4 ms·

Funny that I don't see any of the commenters who wax poetic about their wonderful convenient car centric lifestyle in every post about the costs of car infrastr

by wpm 3y ago

Funny that I don't see any of the commenters who wax poetic about their wonderful convenient car centric lifestyle in every post about the costs of car infrastructure in here telling us how great it is they can drive to their sprawl-town's Costco once a week.

gavaw 3y ago
[flagged]
CacheRules 3y ago
I like Costco.
scoofy 3y ago
I primarily ride a bike and have been low-car since college in the early 2000's... hell, I've been a mod on /r/bicycling since around 2010. I took some Earth Sciences back when the professors just assumed people would act rationally and care about their climate impact. That seems adorably naive in retrospect. I think one of the biggest issues... as is always... is the housing shortage. I'm currently trying to find new housing that is low-car friendly (my lifestyle), and also dog-friendly (my gf's lifestyle). Yes, we live in the bay area, but this applies to every single major tech hub in America. If we want to get a two bedroom unit, that's both safely bikeable to central SF, but also a few blocks from a dog park, we're going to probably need to pay about $4000 per month. That's about $50,000 per year; it's about 40% of the SF median household income. As much as I hate the way our sprawl is infecting climate change... the real reason sprawl has taken over is that we've blocked urban housing construction for 70 years. I hardly blame younger folks for their exurban lifestyles at this point. I can barely afford being an urbanist, over 40, without having roommates... and I consider myself fairly well off. And I'm counting down the days until I say 'fuck it' and just move to Milwaukee or Pittsburgh where I could basically retire (not at all a slight, just the extremely rare affordable urbanist cities). I can't imagine what it would be like with kids. If you pretend to care about the environment, you need to be at your city council meetings demanding high-density, mixed-use, housing in your neighborhood.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  Hear hear! Another option is to move somewhere better. Happy to discuss emigration.
  - scoofy 3y ago
    I would very much consider immigration to western Ireland, Scotland, or the Netherlands if I hadn't built a life for myself in Northern California. As of now, the only reasonably affordable (not actually affordable) areas to live in with a temperate climates are in parts of Sonoma and Humbolt Counties, and Salinas. Any serious move would take some convincing, especially with a partner who is from the area. As someone who prefers the cool fog to warm sun, there aren't a lot of friendly climate zones friendly that don't involve the pacific northwest, but that's a tough sell to normal folks that think grey skies are unpleasant. As someone pretty much fatalistic about stopping climate change, I think the fortunes may favor the pacific northwest over Northern Europe in the next 50 years. It's an awkward gamble to make, but it's one that takes a lot more than just weather into account.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      In the Irish midlands now (came from California) but working on a move to NL.
      - scruple 3y ago
        Just curious, because I daydream about doing these sorts of things and consider the same places. Do you have a family with you?
        CalRobert 3y ago
        Email is in my bio if you want to chat. I do, but when moving here it was just my wife (then gf) and I on working holiday visas. Ireland is wonderful in many respects but also a deeply frustrating place, it's extremely car-dependent outside the middle of Dublin and perhaps what's harder is that most people see that as fine. Climate breakdown is viewed as a far away problem for other people, and rural communities can be insular. I have heard that some areas in Clare and West Cork are transforming, though. That being said, I live in a beautiful house on 3.5 acres a 15 minute bike ride from the train station and we want to move to the Netherlands so our kids can have actual freedom before learning to drive. Also a lot more jobs on climatebase.org are in NL (and DE), they're never in Ireland.
nate_meurer 3y ago
Well all you have to do is ask :) I live in a spectacular suburb of Denver, probably the nicest part of city that's still somewhat affordable for normal folks. My car-centric lifestyle is indeed convenient, but it's also efficient and resilient. I fucking love Costco. I drive a 1996 Honda minivan for which I paid $2000. This minivan does 25-30 mpg in the city. I fill that minivan right to the gills on my monthly trips to Costco, which allows me to minimize my miles driven, gas consumption, and time wasted on the mind-numbing task of buying staples. The less frequent trips to the store naturally requires us to store more food at home, so we end up having enough to last at least a couple of months in case of an emergency. Now, I could move to one of them fancy "walkable" neighborhoods they're building, and further cut down my car usage by taking light rail to a more expensive neighborhood grocer three or four times a week. This would require me to waste dozens of hours and spend hundreds of extra dollars simply to save a pint of gasoline per month. I'm interested to hear your case for why I should want to make that trade?
- scoofy 3y ago
  The obvious response is that you are trading your grandchildrens' future for a bit of convenience and quality-of-life improvement today. If you think that's a good trade, there's no convincing you of any moral duty to make sacrifices for future generations. I'm don't think moralizing is an effective way of changing minds, of course. I'm just generally disappointed that we haven't decided, collectively, that change is important enough to plan for and execute with minimal inconvenience for most people. That was my view 22 years ago, and it was very naive.
  - nate_meurer 3y ago
    > If you think that's a good trade, there's no convincing you of any moral duty to make sacrifices for future generations. Goodness. So not only is my judgement incorrect-- I'm also irretrievably immoral? What could I do differently to redeem myself in your eyes?
    - scoofy 3y ago
      Again, I honestly don't give a shit about your personal choices, I just think that, collectively, we should disincentivize general behaviors that are exceptionally bad for the climate. The fact that you care that I care is exactly the type of anti-partisanship hostility that makes organizing on this subject so difficult. Any theory of moral sentiments must be universal (this is my background in academic philosophy talking), so an moral sentiments I have must apply to you as well, otherwise they wouldn't actually be moral sentiments. That doesn't mean that I think anyone making different choices than I do is a "bad person" or anything (my other comment in this thread specifically discusses how difficult the tradeoffs for urbanism have become in this country), I only mean that I think that you should generally care about other people, even people that aren't born yet, at least collectively (gasp: how pearl-clutching of me). Again, I'm a fatalist at this point, simply because the level of push back to any non-symbolic change has been much more than I thought it would be for all collective changes needed. We have a few tricks up our sleeves in the form of geoengineering, and the eventual dominance of effectively free electricity in the future, but as it stands, I think it's going to get much worse before it starts getting better, and caring about whether someone lives in the suburbs isn't worth the energy.

by wpm 3y ago

gavaw 3y ago

[flagged]

CacheRules 3y ago

I like Costco.

scoofy 3y ago

I primarily ride a bike and have been low-car since college in the early 2000's... hell, I've been a mod on /r/bicycling since around 2010. I took some Earth Sciences back when the professors just assumed people would act rationally and care about their climate impact. That seems adorably naive in retrospect. I think one of the biggest issues... as is always... is the housing shortage. I'm currently trying to find new housing that is low-car friendly (my lifestyle), and also dog-friendly (my gf's lifestyle). Yes, we live in the bay area, but this applies to every single major tech hub in America. If we want to get a two bedroom unit, that's both safely bikeable to central SF, but also a few blocks from a dog park, we're going to probably need to pay about $4000 per month. That's about $50,000 per year; it's about 40% of the SF median household income. As much as I hate the way our sprawl is infecting climate change... the real reason sprawl has taken over is that we've blocked urban housing construction for 70 years. I hardly blame younger folks for their exurban lifestyles at this point. I can barely afford being an urbanist, over 40, without having roommates... and I consider myself fairly well off. And I'm counting down the days until I say 'fuck it' and just move to Milwaukee or Pittsburgh where I could basically retire (not at all a slight, just the extremely rare affordable urbanist cities). I can't imagine what it would be like with kids. If you pretend to care about the environment, you need to be at your city council meetings demanding high-density, mixed-use, housing in your neighborhood.

CalRobert 3y ago
Hear hear! Another option is to move somewhere better. Happy to discuss emigration.
- scoofy 3y ago
  I would very much consider immigration to western Ireland, Scotland, or the Netherlands if I hadn't built a life for myself in Northern California. As of now, the only reasonably affordable (not actually affordable) areas to live in with a temperate climates are in parts of Sonoma and Humbolt Counties, and Salinas. Any serious move would take some convincing, especially with a partner who is from the area. As someone who prefers the cool fog to warm sun, there aren't a lot of friendly climate zones friendly that don't involve the pacific northwest, but that's a tough sell to normal folks that think grey skies are unpleasant. As someone pretty much fatalistic about stopping climate change, I think the fortunes may favor the pacific northwest over Northern Europe in the next 50 years. It's an awkward gamble to make, but it's one that takes a lot more than just weather into account.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    In the Irish midlands now (came from California) but working on a move to NL.
    - scruple 3y ago
      Just curious, because I daydream about doing these sorts of things and consider the same places. Do you have a family with you?
      - CalRobert 3y ago
        Email is in my bio if you want to chat. I do, but when moving here it was just my wife (then gf) and I on working holiday visas. Ireland is wonderful in many respects but also a deeply frustrating place, it's extremely car-dependent outside the middle of Dublin and perhaps what's harder is that most people see that as fine. Climate breakdown is viewed as a far away problem for other people, and rural communities can be insular. I have heard that some areas in Clare and West Cork are transforming, though. That being said, I live in a beautiful house on 3.5 acres a 15 minute bike ride from the train station and we want to move to the Netherlands so our kids can have actual freedom before learning to drive. Also a lot more jobs on climatebase.org are in NL (and DE), they're never in Ireland.

nate_meurer 3y ago

Well all you have to do is ask :) I live in a spectacular suburb of Denver, probably the nicest part of city that's still somewhat affordable for normal folks. My car-centric lifestyle is indeed convenient, but it's also efficient and resilient. I fucking love Costco. I drive a 1996 Honda minivan for which I paid $2000. This minivan does 25-30 mpg in the city. I fill that minivan right to the gills on my monthly trips to Costco, which allows me to minimize my miles driven, gas consumption, and time wasted on the mind-numbing task of buying staples. The less frequent trips to the store naturally requires us to store more food at home, so we end up having enough to last at least a couple of months in case of an emergency. Now, I could move to one of them fancy "walkable" neighborhoods they're building, and further cut down my car usage by taking light rail to a more expensive neighborhood grocer three or four times a week. This would require me to waste dozens of hours and spend hundreds of extra dollars simply to save a pint of gasoline per month. I'm interested to hear your case for why I should want to make that trade?

scoofy 3y ago
The obvious response is that you are trading your grandchildrens' future for a bit of convenience and quality-of-life improvement today. If you think that's a good trade, there's no convincing you of any moral duty to make sacrifices for future generations. I'm don't think moralizing is an effective way of changing minds, of course. I'm just generally disappointed that we haven't decided, collectively, that change is important enough to plan for and execute with minimal inconvenience for most people. That was my view 22 years ago, and it was very naive.
- nate_meurer 3y ago
  > If you think that's a good trade, there's no convincing you of any moral duty to make sacrifices for future generations. Goodness. So not only is my judgement incorrect-- I'm also irretrievably immoral? What could I do differently to redeem myself in your eyes?
  - scoofy 3y ago
    Again, I honestly don't give a shit about your personal choices, I just think that, collectively, we should disincentivize general behaviors that are exceptionally bad for the climate. The fact that you care that I care is exactly the type of anti-partisanship hostility that makes organizing on this subject so difficult. Any theory of moral sentiments must be universal (this is my background in academic philosophy talking), so an moral sentiments I have must apply to you as well, otherwise they wouldn't actually be moral sentiments. That doesn't mean that I think anyone making different choices than I do is a "bad person" or anything (my other comment in this thread specifically discusses how difficult the tradeoffs for urbanism have become in this country), I only mean that I think that you should generally care about other people, even people that aren't born yet, at least collectively (gasp: how pearl-clutching of me). Again, I'm a fatalist at this point, simply because the level of push back to any non-symbolic change has been much more than I thought it would be for all collective changes needed. We have a few tricks up our sleeves in the form of geoengineering, and the eventual dominance of effectively free electricity in the future, but as it stands, I think it's going to get much worse before it starts getting better, and caring about whether someone lives in the suburbs isn't worth the energy.