101–110 of 138 posts
I was relieved that it was only about being them not sustainable for the Earth. How crazy is that? I am relieved that my laptop continues to be supported but for that we all might die later? Just because we all have our own selfish choices?
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> And what exactly is the solution there? For most Americans a car is literally their ONLY option for transport. Hmm without saying that Americans need to do without a car entirely (because the country screwed up in that sense), I am pretty sure that in many situations, it is possible to not use a car. My experience is that Americans tend to not even consider taking a bike for a short ride. I have been in multiple pl…
I think bikes and scooters would be more popular where I am (Seattle) if they weren’t so easy to steal. Even unpowered bikes are disappearing from regular use due to rampant theft. It’s sad.
Yes, this is a big factor. Where I live (around silicon valley area) I can easily bike to nearly everything I need. But! Secure bike parking is rarely available. So my bike is guaranteed to be stolen. So the result is I either walk (if within ~10 minute walk) or drive. I'm a cyclist so I'd love to bike everywhere but without secure bike parking, can't happen.
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Nobody wants to sacrifice anything, and yet that's exactly what is needed from humanity. Can't even change the small things, as we see through outrage over plastic straws still, nevermind trying to get people to eat less meat. I will add however that oil companies wouldn't stop processing so much oil right away, they will do what desperate powers do which is cling to remaining power as tightly as they can. This isn't…
> Can't even change the small things, as we see through outrage over plastic straws still, nevermind trying to get people to eat less meat. If you want people who aren't ideologically on board to sacrifice, you need viable alternatives. Cardboard straws suck ass . Without exception, every single cardboard straw I've ever used was soggy and tasted... well, like cardboard. They simply are not viable replacements. Fake…
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> Decarbonize electricity and electrify everything possible, which we must do, will solve the problem with tech. There is nothing extra that needs to be done. Except that you don't have a miracle low-emission energy source. So whatever you "waste" in the tech industry, you don't use in, say, electric trucks. Also the tech industry emissions are growing pretty fast. For what? Mostly for people to swipe TikTok 4h per d…
> Except that you don't have a miracle low-emission energy source. Sure you do. Solar and wind with battery storage, and fission to fill in the rest. Nuclear being politically unfeasible doesn't change the reality that it's pretty damn clean. Waste disposal/storage is a solved problem except for -- of course, again -- the politics. Yes, you can argue that "the politics" is important, and that makes it not "solved", a…
Fission is nice, but it takes a lot of time to build new plants (we as a society will be screwed pretty soon, so we don't have a ton of time before deciding to build new ones), but still they won't replace fossil fuels entirely.
Which means that we are going towards a future with less energy. If we screw up (and keep not doing anything like now), we're essentially dead. If we do it really well, we will have some energy, but not as much as today.
Therefore we need to prepare our society to deal with less energy. That has nothing to do with politics, it's just physics. Politics will make the difference between society completely collapsing and society dealing with less energy.
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I think bikes and scooters would be more popular where I am (Seattle) if they weren’t so easy to steal. Even unpowered bikes are disappearing from regular use due to rampant theft. It’s sad.
> I think bikes and scooters would be more popular where I am (Seattle) if they weren’t so easy to steal. Yes, this is a big factor. Where I live (around silicon valley area) I can easily bike to nearly everything I need. But! Secure bike parking is rarely available. So my bike is guaranteed to be stolen. So the result is I either walk (if within ~10 minute walk) or drive. I'm a cyclist so I'd love to bike everywhere…
Not a criticism, but the area covered by parking lots in the US shocks me every time I visit.
Instead of making half-working heavy autonomous electric cars, couldn't Silicon Valley somehow find a low-tech way to solve the secure bike parking issue? They are good at claiming that they want a better world, and this should not be rocket science.
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> If you want people who aren't ideologically on board to sacrifice, you need viable alternatives. If people are not ideologically onboard with "we don't want society to collapse" while wanting to keep using plastic straws... I think they need information more than viable alternatives.
Part of the issue with your argument is that most policymakers will be dead by the time society collapses, so they don't care as much. Sure, there's often rhetoric around "saving the world for my children and their children", but in the end most people are selfish and are fine with making things the problems of future generations. "Information" doesn't sway people. Feelings do. If they feel like they're eating/using/…
Hmm... given how it is going (climate seems to be changing faster than the models predicted), it's getting more and more clear that global instability, wars and famine will be here in the next few decades (if you doubt the "famine" issue: take any big US city, and ask yourself what happens if trucks can't get into the city and bring food for a few days). Unless most policymakers are 60 or so, they have a good chance to live long enough to see that. Most definitely their children.
> "Information" doesn't sway people. Feelings do.
When you realize how bad the biodiversity problem is, how bad climate change is, and how bad the energy problem (which is actually the root cause of the other two) is, I think the only reasonable feeling you can get is fear. Maybe faith in technology helps (many people hide behind "they will find a solution"), so maybe one needs to realize that the tech industry is a big money-making joke.
But once you get that information, you should get the fear. And fear should make you accept to start thinking about actions to mitigate the consequences of... well of our way of life.
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> Can't even change the small things, as we see through outrage over plastic straws still, nevermind trying to get people to eat less meat. If you want people who aren't ideologically on board to sacrifice, you need viable alternatives. Cardboard straws suck ass . Without exception, every single cardboard straw I've ever used was soggy and tasted... well, like cardboard. They simply are not viable replacements. Fake…
I actually had a great (for cardboard) straw from jacksons in portland this weekend. I grabbed 3 of them thinking they'd melt. It did 2 full ~42oz diet dews over 4 hours before it started melting. the 2nd one lasted longer (I re-used the cup for drinks that night) holding up to 4 32 oz coke zeros and vodka. I was amazed.
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The only two options are not "you, individual, drive less" and "go to wall-street^W^W the office of shell gas and tell them to cut it out." A lot of americans are forced into car dependency, but at the very same time, it is very easy to drive in downtowns in the US even where it is difficult to own a car. You need to do both, both disincentivize driving on the personal level and regulate companies and change land-use…
The problem with making driving more expensive (which is what happens when you try to legally disincentivize it) is that it becomes a regressive tax: lower-income folks get hurt very badly by it. The rich of course don't love paying extra for something (and, being the ones usually in power, will fight against it), but can usually bear the cost without much pain.
The problem is, the alternative is to throw money at a public transit system and nobody wants to do that either. You can make the taxes highly progressive, but even then, I doubt anyone would agree. In general the only thing to do is what activist groups are doing already; fight the local institutions (DOTs, planning departments, city council, etc.) to make the changes necessary to make getting around without a car viable, fast, comfortable, and cheap.
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> I think bikes and scooters would be more popular where I am (Seattle) if they weren’t so easy to steal. Yes, this is a big factor. Where I live (around silicon valley area) I can easily bike to nearly everything I need. But! Secure bike parking is rarely available. So my bike is guaranteed to be stolen. So the result is I either walk (if within ~10 minute walk) or drive. I'm a cyclist so I'd love to bike everywhere…
I find it a bit sad that (secure) bike parking is missing in a country where it honestly feels like half of the constructed territory is parking lots. Not a criticism, but the area covered by parking lots in the US shocks me every time I visit. Instead of making half-working heavy autonomous electric cars, couldn't Silicon Valley somehow find a low-tech way to solve the secure bike parking issue? They are good at cla…
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I know anti-car attitudes annoy some people, but we really should drive this home(pun not intended but taken advantage of). People keep using "a tank of gas" as a fungible, graspable unit of carbon emissions while not realising reducing that very thing often has an out-sized impact on carbon emission, sometimes more than other things like reusing clothes, internet usage of this or that services or saas, and so on. Tr…
The problem is the genuine vitriol the anti-car topic can bring out in people. The US can stand a lot of changes in public travel, i.e. it’s bullshit that I cannot take the train from one state capital to another, barring Hawaii and possibly Alaska. It’s also bullshit, however, when urbanists/“fuck car” people enter the conversation and demand we need to destroy rural and suburban living entirely. Even labeling it as…