Quote:
Originally Posted by Danth
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Why would you want to do that? Fast and cheap personal transportation has been one of the greatest boons to liberty invented in the past half millennium.
The oil lobby is a problem, sure, but a different problem. You can make a car that runs on anything from kerosene to coal. Emerging technologies point towards several different types of clean fuels, like various synthetics or hydrogen. Congestion is an issue too but that's a function of over-population moreso than mode of transport. I don't know that our nation has the cultural strength needed to face that problem head-on. It could be faced in a variety of ways, ranging from population control to technological advancement so we can get people off this rock, but eventually it must be dealt with whether we want to do so or not. Mother Nature's say is final, she can be argued with for a little while, but in the end she cannot be denied.
Danth
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Fine, fine. The gasoline powered car should die. I'm not opposed to cars themselves. I'd be game to get rid of mine, but it's essentially necessary ib my town and so many others. The pollution they yield is awful, though. And designing cities around them has created a lack of walkable spaces in so many cities. Some are creating alternatives over time, I guess, but I still think the car and petroleum companies wield way too much power.
And I want to see better electric cars than overpriced, self-igniting and hand-washing Tesla ones. And electric cars that aren't themselves charged by fossil fuels burning elsewhere. And cars that aren't manufactured in a destructive, awful way that requires exploitation elsewhere by getting rare earth metals out of developing areas, or if these materials must be mined, they should be obtained ethically.
At every layer of this problem, there are massive corruption hurdles to overcome, but that problem isn't even uniquely American.
Even if all cars just ceased to exist, there's still insane amounts of other pollutants in countless industries. And countless more corruption hurdles. Whatever the solution might look like, it's gonna have to be extremely comprehensive, like a sea change in the way billions of people live their lives
Which is why I think nothing really changes much until the shit hits the fan, craploads of people starve or die from otherwise preventable illnesses, and trucks stop shipping goods.