5 ms·

A electric cars are mostly a luxury item for rich people to feel better. Not sure why you think Tesla should have a good rating. They are harmful in that they

A electric cars are mostly a luxury item for rich people to feel better. Not sure why you think Tesla should have a good rating. They are harmful in that they are actively distracting from the proper solution: that people shouldn't have private cars. The environmental cost to produce car, the space they take up in the cities, in the end private car ownership can not be made sustainable even if they run on electric. Tech wont solve the climate crisis, only societal change will.

gnarbarian 4y ago
I don't live in a city. I'm 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. I build real physical things with my hands that require physical materials like lumber to haul around. I can't haul 2000 lb of lumber on the back of my road bike.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
- cardanome 4y ago
  What would be the issue with just having your stuff delivered then? And yeah every rule needs exceptions, of course there should be ways to rent cars for special occasion, I am just against general private car ownership for most people. Edit: General private car ownership of people living in the cities that is
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    I think your view is skewed towards living in a city. your solution doesn't work for a number of reasons. if I wanted to go somewhere I would call an Uber and they would drive 20 or 30 miles to pick me up and then 40 or 50 miles more to drop me off and then the reverse would happen when I wanted to go home Rather than me just driving the 100 miles there and back You have additional overhead of somebody having to come pick me up doubling the miles driven. That person has to get paid which makes it even more expensive. And there are still cars! I'm just not allowed to own one. if I'm sharing a ride which is unlikely it will take up way more time which is also an expensive drag on the economy. delivery here is unreliable and expensive. if I'm picking out wood I have to go through dozens of boards to find ones that aren't fucked up. I need to find ones that are suitable for the job that I'm trying to use them for. A delivery guy would just grab whatever and throw it in the truck. It's not like I'm ordering an iPod off of Amazon. no mileage savings would be had because it is unlikely that anybody else would be having something delivered in the middle of nowhere.
    - cardanome 4y ago
      These are fair points. I am actually sorry that my last post might have been more dismissive than was called for. The thing is most people live in urban areas (and the general trend is for that to increase) and don't work in woodworking. So this caused me to be a bit dismissive as it doesn't really effect the main point that much. As I said, there will always be exceptions. I think the more productive discussion is to find what would work for most people, that is people in an urban setting. Then we can figure out how to make it work for people farther out. I am not sure what the best solution for your situation would be. I guess the biggest quick win would be just to get private cars out of the cities. It doesn't really matter if a few people farther out own cars as long as they are a minority. Maybe that is where electric cars would come in handy but then again they lack the range. Again, most people live in urban areas and prefer to live in urban areas and once cities become more green they will become even more attractive furthering urbanization. Whether the few people living outside own a car or not will hardly matter.
      - dieselgate 4y ago
        I personally think the best “solution” to needing any vehicle (car, truck) “outside a city” is one that runs on petrol alternatives (biodiesel, among others, being a common one). For remote/very very cold regions gasoline still has high value because they’re easier to start in way sub zero temps. for the record there’s no bias against EVs here
  - ChadNauseam 4y ago
    I hate cars as much as the next guy, but transitioning all urban life away from cars is a much more difficult project than transitioning urban life to electric cars. The no-cars world requires a huge amount of political buy-in and you’d be going through the most politically annoying group in the US – homeowners. The transition to electric cars can be done through simple laws that change the incentives (like by implementing a federal gas tax so it’s cheaper to drive electric, or heavily subsidizing electric cars)
qweqwerwerwerwr 4y ago
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  In my mind's eye, I picture his ideal society as being some sort of giant human factory farm where we are all living in little pods and eating bugs. You still have freedom here. Comrade even though you cannot leave, you still have freedom here in your utilitarian pod. (clean luxury pods require too much energy and are outlawed). You have the freedom to consume media from either one of the state sanctioned media information channels. you also have the freedom to choose the green paste or the brown paste for dinner. Unfortunately our biosensors indicate You may be feeling some depression and anger lately, in an attempt to limit the fallout and spread of your toxic negativity to other residents your communication privileges have been revoked and you will be issued medication mixed into your meals until The behavior and bio sensors indicate positive levels. Though our efforts have been unable to stop climate change, further sacrifice is still necessary to minimize more environmental harm. have a blessed day!
  - cardanome 4y ago
    What a weird straw man. I haven't owned a car for my whole life and I am doing fine. It is not a big deal. Yes you need to life in a city with decent public transport but that is all. It is insane how people seem to be not even able to imagine a world that is not car-centric. It is really a small sacrifice that would increase the actual living conditions of everyone as we could have cities that are much more pleasant to life in.
    - gnarbarian 4y ago
      >Yes you need to life in a city with decent public transport but that is all. That is a huge ask. cities come with an incredible amount of baggage: higher taxes, higher cost of living, lower quality of life, less living space, smaller property, left wing politics, higher crime rates, more air pollution. many of us have zero interest in living in a big city. My personal theory is that individual liberty is inversely proportional to population density. wherever people are closer together, you end up with more rules because it's easier to encroach on other peoples wellbeing. so no thank you. I will keep my car and I will continue to have fires and shoot moose in my backyard.
livueta 4y ago
Whenever I see an argument like this I'm confused by how hand-wavey "just achieve societal change" is. Like, sure, there's various issues with various technological approaches, but it's not as if the kind of broad social change that'd see private cars outlawed develops overnight. If anything, the last couple of decades demonstrate pretty convincingly and depressingly that putting together real momentum (read: won referendums on things like carbon taxes, _not_ push polls) is capital-H Hard. It's absolutely true that various bad actors play a factor in that level of difficulty, but they're not going to shut up and go away if we clap our hands and wish really hard either. Consider [1]: this is in a constituency electorally dominated by one of the most avowedly socially-liberal cities in the US and year after year it goes down by similar margins, and that's incredibly anodyne compared to straight-up getting rid of private cars. Conversely, supply-side energy mix changes have, over the same timeframe, made drastic improvements in emissions-per-capita without requiring much/any self-sacrifice. Martyrdom doesn't really scale in the same way. So: what's your plan for gaining the power required to implement your scenario, taking into account the apparent ineffectiveness of decades of messaging? "just ban the cars" would be sensical if you were emperor for a day, but failing any miracles it seems to me that the real distraction is this sort of utopianism. --- [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...
- cardanome 4y ago
  Transitioning from car-centric to human-centric cities is not about sacrifice. It is about understanding how cars actually keep cities from being places that could be much more enjoyable to live in. Having finding trouble an apartment? Without all the wasted space for cars we could have much denser cities. Problem solved! Want to have a place where children can actually play outside safely? Again, ban cars and you don't have to move to the country or suburbia. Tired of how loud cities are? Oh boy, do I have a solution for that. I am not preaching sacrifice, I am saying if we change some things we can achieve much better living conditions for everyone, a plus in living standard. So it is more of a matter of getting people to be conscious about how things actually work. So no, I am not Utopian. The point still stands that Tech wont solve the issues. It is sink or swim for humanity.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
If this is the road you want to go down the ultimate result of it all is an extremely dark place. Removing peoples autonomy might start with “why can’t they take the bus” but where it ends is something very different.

gnarbarian 4y ago

I don't live in a city. I'm 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. I build real physical things with my hands that require physical materials like lumber to haul around. I can't haul 2000 lb of lumber on the back of my road bike.

nemo44x 4y ago
- gnarbarian 4y ago
cardanome 4y ago
What would be the issue with just having your stuff delivered then? And yeah every rule needs exceptions, of course there should be ways to rent cars for special occasion, I am just against general private car ownership for most people. Edit: General private car ownership of people living in the cities that is
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  I think your view is skewed towards living in a city. your solution doesn't work for a number of reasons. if I wanted to go somewhere I would call an Uber and they would drive 20 or 30 miles to pick me up and then 40 or 50 miles more to drop me off and then the reverse would happen when I wanted to go home Rather than me just driving the 100 miles there and back You have additional overhead of somebody having to come pick me up doubling the miles driven. That person has to get paid which makes it even more expensive. And there are still cars! I'm just not allowed to own one. if I'm sharing a ride which is unlikely it will take up way more time which is also an expensive drag on the economy. delivery here is unreliable and expensive. if I'm picking out wood I have to go through dozens of boards to find ones that aren't fucked up. I need to find ones that are suitable for the job that I'm trying to use them for. A delivery guy would just grab whatever and throw it in the truck. It's not like I'm ordering an iPod off of Amazon. no mileage savings would be had because it is unlikely that anybody else would be having something delivered in the middle of nowhere.
  - cardanome 4y ago
    These are fair points. I am actually sorry that my last post might have been more dismissive than was called for. The thing is most people live in urban areas (and the general trend is for that to increase) and don't work in woodworking. So this caused me to be a bit dismissive as it doesn't really effect the main point that much. As I said, there will always be exceptions. I think the more productive discussion is to find what would work for most people, that is people in an urban setting. Then we can figure out how to make it work for people farther out. I am not sure what the best solution for your situation would be. I guess the biggest quick win would be just to get private cars out of the cities. It doesn't really matter if a few people farther out own cars as long as they are a minority. Maybe that is where electric cars would come in handy but then again they lack the range. Again, most people live in urban areas and prefer to live in urban areas and once cities become more green they will become even more attractive furthering urbanization. Whether the few people living outside own a car or not will hardly matter.
    - dieselgate 4y ago
      I personally think the best “solution” to needing any vehicle (car, truck) “outside a city” is one that runs on petrol alternatives (biodiesel, among others, being a common one). For remote/very very cold regions gasoline still has high value because they’re easier to start in way sub zero temps. for the record there’s no bias against EVs here
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  I hate cars as much as the next guy, but transitioning all urban life away from cars is a much more difficult project than transitioning urban life to electric cars. The no-cars world requires a huge amount of political buy-in and you’d be going through the most politically annoying group in the US – homeowners. The transition to electric cars can be done through simple laws that change the incentives (like by implementing a federal gas tax so it’s cheaper to drive electric, or heavily subsidizing electric cars)

qweqwerwerwerwr 4y ago

gnarbarian 4y ago
In my mind's eye, I picture his ideal society as being some sort of giant human factory farm where we are all living in little pods and eating bugs. You still have freedom here. Comrade even though you cannot leave, you still have freedom here in your utilitarian pod. (clean luxury pods require too much energy and are outlawed). You have the freedom to consume media from either one of the state sanctioned media information channels. you also have the freedom to choose the green paste or the brown paste for dinner. Unfortunately our biosensors indicate You may be feeling some depression and anger lately, in an attempt to limit the fallout and spread of your toxic negativity to other residents your communication privileges have been revoked and you will be issued medication mixed into your meals until The behavior and bio sensors indicate positive levels. Though our efforts have been unable to stop climate change, further sacrifice is still necessary to minimize more environmental harm. have a blessed day!
- cardanome 4y ago
  What a weird straw man. I haven't owned a car for my whole life and I am doing fine. It is not a big deal. Yes you need to life in a city with decent public transport but that is all. It is insane how people seem to be not even able to imagine a world that is not car-centric. It is really a small sacrifice that would increase the actual living conditions of everyone as we could have cities that are much more pleasant to life in.
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    >Yes you need to life in a city with decent public transport but that is all. That is a huge ask. cities come with an incredible amount of baggage: higher taxes, higher cost of living, lower quality of life, less living space, smaller property, left wing politics, higher crime rates, more air pollution. many of us have zero interest in living in a big city. My personal theory is that individual liberty is inversely proportional to population density. wherever people are closer together, you end up with more rules because it's easier to encroach on other peoples wellbeing. so no thank you. I will keep my car and I will continue to have fires and shoot moose in my backyard.

livueta 4y ago

Whenever I see an argument like this I'm confused by how hand-wavey "just achieve societal change" is. Like, sure, there's various issues with various technological approaches, but it's not as if the kind of broad social change that'd see private cars outlawed develops overnight. If anything, the last couple of decades demonstrate pretty convincingly and depressingly that putting together real momentum (read: won referendums on things like carbon taxes, _not_ push polls) is capital-H Hard. It's absolutely true that various bad actors play a factor in that level of difficulty, but they're not going to shut up and go away if we clap our hands and wish really hard either. Consider [1]: this is in a constituency electorally dominated by one of the most avowedly socially-liberal cities in the US and year after year it goes down by similar margins, and that's incredibly anodyne compared to straight-up getting rid of private cars. Conversely, supply-side energy mix changes have, over the same timeframe, made drastic improvements in emissions-per-capita without requiring much/any self-sacrifice. Martyrdom doesn't really scale in the same way. So: what's your plan for gaining the power required to implement your scenario, taking into account the apparent ineffectiveness of decades of messaging? "just ban the cars" would be sensical if you were emperor for a day, but failing any miracles it seems to me that the real distraction is this sort of utopianism. --- [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...

cardanome 4y ago
Transitioning from car-centric to human-centric cities is not about sacrifice. It is about understanding how cars actually keep cities from being places that could be much more enjoyable to live in. Having finding trouble an apartment? Without all the wasted space for cars we could have much denser cities. Problem solved! Want to have a place where children can actually play outside safely? Again, ban cars and you don't have to move to the country or suburbia. Tired of how loud cities are? Oh boy, do I have a solution for that. I am not preaching sacrifice, I am saying if we change some things we can achieve much better living conditions for everyone, a plus in living standard. So it is more of a matter of getting people to be conscious about how things actually work. So no, I am not Utopian. The point still stands that Tech wont solve the issues. It is sink or swim for humanity.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

If this is the road you want to go down the ultimate result of it all is an extremely dark place. Removing peoples autonomy might start with “why can’t they take the bus” but where it ends is something very different.