We don’t just need electric cars, we need fewer cars - Greenpeace International
11 days ago by HaraldvonBlauzahn to c/europe
Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently.
More and more young people are choosing bicycles, buses and trains over owning a car out of the sheer cost. In Berlin, it’s public transport, not cars, which is the coolest way of getting around.
In Copenhagen, a city that has a long held reputation for being bike-friendly, a whopping 62% of people choose to cycle their commute.
In the French city of Lyon, the number of cars entering the city has fallen by 20% compared to just a decade ago. As the city’s network of bike hire stations continues to grow, town planners are hoping for a further 20% decline.
In London, where cycle super-highways are becoming popular, the share of journeys made by car has fallen by a quarter since 1990.
Car free days are rising in popularity in many of the world’s largest cities, giving people a taste of what it’s like to live with less noise, traffic and pollution. Bogota was one of the first cities to introduce a car free day, and it’s now become so popular that it’s been extended to a full week.
Bogotá's Ciclovía is fantastic! I was there in the mid-nineties and they closed a major artery, the Carretera Séptima, on Sundays. Here some pictures.
We need public transport.
And plenty of safe and comfortable bike paths - the cheapest, and often fastest option.
And, if you look at the transport capacity of bike paths in persons per hour passing, they are absolutely incredible. Far more than most large multi-lane streets for cars. Cykelslangen in Copenhagen has at rush hour times a vehicle frequency of 2 per second - that's 7200 vehicles per hour. Cars would need a motorway through the city to reach that capacity.
One of the many more good things about bikes is that they release expensive public transport resource for those which do really need them - people who are too ill, too old, incapacitated, or need to go too far distances to get there by bike. We should think of public transport in cities as an extension and supplement of a bike-centered system, not as the main option.
Yes. And painting a white line along the side of the road doesn't cut it.
I would love it if the local light rail had a car to lock your bike up while you ride the train.
I might not have made many smart decisions in life, but one was to move at biking distance from work, and when changing work places, not to go above that distance.
Depending on the area you live in and income level that can be pretty much impossible. I was driving well over an hour each way to work to get to a $1,400/mo 2br apartment in the Denver metro years ago, and it's only gotten worse.
I hate this sentiment so much, because it implies that everyone can just wait for change: "Just go buy another gas powered car until that rail road line is built".
If you can afford an electric car (instead of your current gas powered car) today please buy one or you are part of the problem. If you don‘t need it anymore, because of that rail road line, sell it. Electric cars are much better for the climate & the surroundings. They can also be important for electric grid stability.
Additionally since Copenhagen was mentioned: In the last ten years car ownership in Copenhagen actually increased (https://kk.statistikbank.dk/...). Just because people take the bike every day doesn‘t mean that they don‘t own a car.
PS: I live in the city center and don‘t own a car. Never have.
I hate this sentiment so much, because it implies that everyone can just wait for change:
Also: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good [enough]."
Societal Progress is an exercise in iterative steps. Electric cars today, something even better tomorrow (and by tomorrow I mean in fifty to a hundred years because lord knows people refuse to fund mass transit in some countries).
Look if you give me the money I'll build a whole fleet of dirigibles. Those are mass transit.
I hate this sentiment so much, because it implies that everyone can just wait for change:....
Pretty sure that Greenpeace does not want people to wait for change - they push for it
Did you miss the word "just" in the title?
I know that some people will miss it and act accordingly. The car industry in Europe build up more electric car production capacity than people were willing to buy. The industry transformed faster than society. They are now correcting their plans which is so sad to see. I know that for some an electric car is just unaffordable, but for many others it is just too inconvenient, unreasonably priced or they wait for hydrogen cars (I had these discussions a lot). Climate change is what is inconvenient. There is no time too waste.
Well.. I'm sure there would be ways to make electric cars more affordable.
Either by government policy or by company policy. You could for example shift the extra cost of your EVs to the ICE cars. There is no law that mandates how your cars need to be priced. You could literally swap prices of ICE cars vs EVs.
Since ICE cars are bought more you could probably raise their price only a bit, but drop EV prices massively until it evens out or shifts.
There is not going to be a one size fits all solution for all countries and regions.
In cities you need public transport and walking/biking facilities. Car infrastructure is too expensive.
In suburbia, getting households to go from dual car to single car, you need public transport and bike facilities.
For rural, public transport is not really cost effective, so you are going to need to incentivise self power generation and home charging. Popularizing from high speed ebikes might be a good option though.
I'm on the edge of suburbia, butting up against ag rural. It's ten miles to the next town either direction. My bike gets forty on a full charge. And most of the streets (with the exception of the major roads every couple miles, most of which have functional bike lanes) are one and a half lanes wide, 25 MPH and I usually only see people walking their dogs and the postmister when I'm out there. My 20mph governed ebike does great for getting me around locally. I ended up slapping a collapsible 35L milk crate on the back (I think that's the right volume) for when I need to pick up a couple hundred pounds of kitty litter. Which the wife says is tomorrow yaaaay
I guess my point is (I actually have one this time!) I bet a bunch of rural folk could do pretty well using an ebike as their primary vehicle
They're slowly adding bike lanes along some rural roads in Sweden. I wish they'd hurry it up, because with e-bikes and cargo bikes you could just skip having a car, especially if they added some good bike garages near bus/train stations.
Yeah, the only reason we have them on county/rural road here is two of the guys in the county board of supervisors (think city council but the whole damn county) are the cool lycra dudes. They insisted they put them in on specific roads to use as a bike route between towns/cities. I mean sure they benefited personally from that, but really don't most people benefit from better bike infrastructure (not just them)?
I probably wouldn't have gotten my trike if it weren't for them trying to make it safer to ride, honestly. I worked with one of them specifically on homelessness projects and I just realized I haven't shown him my trike yet. I gotta fix that.
I think so too, e-bikes are very underrated. it becomes a problem if the distances get to 30-50 miles between townsthough. Maybe some battery swap tech with solar recharging stations could do the trick.
Battery swap is here, since I can unplug and remove mine with the turn of a key. I just need more batteries
For rural, public transport is not really cost effective, so you are going to need to incentivise self power generation and home charging.
So, how do you think does the rest of world's rural population outside of the US and Europe move?
Actually, I am in Africa, so I am very aware of the situation. Outside of cities and Major towns, people are often trapped with little access to transport. They can only afford to travel to local towns, once or twice a month to access services like healthcare and professional services. For goods they usually have to coordinate as a community to get a goods truck to bring them items.
The problem with rural areas is that the tax base is too low to warrant the cost of infrastructure investment. Its cheaper for those people to move to larger towns and cities. In the "old world" they at least have the advantage of dense and walkable towns.
The US as the problem that their small towns are build car centric, and subsidized by taxes from urban tax payers. They will need reabilitate their towns to build over the top of roads and radically rework their power, electricity and sewage infrastructure.
They don't move very much. They go as far as they can afford private transport to take them. Hopefully to a town where public transport to other towns are available.
I have been a good while in Colombia and there, rural people use microbuses and vans to get everywhere. I'd guess they have better public transport than Germany. Very few people can afford a car.
I think it is pretty much the same in the rest of South America.
We see the same in South Africa. Rural People here spend close to 60% of their income on those micro busses. That is not sustainable.
We really have to do something about tires though, their usage is one of if not the biggest sources of micro plastic pollution. Everybody is usually so focused on emissions and social/infrastructure aspects that they miss a lot of the other problems with cars.
I think much like with CFCs, this can be addressed by regulating tires to have longer life and not rely on the materials that generate micro plastics.
I also think cars should come with a 25 year warranty. To force manufacturers to make them to last. Japanese cars from the 90s are doing 30-35 year lifespans when maintained.
That’s not really a choice, is it?
Isn't it? In less car-centric places not having a car is entirely valid choice to make.
I could quite easily afford a car, but parking where I live is a nightmare and I can get get to 99 percent of my destinations either on my bicycle or if further away, by taking a train.
There's some penalty in terms of convenience and traveltimes (especially out in the farmland, even though I can almost guarantee i'm faster on my bicycle than anything on four wheels within the city I live in), but that's easily overshadowed by cost saving in my case by not having to buy and maintain a car and honestly also a gym membership which costs both money and the far more irreplaceable commodity of time.
You always have choices.
In Copenhagen, a city that has a long held reputation for being bike-friendly, a whopping 62% of people choose to cycle their commute.
I did that too when I lived in Copenhagen. And it's also the fastest way to get around.
But now I live in the countryside, and here we absolutely need cars, but everyone on my road drive electric, and half of us have solar panels. So in that way I don't think our environmental footprint is worse than living in an apartment in the city. Because we to a large degree are energy self sustained.
The problems of car dependency go beyond carbon, though - it's also about road danger, space demand, micro plastics, the exclusion from society of people who can't afford cars, the exclusion of disabled people, etc etc. Changing the engine doesn't address these and we need to work towards reducing reliance on this form of transport
IMO the best way to get rid of cars (in your own life) is to not live on the countryside.
Not everyone can afford a place in a large city.
i was always wondering, ok not everyone can afford to live in a big city, but what about the periphery? what about living directly next to a big city?
They could if they weren't paying for a car note, excise tax, parking, gasoline, repairs, and maintenance...
Likely have a shorter commute to work (since no traffic), too, and thus a better work/life balance.
But...you likely lose out on recreational perks of suburban and rural life, like gardening, since you have very limited space for it. On the flipside, though, there are usually more recreational options and "third places" readily available.
Not to disagree, but better only have those problems and not have those problems and fossil fuel emissions. Working towards that goal is much more sensible in the places with high density populations.
"Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently."
How do I even take this sentence seriously. Like what the fuck did they think we were supposed to do? Band together as citizens and build bike paths or metro infrastructure? You gave us limited options for transport and then was surprised it was your job to provide the alternatives?? Either that sentence is a complete lie or they are truly walking around with a completely empty head.
Everything starts somewhere. The Netherlands were a car country through and through. That was until more and more people rejected it and they slowly built the infrastructure for bicycles, trains and walkable city centers over several decades they are famous for today.
Our biggest problem in the fight for cleaner, safer and overall better infrastructure are the car and oil lobbies for sure. They learned their lessons from the Netherlands too and fight every cycling lane with tooth and nail. But they can‘t fight progress when the cost of everything is becoming too high. People demand more efficiency than cars, be they electric or not, can offer.
My problem with this at the core is that they are blatantly lying to everyone. There is no way none of them realized the solution to less cars was to provide people with alternative transport. There is a zero percent chance of that. And the fact that they would lie and say they are just realizing it is what pisses me off. Everyone knows oil lords control the world, everyone knows renewable energy, electric vehicles, public infrastructure etc. has been hindered because of them. They are treating the public like toddlers who can't differentiate between truth and absolute bollocks.
renewable energy took a long time to take off because the cost of it had to fall low enough first, which can only happen through substantial subsidies, which only germany and china were willing to do. germany cancelled the project sometime around 2012 while china pulled all the way through.
You should look into how oil industry lobbying has affected green energy since the 60s
If you live in a democracy, you were supposed to support candidates that make better choices. If no such candidate exists, you're supposed to make them. Instead you assumed that something supposed to happen to you without your input. Well, something did, why are you surprised it's not catered to your interests
I'm sure some people would be surprised that people would choose not to use a car assuming rather that the perceived convenience of it would trump everything else
You just reminded me I need to work on my tricycle's a/c (a big ice block bungeed to my cargo basket)
That’s an easy thing to say when you’re young and healthy.
You will think differently why you are 70, arthritic and facing chemo.
That’s an easy thing to say when you’re young and healthy.
You will think differently why you are 70, arthritic and facing chemo.
I am 59, have asthma, and cycle one hour to work. And cycling conserves and improves my health.
And: People in their 70 need public transport far more than others. Many of them cannot drive a car safely anymore (examples here). There are many tragic and unnecessary accidents because of that.
Dad had Parkinson's and found that regular moderate to high intensity cycling not only helped him feel healthier, it also helped his dyskinesia.
Bullshit! Give it another 20 years, you will think differently.
You think you’re hot shit now , but death comes to us all, and the ending is always more ugly than your bloated ego thinks it will be.
No arguments left, now resorting to trolling?
BTW I won't drive a car in 20 years because I arranged my life pretty nicely to do without in the last 40 years. I never had a car.
He’s being a dick about it… but he does have a point. Some people really do need a door-to-door solution. Cars are simply the most feasible means to that end. Even the bus stops outside of the hospital grounds and the entrance can be a few hundred meters away. And that can be like a marathon for some of the sick, frail and elderly.
That doesn’t mean that everyone should own a car. A ride-share system or self-driving taxi service could provide for people in need. But banning cars and roads entirely is just not going to work, especially not in the USA, without any public transport to speak of. I wish we could and it is a nice dream, but not a feasible one.
Just for the record, no I'm not trolling, I'm just angry. And I should probably just walk away, but what the fuck.
I run across arrogant self centered pricks like you all the time. The ones who say "Hey, my life is just fine. I'm doing great. And I'm just to much of a narcissist to imagine people who may be worse off than me"
You think that just because you are healthy and active at 59 you are going to stay that way? Well you're wrong. That's not how aging works.
Will the biking help, oh hell yes. I ride an ebike and it's great.
But that doesn't stop your body from breaking down it just delays the inevitable.
And as for public transportation, yes, it great, unless you broke a hip in a fall, or have to use it to get to your chemo appointment, or are immune compromised, or anemic or..... Do I really have to list all the medical conditions that make it inappropriate.
And no, taxi's and ambulances are not a substitute, or even available or affordable.
My friend was on chemo last year, ran to the grocery store late one night, didn't wear a mask. Was dead within two weeks, caught three different viruses at the same time. Covid, the flu and I can't remember the third one. It was fucking horrific.
And no, going into a nursing home or assisted living isn't a good option. Because every time some arrogant young asshole walks through the front door with the sniffles, everyone in there dies. During covid they just become charnel houses. My cousin is a mortician and we talked about it. The morticians couldn't keep up with all the bodies.
My dad was in one the last year of covid because of a stroke, he died of covid.
You all have decided how everyone else should face death, and that just makes you self centered pricks without an ounce of empathy.
You lack imagination and you just don't care about anyone but yourself.
And yes I do live in the USA. And yes our healthcare really sucks. And the nearest hospital is 20 miles away. And even if there was public transportation I wouldn't take it, because I am also immune compromised.
Will this and my other posts get downvoted into oblivion? Oh hell yes.
But the down arrow doesn't make you right. It just means you lack the experience and imagination to understand. You haven't had to face the tough choices of end of life issue. But you will. And at that point, some arrogant prick will tell you to just take the bus.
Your down votes don't make me wrong. They just make you clueless.
You can have your eco chamber back now.
No, the frail and elderly should not drive. They would pose a risk to everyone else and themselves. What the frail and elderly need is public transport. A fast and safe way to get to places, without having to drive.
Public transport is also more accessible for the elderly and the disabled, if correctly designed. The fact that cars are better for those people is a myth that makes no sense when you think about it.
They make these things called recumbent tricycles. Slap an electric motor on it and you're set for your 70s.
These are actually excellent bikes both for the city and older people. Comfortable, can carry a bit cargo, and fast. And zero risk to lose balance and injure your head.
I have a recumbent two-wheeler (a full-suspension highracer), which I use more for the countryside and longer hiking. It is so much fun! But I plan to add a recumbent trike in tadpole configuration, such as a HP Scorpion when I am 75 or so.
Username checks out.
(The, now deleted, argument was that Greenpeace is supposedly not credible becaused they supported the anti-nuclear movement. Which, according to them, hampered climate protection)
It is right that nuclear plants emit less CO2 per unit of energy than coal plants. That does not mean that it is right to put any money in that, because for the money which would be needed to produce 1 GWh of nuclear power, many times of that amount could be produced by much cheaper renewable power - and in far less construction time.
Ultimately, it is not relevant if for a first, 1% or 3% of backup energy is generated by gas plants, and 97% to 99% by cheap renewables. Again, reducing CO2 emissions at the scale we need is a quantitative-economical problem, and if for the money that would be needed to get electricity production 100% clean right now, we could, say, improve insulation of 30% of our countries houses, and install heat pumps there, more would be achieved in shorter time.
And a third thing - it is often represented as if the goal of nuclear power was to replace coal and gas plants. That was never the case. Suggesting this is misinformation. The idea was always to have a cheap baseline source from the nuke plants which would cover the minimum of each day - perhaps 10% of the daily maximum - and cover the rest mostly by also cheap coal and gas power plants. That was the goal of the electricity companies which operated both coal and nuclear plants. Producing peak load from nuke plants would not have been economical, and was never the goal. (And the only exceptions are countries like France, which build their nuclear fleet for the sake of producing own nuclear arms - at whatever price.)
The whole discussion about nuclear power by the ecological movement since the 1970ies was to provide a clean and safe alternative to nuclear plants.
Do you see what this logo shows in its center? It was designed in 1975:
That was the goal of the environmental and the anti-nuclear movement and the greens. I am honoured to have been able to work and contribute a tiny little bit to that goal - together with many, many brilliant scientists, engineers, inventors, enrepreneurs, and crazy people. We did succeed to made it possible.
By about 2000, we had Megawatt wind power plants and the technical base for that was ready.
Mankind is holding the keys to our future in their hands. Don't throw them away, the alternative is planetary hell.
Everything in the 25 years since was foot-dragging by conservative politicians, fossil lobbism, and often fossil corruption.
P.S. I see that often that somebody posts some at least misinformed, perhaps misleading argument - and when a good counter-argument is posted, the first argument is deleted. This lets me think in astroturfing.
Another pattern that I am seeing now that when I post something around the topic of sustaiability / fossil fuels etc., I get plenty of highly critical comments around posts that I make around other, completely different topics (say, Linux window managers). Most of these critical comments have no logical substance - what they aim at is to discredit and leave a bad atmosphere and mood.
@feddit.org
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
go to feed...
@feddit.org
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
go to feed...
We need public transport. Electric cars are like methadon for carbrain, it's better, but not really.
save