• MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Sure, but those regulations have to be stuff like “no selling petroleum to people for their cars”. Are you ready for a carless world? I am. If you’re not ready, you might find yourself opposing the necessary regulation when the time does come to regulate.

    • Fillicia@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I don’t know why these discussion are often met with “if you’re not ready to lose your car you’re the problem” narrative.

      I might not be ready to lose my car but I sure as hell am ready to lose coal based electricity, the military complex, single use plastic, billionaire who prefer to let a train derail than spend money on regulations, and a shit ton other things that wouldn’t even affect my day to day life other than make it safer.

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        That’s great, but EmperorHenry said regulation would stop 99% of emissions. I can assure you that personal vehicles and animal agriculture represent more than 1% of emissions. If we’re talking about a 20%, 50%, maybe even 70% reduction, then your argument is fine. But we need a 100% reduction in order to save the species. I’m ready for 100%, are you?

            • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 month ago

              I can’t use public transit. And I don’t want to live in a 15-minute city either. I like my big rural town with tons of free space between every home. 1000 regular people driving cars isn’t even 10% of one billionaire flying in a private jet once.

              Have you ever noticed how all these environmental regulations only affect us? Or how we’re the only ones looked at as being the ones who need to “cut back” on things WE like?

              But billionaires and millionaires are never expected to change anything THEY do to help the environment.

              I’ve also noticed that climate change isn’t nearly as bad as authoritarian, anti-free-speech assholes like Al Gore says it is. Al Gore said there wouldn’t be any ice in the polar regions by 2013, we’re 11 years past that and there’s still ice there.

              I honestly don’t know if climate change is real, because half the studies are funded by oil companies and the other half of studies are funded by evil groups that want us to live in pods and eat bugs, the olde “you will own nothing and be happy” types.

              I keep hearing from the latter that we’re all going to die because of climate change at whatever date they say, then we pass that time and we’re still here.

              • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                Look dude it’s awesome that you like your rural town and the big truck you probably take to grab a big mac from the nearest McDonald’s and all and there is nothing wrong with you personally liking that, but I like big cities. I like having everything I need, plenty of diverse entertainment and new friends to make, all within a 15 minute walk from me; being able to hop on a bike, tram or train to get anywhere further than that; the livelihood of living amongst other walking, talking, living, breathing humans; living amongst green spaces that people actually use and that I don’t have to personally maintain, that exist for a reason other than being a non-location that you pass through and don’t really think about on your way from a to b. I currently can’t have that at a reasonable quality without either having a damn near million dollar salary, moving several states away from my friends and family, and/ or just leaving the country altogether.

                Nobody is saying towns that need cars to get around can’t exist, we are saying that walkable cities and towns are actually really good for our society and small business and the fucking tax revenue keeping your beloved money-pit suburbs and rural towns afloat. We are saying that there should be more places where humans come before cars, made available for the people that want them; just as badly as you want your free space between every home; rather than owning a home and a car in a bleak patchwork of corn fields, manicured bluegrass, and crumbling asphalt being the only real option for the vast majority of the country.

                Heck, I’m honestly not even asking for big cities or any crazy amount of density. Americans have a hard time conceptualizing this before they travel and see it for themselves, god knows I did, but I’m not talking Manhattan. Literally just take any historical district of 1-over-1 or 3-over-1 mixed-use buildings in an American town (usually all that remains is a single block but they do still dot the country and are beloved places of commerce and leisure), expand that by a radius of 10 or so blocks, slap a tram, a couple buses, plenty of bike lanes, and a pedestrian-only zone or two in the middle of it, and boom you have yourself the lively and functional cross between a suburban town and a densely populated city that worked in America long before everyone was convinced they needed a car, and has adapted well to cars in Europe.

                You see, we deliberately killed our cities when we flattened huge swaths of them to build freeways, parking lots, and arterial roads through them in order for whites to move somewhere that blacks were priced and redlined out of. We cut off our nose to spite our face and as a result, a lot of the issues we see in this country today are symptomatic of that era of government subsidized suburbanization.

                This is not the natural order of things, we did not get here by suburbia and rural towns with their car-dependent lifestyles simply being superior in some way to cities and moderately dense towns, and we won’t go back by forcing people out of their homes and into tenements and taking their cars away. We simply have to fix what was destroyed and give people a choice and if they want to, they will move on their own. Many of those people will likely find that a car just isn’t worth the investment anymore. I would bet my life savings that a good chunk of people would choose that over the suburban sprawl that is currently the default.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Personal vehicles and animal agriculture are responsible for way more than 30% of emissions, it would be impossible to get 70% reduction without touching them. 100% reduction is not possible, necessary, or desirable, some industry is necessary to maintain basic necessities.

          I think what you’re trying to say is that it’s necessary to address personal vehicles and animal agriculture to adequately address climate change, which is true and valid. But the way you’ve phrased it comes across as unreasonable.

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Neurotypicals are so picky. I deliberately tell them 70% might be possible just to seem extra reasonable and concilatory, and it’s still not enough.

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              I’m not NT but maybe I can give some advice, constructive criticism as someone who agrees with your overall point.

              I think being generous on that point backfired because it made the other changes seem less necessary. It meant being more insistent on other points, which are more subjective, like, “exactly where do you draw the line between sacrificing for the environment vs maintaining quality of life?” It’s better to be generous on questions like that while sticking to your guns on facts you can support with data.

              It could also help to point out that lifestyle changes are something people can do right now, while regulations have to go through political processes with lots of money working against them.

              Also I just realized you may have been referencing carbon neutrality when you say “100% reduction.” The way I (and I think others) interpreted it was not “net zero emissions” but just “zero emissions.” The planet removes some carbon naturally, so it’s ok to have some pollution, we don’t need to go back to living in mud huts or anything. The question is, where can we get the most bang for our buck in reducing overall emissions to bring us closer to net zero, and the answers are the things you mentioned.

              • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                Yeah, I meant carbon neutrality. Carbon neutrality is the first step to preventing runaway climate collapse. When we reach carbon neutrality, it’ll keep getting hotter, but the rate at which it gets hotter won’t be increasing anymore. We need to be carbon negative in order to prevent further warming.

                We’re still going to need to have some emissions, like from farting, but meat and cars are easy to get rid of. Those changes actually have a negative cost, because cars and meat are already bad for reasons besides climate change. I got rid of them and it was easy and it made my life better.

                I would want to get rid of meat and cars before we get rid of things like intercontinental container ships. Those ships are actually super efficient for the amount of cargo they carry, and I think intercontinental trade is an absolute necessity. The main problem with container ships is just how much disposable garbage we’re shipping and how much we’ve moved away from local industry. But intercontinental industry is definitely going to be a necessity in some ways if we want to have an advanced society. Cheeseburgers? Not so much.

                • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  Based. I’ve also cut out meat and got rid of my car (have had to rent/borrow bc reasons) and yeah I agree with you 100%.

      • Skates@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        I might not be ready to lose my car but I sure as hell am ready to lose

        Whatever it is you’re ready to lose, there are people out there who aren’t ready to lose it.

        coal based electricity

        Fuck right off, there are entire countries who would be completely at a loss without coal-based electricity. Countries which would rather you lose your car.

        the military complex

        Everyone working in the military complex would rather you lose your car than they lose their jobs. It’s you and your car vs millions of people all over the world specifically trained to identify threats to their security, find them and shoot/cut/drone/nuke them. Good luck.

        single use plastic

        I mean you wanna fight all the corpos involved with single used plastics, I’m sure having your car will keep you from being suffocated with a plastic bag for like 2 hours.

        You’re unwilling to allow for changes in your personal lifestyle to globally change things for the better, so why the fuck would anyone else? Just nuke the planet from orbit at this point, we’re all egotistical shitheads and there’s no way to convince Jimmy McFuckface to give up his 1994 truck, we’re done here.

      • yiliu@informis.land
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        1 month ago

        I don’t know why, in these discussions, “it’s all the fault of corporations!” is treated as though it was a serious argument.

        Corporations do one thing: they give us what we want. What we demand, a lot of the time. The fundamental problem is us, corporations are just the abstraction we use to fulfill our needs and desires. Before there were companies, people fought and scrambled for wealth and then displayed it as lavishly as possible, it’s just that the means of acquiring and then using that wealth were different. Read up on Romans hosting banquets where slave boys were fed to eels for entertainment while guests fed on flamingos stuffed with hippo brains with a garnish of tiger testicles or whatever, or the Chinese or Indian or Mesoamerican equivalent, and then explain again how all our problems are due to modern corporations.

        • racsol@programming.dev
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          1 month ago

          Exactly. It’s just people don’t want to take responsability for the decisions they are able to make.

      • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        I don’t know why these discussion are often met with “if you’re not ready to lose your car you’re the problem” narrative.

        I hate that argument. I can’t use public transit and most cities are too big to be walkable.

        I also hate the idea of walkable cities, which is a dog-whistle-word for 15-minute cities, full of surveillance and all kinds of other bullshit, like not being able to go back the way you came and having to walk all around the entire town to go back home.

        • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          You’re getting surveillance regardless of walkablity. Amazon is happy enough to hand Ring camera footage over to authorities no questions asked.

          • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 month ago

            You said you can’t use public transit twice but neither time did you specify why.

            I’m disabled in several ways, I don’t want to talk about it.

        • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          Someone has been feeding you some weird bullshit about 15-minute cities. The concept of 15-minutes cities has nothing whatsoever to do with the things you wrote.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      1 month ago

      No no no, it’s way more comfortable thinking that I don’t have to make any big efforts because it’s only the responsibility of some elite.

    • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Sure, but those regulations have to be stuff like “no selling petroleum to people for their cars”. Are you ready for a carless world?

      Are we just going to act like electric vehicles don’t exist or that the quality of EVs would be significantly higher if the current fuel and car industry wasn’t hindering their development at every turn?

      I get the feeling you’re just on some ego trip about how you’re ready to return to nature, while the rest of the lower classes around the world aren’t ready to go as far as you are, despite the fact that it’s not even necessary.

      Our infrastructure and our technology can change and evolve to co-exist and support the environment much better. People can retain many of their modern convivences of life while preserving nature. It will be more expensive for the wealthy at the top, more time consuming, and perhaps not exactly the same, but it can be done.

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        you’re ready to return to nature

        No, I’m trans. I need to take hormones every day or I’ll want to kill myself. I wear glasses and I can’t do without them. I love processed food, as long as it’s vegan. Instant ramen and potato crisps make up a significant portion of my diet. I can’t do without the internet. Constant information and stimulation keep the voices in my head quiet enough to be bearable. I love technology, there’s no place for me in a primitive world. I’d die.

        Our infrastructure and our technology can change and evolve to co-exist and support the environment much better.

        I know. And cars aren’t the way. Cars are destructive to communities, they kill people with startling regularity, and even when they’re working properly on an electric battery they release PM10 pollution that gives kids asthma and allergies, and they stunt cognitive development for the people inside them.

        The answer is public transit and bicycles. We don’t need to return to monke, we need to build cross continental high speed rail. The technologies to make our lives better exist and they’re not cars. Not even electric cars.

        • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          My apologies for assuming then. It genuinely came off as pretentious and I’m sorry for misunderstanding.

          I also wasn’t aware of the side effects and dangers that even EVs had. I agree that public transit should be invested in more, but I at least thought using EVs as a transition phase would help.

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Electric cars are only an effective solution if we’re waiting around for capitalism to fix our problems. Which we shouldn’t be doing. If the government is actually putting in an effort, then it’s more cost effective and faster to build trains and trams and rail. Electric cars let people do a little more good in a world where nobody else is. But they’re not the future, not a future we can look forward to. The EVs of the future are trains, bicycles, trams, buses, scooters, skateboards, fire engines, and ambulances.

            Living carfree makes my life better. But people don’t realise that. I say “you better be ready like me”, and you think I’m an anprim. Nah, I love technology. And I also like getting exercise when I go places like nature intended. I like the vitamin D, I like the cortisol, I like the lack of guilt. I like bringing my bike on the train and playing with my phone on the way. I like never needing to seriously worry about parking. I like knowing I’m not part of the problem. And I really like knowing that no matter how badly I fuck up, I’ll never get someone else killed through carelessness.

            The future is awesome! Walkable neighbourhoods and a public transit system the government actually invests are amazing. I’m very lucky to live somewhere that both of those are true. It’s great in the future, come over here!

            But psychologically, people are stubborn. They’re scared of change. They’ll resist it. People don’t know what’s good for them, they only know what’s comfortable. So come join us in the future now, don’t wait, and don’t risk the possibility that you’ll end up an old fart holding the human race back with your reliance on the technology of the past.