to pay it back, now Bob might get hit by a truck or start a gambling habit and his ability to pay me back would be reduced/gone, but the USA will always have income in the form of tax from productive people paying them. Then again maybe that's too simplistic, the USA could suffer an even worse political gridlock than what it currently has and grind to a halt.
    - abakker 5y ago
      How much do you think it would cost to get the infrastructure necessary to ensure that the US didn't need cars?
- deleted 5y ago
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- collegeburner 5y ago
  A car does neither. I am in great shape despite having one. A bike does not necessarily do either of those things. And I'm pretty happy getting the kinds of exercise I like (mostly lifting with a little running and swimming) not the kind the feds think I should get (biking). Also, do you know how much it sucks to bike after an intense leg day? And regardless I'd much rather not show up places sweat soaked (will happen on the 100 degree days) I didn't meet a lot more friends in a compact city than out of one. I never spend weekends in front of a TV, and the people who do will probably do that no matter what. Doesn't the massive decline that is losing the personal space of a house of my own, having land of my own, a yard of my own, no shared walls.
- ifokiedoke 5y ago
  Wish it were so simple. I (and my partner, an Urban Planning graduate!) had the exact same opinion as you until half a year ago my partner finally found a job out of school... in a small municipality. So we moved away from our very compact city of Toronto. The reality is just different here. We're not going to bike everywhere on the highway in Ontario in the winter, when it's -20C with windchill. We can't even get the government to bring internet to every street, much less bike lanes, street lighting, better infrastructure. My partner is really trying to make change at city hall, but it's just... difficult. And of course, we'd love to have kept living in Toronto, but it's completely unaffordable and this is where the job was. And thousands if not millions of other folks are living in similar realities. Perhaps we could convince everyone who lives in small towns to move to the city, but the city is already a difficult enough place to live. We should do everything we can as individuals to make this better, but that "everything" is getting the local government to actually do something to make biking a real possibility. Until then, blanket statements like yours are just humblebrags about either your city, your situation, or your amazing willpower.
rollcat 5y ago
You might have missed the cue, but we're rapidly approaching (if we haven't crossed it already) a point of no return in global climate change. There are many beautiful places to live on Earth where opting for a bicycle is not a compromise of any kind, but a practical choice. But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  > a point of no return in global climate change Every year is a point of no return, it's an adage that has lost it's original meaning. It's theoretically possible to reverse damage but we are a long ways from that to the extent that drastic cutting of emissions is necessary in the very short run. > But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians. It's possible to strike a balance. There's no reason suburbs have to be hostile to cycling and public transpo. On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore.
  - rollcat 5y ago
    > Every year is a point of no return, it's an adage that has lost it's original meaning. The hole might be too deep to get out of it, so let's keep on digging down. > On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore. It still matters, even with free energy I wouldn't want to live in a place where it's miserable to take a walk.
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      If we all lived in densely packed cramped apartments in strictly urban environments, it would surely be miserable to take a walk. The key point about free, clean energy is that carbon emissions would be nil even with increase in demand. That's what is meant by "it hardly matters". However, we need swift intervention right now to ensure climate doesn't descend into an uncomfortable range for many years.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
Do you need a cookie to do what you ought?
user-the-name 5y ago

helmholtz 5y ago

Cue the million naysayers who will tell you that that's impossible, that they'd love to bike but it's just too dangerous as things stand, you see? Or they'd love to live in a compact city but cannot move for the forthcoming litany of good reasons. Meanwhile the planet burns, oceans die, and children are condemned to a shit world.

Tade0 5y ago
> Or they'd love to live in a compact city I for one wouldn't want to live in a city that's too compact (more than 4k people per square kilometre or about 10k per square mile) - chiefly because this means high prices per unit of housing area. I don't care if I have a corner store and a bar within walking distance if all I can afford is 60m2 at maximum while still making at least twice as much as the average in the area.
unethical_ban 5y ago
(I'm just perusing the comments and throwing in my two cents) I live in San Antonio, and I went on a bike ride last night. On large community rides you don't have to think as much individually about safety - you have other people calling things out and there is some safety in numbers. But for most of my ride, until I got downtown, I felt a bit on edge in a way I wouldn't feel on the River walking. Why? Because you constantly have to think about cars not paying attention and hitting you, even when you're lit up and following the rules. I don't fault the everyday person for being skeptical about riding bikes in the suburbs, where there are even more bends and curves, no bike lanes, and even more aggressive asshole drivers who think bicycling is for loudmouth liberals. I wish we lived in a different world (or the Netherlands), but alas.
- deleted 5y ago
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md2020 5y ago
I don’t see your point. I live in an apartment in a relatively urban area, and it is literally true that the bike infrastructure here is such that using a bike regularly puts you in much more danger than using a car. The city I live in isn’t going to build the infrastructure to ride a bike safely just because I stubbornly chose to ride a bike and put myself in danger. In the meantime, I’ll vote for candidates and ballot initiatives to support such infrastructure. But talking down to people who care about their personal safety is just going to alienate them.

bluescrn 5y ago

After the pandemic and lockdowns, good luck trying to convince people to move to much smaller homes in dense, noisy, overpriced, high-crime cities. Cities now seem obsolete to many, if WFH is the future. And these people now need homes with more space, to set up a more permanent home office.

throwmeariver1 5y ago
Sorry but it's the exact same sentiment of the 50s and 60s something disruptive happens people have a new way to attend work. Tada suburb/country culture. It's not that cities are obsolete it's just that cities are no longer as convenient for a big part of the working population as they were before.
- bluescrn 5y ago
  If you want to relocate more people into cities in an increasingly-WFH world, you're going to have to make city living vastly less expensive, increase the quality of the housing, as well as dealing with the crime, homelessness, noise, and other difficult problems. It's not going to happen, is it? People won't accept being pressured to relocate into grim megacities while leaving the rest of the planet mostly uninhabited.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    The point is to address why city is SO expensive while suburbs are so cheap. Even thought suburbs require a new set of infrastructure to be built in the middle of nowhere and where density of housing is rarely enough in the long term for the tax base to pay for the suburbs. Very often, this is the city that is subsiding suburban living.
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      You're referring to tax structure. It's a form of wealth redistribution; corporations in the city center, and businesses in dense strip malls all around, are the big earners in the city. Suburbanites already feel like they pay high taxes on their houses, at a discount, notwithstanding the obscene cost of mortgages. You could drastically revamp zoning laws and still living in the outskirts would be less expensive (See: Japan). Of course we should do this because it creates more options and opportunities for consumers and which NATURALLY increase density of cities without the need for senseless coercion.

collegeburner 5y ago

Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apartment not the land). I'll stick to living in a rural area. I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year. A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener.

Starlevel001 5y ago
If the worst thing that happens to you in the climate apocalpyse is having to live in a smaller apartment, consider yourself lucky.
- jiggyjace 5y ago
  "Climate apocalypse"? Is that what we're calling it now? Global warming --> climate change --> climate crisis --> climate apocalpyse What models are you looking at that you're seeing doom and gloom in the next few decades?
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I think the person you are replying to was being a little hyperbolic, but you can look at human-caused climate change and the effects on a spectrum based on whatever information you've obtained in your life. For some, naively, it means nothing will happen and it's all a "big government liberal hoax". For others it's an actual "apocalypse" with tidal waves and volcanoes erupting or something (also incorrect). But just like in normal life, you can chop both ends of the hysteria off because they're not useful, they're just the loudest. Global warming was probably a bad name choice, but it described the "thing happening" and not the effects. Climate change is probably a better term for it. It is a crises. Places like the American Gulf Coast and West Coast are in for a rough time ahead that's going to require gigantic expenses that probably won't materialize to solve problems. Aside from the actual effects that will occur, the degree of severity and location can certainly be debated within some sort of reasonable parameters, we really fucked ourselves with this car-first infrastructure. It's a gigantic tax on productivity. All the money that goes into maintaining cars, roads, parking lots, etc. while losing natural habitats, gaining obesity, and unnecessary deaths because instead of walking a half mile round trip to a local grocery store you have to drive 30 miles to go to Costco. I've also noticed comments about "living packed like sardines", which shows me that those making these comments really haven't thought much about this walkability thing. While I'd argue something like Hong Kong is better than Houston on just about every metric except the illusion of having "land", it's also not a desirable outcome. Better to look at Europe where small towns and villages, and medium-sized cities dot the landscape. If you still want to live in a rural community or live on a property with a lot of acreage nobody is stopping you! What we're trying to stop is a top-down program that enforces suburbia, to the benefit of car manufacturers and government transportation budgets, and to the degradation of the rest of us. You should be looking at mixed-use walkable neighborhoods as your model for the future. This "either Hong Kong or Houston" discussion is nonsense. And us Americans know this at their core. That's why they all "love Europe" and "love the cafe on the corner". Building in this way solves just about every problem we have. It can't be stressed enough how fucked up urban planning and architecture are making our country.

igetspam 5y ago

I'll give on a lot of stuff but not space. We've cut down plastics, we compost, I'm the only one eating meat and then only fish, our scraps go to our pet pigs (anything not salted) and we've only ever had a heat pump. We recycle way more than we trash. I upcycle all kinds of things. But I also have a couple acres and the freedom to choose how I live, that comes with it. We've rescued a lot of animals and we couldn't if we shared walls in a box of boxes. My zero turn mower, like most of my tools, is electric and I only use it when and where I have to. Nature takes care of most of it.

jeromegv 5y ago
That's fine for you. We aren't talking of YOU, this is about societal changes so that the only choice encouraged by planners and tax policy is to own a home in a suburb. There should be a way to have more density in cities that doesn't involve living in a shoebox. Right now it's suburban houses or small apartment, there is a missing middle.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Except we are. We're talking about all of the "you" here. My point is that we don't have to all cram ourselves together to do make positive change. We can course correct AND be happy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pid-1 5y ago

I have lived in apartments my whole life, but I'm not sure if that is necessarily the most green decision.

slothtrop 5y ago
It's alarming to see people on here entertaining the notion that coercing people to decimate their quality of life is going to put a dent in global emissions, let alone save the environment. We're at a point where the financial and industrial sector needs to be on board and on the hook for trillions to change global infrastructure, and we need innovative technology yesterday to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere. Even if you could convince most of your classist hippie/yuppie acquaintances to live in a cage, it would not make a difference. That is the infuriating part of the messaging, the projection of guilt onto consumers for not jumping on a hypothetical ineffectual bandwaggon. They sure like to talk the talk, but I don't think they would let their own consumer preferences truly open to public scrutiny.

fendy3002 5y ago

Your advice is good until billionaires blow up our emission reductions. Huge mansions, private yachts and jets with huge carbon emissions, luxurious high cylinder cars, etc. But still I don't advice the opposite. This advice is good as long as it doesn't really affect your life necessities.

bongoman37 5y ago

slothtrop 5y ago

This is only (barely) useful alleviating short-term pressures related to emissions, otherwise it's a race to the bottom. If not everyone can live a life of high satisfaction without throwing the world over carrying capacity, then we’re overpopulated. Ultimately the global growth rate is expected to stagnate, and we're expected to make strong gains in emissions reductions in the next few decades so it's a moot point except insofar as we need imperative solutions. In the very long run, environmental encroachment and destruction scales with population - only dampened by either innovation, or imposition of lower quality of life for commoners like us.

JodieBenitez 5y ago

I was with you until this: > Instead of living in a huge house and needing a lawnmower, move to an apartment (and vote for more compact housing zoning). Or stay on your land, learn to grow food, eat healthy and profit from selling your excess to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes. Because if my future is in an apartment I might as well get a better carbon footprint right now by killing myself.

reaperducer 5y ago
Or stay on your land, learn to grow food, eat healthy and profit from selling your excess... Sounds great. But statistically, almost never happens. All they do is plant monoculture grass that they don't maintain anyway, filling the world with pesticides and other chemicals that ruin the planet. I was with you until this: ...to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes. You seem to be trapped in your tiny suburban fears. How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from. I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful. Much better to be "free" by living in a shack in the middle of a windswept prairie with no infrastructure, no culture, nowhere to go, no people to see, and crap internet service.
- scarygliders 5y ago
  Your heaven is my hell. > How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from. I don't eat out - me and my family cook our own food. It's cheaper and you know what you're eating. We also enjoy eating at home as a family, and having conversation as a family without umpteen other families or singletons/couples either overhearing or participating in their own conversations at the same time. > I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful. Blinkered vision and sarcasm. Also, very selfishly subjective. Not everyone is like you. Not everyone wants to visit museums (I despise museums), go to coffee shops (see above), I don't visit even my local library. Sometimes it's suggested we go to some $entertainment_option and sometimes I'd like that but mostly having to mix with other people brings me out in hives - not due to being anti-social, but due to liking my peace and quiet (I don't like crowds). I'm in Scotland and prefer open spaces and spectacular mountain ranges to little artificial-landscape parks where the pod-dwellers walk to pretend they're in some kind of open and "green" space which is actually located in the middle of their dystopian metropolis. See, this is the problem with all the people who are proposing living in the pod in some metropolis somewhere - they're talking about their personal preference for such and haven't even considered either geographical location (which country outside of the USA, which part of said country, and so on) nor what _other people_ like to do, eat, or live with, or any number of additional factors. Everyone who is advocating/proselytising for the metro pod-life, needs to think outside of their particular box. Or pod.

psychlops 5y ago

With the caveat that I have no numbers to back this up I'll posit this. Even if everyone who reads this post or read any post here or even knows someone who has heard of hackernews takes your advice that it still wouldn't achieve a balance with nature (we can leave that undefined). I doubt the grassroots approach will work for anything more than superficial change and that governments and economies will need to change before any real progress is made in that direction. The system is designed to work with consumption.

ttiurani 5y ago
I'm with on on this, and agree wholeheartedly that fighting overconsumption is a system change, which needs a big political win (see my response on a sibling comment). At the same time, I do have a little hope that commenting this here can plant some seeds that might grow into something bigger later on.
- psychlops 5y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to see the bigger picture. Many times the conversation stops with a self-satisfied individual carbon footprint discussion. While that's is certainly better than nothing and is absolutely an essential component, a global analysis and intergenerational goals would be the only true win in the area.

scarygliders 5y ago

You sound (write) like you live somewhere where the weather is always reasonably pleasant enough to be out on a bicycle. Here in Scotland, that kind of weather is rare. In fact it's so rare that we tend to remember the nice days. We just had a week of pleasant spring weather (actual sunshine and blue skies!) but it was still bloomin' cold as the air temperature was still low. Snow and icy conditions forecast for this week. Also, not everyone can cycle 15-20 miles from their home to their place of work and back every day - especially in the usual wet & windy conditions we have here. Nor would families be prepared to uproot from one of your proposed living pods to another one closer to any new place of work. I'm quite adamant that I will refuse to take part in your proposed Dystopia, for that's what it will turn out to be.

oblio 5y ago
The list of places where biking is not realistic is actually the opposite. It's hot places, especially if you don't have easy access to showers after biking. You can always put on warm clothing, you can't really shed skin. For cold places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU + you know, the Netherlands, which has a cloudy and rainy and chilly climate. Besides that, places that aren't a flat are obviously a challenge, but even that's solvable with electric bikes. More than that, to be completely blunt, most places are not Scotland. You have a reputation for a crap climate, for a reason.
- scarygliders 5y ago
  The video you cited made me feel both ill and annoyed. The smug proclamations from some guy who judges everyone else was nauseating. It's also based on urban life within a city. Cities with invariably flat landscapes with no hills. The Netherland you cite is basically flat compared to Scotland. Scotland is _very_ hilly. And cold. And _rainy_. Your proposals would NOT work here. Apart from Glasgow and Edinburgh, most towns, villages and other cities here are not suitable to forgoing cars in favour of cycles - electric or not - and that's not down to a lack of cycle lanes or tracks, it's down to the practicalities of life here. Your Utopia cannot happen, and in fact would eventually turn into a dystopia.

tomp 5y ago

This right here is the biggest issue with "anti-climate-change agenda". Mainstream climate change activists employ a "motte-and-bailey" technique where the motte is "saving the planet" and bailey is "regression of human civilisation". The fact is, our civilisation depends on energy and will depend on even more energy if we want to progress further. I don't want to live in smaller places, travel less, eat less (and worse) food and overall enjoy life less. Progress is Africa becoming more like Europe, regression is Europe becoming more like Africa. I want progress. I don't disagree with the existence or seriousness of (anthropogenic) climate change. I simply disagree with most proposed "solutions". Build nuclear!

spaethnl 5y ago
I don't see the rhetoric you are talking about used by mainstream climate change activists; I see reasonable changes: 1) Power most things with electricity instead of fossil fuels. 2) Generate electricity with sustainable technologies like solar, wind, geothermal. (There is division on nuclear power, but many still support that, too). 3) Reduce the amount of power wasted overall. Most people don't need huge trucks. Fewer people don't even need personal vehicles. Very few people are saying "Take away your choice", most people are saying, "stop subsidizing the bad choice, and make the public transport option at least an actual option by fixing the way we build cities". This also extends to "stop subsidizing rural lifestyles" where people waste energy on driving 20 miles to the grocery store and back and every trip they make, and deliveries, and all of their infrastructure which has a much higher per-capita cost, while cities subsidize them. If people want to live there fine, but make them pay for it, or at least make those costs more transparent. In other words, subsidize for the public good (environmentally sustainable things) instead of the externalized costs (environmentally disastrous things), and let the market drive consumer choice. In most cases, really, it comes down to: STOP subsidizing bad behavior and things will probably get a lot better. That is what I think most experts expect.
- brippalcharrid 5y ago
  It's not an extreme position; there are various activists extolling the benefits of an Intermittency Economy that would spring up in society once power companies introduced load-shedding and brownouts when renewable power sources become unavailable unexpectedly. "For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism." https://bostonreview.net/articles/david-mcdermott-hughes-battery-trap/ https://bostonreview.net/articles/david-mcdermott-hughes-bat... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/29/intermittant-solar-wind-energy https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/29/intermit... It's not really a big deal in the bigger scheme of things; it's just asking people to adjust their lifestyles and habits to take into account the available resources at a given moment against the background of a deadly threat to humanity. It's certainly nothing that a billion or more people in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Lebanon don't already have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

foxyv 5y ago

You don't NEED to move to an apartment. There are suburban neighborhoods that don't suck. Also, lawns are optional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

relaytheurgency 5y ago
This video had me laughing a bit. I live in Kansas City and will fully admit it's not a model for anything good. But the shot of a Home Depot parking lot off of the Grandview Triangle as an example of my city? It's bogus. I live in a completely walkable neighborhood in Kansas City that is, essentially, the kind of suburb this video claims to support. I can walk to a grocery store, several bars, coffee shops, restaurants, a library. All in five minutes. All from my 1930s construction home with a back yard and a two car garage.
- dr_spicy 5y ago
  One thing that guy generally complements is interwar construction. Maybe a failing on his part for not recognizing it in KC, a probably a question of what portion of KC is from that time period and what portion is as pictured.

thisisnico 5y ago

When you live up north you quickly realize that a bike is not a all-season practical mode of transportation. Additionally, when you have kids, everything changes.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I'm all for reducing our overconsumption, but asking everyone to give up their cars and homes and get bikes/apartments doesn't make sense outside of big cities. Of course, some people will argue that everyone should move to cities--it's true that cities are more space efficient, but it would be immensely depressing both literally (cities are associated with significantly increased levels of depression and other mood disorders) and figuratively regarding the loss of cultural and lifestyle diversity. Perhaps most importantly, this is never actually going to happen, so maybe we should just focus on minimizing the volume of useless, toxic garbage we import from China (which relies on subsidies in the form of pollution and slavery).

tejohnso 5y ago

Pushing these responsibilities onto individual consumers is not going to work. You're not going to win anybody over by saying "buy a bike and vote to make it more convenient". Instead, the change needs to come from above, and it needs to compel people to switch. Make a bike-only life desirable, or even preferable, then people will choose it. Of course there's a chicken and egg problem, and several financial, and political problems. We need the equivalent of an eco-dictator. And on a global scale. And that would bring its own set of problems of course.

antattack 5y ago

The way apartments are built they are not good for peace and quiet. On top of that, many apartment complexes lack play/park areas near by. It's entirely different living than in a house.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> So instead of changing to an electric car that has a massive material footprint and takes up the same amount of space on the road as a petrol car, buy a bike And/or maybe we need to rethink the size of the "cars" (actually SUVs) we're driving around in. Not all trips are doable by bike (weather, health, etc are limiting factors). Instead of electric SUVs we should be looking at smaller vehicles like the Aptera [1] which uses much less power than most other electric cars (less than half the power / mile than a Tesla) and as such is practical to charge overnight with only 110v. (I hear the objections now - "but it's only got 2 seats", sure, but that's fine for like 99.9% of my trips. "But you can't go grocery shopping with that thing", take a look at some of their videos where they go shopping at Costco and get more stuff in there than most of us would need in a month.) [1] https://aptera.us/ https://aptera.us/

cptskippy 5y ago

That's nice on the surface but the whole "don't create clean alternatives in the short term, instead influence city planning that will take multiple decades to bare any fruit if at all" is worse in my opinion. You're also asserting that everyone should live the same when the the reality is that we're all different and want/need different things. A lawns are largely a waste but yards, gardens, and green spaces are very important and in many ways culturally ingrained in people. Telling people to live in shipping container sized spaces a short walk from their job is delusional at best.

notacoward 5y ago

> buy a bike "Same but pedal powered" isn't really all that much different than "same but electric" though. As the contentiousness in the replies clearly shows, doing just that without addressing the fundamental issues with how we manage various kinds of consumption - especially but not only of land - simply will not work. Many people will not go along. Ever. Some of the alternatives create their own problems, or wouldn't make a significant dent in climate change, pollution, etc. The 90% solution for young, childless, non-disabled, crowding-tolerant people is nowhere near the 100% solution (or at least 99.9% solution) that's really needed. "Rethink the whole design" (your words) means more than "move to the city and ride a bike" leaving cities and bikes and practically everything else almost entirely as they are or even making things worse. Hint: cities are prone to all sorts of problems from supply to waste, from crime to disease, even at current sizes and densities let alone those which would result from everyone following that prescription. When we think about reclaiming all that land wasted by suburban sprawl, a better solution might be making small- to medium-size town centers more nearly self sufficient (i.e. living + working + shopping + recreation and food supply around the edges). Thousands of those, well connected to one another, would be far better than dystopian dozens of NYC/LA/Beijing clones with no human habitation in between. It's a larger change, but both more likely to appeal and more likely to make a difference.

nmz 5y ago

Riding a bike makes me sweat like a madman, by the time I get to work, I would be completely drenched in sweat. making the entire workday terrible

throwaway684936 5y ago

Bike vs. cars or public transport and house vs. apartment are both accessibility issues.