General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The CEO of Ford just perfectly summarized the biggest problem for electric cars [View all]hunter
(38,311 posts)To be considered a fully functional adult in our society I'm expected to own and drive a car, similar to how women in some cultures are expected to wear burkas.
If car ownership was discouraged then walkable communities and public transportation would be the norm. I live within walking distance of a bus stop but the buses are scheduled by the hour, not the minute. If far fewer people in my neighborhood owned cars the buses would run every few minutes. Their routes might even be electrified, the buses recharged at each stop, or powered by a low-tech overhead wire as they are in San Francisco and other major cities around the world.
Many U.S. Americans spend the vast majority of their lives confined within a hundred yards of a road or parking lot. Cars isolate people from their neighbors, and from the world beyond roads. Cars restrict our freedom. We are forced to travel with identification papers and a unique license plate on our ass. Big Brother is watching. Car cultures enable, even require, a certain level of fascism.
I was just thinking about those caravans of cars headed to #WaterProtectors campsite in ND. What do you want to bet that someone is recording license plate numbers? It also seems to me incredibly incongruous that people are burning fuel to protest a means of delivering that fuel.
I don't have a real answer. A society that banned the use of fossil fuels would look nothing like the society we enjoy now. Electric railroads, delivery vehicles, and public transportation would be a big deal. Air transportation would require expensive "carbon neutral" synthetic fuels. So would conventional container shipping. Solar, wind, or nuclear power are not drop-in replacements for fossil fuels.
Walking and sailing are the traditional forms of human transportation. They are so effective that most of the world, even tiny islands in the Pacific, were inhabited by humans thousands of years ago.
Maybe the answer to global warming is as simple as walking more and driving less, by building our urban areas up to accommodate pedestrians and not cars.