4 ms·

The Guardian's journalists just want to see cars gone. The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too

by throwaway22032 4y ago

The Guardian's journalists just want to see cars gone. The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too. They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network. The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest. It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood. They can't stand the idea that I could transport myself and my family securely across the country. It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege. Nothing is good enough for them. The entire origin of the "you'll eat bugs and be happy" meme comes from that idea that for some people it's not about the climate or ecology, it's about just being happy with a student lifestyle forever. They literally run articles like "we're going childless to save the planet". It's like hanging yourself now to avoid dying of old age.

felix_n 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  I live less than 5 miles from Central London and use the tube almost every day. The rest of the world exists outside of it. I have no interest in spending my entire life within the constraints of the train network. As a result of living in a big city, I know a lot of people who are happy with those constraints and they're almost universally boring, preachy jobsworths. Like the entire staff of The Guardian. I'm surprised that they even bothered to found an American subsidiary. There are only about three US cities they could even exist in without having a heart attack.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Do you think sneering condescension will convince anyone to live in a studio apartment with their 4 kids in a dangerous part of town to appease your aesthetic hatred?
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    It's what happens when one forms an opinion based on echo chambers with no real push-back.
revolvingocelot 4y ago
[flagged]
- bcraven 4y ago
  HN's rules of civility do indeed have some relevant parts for your comment: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    For whatever reason, you're not responding in this way to the root comment -- perhaps HN's rules of civility are only for some topics. If I'm the only one who can't read journalists' minds, this is an embarrassing way to find out!
    - dang 4y ago
      Of course it's usually not just one commenter contributing to these downslides, and the GP arguably started it, but your comment was noticeably more flamey than the GP. That is exactly the wrong direction to respond. Instead, what you should do in response to a provocatively wrong comment (or one that you feel is wrong) is either (1) correct it respectfully and patiently; or (2) chalk it up to the internet being wrong and just not respond. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
secretsatan 4y ago
But there's the other side isn't there? the one where you have no choice but to have a car, where every road is 4 lanes, where's there's no pedestrian crossings, no pavements? I haven't had a car in over a decade, I don't want to have to pay a mandatory car tax that will cost me far more per year than public transport, parking, petrol, insurance, space, I don't miss sitting in traffic that will grow the more roads are added. Just having public transport that can get you everywhere would reduce a tremendous amount of burden, instead of sacrificing every bit of road to cars, make room for public transport and pedestrians, plan for it. No doubt we will always need cars, but they shouldn't be mandatory and we should have public spaces that aren't cut through with car parks and roads and endless, endless traffic
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  > they shouldn't be mandatory The same goes for public transit. That's the central argument, don't force other people to live the way you live. Everyone should have a choice in how they conduct their lives.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    That's a teenager's point of view, you can't live in a dense community and say "I can do what I want because I'm free", every single of your action have consequences, on you, and on the community. Of course other people can force you to live a certain way, that's like the whole basis of living in societies, we come up with rules and follow them, these rules change all the time
    - revolvingocelot 4y ago
      >That's a teenager's point of view But haven't you read these well-upvoted opinions? It's the right of the adult to do whatever they want; the student-lifestyle of public transit is the position of the grubby, naive, cooperative youngster. Once you have the resources, you seal yourself away in your bubble -- preferentially ICE-based, of course -- and Become Traffic. It's the culturally superior option, as everybody's known since the 50s, and we here on HN are superior. Our paychecks tell us so. The public transit option, ill-funded as it is, will never be popular, because as sarcastic as I might seem here, I'm also simply describing reality.
lm28469 4y ago
> The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too. Then remove cars from city centers, they're an aberration in every single way > They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network. Cool, most cars are parked 95% of their lives, taking useful space for no good reason > The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest. Some people actually enjoy meth too > It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood. It's already the case in any dense city center, I commute faster by bike or pubtrans than by car for anything shorter than 10km > It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege. If we start making up arguments like these we can play all day. I've recently crossed germany for 17 euros, nothing was stolen even though I slept a good 4 hours with multiple toilet trips. > being happy with a student lifestyle forever. Wow look at Mr. big adult manly man with his own personal vehicle. I bet they even eat veggies, what are they ? 6 ? You want the same thing as everyone else, going from A to B efficiently and cheaply, and in many case a personal car isn't the most efficient nor cheap tool for that. The problem is that in a car centric city everything is designed to be hostile to anyone but cars, couple that with the auto industry propaganda and we get people like you Just run the maths, 1.4B personal vehicles on earth (it's not going anywhere but up btw), fully electric or running on pure lignite you end up facing the same issues. So yeah we get it, you like moving 3 tonnes of metal to go to walmart and see your friends, that's fine, but you have to understand it's not efficient or clean or sustainable
bart_spoon 4y ago
I generally agree with you, and I think the biggest tell has been response to remote work. I live in a suburb, largely for cost reasons, and commuting into work involved driving 15 miles one way. The round trip, 5 days a week, meant I was driving 150+ miles per week. I’ve been 100% remote since the beginning of the pandemic, and now I drive less than 5 miles per week, for groceries and all other trips combined. While I understand this situation won’t be universally applicable, the same holds true for a large chunk of the population, including many of my family, friends, and coworkers. This should be seen as an unmitigated climate success, and we should be pushing remote work wherever possible from a climate perspective. But many of the same news publications and individuals supposedly so concerned about the climate have lamented how remote work will cause the decline and eventual death of our large cities. Nevermind that many smaller to medium cities could potentially thrive in more self-sustaining ways. Because it’s ultimately about a particular lifestyle they prefer, and anything reasoning regarding the climate, the economy, culture, politics, or society at large that can be twisted to support their preferred lifestyle will, and will be jettisoned as soon as it doesn’t. The same holds true, in my personal experience, with many of those claiming to go child-free for the sake of the climate. Most of my acquaintances who fall into my basket have clearly been uninterested in having children for a long time and have only recently latched onto the idea that they are doing it for the good of society. The reverse seems to hold true as well: I’ve noticed what seems to be an increase in the number of people claiming our moral obligation to have children for the sake of society stability and growth. Let me be clear, I don’t believe that living in or out of a city, or having or not having children are “better”. I am just alarmed by how many seem completely unwilling to accept others may make different life choices than them. People are not content to live their life as they please. They must actually be martyrs and better than you for doing so. I can’t tell if this is an artifact of the age we live in, or it’s always been this way and I’m only become more aware of it as I’ve grown older.
LatteLazy 4y ago
You give them too much credit: they exist to scare the "worried well". This isn't some conspiracy of urbanites. It's just the environmentalist equivalent of Fox news: shocking lies sell more ad space than boring truths.

felix_n 4y ago

[flagged]

throwaway22032 4y ago
I live less than 5 miles from Central London and use the tube almost every day. The rest of the world exists outside of it. I have no interest in spending my entire life within the constraints of the train network. As a result of living in a big city, I know a lot of people who are happy with those constraints and they're almost universally boring, preachy jobsworths. Like the entire staff of The Guardian. I'm surprised that they even bothered to found an American subsidiary. There are only about three US cities they could even exist in without having a heart attack.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Do you think sneering condescension will convince anyone to live in a studio apartment with their 4 kids in a dangerous part of town to appease your aesthetic hatred?
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  It's what happens when one forms an opinion based on echo chambers with no real push-back.

revolvingocelot 4y ago

[flagged]

bcraven 4y ago
HN's rules of civility do indeed have some relevant parts for your comment: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  For whatever reason, you're not responding in this way to the root comment -- perhaps HN's rules of civility are only for some topics. If I'm the only one who can't read journalists' minds, this is an embarrassing way to find out!
  - dang 4y ago
    Of course it's usually not just one commenter contributing to these downslides, and the GP arguably started it, but your comment was noticeably more flamey than the GP. That is exactly the wrong direction to respond. Instead, what you should do in response to a provocatively wrong comment (or one that you feel is wrong) is either (1) correct it respectfully and patiently; or (2) chalk it up to the internet being wrong and just not respond. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

secretsatan 4y ago

But there's the other side isn't there? the one where you have no choice but to have a car, where every road is 4 lanes, where's there's no pedestrian crossings, no pavements? I haven't had a car in over a decade, I don't want to have to pay a mandatory car tax that will cost me far more per year than public transport, parking, petrol, insurance, space, I don't miss sitting in traffic that will grow the more roads are added. Just having public transport that can get you everywhere would reduce a tremendous amount of burden, instead of sacrificing every bit of road to cars, make room for public transport and pedestrians, plan for it. No doubt we will always need cars, but they shouldn't be mandatory and we should have public spaces that aren't cut through with car parks and roads and endless, endless traffic

throwaway4aday 4y ago
> they shouldn't be mandatory The same goes for public transit. That's the central argument, don't force other people to live the way you live. Everyone should have a choice in how they conduct their lives.
- lm28469 4y ago
  That's a teenager's point of view, you can't live in a dense community and say "I can do what I want because I'm free", every single of your action have consequences, on you, and on the community. Of course other people can force you to live a certain way, that's like the whole basis of living in societies, we come up with rules and follow them, these rules change all the time
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    >That's a teenager's point of view But haven't you read these well-upvoted opinions? It's the right of the adult to do whatever they want; the student-lifestyle of public transit is the position of the grubby, naive, cooperative youngster. Once you have the resources, you seal yourself away in your bubble -- preferentially ICE-based, of course -- and Become Traffic. It's the culturally superior option, as everybody's known since the 50s, and we here on HN are superior. Our paychecks tell us so. The public transit option, ill-funded as it is, will never be popular, because as sarcastic as I might seem here, I'm also simply describing reality.

lm28469 4y ago

> The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too. Then remove cars from city centers, they're an aberration in every single way > They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network. Cool, most cars are parked 95% of their lives, taking useful space for no good reason > The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest. Some people actually enjoy meth too > It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood. It's already the case in any dense city center, I commute faster by bike or pubtrans than by car for anything shorter than 10km > It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege. If we start making up arguments like these we can play all day. I've recently crossed germany for 17 euros, nothing was stolen even though I slept a good 4 hours with multiple toilet trips. > being happy with a student lifestyle forever. Wow look at Mr. big adult manly man with his own personal vehicle. I bet they even eat veggies, what are they ? 6 ? You want the same thing as everyone else, going from A to B efficiently and cheaply, and in many case a personal car isn't the most efficient nor cheap tool for that. The problem is that in a car centric city everything is designed to be hostile to anyone but cars, couple that with the auto industry propaganda and we get people like you Just run the maths, 1.4B personal vehicles on earth (it's not going anywhere but up btw), fully electric or running on pure lignite you end up facing the same issues. So yeah we get it, you like moving 3 tonnes of metal to go to walmart and see your friends, that's fine, but you have to understand it's not efficient or clean or sustainable

bart_spoon 4y ago

I generally agree with you, and I think the biggest tell has been response to remote work. I live in a suburb, largely for cost reasons, and commuting into work involved driving 15 miles one way. The round trip, 5 days a week, meant I was driving 150+ miles per week. I’ve been 100% remote since the beginning of the pandemic, and now I drive less than 5 miles per week, for groceries and all other trips combined. While I understand this situation won’t be universally applicable, the same holds true for a large chunk of the population, including many of my family, friends, and coworkers. This should be seen as an unmitigated climate success, and we should be pushing remote work wherever possible from a climate perspective. But many of the same news publications and individuals supposedly so concerned about the climate have lamented how remote work will cause the decline and eventual death of our large cities. Nevermind that many smaller to medium cities could potentially thrive in more self-sustaining ways. Because it’s ultimately about a particular lifestyle they prefer, and anything reasoning regarding the climate, the economy, culture, politics, or society at large that can be twisted to support their preferred lifestyle will, and will be jettisoned as soon as it doesn’t. The same holds true, in my personal experience, with many of those claiming to go child-free for the sake of the climate. Most of my acquaintances who fall into my basket have clearly been uninterested in having children for a long time and have only recently latched onto the idea that they are doing it for the good of society. The reverse seems to hold true as well: I’ve noticed what seems to be an increase in the number of people claiming our moral obligation to have children for the sake of society stability and growth. Let me be clear, I don’t believe that living in or out of a city, or having or not having children are “better”. I am just alarmed by how many seem completely unwilling to accept others may make different life choices than them. People are not content to live their life as they please. They must actually be martyrs and better than you for doing so. I can’t tell if this is an artifact of the age we live in, or it’s always been this way and I’m only become more aware of it as I’ve grown older.

LatteLazy 4y ago

You give them too much credit: they exist to scare the "worried well". This isn't some conspiracy of urbanites. It's just the environmentalist equivalent of Fox news: shocking lies sell more ad space than boring truths.