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Comment by vladms | Hacker News Reader

The standard of living is something very dynamic though. It's more about perception than anything.

It's normal that people want "better" than what their parents had, question is what is "better". If lots of people would see "better" (for example) as "less polluted town, where you enjoy walking" and NOT "more place to be in your car", things would fix themselves given some time.

My favorite example: why did Netherlands adopted bikes? Because there were killing too many children with cars (ref: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...)

Nowadays there are many opportunities (high speed trains to replace some flights, e-bikes to allow bikes in non-flat cities, insulation to reduce heating, rather cheap renewable energy), so it's not all lost UNLESS people want specifically something very bad (exaggerating: "I love my coal plan!")

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Respectfully, your favourite example depresses me. Pre-2013 or so I would have agreed, but North America, when faced with "Too many parents are accidentally running over their children in driveways and parking lots", chose to mandate backup cameras instead.

I'm not from the US and may be missing some context, but in what way mandating backup cameras makes a society less open for mass and light transit?

The mandate didn't make the US less open to that, it's just that the US is so in love with cars that we don't seriously consider alternatives to driving as solutions to anything. If there was a meeting and the topic was "what to do about the gigantic number of car-related deaths every year", and someone said "maybe we stop driving so much and give people other options of getting around?" they would be laughed out of the room.

The people that make rules about car design have no relation at all with the ones that make rules about urban transportation.

> and someone said "maybe we stop driving so much and give people other options of getting around?" they would be laughed out of the room.

not in an open-carry state they wouldn't.

Shooting someone, lethally or otherwise, for laughing at you, is seen as an appropriate response in open-carry states? If it is, maybe the people pushing for such laws should drop the "Snowflake" line and take a look in the mirror, because this shit is not normal.

And if it's not, what's the point of this comment? To look tough online?

Different times, different solutions. Backup cameras were not a solution in 1970's Netherlands otherwise maybe it would have been considered.

Idea was that things are not set into stone and change faster than we realize. And there will always be good and bad examples (and if I think about it, probably the backup cameras solution nowadays is not that bad anyhow).

Passenger road transport amounts for <10% of global emissions. Going on another tirade about using bikes instead of cars is just a waste of time.

"X" amounts for <10% of global emissions. Going on another tirade about "doing Y" is just a waste of time.

No surer way to continue climate change.

The problem is that you cannot bring it to 0%. It's impossible to have people not use cars in many parts of the world due to adverse weather, physical limitations, etc. there's already a large transition to EVs happening so the actual engine emissions are going down.

Other things like coal burning factories can be actually brought to 0. Same with electrifying homes and connecting them to renewable energy for 0 perceived change (if the grid supported it). That will also help making EVs actual net zero.

Lots of other opportunities that can drive people away from emissions without meaningfully asking them to change their lives or to completely rebuild civil infrastructure.

No one but extremists say it must be brought to 0% immediately. It's that removing all but the most necessary ICE burning, bringing it from 10% emissions to 1% would do a lot! Lots of people actually want more pedestrian friendly places to live. Let's do more to make this plentiful and affordable to the people that do want them. We'll get a lot more bicycles than cars. Most people would rather live and bike around Amsterdam than drive their ICE around parking lots in a typical American suburb. America got short-sighted and into long term infra debt by prioritizing cars everywhere instead of pedestrian / public-transit cores like many places in the world. Individuals can selfishly want it to keep going longer, but it's only going to be worse for everyone and their children as it creaks under the bad infra we've set up.

These are not waste of time. We are past the point where just lowering emissions would be enough.

I think people don't understand how climate change works. On a human significant time scale, every gram of CO2 you emit mostly just stay there. A small part disolves in the oceans but that's it. The rest will forever contribute to the Earth greenhouse effect.

The goal which was set in the Paris agreement is reaching net zero. We are aiming to entirely stop emitting GHC. Everything which is emitting today needs to stop or be offset. I repeat: everything. That obviously includes transports, an area which moreover is fairly easy to clean especially for a country as rich as the USA.

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