This guy’s the worst at putting together a pursuasive argument. Almost all the problems he wrote wil have solutions we engineer in the future. Dismissing electric cars, the very real and imminent problem they have of CO2 emissions, based on cherry picking current problems they have in different countries is disingenuous and short sighted. eg. California’s CO2 emissions problems at night cannot be generalized to other places.
And the punchline of this article is an apples-to-oranges comparison - you can’t harp on transport trucks and then argue the solution is walking and biking.
Lithium batteries (or their successor) will get cheaper, lighter, and more energy dense because there’s a massive market opportunity for that now. This article completely ignores our ability to advance technology to solve problems, lol.
To cut him some slack, it’s hard when you start with a thesis that’s not actually supported by the facts. Mashing together a bunch of tidbits without actually logically connecting them is probably what I’d end up doing too.
I don’t know this guy, and I don’t know why he tried this in the first place, but I’m guessing he’s one of those people that will only accept a radical, even deliberately painful solution nobody else will go for.
It is a childish argument. A walkable/bikeable city is a chicken and egg scenario and the author has it all ass-backwards. Infrastructure to encourage walk/bike/bus comes first. People will not walk/bike if there is no safe way to do so, or places near by to go to. I love walking and biking but it will not get groceries to the store or lumber to/fro the Home Depot. It has its place, but it is not a panacea.
Not like “cars” are the best option anyway, I can’t believe that with the level of technology we have we still rely on personal transportation, capitalism sure is a blight on our world.
If you think that’s a blight, you should check out the comma splice.
That’s like, just your opinion, man.
Seriously, this is an opinion article from a guy that wants everyone to switch to bicycles, and has a laundry list of downer anecdotes to support it. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good my man.
electricity is largely powered by fossil fuels is somehow a measure of progress.
Here’s where the factual errors became too great to continue.
And, aside from the factual errors, it was a well-written piece.
Ecological health will always suffer in a model that demands eternal growth. Not specifically, but where moneyed interests are faced with finding avenues for growth, any option will be exploited based solely on its ability to generate profit. So, any avenue that is not directly in opposition to that goal is fair game. Instead of implementing measures to protect ecological interests, a make-believe version is in place where the barriers to profiting at the expense of the environment are low enough to be costed and included on balance sheets as an expense that barely dents the bottom line. Until the unholy relationship between the political capital of lobbyists and the political power of governments is closely regulated and bounded by measures that are actively enforced, no real progress will be made, and that means global measures, or else the cancer of eternal profit will just shift away from countries that are willing to respect and enforce the guidelines.
Basically, not going to happen,. So every new product that purports to be ecologically friendly, like Teslas, will have to be regarded with suspicion until they are proven to be effective, and not a back door profit stream for big oil, mining, and every other environmentally costly industry looking for shareholder value.
