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handofdave H
handofdave Sep 20, 2008 15:12:53
Replying to grufty jim

well...
I think public transportation is very valid in areas where population density can support it. Europe is better suited to such infrastructure because it was originally built around the village.

On the contrary, large sections of the US were populated after the car became widely available. It's unlikely that great swaths of the existing populace can practically rely on a public transportation system. It's all well and good to talk about bicycles and light rail, another thing to completely remold a society that was predicated on the personal automobile.

Along certain major routes, rail is great, but off those routes, it becomes increasingly impractical to build and support fixed routes. Buses running on fuel cells, or something of this nature, would be a more flexible option that would easily take advantage of the existing roads, but even there, you'd be talking about such sporadic or limited riderships that funding those routes would rely heavily on subsidies.

The simple fact is, the world is not going to give up the automobile overnight. The economy is built around it in many sectors, you can't just ditch it without a lot of planning ahead. The shifting to a post-carbon world is going to be a gradual one... it's not going to be easy, and chaotic, violent disruptions to the society need to be mitigated.

If gasoline became unavailable overnight, and cars rendered useless, you'd have anarchy, riots, deprivations on a mass scale. The automobile will be with us for a while, and so practical solutions to making it cleaner make perfect sense. Think of this technology as one that bridges where we are now and where we need to go, not as a delaying tactic.

I think most everyone can agree that an electric vehicle is better than a fuel-burning vehicle, and an electric vehicle with a 40 mile range is better than one with a 25 mile rage- it is progress.

There are many other things to consider, including environmental (bitter cold, snowy places aren't great for biking in, and mass use of sled dogs ain't gonna happen!), the swelling ranks of the elderly (can you imagine forcing granny to hobble everywhere?), even the huge losses of jobs that would follow the death of the auto.

No, like most everything else, it's not an all or nothing proposition. It's a patchwork of slow, practical steps towards our more sustainable world.

And let's face it... much of our problems today are the result of the population explosion. As simply wishing, or unthinkably, 'removing' this problem away quickly isn't an option, and as all these people tend to want to live at a certain comfort level...well, it's not really possible to halt that as long as there's someone willing to provide it. As long as it's profitable to provide it, it'll continue. Improving economy and ecologic standards, therefore, can only be a good thing, if not a 'perfect' solution.

I'm all for whatever takes us closer to cleaner energy. A Volt charged up with windpower and kept within it's 40 mile daily range would be a VAST improvement over an SUV getting its fuel from a convoy in Iraq or an offshore oil well.

G grufty jim
grufty jim Sep 20, 2008 17:32:32
Replying to handofdave

handofdave, it's not an exaggeration to say that I think pretty much every single thing you've just said about the private car is wrong. On top of that, I suspect that you will feel exactly the same about any detailed reponse I provide. The more I think and write about sustainability, the further I find myself from the mainstream opinion. And when I say "mainstream", I'm talking about the liberal, concerned, environmental mainstream... as it were; the mainstream as defined by the U-Know! folks. As far as the other mainstream goes; the free-market, capitalist, pro-economic growth mainstream... I'm not sure I'm even on the same planet as those people any more. And it's something that concerns me more than a little.

We don't know each other personally, and the anonymity of the internet being what it is, for all I know you could be George W. Bush himself posting under an alias. For all you know, I could be. Well, OK, that's a bit far fetched. Both of us appear to have a half-decent command of the English language, so we're unlikely to be Dubya Bush. But you get the general point.

Nonetheless, if I assume that your messages here are a fair reflection of you as a person, then I'd say you were one of the good guys. If we ever take to the barricades, I suspect we'd be on the same side of them. I feel certain that we share a basic belief in social justice and in protecting the planet from the excesses of human greed. So it saddens me that on so many issues our positions are so far apart that any search for a middle-ground would find us both uncomfortably far from home.

It's like when you say:

handofdave wrote:
I think most everyone can agree that an electric vehicle is better than a fuel-burning vehicle, and an electric vehicle with a 40 mile range is better than one with a 25 mile rage- it is progress.
Yes, almost everyone can agree on that. But I'm not one of them. I honestly feel that the whole idea of the electric car is as far from "progress" (or at least 'positive progress') as you can get. I believe it's a dangerous misguided attempt to convince western consumers that their lifestyle is in some way sustainable.

You claim that because US society is highly dependent upon the private car, that the private car must somehow be retained. I find that view extremely difficult to process. I believe modern western civilisation to be literally psychotic and needs to be radically restructured if it is to survive (being the good Batesonian that I am, I define unsustainability as a group psychosis).

And I don't think this can be done in "slow, practical steps". The required changes need to be dramatic, need to be immediate, and need to be enforced.

I don't for a moment think this is going to happen. I think we are sleepwalking into complete collapse and phrases like "hydrogen economy" and "electric car" are lilting lullabys preventing us waking up.