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- progressivepolitics
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- progressivepolitics
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.
The real truth is, the notion that a lower-carbon lifestyle is somehow inferior to our current car-dependent bullshit is 100000% fallacious bullshit brainwashed into us by the automobile industry. Walkability is just better in every way (environmentally, economically, sociologically) and people whose lifestyle doesn’t depend on cars are, statistically, happier and healthier than people who do.
Now try to explain that people have to give up their job that’s in the neighboring city, or having to get up 1-2 hours earlier due to bad train or bus connections, or that they now cannot get groceries anymore because they live in suburbia and have to drive an hour out to some massive parking lot desert to shop in their IKEA sized grocery halls. And that’s just relating to the personal transport sector.
Why do you persist in assuming that all those shitty circumstances would continue to exist when they are exactly the things I’m saying we should be fixing? The whole idea is to have lots of nearby employers, good train and bus connections, grocery stores within walking distance (and with little to no parking), etc.
The #1 priority for reducing climate change (and fixing almost all our problems, from housing affordability to obesity) is zoning reform.
Because no one is willing to change those things. No politician who would be willing to go this far would be voted in because of the intermediate issues this would cause for people. And doing a super slow transition would be too late at this point, especially since we’re way past schedule already in regards to our emission models. It even starts with the simple fact that people are simply not willing to get rid of their cars, even if public transport was good and completely free. So you’d be left with enforcing people not to drive, which is obviously also not going to happen for the same reasons.
Only in countries like the US, who have a disproportional large portion of transport emissions. But a lot of our emissions in the West simply come from the production of our goods that we buy and give us our comfy lives.
Induced demand can work in reverse. Stop expanding roads. Redesignate some lanes to public transport only. Why take the car and sit in a queue for 2 hours when a bus can get you to work in 30 minutes without any queues?
That’s a decades long process. We need proper action done within this decade.
You’d be surprised how many people would take that over a ride with other people.
We don’t know that. If it turns out that the actual ECS value is higher than predicted we’re already fucked because whatever faction we might take today should’ve already been taken decades ago. If a global humanitarian crisis is mere decades away, no changes we’ll feasibly make today or in the near future will stave it off.
An alternative is also that those who can, do their job remotely. Covid proved the feasibility of that. You couldn’t pay me enough to start commuting or doing my own grocery runs again. I only go outside for enjoyment and none of it involves vehicles. Unless said vehicle is a bicycle, because my dog really enjoys cycling.
We do, because the opposite effect took that long. It’s likely even worse for the reasons mentioned.
That’s true either way with where we’re at. That’s why we call for drastic actions to be taken, especially since governments can’t even agree to implement what’s asked for by scientific advisors, who are already very conservative in their predictions in order to not push those politicians too extremely.
That’s not correct, because it can always get even worse. The more and sooner we get rid of our emissions, the better are our chances. That’s also why, on a fixed time scale, it is important to do the bulk of the work as early as possible, instead of doing it towards the end. The longer those greenhouse gasses are in the air, the more damage it will cause for us in the long run. But right now literally all of our measurements taken are still causing us to shoot far beyond our set targets (which turns out, were already too conservatively set too).
So what exactly is the end goal for these drastic actions?
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