Anything but reduce car usage or invest in public transit. No, the solution to everyone wasting energy to move a personal multi ton vehicle around, and prevent parking lots from worsening climate change, is to install solar panels on top of every parking lot and road.

Cars will one day be made by green energy, powered by green energy, recycled by green energy, and be entirely carbon neutral, of course.

They will still emit tons of microplastic particles but we’ll eventually find a technoloical solution for that, I’m sure. They will still kill billions of animals every year but it’s not related to climate so no biggie. They will still kill one human every 30 seconds but again, not a climate issue. They augment the risk of cardiovascular diseases and make people fat. They are also a source of noise pollution and stress for millions of poor people living near freeways. And they are also an expensive status symbol. But none of this matters because they will be electric, and have solar panels on top of parking lots, thus solving the problem once and for all!

Personally I’d prefer we get rid of parking lots and build housing on top of it but, where will people park their climate friendly cars?!

Anything but to admit cars are an environmental problem.

EDIT: Sorry about the abrasiveness. I did read a study a few months ago about installing solar panels on top of parking lots and they did have a positive impact, but it’s just impossible to do this on every open air parking lot and road because of material and cost. Even if it could have a positive impact on localized areas, it’s never gonna be enough to have an overall impact.

Just to give you an idea of how much parking there is in the world, you can look for those maps where parking lots are highlighted. This is for Flint, MI. This is for Philadelphia. I tried to do it for a town of about 80k people in Québec (Drummondville), and just gave up before being done. And that’s just counting parking lots, not roads. How many solar panels do you think we should produce to cover all this?

Cue the comments from people not subscribed to the community saying “I have nothing against cyclists but they’re in the way!11!”

Electric cars are mostly there so that the car industry can continue to sell one of the most expensive object of consumption. As far as I am concerned, they are mostly greenwashing.

They are climate friendlier than internal combustion engines but not an easy fix for all the other issues they still pose. For example, parking lots are causing heat islands and their impervious surfaces also contribute to flooding.

It’s just impossible to have every human on the planet to own a multi ton vehicle that spends energy to move that box and the human it contains everywhere they go. Even if electric.

But no, consume. Buy without remorse, it’s climate friendly(er). Hurray for overconsumption.

For people living in small town is an obligation

Car culture is actually making it an obligation.

This is highly variable depending on your country, area, town. I have lived car free all my life in Canada, in some small towns, and moved to a big city. It’s entirely possible to live in a small town without a car depending on what you do and the size of the town, even with deficient public transit.

Most people live in urbanized areas and towns are just clusters of houses and people that could be served by transit. According to statista, more than 80% of Canada’s population lives in an urban area. In fact, some of those towns were even created by transit, or already had transit, and now cars are an “obligation”.

And if we are to compare with old numbers from 2012 for commuting distances in Canada, most people will drive less than 10-15 km to go to work, with the vast majority being less than 10 km. So the vast majority seems to gravitate within their town or urban cluster. The “obligation” is mostly made up by car culture, and people will happily defend it so they can justify having their own car. Nobody will be demanding transit and it will die.

There is however a spike for people commuting more than 30 km. And those can have a real obligation to use a car. They should switch to electric when it’s going to be possible. Nobody wants to force them to give up their car, but they are in the minority, meaning cities, and even towns, should not be choking with cars.

In fact, nobody wants to force anybody to give up their car if they truly think it’s an obligation. Just be aware that electric cars will obviously not solve congestion issues, will continue to pollute in certain other ways, will still be deadly, and are not an easy works for all fix.

Everyone benefits from having less cars on the roads and them being electric will not achieve that goal. It’s not because a minority of people want or really need a car, that we can justify building whole towns, cities, and infrastructure for those cars.

Yes. Fuck cars. Electric or not.

Any more info on that? I found this but it’s coming from an EV enthusiast site and I’d like other sources.

If true I’ll have to retire this argument and focus only on the other half a dozen issues with cars, like using energy to move a multi ton vehicle and park it everywhere a few billion humans go.

The first thing we see when opening that link is literally bicycles.

If we need self driving cars to help with the last mile issue, I’m pretty sure people will tend to use them for more tha the last mile and ditch other options.

Fuck cars. They are dangerous lethal heavy machines that should not be in urbanized environments.

Yes, cleaner air is a positive aspect and it’s not insignifiant.

But cars also increase sedentarity causing higher cardiovascular disease and obesity risk for its users.

Electric cars also emit as much noise as internal combustion engines when on freeways, causing health and stress issues for poor people living near them in major cities.

And as a city dweller, I can tell you that electric cars are also noisy at low speed because of the fake engine noise they add. I live on the 7th floor and can hear some electric cars better than gas ones when my windows are open. Some sound like they are always honking at low volume.

Yes, they’re better and will help getting cleaner air, but there’s many other negative aspects to using cars that also can’t be dismissed just because they will be electric.

They are marginally better than internal combustion engines and that’s their only merit. If you’re gonna have a car, it should be electric.

But yeah, electric cars are not only creating micro plastic pollution from tire shedding, they are also heavier and thus require more energy to move, as well as create more potholes.

Plus, they still require parking lots that worsens flooding and creates heat islands.

Worldwide, cars are also killing billions of animals every year, as well as around 2 million humans. Every 30 seconds someone dies injured by a car.

Making them electric will barely change anything.

As someone not from the US, I can’t say how much I appreciate the last part of his video. As much as I understand why YouTubers want to “keep politics out of entertainment”, it’s disappointing and makes me lose interest in some US content because it seems like they are ignoring what’s going on around them.

And about the batteries, that’s unfortunately an argument I sometimes hear from skeptics. “What are we going to do with all those batteries?” they ask. I explain that they can mostly be recycled and like to ask what are we going to do with all the CO2 in the air, but apparently it’s different. Ironically one of those persons is my father, that has a cabin with a solar system that I installed for him. He originally bought a generator but since it’s very noisy to run only for some lights, he prefers using the battery bank powered by a few solar panels on the roof. I’d show him this video but he doesn’t speak English and it’s probably a lost cause anyway.

We can only hope that at least a few people can be influenced by this video; both parts.

This is one of the reasons why e-bikes are not a favorite of mine. Some are obviously fairly simple and not IoT/cloud connected/AI/buzzword, but others, like VanMoof, needed an app to unlock the bike. So it would indeed be easy to display an ad before being able to unlock some e-bikes. They can be like modern cars and spy on their users too. Gotta be very careful when shopping and buying one of these.

It’s not always easy. I had to move. My new city/region has barely adequate public transit and my country has abysmal train services. So my bike is the main way to move around. It’s really nice for short distances. Even longer ones in summer. I love it. I have panniers, trailers, and pull my inflatable kayak to the lakes and rivers around.

However intercity travel here is horrible without a car. We have a pretty decent network of dedicated bike paths spreading like a web from my city and going into the countryside, but I don’t always want to cycle 300 km to and fro to visit my parents. Plus, it’s winter right now, so I rely a lot more on public transit, and sometimes it really makes me wish I would have a car instead of having to deal with underfunded transit and bike networks.

I watch the people standing up in the crowded bus, that has to leave people behind at some stops because it’s full, and I think to myself that society really really wants people to own a car; that transit users tolerate a lot of shit. And unfortunately, using public transit is also being subjected to an insane amount of ads.

That’s why I love my bike so much. But it would also be hypocrite of myself not to acknowledge that I sometimes stop at gas stations while bike touring, because I also need some fuel, like a sandwich and some electrolytes. There’s going to be ads inside and the cashier might even offer a lottery ticket. No way to escape them.

Still, if you wish to be car free, I hope you can attain that goal. Because even with that said, it’s satisfying to move myself and my stuff without a car, or not having to constantly pay for gas. In a world where cars are systematic, at least where I live, it feels like an accomplishment to do things without one.

I’ve been car free all my life and not pumping gas into a multi ton vehicle that burns it to move everywhere I go is one of the nice parts.

Aside from specific dependencies that may want some installed packages even if you don’t use them, yes, it’s fine.

I have used Debian for 15 years, with Gnome 2 then MATE, and now I’m using Cinnamon, while mixing with any GTK apps I can find.