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Music aside, the framing of his rant seems really odd. Are there many millennials saying “it costs money so we can’t do it” while watching a 20-minute Green New Deal video by John Oliver? Or do you think it is their parents (and legislators/lobbyists that are Bill’s age) who wouldn’t watch Bill or John that are blocking action or denying that it’s a real problem?
Millennials are definitely not taking this seriously enough. But compared to boomers we’re better I guess. That’s not saying much.
This millennial says yes, it does cost money, so we shouldn’t do it. The corporations responsible for shaping the world we live in to ensure their own success are the ones that should! Get BP, Shell, the companies that ship things on giant container ships, the factory farms, etc. etc. to pay for it all.
Lord knows I can barely afford rent.
Plenty of millennials are saying it costs money so we shouldn’t do it. I’m in a thread with them right now arguing that it is indeed feasible to ban cars and we can afford it.
I think that’s a bad example. Not Just Bikes even sees it as a lost cause, key point at the bottom:
https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/08843796-69a9-4286-9e88-3f4d1bc30758.png
If several of the biggest cities got infrastructure/mixed-use-development good enough to restrict car use in the next 5 years I would be very impressed. Passenger trains and some bike infrastructure would be nice too.
You add in issues like rural areas, housing prices/availability, and cost-of-living (plus stagnant wages) and even the disruptive approach will not be here in 5-10 years even if it did somehow have full support. USA is completely entrenched in rivers and lakes of asphalt. If cars are a disease, we are in at-least stage 3. That is a different fight.
So I can see why you would say that, but cynicism/realism are quite different than denialism.
EDIT: A different analogy would be if you were choking, being attacked by a wild animal, overdosing, and on fire all at the same time. Even if you had a pit crew, that’s gonna be difficult to tackle all of those simultaneously in the same time-frame as any individually. Also more complicated/more risk of complication.
rural areas
Pareto principle; rural areas are causing less harm and cities right now. Ban cars in cities, figure out rural areas next.
Rural person needs to go to the city? They park their car at the outskirts.
I’m sick and tired of hearing 20% excuses on why we can’t fix 80% of traffic.
Rural areas can be addressed too by subsidizing electric vehicles and infrastructure. Every manufacturer would drop all but a few of their gas-powered models overnight if they could sell electrics at the same price.
Note that the person I was responding to is saying “we can ban cars and gas stations in 5 years” full stop. And then the NJB quote of
That was fixable within a generation. the US isn’t.
It can get better but it cannot be fixed in your children’s lifetimes. Canada might be.
So no, I am not saying we can’t make it better (or that cities can’t do it). Just that it’s a complete mess nationwide.
That’s why the rest of the world should go to war with the USA and take away their cars. We can end genocide of trans people while we’re there, like we did in Germany.
You’re an extremist, and wrong. We personally don’t need to see anything in our lives change. Politicians need to force electric cars, better charging infrastructure, nuclear energy and and we will survive.
We’re gonna need a lot more than nukes and electric cars, my dude. The extremists are the ones who want to keep the status quo.
But politicians aren’t forcing those things. You can’t just cross your fingers and pray for someone to save you.
If we can’t just assume politicians are going to push what we say how are you saying that it’s feasible to ban cars?
I’ll protest on the streets and I’ll block the freeways until the only way to resume the world is for politicians to choose sustainability, and if that doesn’t work I’ll pull out my keys and I’ll make owning a car more difficult myself.
Please don’t get yourself killed, m8
Yes, but also recycling your weekly twelve pack of cans isn’t going to do a thing against the forces we’re facing.
You could reduce your own footprint to nothing and plant a hundred trees yourself, and if you get a hundred or a thousand others to do the same it still will never be enough so long as the actual titans are still fouling up the water and air.
Come on. Electric cars? Same shit different smell. It’s not going to solve the problem at all due to battery disposal problems and traffic jams. You still have to park it somewhere to and from. Private transport in city centres are a waste of money. Infrastructure in dense populations should be focused on accessible public transport, cycling and walking infrastructure.
These problems you cited do not contribute to climate change. The vast majority of it is factories and cars and energy. Making those sustainable is enough.
I respectfully disagree. We have millions, if not billions of private vehicles on the roads right now. If we transition to EVs, there will be millions of batteries that currently have no way they can be recycled and will likely go to landfill. Landfill becomes a toxic waste dump. Toxic waste has huge ecological impacts, which affect climate.
Additionally, parking spaces take up valuable room that could be changed to parks or areas of re-wilding, allowing for eco systems to take root which builds up resilience against climate change.
Private transport is a luxury and not a requirement. The only reason why it’s a requirement is because of a serious lack of other infrastructure.
Infrastructure investment for battery recycling absolutely should be a part of the retooling, but the impact of batteries slowly leeching into the soil is nowhere near the ongoing harm caused by fossil fuels right now.
Your worry is a valid one, but it is vastly out of proportion when put next to the very real damage already happening. And it can be mitigated.
Oh sweet summer child…
Governments need to be heavily subsidizing public transportation for urban areas and electric vehicles for rural areas.
Simply pushing strict emission standards is not enough. Yes, it gets less efficient vehicles out of the consumer stream, but those vehicles aren’t coming down in price. You want to get gas vehicles off the road quickly, and supercharge the economy in the process? Offer a massive rebate for electric vehicles, at the dealer level, so any person can walk into a dealership and buy an electric vehicle cheaper than a gas powered one. Non-commercial internal combustion engines will all but disappear from the road in less than a decade.
And once everyone is on electric, you can feed that with solar and wind.
Melodysheep is awesome. I would highly recommend his other videos!
