The average modern person, by one calculation, spends more than 1,600 hours a year to pay for their cars, their insurance, fuel and repairs. We go to jobs partly to pay for the cars, and we need the cars mostly to get to jobs. We spend four of our sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering the resources for the car.
Since the average modern American, by one estimate, travels 7,500 miles a year, and put in 1,600 hours a year to do that, they are travelling five miles per hour. Before people had cars, however, people managed to do the same – by walking.
By contrast, a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process.
Not having or needing a car is one major reason I feel I have a lot of financial freedom at the moment.
Seriously. Not needing a car to get to work has been amazing.
Hey, I’m all for more bicycles. I’m a big fan. But this article seems to imply that it’s either fossil fuels or foot power. We have access to cheap renewables, why can’t we use that? Electric vehicles exist as well, as when we can power the whole grid on renewables, using electricity will be fine. Pedal power is obviously better than no machine at all, but it’s not the only option in existence after we get rid of fossil fuels. And it’s exactly this kind of shit that the fossil fuel companies and right wing asshats will use—exactly like the eating insects thing—to fuel fear of what a climate friendly future has to look like.
But this article seems to imply that it’s either fossil fuels or foot power. We have access to cheap renewables, why can’t we use that?
I didn’t interpret the article as presenting bicycling as the only transportation option.
Although trains and public transport can fill in the gap for longer distances, EVs will be necessary in limited cases. The point is that our dependence on all types of cars and the infrastructure that comes with it is excessive and a massive contributor to the destruction of our climate. They are also literally killing us, hence auto insurance being mandated in most states/provinces.
EVs are better than ICE cars and should be used as one of the replacements - but not nearly enough to solve our climate crisis by buying an electric car. That’s why there is also a push to designing cities for active transportation and public transportation. The emmissions from walking and cycling are incomparable to those of an EV.
If the narrative that electric cars and renewable energy are all that’s needed to solve our climate crisis continues, then our planet will continue to warm.
when we can power the whole grid on renewables
Hooo boy, theres a massive leap behind that statement. Don’t forget the production and decommissioning of that infrastructure, and the vehicles.
Electric cars are slightly less bad that ICEs. They’re still utterly unsustainable and part of the problem, not the solution.
Exactly, cars are an atrocity, slightly less when electric but not by much, they’re still the same killing machines clogging up our world, polluting everything with noise and microplastics.
Of course. I don’t drive and don’t plan on ever having to again. I was just saying this type of framing in an article doesn’t help the cause. It is fodder for the people peddling misinformation about why we shouldn’t do anything about climate change. The pro-climate change groups will always latch onto this type of shit when they can find it. Like the whole “no more hamburgers” thing or the “crickets as food” thing or the “no more vacations” thing or whatever the fuck they’re always spouting on fox. It’s a strawman, of course. But we shouldn’t be serving it up that way.
That’s what I was saying. Not that we need to be pushing EVs. Just that this type of article saying, “maybe we can live in a world where one day we move back to pedal power” is the exact sort of PR problem the pro-climate movement keeps falling into.
Münecat did a great video on the PR pitfalls of the crunchy spokespeople these movements always seem to put forward. We all understand a solarpunk utopia would be great. But picking out the least desirable aspect of it for the largely lazy population doesn’t help the cause.
That’s all I was saying.
5 word summary:
Aside from mass transit, the future is e-bikes and electric vélomobiles.
