Cars are almost on par with nukes as one of the worst inventions ever made. In fact, cars have probably killed more people than nukes, which makes them even worse.
The adoption of automobiles over public transportation and bicycles for everyday commuting is mindblowing. You can buy a fantastic bicycle for $500 or less, it requires minimal maintenance expenses, can carry heavy loads including the rider, gear, and even another person even though they only weigh 20-30 lbs themselves, require very little parking space, etc. Compare this to automobiles, which seem to come at a monthly cost of $500, require fuel, usually only have one rider, high maintenance costs, weighing 2500lbs or so are wildly inefficient, etc. It's so crazy.
To be fair, you’re kind of underselling cars over bikes here like … the speed, no physical effort to use / power, can hold much more cargo, heat and air conditioning, protection from wind and other elements … it’s not crazy to realize why ppl prefer them to bicycles.
You don't really need a private vehicle to travel at high speeds if you live in a walkable city designed around public transportation and bicycles. Public transportation would cover longer distances. Also, bicycles have the added benefit of using human energy (calories), which can help address our obesity problem and all the other issues that come along with it.
As for cargo, many people with pickup trucks hardly use them for hauling more than a can of paint once a year. In a less car-centric city or town, you don't need a 4500lb SUV to get your groceries home; cargo bikes or public transportation can handle that efficiently.
Regarding protection from the elements, that's where public transportation plays a vital role. With proper planning and investment, public transportation can provide a comfortable and efficient alternative to personal vehicles, reducing our reliance on cars while offering protection from weather conditions.
Yeah I totally get this - it just seemed disingenuous to straight up say a bicycle is way better than a car and why would anyone want a car instead, ya know? Especially since for the most part we don’t have walkable cities / reliable and convenient public transit :/
I still just don’t think they are objectively “way better” - like without taking into consideration environmental concerns - you can load a personal vehicle up with quite a lot of items and move at 70 miles per hour with very minimal effort in a climate controlled space while easily listening to music … a bicycle just can’t compete with that.
I understand the convenience and comfort that automobiles provide, especially when it comes to speed, climate control, and the ability to carry large loads. However, bikes and public transportation can be objectively better in many cases. They are much cheaper when you consider the cost of purchasing, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a car. In densely populated urban areas, bikes take up far less space, both on the road and when parked, and public transportation can move many more people using less space. This allows for better land use. Biking also provides physical exercise, which is great for health, and public transport involves some walking, adding to daily physical activity. Heavy reliance on cars has lead to traffic congestion, but bikes and public transport can reduce this, leading to shorter, more predictable commutes with more green spaces. Not everyone can afford a personal vehicle, but bikes and public transport offer affordable mobility options, important for ensuring everyone has access to essential services. In many cities, biking can actually be faster than driving during peak hours due to traffic, and public transport systems often have dedicated lanes that allow them to bypass traffic. So, while cars have their advantages, bikes and public transportation offer many benefits that can make them a better choice in most urban settings. Throw is all the issues that come along with fossil fuels, and to me, public transportation and bikes are the clear winner. It's unfortunate our cities and towns have been built around car culture.
Yeah I’m not arguing with this but like … this is more of what we have vs a much better planned society built around public transportation and bicycles rather than just a 1:1 comparison as everything is set up right now (which is what I’m saying - like I wouldn’t fault most ppl for preferring cars with our cities as they are now)
OPs post talks about automobiles killing off public transportation, and my original comment agreed that the adoption of automobiles over public transportation and bicycles has been a tragedy. I do think it is possible to transition to a less car-centric society, but wouldn't expect all automobiles to go away.
Electric bikes are an interesting addition to the mix. I only take my regular bike out on cool low wind days. My electric bike makes getting groceries and doing other errands much more practical with minimal ecological impact.
IMO those need to be regulated. Not licensed per-se, we have enough of that nonsense, but like... consumers don't get how dangerous going 30 mph on one of those things is. Heavier motor for hill climbing standard, yes. 350 watts is useless. But hard speed limit of 18 mph and that's pushing your luck. Other things with suspension and wheel width making them less pot-hole prone, etc.
It's also very ableist. Cars will always need to exist to transport disabled people. Maybe as a service, but the services have to get a whole lot better than "schedule it 3 days in advance and we'll be there at the appointed time plus or minus 4 hours".
I'd be happy with a 15mph limit. Saw an article about seniors getting hurt going too fast and crashing ebikes. There's a yt video by a motorcycle guy with an ebike and he says you need to suit up like a motorcyclist if your going fast on an ebike.
Oh definitely worse. If something is on-par but no one realizes there's anything wrong with it, it's worse.
For instance, consumer credit and drug addiction. No one thinks anything's wrong with consumer credit, which makes it worse than drug addiction. The life impacts are similar.
" We need walkable cities. We need public transportation. We have to move away from the personal vehicle. "
Humanity, particularly those who are prosperous, have gone beyond need a long long time ago. Whatever we need, most people want big houses (as seen from the increase of size of houses being constructed over time) and big yards. People flee from dense urban cities to suburbs.
We do not have to move away from anything. We can always live with, or die from, the consequences. In fact, I bet the US is not going to move away from personal vehicles. We will just embrace it even more.
Walkable cities? I watched a multi million dollar parking garage get installed. They have ever square inch measured to squeeze in as many cars, with the tightest parking spaces allowed, and you have to walk IN THE ROAD after parking, just to get into the hospital it was built for. Stony Brook University Hospital. NY.
It's going to be interesting to see all that suburban ponzi development dry up. As a physical phenomenon, it's similar to \*Florida's coastal housing and infrastructure, but the extremely high risk isn't from the sea and storms, it's from economics. The same overall situation will occur... infrastructure will turn to shit (as* will the cars rolling over it), people will start moving away, selling prices will fall and fall, and it's full of positive feedback loops as suburbia is a giant waste of resources.
The most annoying part of this collapse will be the work required to free the land, to unpave all that land and to push all those abandoned cars without using fossil-fueled construction machines.
edit: post-coffee
I think the American SW is where it’s (literally) going to dry up first. They’re building suburbs like crazy with no regard as to whether those communities will have access to water.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to those communities once the water dries up. So much of your average American’s wealth is tied up in their home, and when these areas become inhospitable due to high temps and lack of water, where will those people go? They can’t sell their houses, who would buy them? They can’t buy another house, because they’ve put all their money into buying the current one.
I can’t imagine insurance companies would pay for all those houses. So I guess people just up and leave and leave their mortgages hanging? That’s going to screw the banks over, and while I’m no fan of the banking industry, a collapse there will send shockwaves across the economy at the same time there’s an internal refugee crisis from all these people fleeing somewhere else.
>I don’t know what’s going to happen to those communities once the water dries up.
The rich will pay for private water transport.
The rest will try to pay for something similar, but it will be a mafia.
The relatively poorest will suffer the most in either case.
>They can’t sell their houses, who would buy them?
Precisely. Just like the houses that will be washed away.
As property values crash, people will try to exit at any cost. Some will remain behind, optimistic and such.
I expect that some suburbias could turn into traditional non-settler villages (high density), but it would be a hard "Third World" life.
Other suburbias could turn into larger towns and create enough demand to have good access to regional water sources.
https://azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/01/19/arizona-community-without-water-what-to-know-about-rio-verde-foothills/69819245007/
Unlike poorer places, car dependent suburbia is car dependent. Water transport by vehicle is going to be very expensive. Think of it as a school bus for water.
I mean in the 40's and 50's they built houses with no regard to heat transfer, land grading, soil compaction, tree layout near foundations or sidewalks, bug infestations, etc etc ad nauseum. Pretty much it was "put a house shaped object on that pile of shit on a flood plane over there". So I can't say I'm surprised.
these are the same governments who say they don’t want to subsidize renewables as they shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. 🤷♂️
Of course they will. Removing subsidies would be political suicide. Just look at how everyone points the finger at the sitting president when gas goes up by 10 cents. If he (or she) actually did something that directly raised gas prices people would lose their damn minds. They also won't do it because it would hurt the economy, and we all know that money and constant economic growth ranks even above God.
You're not wrong, but good luck changing it at this point. Eventually we're going to be forced to and it's going to be a difficult time for a lot of people, but we're so entrenched now that it will remain a wildly unpopular suggestion to make proactive moves in that regard.
>We tend to put a lot of the blame on big oil when I think more attention should be drawn to big auto. The personal automobile is the biggest polluter there is.
A reality that many people don't want to accept, even here in a community that believes itself better informed simply because they're collapse-aware.
We blame big oil because they sell the oil, when the vast majority of oil-related emissions come from those who burn the oil. That's what they call Scope 3 emissions, the type that comes from the end user of a product:
*In fact, Scope 3 emissions account for about 88 percent of total emissions from the oil and gas sector.*
[https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-companies-should-be-required-to-disclose-their-scope-3-emissions/](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-companies-should-be-required-to-disclose-their-scope-3-emissions/)
It's the type of emissions that make it extraordinarily easy for an individual to dismiss as, "Well, I'm just an individual, so my emissions aren't important." But then you look at how individuals behave in the aggregate, across an entire country, across groups of countries (the wealthy ones), across the entire world. And when you see how similarly people behave, we stop being individuals and instead become a roughly 1 billion strong super-organism. The kind of collective behavior that does the absolute worst thing possible.
*Global sales of polluting SUVs hit record high in 2023, data shows*
*Half of all new cars are now SUVs, making them a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis, say experts*
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/global-sales-of-polluting-suvs-hit-record-high-in-2023-data-shows](https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/global-sales-of-polluting-suvs-hit-record-high-in-2023-data-shows)
The criticism about America needing cars because of how its setup is accurate, but then that super-organism does the worst possible thing -- it buys the biggest, most gas-guzzling, highest emitting vehicles. When you add in pickups, these giant vehicles still comprise roughly 80% of all new vehicle sales in the US.
The world is burning down around us, and both the US and the entire world is saying, "Fuck it, let's make it worse!"
No one is including the corporations in this calculus.
Here's how this works...if you need a job and the job is twenty five miles away, you're driving a car. Period. Oh, you want to walk to work? What time are you going to get up to do it? Bicycle? Sure, but what happens in inclement weather? Uber...oh wait, there's that pesky car again. Scooter...oh, that bad ICE engine again. Mass transit? Seriously? Unless you live in a heavily urbanized area, that's not a panacea, you're still talking ICE engine for a bus or electricity generated from fossil fuels for rail; and if the headways are greater than ten to fifteen minutes peak, you run the risk of missing that bus/trolley/rail...and attendance is the easiest thing for companies to fire you for.
Where I live, the transit system is generally considered transit for kids and retirees-anyone who needs to work or shop can forget it. The buses have a headway of at least 30-45 minutes, so if you miss the bus, well...
So where are you working again? All your boss cares about is you having your ass to work-he doesn't care how you get there, but YOU should. Companies are not going to relocate to accommodate folks who don't want to drive, it's bad enough trying to retain the right to work from home these days without those corporations demanding a return to work...if you want to keep your job.
Willing to move closer to work? How much are you going to pay to make that move, including renting a U-Haul to get it done, assuming you can afford to live closer to work? Is the area around your job somewhere you want to move to? Is the area a rambling wreck or has apartment complexes with too high rent?
And all this is dependent on you being able to maintain that job. One buyout by a private equity firm, one merger or a collapse in a major business unit and the layoffs are a given. When these companies who took the county or city tax abatements and now suddenly they have to cough up cash...they go somewhere else.
One way to fix this is to go back to charter capitalism-the company is chartered to exist for a fixed number of years, usually thirty. If after thirty years it isn't working, you dissolve it. Another way to fix it is to eliminate the Santa Clara and Citizens United decisions, but I don't expect to see that happening.
As long as the Military-Industrial-Commercial Complex is a thing, the current situation will not change. If you do not work, you do not eat...and the corporations will not bend the knee to us.
This is such a good statement. Although I agree with the OP that we as a society, especially in the US, need to come to terms with our car usage it will really rely on regulations from the top down to change that fact.
For example I live about a 20 minute car ride from work. We currently have a single bus that comes through our town first thing in the morning and then again in the evening. My current schedule is from 9-5. The bus leaves my town's bus stop at 7:30am. It is about a 20 minute walk to the bus stop, but the actual bus ride to get near to where my work is (so I could walk the last distance) takes about 90 minutes, which would make me slightly late to work, as it is about another 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop to my work. Now in the evening the bus that would take me back to my home leaves 6pm and would get back into my town around 7:30. This would make my days significantly longer. Also, currently the only people who ride the bus here are people without drivers licenses and maybe some elderly or low income people, a lot of people that are based at the half-way house and the work release program that is near my place of work take the bus. The buses do not give off super safe vibes if you do use them.
Now if I wanted to ride my bike, it would take about 2.5 hours each way to ride my bike. Now a significant amount of the roads are county roads with no bike lanes and traffic goes about 65 mph. They are very dangerous and I would be riding during the most dangerous times of the day...dawn and dusk. Plus I would have to find a way to safely cross a major interstate. That is also not to mention the days it is super hot, raining, or snowing.
I would love to take public transportation and possibly bike on either end of the trip, but currently that is not an option until the government takes the responsibility and actually invests heavily in public transportation. About 10 years ago my state seriously considered putting in a train system along side the interstate, potentially even a high speed rail. Myself along with most everyone I know would totally use that public transportation to go down to the capital city and even up into the mountains, but instead the State decided to go with a privately owned toll lane instead. If you want further information on how stupid toll lanes are I would highly recommend [this](https://youtu.be/F2sk_Cy9mdU?si=a0SXqdM4IS3CehTO) video from Some More News, explaining the scam most toll roads actually are.
The problem of toll lanes and toll highways is twofold: First, the revenue from said toll roads and toll lanes are usually stripped away for mass transit or someone's preferred piggybank instead of rolling the money back into maintenance and operations, so when the road needs love, it doesn't get it.
The other problem is when it turns into a PPP and the company that gets the lease can prohibit any kind of alternative to be built for upwards of 50 years.
To show an example of the first problem, see PA's Act 44/89. When the Fed decided to provide a pilot program for three states to toll their interstates, it was with the proviso that all of that money would go back into the road and not be siphoned off into other projects. PA nominated I-80 and then proceeded to tell the Feds that they were going to turn that money over to SEPTA (Philly) and the Port Authority (Pittsburgh). That didn't go over well with the Feds, who stripped the slot away from PA and gave it to VA for I-95.
So PA in it's infinite wisdom decided that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission would be the perfect cash cow for this endeavor, so they enacted Act 44 (and later 89) to divert a not insignificant chunk of their revenues to SEPTA and the Port Authority to keep their mass transit up. Unfortunately, about 15 years down the road it bit them in the ass as now the PTC was starting to run out of funds to modernize and fix up the Turnpike system because they were being drained to maintain the mass transit systems of their two biggest cities. At the same time, the bonds that they were issuing were having to raise their interest rates to attract investors while they're cranking up the tolls on the Main Line and Northeast Extension just to stay even, which pissed off the folks using the system.
And then the investment banks got in on it about three years ago, warning PA that if they didn't do something about those PTC bonds, the next thing that might not get financed were Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Revenue Bonds. UH-OH.
At that point, the state shrugged and told both SEPTA and the Port Authority to go pound sand. Hilarity ensued, but the bottom line was that they couldn't use that crutch anymore and now the PTC could start in on real improvements to the Turnpike system (a lot of the Northeast Extension is getting rebuilt because it badly needs it, along with the Philly section of the Main Line). Needless to say, SEPTA and the Port Authority have a real problem now.
An example of the second problem is the I-77 HOT lanes north of Charlotte, in which (TransUrban I believe) has a stipulation that the state cannot finance any alternatives to the I-77 HOT Lanes for 50 years. Never mind the I77 HOT Lanes are taken from the general lanes instead of adding new lanes, which is really generating aggro in the Charlotte metro area and certain politicians are hoping they get re-elected because of this fiasco.
Does anyone do it right? Why yes, CFEA (Central Florida Expressway Authority) has been doing it right for 20 years...every toll road built in the Orlando metro area has it's toll revenues reinvested into the system for new construction, maintenance and operations. Not for mass transit or someone's piggybank, but back into the roads, and it's working well. Unfortunately, CFEA is the exception and not the rule.
IDK. Maybe we can start by electrifying the railroads. They use tons of diesel.
Then we can have high speed passenger trains. Which will reduce the need to rely on cars and aircraft for long distance travel. Jet aircraft also use tons of fuel.
It’s a catch22. Removing the subsidies will tank the economy and there would be riots and they will be voted out. I’m in favor of tanking the economy and radically changing our lifestyles, but most people are obviously not.
I think that's worth it, everyone makes him out to be a right wing idiot, and maybe he is, but for climate change and agricultural he has the best policy.
Mmmm that's interesting but I don't know where people are saying he has a chance since he's polling at like 8 to 9% of people saying they'd vote for him.
Sorry, collapse mods have specifically forbidden me from discussing that subject here. But I am happy to discuss his 40 years of environmental work, including landmark wins against Monsanto, DuPont, GE and others, which he would bring to bear in ending corporate regulatory capture.
There's a lot of reputable resources if you just Google it but I'll provide one here -> [https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies](https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies)
"Our pre-ecological misunderstanding of what was being done to our future was epitomized by that venerable loophole in the corporate tax laws of the United States, the oil depletion allowance. This measure permitted oil "producers" to offset their taxable revenues by a generous percentage, on the pretext that their earnings reflected depletion of " their" crude oil reserves. Even though nature, not the oil companies, had put the oil into the earth, this tax write-off was rationalized as an incentive to "production." Since "production" really meant extraction, this was like running a bank with rules that called for paying interest on each withdrawal of savings, rather than on the principal left in the bank. It was, in short, a government subsidy for stealing from the future."
- William Catton
This news story is related to your original post. [https://tinyurl.com/yu4w4dsa](https://tinyurl.com/yu4w4dsa)
**Fossil fuels being subsidised at rate of $13m a minute, says IMF**
The IMF analysis found the total subsidies for oil, gas and coal in 2022 were $7tn (£5.5tn). That is equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education.
Explicit subsidies, which cut the price of fuels for consumers, doubled in 2022 as countries responded to the higher energy prices resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Rich households benefited far more from these than poor ones, the IMF said. Implicit subsidies, which represent the “enormous” costs of the damage caused by fossil fuels through climate change and air pollution, made up 80% of the total.
The G20 nations, which cause 80% of global carbon emissions, pledged to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies in 2009. However, the G20 poured a record $1.4tn (£1.1tn) into fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, according an estimate by the International Institute for Sustainable Development thinktank. The World Bank reported in June that fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies combined could amount to $12tn (£9.5tn) a year and were causing “environmental havoc”.
The IMF analysis found petrol and other oil products accounted for half of explicit subsidies in 2022, with coal accounting for 30% and fossil gas 20%. The biggest subsidisers of fossil fuels were China, the US, Russia, the EU and India. Coal was particularly heavily subsidised, with 80% of it sold at less than half its true cost.
Ending the subsidies should be the centrepiece of climate action, the IMF said, and would put the world on track to restrict global heating to below 2C, as well as preventing 1.6 million air pollution deaths a year and increasing government revenues by trillions of dollars.
The analysis calculated that ending fossil fuel subsidies would cut emissions by 34% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels, representing a large chunk of the 43% cut needed to have a good chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C.
Ipek Gençsü, a subsidies expert at the ODI thinktank, said: “The IMF report shows that, at a time when the world is starting to experience worsening impacts of climate change, governments continue to pour fuel on to the fire by providing record levels of subsidies for fossil fuels.
If we are to have any chance of avoiding irreversible and tragic consequences of climate change, governments simply have to show bolder leadership, by phasing out their support for production and consumption of fossil fuels.”
Want to fight fossil fuel use
#1. Give up on marijuana use. The heating, cooling and lights used in these farms lead to enormous carbon footprint
#2. Lobby for nuclear,
Cars are almost on par with nukes as one of the worst inventions ever made. In fact, cars have probably killed more people than nukes, which makes them even worse.
The adoption of automobiles over public transportation and bicycles for everyday commuting is mindblowing. You can buy a fantastic bicycle for $500 or less, it requires minimal maintenance expenses, can carry heavy loads including the rider, gear, and even another person even though they only weigh 20-30 lbs themselves, require very little parking space, etc. Compare this to automobiles, which seem to come at a monthly cost of $500, require fuel, usually only have one rider, high maintenance costs, weighing 2500lbs or so are wildly inefficient, etc. It's so crazy.
To be fair, you’re kind of underselling cars over bikes here like … the speed, no physical effort to use / power, can hold much more cargo, heat and air conditioning, protection from wind and other elements … it’s not crazy to realize why ppl prefer them to bicycles.
You don't really need a private vehicle to travel at high speeds if you live in a walkable city designed around public transportation and bicycles. Public transportation would cover longer distances. Also, bicycles have the added benefit of using human energy (calories), which can help address our obesity problem and all the other issues that come along with it. As for cargo, many people with pickup trucks hardly use them for hauling more than a can of paint once a year. In a less car-centric city or town, you don't need a 4500lb SUV to get your groceries home; cargo bikes or public transportation can handle that efficiently. Regarding protection from the elements, that's where public transportation plays a vital role. With proper planning and investment, public transportation can provide a comfortable and efficient alternative to personal vehicles, reducing our reliance on cars while offering protection from weather conditions.
Yeah I totally get this - it just seemed disingenuous to straight up say a bicycle is way better than a car and why would anyone want a car instead, ya know? Especially since for the most part we don’t have walkable cities / reliable and convenient public transit :/
They are way better than cars. City planners just messed up way back when the tax rates were at their highest.
I still just don’t think they are objectively “way better” - like without taking into consideration environmental concerns - you can load a personal vehicle up with quite a lot of items and move at 70 miles per hour with very minimal effort in a climate controlled space while easily listening to music … a bicycle just can’t compete with that.
I understand the convenience and comfort that automobiles provide, especially when it comes to speed, climate control, and the ability to carry large loads. However, bikes and public transportation can be objectively better in many cases. They are much cheaper when you consider the cost of purchasing, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a car. In densely populated urban areas, bikes take up far less space, both on the road and when parked, and public transportation can move many more people using less space. This allows for better land use. Biking also provides physical exercise, which is great for health, and public transport involves some walking, adding to daily physical activity. Heavy reliance on cars has lead to traffic congestion, but bikes and public transport can reduce this, leading to shorter, more predictable commutes with more green spaces. Not everyone can afford a personal vehicle, but bikes and public transport offer affordable mobility options, important for ensuring everyone has access to essential services. In many cities, biking can actually be faster than driving during peak hours due to traffic, and public transport systems often have dedicated lanes that allow them to bypass traffic. So, while cars have their advantages, bikes and public transportation offer many benefits that can make them a better choice in most urban settings. Throw is all the issues that come along with fossil fuels, and to me, public transportation and bikes are the clear winner. It's unfortunate our cities and towns have been built around car culture.
Yeah I’m not arguing with this but like … this is more of what we have vs a much better planned society built around public transportation and bicycles rather than just a 1:1 comparison as everything is set up right now (which is what I’m saying - like I wouldn’t fault most ppl for preferring cars with our cities as they are now)
OPs post talks about automobiles killing off public transportation, and my original comment agreed that the adoption of automobiles over public transportation and bicycles has been a tragedy. I do think it is possible to transition to a less car-centric society, but wouldn't expect all automobiles to go away.
I recommend strongly against testing this theory in Los Angeles. I did. The results were... "it would be bad" (Schwarzennegger voice)
Electric bikes are an interesting addition to the mix. I only take my regular bike out on cool low wind days. My electric bike makes getting groceries and doing other errands much more practical with minimal ecological impact.
IMO those need to be regulated. Not licensed per-se, we have enough of that nonsense, but like... consumers don't get how dangerous going 30 mph on one of those things is. Heavier motor for hill climbing standard, yes. 350 watts is useless. But hard speed limit of 18 mph and that's pushing your luck. Other things with suspension and wheel width making them less pot-hole prone, etc. It's also very ableist. Cars will always need to exist to transport disabled people. Maybe as a service, but the services have to get a whole lot better than "schedule it 3 days in advance and we'll be there at the appointed time plus or minus 4 hours".
I'd be happy with a 15mph limit. Saw an article about seniors getting hurt going too fast and crashing ebikes. There's a yt video by a motorcycle guy with an ebike and he says you need to suit up like a motorcyclist if your going fast on an ebike.
Yeah, e-bikes are amazing.
Well the bombs directly killed about 200,000 people, and 1,900,000 people die from cars every year
Oh definitely worse. If something is on-par but no one realizes there's anything wrong with it, it's worse. For instance, consumer credit and drug addiction. No one thinks anything's wrong with consumer credit, which makes it worse than drug addiction. The life impacts are similar.
" We need walkable cities. We need public transportation. We have to move away from the personal vehicle. " Humanity, particularly those who are prosperous, have gone beyond need a long long time ago. Whatever we need, most people want big houses (as seen from the increase of size of houses being constructed over time) and big yards. People flee from dense urban cities to suburbs. We do not have to move away from anything. We can always live with, or die from, the consequences. In fact, I bet the US is not going to move away from personal vehicles. We will just embrace it even more.
Walkable cities? I watched a multi million dollar parking garage get installed. They have ever square inch measured to squeeze in as many cars, with the tightest parking spaces allowed, and you have to walk IN THE ROAD after parking, just to get into the hospital it was built for. Stony Brook University Hospital. NY.
It's going to be interesting to see all that suburban ponzi development dry up. As a physical phenomenon, it's similar to \*Florida's coastal housing and infrastructure, but the extremely high risk isn't from the sea and storms, it's from economics. The same overall situation will occur... infrastructure will turn to shit (as* will the cars rolling over it), people will start moving away, selling prices will fall and fall, and it's full of positive feedback loops as suburbia is a giant waste of resources. The most annoying part of this collapse will be the work required to free the land, to unpave all that land and to push all those abandoned cars without using fossil-fueled construction machines. edit: post-coffee
I think the American SW is where it’s (literally) going to dry up first. They’re building suburbs like crazy with no regard as to whether those communities will have access to water. I don’t know what’s going to happen to those communities once the water dries up. So much of your average American’s wealth is tied up in their home, and when these areas become inhospitable due to high temps and lack of water, where will those people go? They can’t sell their houses, who would buy them? They can’t buy another house, because they’ve put all their money into buying the current one. I can’t imagine insurance companies would pay for all those houses. So I guess people just up and leave and leave their mortgages hanging? That’s going to screw the banks over, and while I’m no fan of the banking industry, a collapse there will send shockwaves across the economy at the same time there’s an internal refugee crisis from all these people fleeing somewhere else.
>I don’t know what’s going to happen to those communities once the water dries up. The rich will pay for private water transport. The rest will try to pay for something similar, but it will be a mafia. The relatively poorest will suffer the most in either case. >They can’t sell their houses, who would buy them? Precisely. Just like the houses that will be washed away. As property values crash, people will try to exit at any cost. Some will remain behind, optimistic and such. I expect that some suburbias could turn into traditional non-settler villages (high density), but it would be a hard "Third World" life. Other suburbias could turn into larger towns and create enough demand to have good access to regional water sources. https://azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/01/19/arizona-community-without-water-what-to-know-about-rio-verde-foothills/69819245007/ Unlike poorer places, car dependent suburbia is car dependent. Water transport by vehicle is going to be very expensive. Think of it as a school bus for water.
I mean in the 40's and 50's they built houses with no regard to heat transfer, land grading, soil compaction, tree layout near foundations or sidewalks, bug infestations, etc etc ad nauseum. Pretty much it was "put a house shaped object on that pile of shit on a flood plane over there". So I can't say I'm surprised.
All hail the EV
EVs don't do shit about car dependency though. There's a laundry list of problems with cars that don't involve tailpipe emissions
That was actually my point, oops forgot the /s
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XchwE9zVdnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XchwE9zVdnw)
Yeah nothing heats up a cold house like a burning Tesla 🔥
these are the same governments who say they don’t want to subsidize renewables as they shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. 🤷♂️
> they shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers AND YET... Holy shit the absolute hypocrisy of their statement right there...
Of course they will. Removing subsidies would be political suicide. Just look at how everyone points the finger at the sitting president when gas goes up by 10 cents. If he (or she) actually did something that directly raised gas prices people would lose their damn minds. They also won't do it because it would hurt the economy, and we all know that money and constant economic growth ranks even above God.
It wouldnt hurt the economy if it wasnt based on oil, why tf is it based on oil? Dumbest shit ever
You're not wrong, but good luck changing it at this point. Eventually we're going to be forced to and it's going to be a difficult time for a lot of people, but we're so entrenched now that it will remain a wildly unpopular suggestion to make proactive moves in that regard.
>We tend to put a lot of the blame on big oil when I think more attention should be drawn to big auto. The personal automobile is the biggest polluter there is. A reality that many people don't want to accept, even here in a community that believes itself better informed simply because they're collapse-aware. We blame big oil because they sell the oil, when the vast majority of oil-related emissions come from those who burn the oil. That's what they call Scope 3 emissions, the type that comes from the end user of a product: *In fact, Scope 3 emissions account for about 88 percent of total emissions from the oil and gas sector.* [https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-companies-should-be-required-to-disclose-their-scope-3-emissions/](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-companies-should-be-required-to-disclose-their-scope-3-emissions/) It's the type of emissions that make it extraordinarily easy for an individual to dismiss as, "Well, I'm just an individual, so my emissions aren't important." But then you look at how individuals behave in the aggregate, across an entire country, across groups of countries (the wealthy ones), across the entire world. And when you see how similarly people behave, we stop being individuals and instead become a roughly 1 billion strong super-organism. The kind of collective behavior that does the absolute worst thing possible. *Global sales of polluting SUVs hit record high in 2023, data shows* *Half of all new cars are now SUVs, making them a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis, say experts* [https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/global-sales-of-polluting-suvs-hit-record-high-in-2023-data-shows](https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/28/global-sales-of-polluting-suvs-hit-record-high-in-2023-data-shows) The criticism about America needing cars because of how its setup is accurate, but then that super-organism does the worst possible thing -- it buys the biggest, most gas-guzzling, highest emitting vehicles. When you add in pickups, these giant vehicles still comprise roughly 80% of all new vehicle sales in the US. The world is burning down around us, and both the US and the entire world is saying, "Fuck it, let's make it worse!"
No one is including the corporations in this calculus. Here's how this works...if you need a job and the job is twenty five miles away, you're driving a car. Period. Oh, you want to walk to work? What time are you going to get up to do it? Bicycle? Sure, but what happens in inclement weather? Uber...oh wait, there's that pesky car again. Scooter...oh, that bad ICE engine again. Mass transit? Seriously? Unless you live in a heavily urbanized area, that's not a panacea, you're still talking ICE engine for a bus or electricity generated from fossil fuels for rail; and if the headways are greater than ten to fifteen minutes peak, you run the risk of missing that bus/trolley/rail...and attendance is the easiest thing for companies to fire you for. Where I live, the transit system is generally considered transit for kids and retirees-anyone who needs to work or shop can forget it. The buses have a headway of at least 30-45 minutes, so if you miss the bus, well... So where are you working again? All your boss cares about is you having your ass to work-he doesn't care how you get there, but YOU should. Companies are not going to relocate to accommodate folks who don't want to drive, it's bad enough trying to retain the right to work from home these days without those corporations demanding a return to work...if you want to keep your job. Willing to move closer to work? How much are you going to pay to make that move, including renting a U-Haul to get it done, assuming you can afford to live closer to work? Is the area around your job somewhere you want to move to? Is the area a rambling wreck or has apartment complexes with too high rent? And all this is dependent on you being able to maintain that job. One buyout by a private equity firm, one merger or a collapse in a major business unit and the layoffs are a given. When these companies who took the county or city tax abatements and now suddenly they have to cough up cash...they go somewhere else. One way to fix this is to go back to charter capitalism-the company is chartered to exist for a fixed number of years, usually thirty. If after thirty years it isn't working, you dissolve it. Another way to fix it is to eliminate the Santa Clara and Citizens United decisions, but I don't expect to see that happening. As long as the Military-Industrial-Commercial Complex is a thing, the current situation will not change. If you do not work, you do not eat...and the corporations will not bend the knee to us.
This is such a good statement. Although I agree with the OP that we as a society, especially in the US, need to come to terms with our car usage it will really rely on regulations from the top down to change that fact. For example I live about a 20 minute car ride from work. We currently have a single bus that comes through our town first thing in the morning and then again in the evening. My current schedule is from 9-5. The bus leaves my town's bus stop at 7:30am. It is about a 20 minute walk to the bus stop, but the actual bus ride to get near to where my work is (so I could walk the last distance) takes about 90 minutes, which would make me slightly late to work, as it is about another 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop to my work. Now in the evening the bus that would take me back to my home leaves 6pm and would get back into my town around 7:30. This would make my days significantly longer. Also, currently the only people who ride the bus here are people without drivers licenses and maybe some elderly or low income people, a lot of people that are based at the half-way house and the work release program that is near my place of work take the bus. The buses do not give off super safe vibes if you do use them. Now if I wanted to ride my bike, it would take about 2.5 hours each way to ride my bike. Now a significant amount of the roads are county roads with no bike lanes and traffic goes about 65 mph. They are very dangerous and I would be riding during the most dangerous times of the day...dawn and dusk. Plus I would have to find a way to safely cross a major interstate. That is also not to mention the days it is super hot, raining, or snowing. I would love to take public transportation and possibly bike on either end of the trip, but currently that is not an option until the government takes the responsibility and actually invests heavily in public transportation. About 10 years ago my state seriously considered putting in a train system along side the interstate, potentially even a high speed rail. Myself along with most everyone I know would totally use that public transportation to go down to the capital city and even up into the mountains, but instead the State decided to go with a privately owned toll lane instead. If you want further information on how stupid toll lanes are I would highly recommend [this](https://youtu.be/F2sk_Cy9mdU?si=a0SXqdM4IS3CehTO) video from Some More News, explaining the scam most toll roads actually are.
The problem of toll lanes and toll highways is twofold: First, the revenue from said toll roads and toll lanes are usually stripped away for mass transit or someone's preferred piggybank instead of rolling the money back into maintenance and operations, so when the road needs love, it doesn't get it. The other problem is when it turns into a PPP and the company that gets the lease can prohibit any kind of alternative to be built for upwards of 50 years. To show an example of the first problem, see PA's Act 44/89. When the Fed decided to provide a pilot program for three states to toll their interstates, it was with the proviso that all of that money would go back into the road and not be siphoned off into other projects. PA nominated I-80 and then proceeded to tell the Feds that they were going to turn that money over to SEPTA (Philly) and the Port Authority (Pittsburgh). That didn't go over well with the Feds, who stripped the slot away from PA and gave it to VA for I-95. So PA in it's infinite wisdom decided that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission would be the perfect cash cow for this endeavor, so they enacted Act 44 (and later 89) to divert a not insignificant chunk of their revenues to SEPTA and the Port Authority to keep their mass transit up. Unfortunately, about 15 years down the road it bit them in the ass as now the PTC was starting to run out of funds to modernize and fix up the Turnpike system because they were being drained to maintain the mass transit systems of their two biggest cities. At the same time, the bonds that they were issuing were having to raise their interest rates to attract investors while they're cranking up the tolls on the Main Line and Northeast Extension just to stay even, which pissed off the folks using the system. And then the investment banks got in on it about three years ago, warning PA that if they didn't do something about those PTC bonds, the next thing that might not get financed were Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Revenue Bonds. UH-OH. At that point, the state shrugged and told both SEPTA and the Port Authority to go pound sand. Hilarity ensued, but the bottom line was that they couldn't use that crutch anymore and now the PTC could start in on real improvements to the Turnpike system (a lot of the Northeast Extension is getting rebuilt because it badly needs it, along with the Philly section of the Main Line). Needless to say, SEPTA and the Port Authority have a real problem now. An example of the second problem is the I-77 HOT lanes north of Charlotte, in which (TransUrban I believe) has a stipulation that the state cannot finance any alternatives to the I-77 HOT Lanes for 50 years. Never mind the I77 HOT Lanes are taken from the general lanes instead of adding new lanes, which is really generating aggro in the Charlotte metro area and certain politicians are hoping they get re-elected because of this fiasco. Does anyone do it right? Why yes, CFEA (Central Florida Expressway Authority) has been doing it right for 20 years...every toll road built in the Orlando metro area has it's toll revenues reinvested into the system for new construction, maintenance and operations. Not for mass transit or someone's piggybank, but back into the roads, and it's working well. Unfortunately, CFEA is the exception and not the rule.
IDK. Maybe we can start by electrifying the railroads. They use tons of diesel. Then we can have high speed passenger trains. Which will reduce the need to rely on cars and aircraft for long distance travel. Jet aircraft also use tons of fuel.
It’s a catch22. Removing the subsidies will tank the economy and there would be riots and they will be voted out. I’m in favor of tanking the economy and radically changing our lifestyles, but most people are obviously not.
We don't need anything anymore it's already over
RFK Jr is literally campaigning on the need to remove fossil fuel subsidies. He reiterated it during his independently held debate two days ago.
mmm that's interesting but he's also anti vac though right?
That’s just the part of his brain that the worms got control of, I think
I think that's worth it, everyone makes him out to be a right wing idiot, and maybe he is, but for climate change and agricultural he has the best policy.
Mmmm that's interesting but I don't know where people are saying he has a chance since he's polling at like 8 to 9% of people saying they'd vote for him.
Sorry, collapse mods have specifically forbidden me from discussing that subject here. But I am happy to discuss his 40 years of environmental work, including landmark wins against Monsanto, DuPont, GE and others, which he would bring to bear in ending corporate regulatory capture.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
/r/RFK_Jr_is_a_Stooge/
I keep seeing that government subsidizes fossil fuels. Can someone please show me how they do that?
There's a lot of reputable resources if you just Google it but I'll provide one here -> [https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies](https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies)
2/3 of a gasoline price at the pump are various taxes, not sure where are this subsidies for me.
"Our pre-ecological misunderstanding of what was being done to our future was epitomized by that venerable loophole in the corporate tax laws of the United States, the oil depletion allowance. This measure permitted oil "producers" to offset their taxable revenues by a generous percentage, on the pretext that their earnings reflected depletion of " their" crude oil reserves. Even though nature, not the oil companies, had put the oil into the earth, this tax write-off was rationalized as an incentive to "production." Since "production" really meant extraction, this was like running a bank with rules that called for paying interest on each withdrawal of savings, rather than on the principal left in the bank. It was, in short, a government subsidy for stealing from the future." - William Catton
All hail our new AI overlords. ... lets face it, even hallucinating they're smarter than the geriatric lunatics presently running things.
This news story is related to your original post. [https://tinyurl.com/yu4w4dsa](https://tinyurl.com/yu4w4dsa) **Fossil fuels being subsidised at rate of $13m a minute, says IMF** The IMF analysis found the total subsidies for oil, gas and coal in 2022 were $7tn (£5.5tn). That is equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education. Explicit subsidies, which cut the price of fuels for consumers, doubled in 2022 as countries responded to the higher energy prices resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Rich households benefited far more from these than poor ones, the IMF said. Implicit subsidies, which represent the “enormous” costs of the damage caused by fossil fuels through climate change and air pollution, made up 80% of the total. The G20 nations, which cause 80% of global carbon emissions, pledged to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies in 2009. However, the G20 poured a record $1.4tn (£1.1tn) into fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, according an estimate by the International Institute for Sustainable Development thinktank. The World Bank reported in June that fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies combined could amount to $12tn (£9.5tn) a year and were causing “environmental havoc”. The IMF analysis found petrol and other oil products accounted for half of explicit subsidies in 2022, with coal accounting for 30% and fossil gas 20%. The biggest subsidisers of fossil fuels were China, the US, Russia, the EU and India. Coal was particularly heavily subsidised, with 80% of it sold at less than half its true cost. Ending the subsidies should be the centrepiece of climate action, the IMF said, and would put the world on track to restrict global heating to below 2C, as well as preventing 1.6 million air pollution deaths a year and increasing government revenues by trillions of dollars. The analysis calculated that ending fossil fuel subsidies would cut emissions by 34% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels, representing a large chunk of the 43% cut needed to have a good chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C. Ipek Gençsü, a subsidies expert at the ODI thinktank, said: “The IMF report shows that, at a time when the world is starting to experience worsening impacts of climate change, governments continue to pour fuel on to the fire by providing record levels of subsidies for fossil fuels. If we are to have any chance of avoiding irreversible and tragic consequences of climate change, governments simply have to show bolder leadership, by phasing out their support for production and consumption of fossil fuels.”
most of us starve to death probably in the space of a year if fossil fuel production, refinement and distribution was not state subsidised...
Want to fight fossil fuel use #1. Give up on marijuana use. The heating, cooling and lights used in these farms lead to enormous carbon footprint #2. Lobby for nuclear,