Politico

  • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In my ideal world, we’d have a full carbon tax as well as a vehicle weight tax, and we’d use part of that to fund more electrified public transit (e.g., trains, trams, trolleybuses) and bike infrastructure. Plus we need to actually legalize dense, walkable urbanism. The zoning codes and parking minimums in North America make it literally illegal to build anything dense, walkable, and transit-oriented across almost all the urban land, resulting in miles and miles of government-mandated sprawl.

    The future of sustainable urban is truly in public transit and micromobility – car dependency just doesn’t make any sense in cities, as no amount of electric cars can make up for the harm caused by sprawling, car-dependent land use. Electric cars are obviously less bad than ICE cars, but just swapping out ICE cars for electric is not actually financially, socially, or environmentally sustainable.

    We should still have electric cars for the use cases (e.g., rural areas) for which you truly do need them, but the vehicle weight arms race (especially for trucks and SUVs) is getting out of control and we need the electric cars we would still have to be much smaller and lighter like this. Fewer electric hummers, more electric kei trucks, more electric trains, more electric bikes.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I am a Republican and I hate their stance on electric cars, walkable cities, etc. For some reason, the party has taken an ignorant and hard stance against electric.

      Electric cars currently are not better for the environment in any measurable way. I am OK with that since the technology is growing. It will get much better. As we add solar panels to homes or nuclear power that will greatly help since we will not be burning fossil fuels.

      My republican friends all tease me because of my Tesla. In return, I took them for a ride and I will say it changed their opinion. They thought it would be slow and clunky. Even the model 3 is a rocket with great handling.

      People always make weird claims like oh, the range is so limited. I travel often for work and honestly, the range isn’t that big of a deal.

      I use to live in a larger city that had public transportation and it was much more walkable. Honestly, it was better than i had imagined. It was wonderful to complete more daily chores by walking. I have always liked to walk but it was also less stressful. I still had a car but I drove it once or twice every few months when I had to do something further away.

      The largest issue with electric cars is the cost and the ability to charge. When I lived in the larger city, charging was hard. To add it to my condo was going to cost 20K. That is a something that needs to be figured out and put in the laws. The building was just milking it and it would have not been cost effective.

      • Reptorian@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        I am a Republican and I hate their stance on electric cars, walkable cities, etc. For some reason, the party has taken an ignorant and hard stance against electric.

        Could you look at other stances too? It’s not just this.

          • Reptorian@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago
            • No exceptions for rape and incest.
            • Supporting 1/6
            • Observation of them being worse for the economy after investigating state of economy for decades
            • Closing of majority-black voting poll locations.

            And this is a short list

            • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              No exceptions for rape and incest.

              The alternative currently being no restrictions whatsoever, which, statistically speaking, is more relevant than a small % worth of exceptions. Make me Supreme overlord of the universe and you bet you’ll have a few exceptions.

              Supporting 1/6

              Burn the fucking government to the ground for all I care.

              Observation of them being worse for the economy after investigating state of economy for decades

              OK and? I’m not playing some strategy game here. Optimizing existence isn’t the goal. “the economy” isn’t some God we must appease.

              Closing of majority-black voting poll locations.

              Pretty fucking bottom of the barrel shit to be deciding a vote based on. Decide polling locations by throwing a dart at a map for all I care.