• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    And that’s good. But what would be better for the planet would be building up a public transportation system so robust that cars are unnecessary outside of rural areas.

    • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I was just listening to a Parenti lecture where he talked about an interaction he had with someone who had been in high up in East Germany. He basically asked, “why did you put out those crappy little two cylinder engine cars?” And the ex-officials response was essentially, “we didn’t want to put them into cars at all, we thought if we provided an adequate public transportation system, that people would be satisfied, but they weren’t so we had to do what we could.”

      I agree with you fully, that public transport would be the ideal solution, far and away above electric vehicles, which just providing one for every household in the US would require such s massive amount of material extraction that it by itself will cause significant climate outcomes, but, we must find a way around the impulse for private personal transportation that exists within people, and I don’t know how to do so. Moving without the mass of people could lead to rejection and reactionary movements. Moving with the mass will lead to climate destruction. How do we work with the masses to come to a compromise that allows the support of the masses, while reducing the number of private vehicles to nearly zero?