transportation gets a lot of attention being half of GHG emissions but we're too addicted to cars to solve the problem so let's nibble around the edges of everything else and put our fingers in our ears and sing LALALA if somebody mentions cars
Transportation gets a lot of attention in conversations about decarbonization, and it should. But building materials like cement also need it. The production of cement is responsible for about 8% of global CO2 emissions.
Thanks to President Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for this progress.
@brewski Plus reducing the amount of cars (EV or ICE) on the road in favor of active transportation and maass transit is infinitely more effective and productive than any benefit seen from replacing ICE passenger cars with EV passenger cars, which is a substantial benefit, don't get me wrong. The cars are the real problem, while their source of energy is only one part of the equation. We are so focused on fixing that one piece when it could all be solved, out of compromise.
@ned @brewski as I pointed out to the OP which made him block me, probably half of the concrete is building parking garages and freeways but we're going to "significantly reduce" the carbon of 5.5% of GHG, so clap. 😆
Exactly! I just wanted to share a small slice of the problem.
What it seems to be, is making the smallest possible change to address the main "problem" the perceive. An individual can imagine this future; their day-to-day doesn't change much, they just drive an EV, and maybe have some solar panels on their roof. But implementing this vision requires massive changes on a societal level. So if big changes are necessary, why not rethink transportation from the start?
And in terms of GHG it's only 5.5% and we're spending millions only "significantly reducing carbon emissions" not even getting to zero. Just another industry scam when all we need is a carbon tax that we're too weak to implement because we can't quit buying gas. Great job progressives.
Any tax that would significantly increase the costs of gasoline, diesel, LPG, NG, or heating oil is going to be a non-starter in the US, because the US is utterly dependent on infrastructure and land use policies that assume the profligate consumption of fossil fuels to substitute for better design.
People can't just pick up and move, rebuild houses, rearrange their whole lives to use less carbon quickly, so any tax is going to be viewed as punitive and unfair.
Transportation and HVAC are the two leading sectors for fossil fuel consumption, and both of them are driven by sprawl, which is driven by land policy.
We need land policy that incentivizes people to live, work, learn, shop, and play in higher density settlements, which result in more efficient buildings and obviate the use of transportation fuels. Only then will we be able to successfully implement carbon taxes at the necessary scale.
@gcvsa yes that is what I meant about weakness, that we've built ourselves into fossil fuel dependency. But as you alluded, the HVAC problem is also probably half for the sake of cars and everything in our built environment being for cars instead of people. The biggest lever we have toward being able to tax carbon is cities curbing (or preferably bollarding) cut-thru car traffic, cutting back how much we give cars the ability to run people on bikes off of the street, plant trees, build housing
@gcvsa and specifically our weakness about cars keeps us trapped with ineffective carbon policy, nonsense like trying to buy everyone an electric car. Most trips are under three miles and those will get shorter soon enough, just as soon as we legalize bikes/e-bikes and take transit seriously.
On those points, you are of course speaking to a fellow member of the choir. I am poor, and I live in a small town in Vermont with hardly any public transit or bicycle infrastructure, where most people claim to be environmentally-conscious, but sprawl all over the landscape in their leaky 200 year old homes, driving hither and yon.
We're slowly improving, added a new arterial painted bike lane, got part of a shed roof over one bike parking rack, and hopefully more soon.
I've been car-free for over 2.5 years, a year-round primary transport cyclist in Northern New Sngland Winters.
Our biggest transit benefit is we have an Amtrak station, direct to NYC, and a new station is being built, though it is still only one train a day in each direction. A new evening only microtransit bus service is starting downtown this month. We have a thriving and growing community of cyclists with cargo bikes.
@gcvsa I don't think we should see the transition to sustainable transportation as moving houses, in many cases we just need infill and mixed use zoning + third places within biking distance (people who are allergic to bikes don't understand the range of 4x walking speed or 5 minutes per mile on e-bikes) and those 4-lane stroads to have the curb lanes designated as bus-and-turn-only/bikes if there's no bike lane. It's not rebuilding everything just stopping the over-accommodating of cars.
What I mean to say is that public policies which incentivize land uses that allow us to live with comfort and convenience within smaller radii will naturally lead to reduced transportation dependency and reduced energy consumption. It's a win-win for everyone but the landlords, the oil barons, and the automotive industry, all of whom leech off of the rest of us.
If you start with simply making cars more expensive to operate and homes more expensive to heat and cool, buy-in is tough.
@gcvsa right you can't just make it expensive to drive, but we do need to start with making it slightly harder to drive specifically everywhere that cars make it hard to bike or use transit, we need that space back. Probably will need to make parking more expensive, congestion pricing, etc and instead of using poor people as an excuse to make parking free, just give all of the poor people money. What we have now only works for people with cars who are able to drive, and barely that.
We first need to make it possible to use Transit and bike in the first place.
If you don't have transit (even a bus) within 800 meters of your front door - which is common - then you don't have transit. If you do have that transit; but it comes only hourly, is slow because of all the stops and turns, or it is more then 10 minutes to a transfer point with lots of other transit options - then you don't have useful transit even though it theoretically exists.
If all the places you might want to go to on bike are setup for cars: they face a highway, with fences you have to go around for double the crows flight distance, then have drive thrus traffic blocking sidewalks, and no bike racks to park at : you don't have bike access.
Once it is reasonably for someone to use bikes are transit, only then can we talk about making driving hard.
@bluGill @gcvsa no, because all of these places have an excess of car lanes with an excess of width. Drivers will survive reduced lane width or fewer lanes, driving around a block sometimes instead of through every street, none of that is hardship.
@gcvsa none of that matters as there is no reasonable option except to drive so making driving harder doesn't get people to not drive.
If you make reasonable options to driving many people will start using them. Then we can talk about how to deal with the stragglers would could walk/use transit but are not - and we would also have the support of people who have figured out that reasonable options exist. However if you start before there is a reasonable option you just make people mad and get voted out of office.
Note that we are talking about real estate here. Location location location applies. Some parts of the US have reasonable options and can start looking at getting people to stop driving. Others do not and need to focus on that.
@bluGill as I said, there is extra space on the street already, there is your bikeway network. There is not a "build it & they will come" city on a hill, it's just scrapping together a comprehensive network from the infrastructure that we've already overprovisioned for cars. The leaders who do this will get re-elected if they do it with conviction and get it done before the election. Paris has demonstrated this, as has Seville, Barcelona, the pattern is the same all the way back to Amsterdam
😀🚲
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
😀🚲
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •transportation gets a lot of attention being half of GHG emissions but we're too addicted to cars to solve the problem so let's nibble around the edges of everything else and put our fingers in our ears and sing LALALA if somebody mentions cars
https://progressivecafe.social/@TonyStark/112241596992156357
Tony the Mechanic
2024-04-09 13:54:12
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
Brewski
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •Ned Yeung
in reply to Brewski • • •@brewski
Plus reducing the amount of cars (EV or ICE) on the road in favor of active transportation and maass transit is infinitely more effective and productive than any benefit seen from replacing ICE passenger cars with EV passenger cars, which is a substantial benefit, don't get me wrong. The cars are the real problem, while their source of energy is only one part of the equation. We are so focused on fixing that one piece when it could all be solved, out of compromise.
#yegbike
😀🚲
in reply to Ned Yeung • • •Brewski
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •@ned
Exactly! I just wanted to share a small slice of the problem.
What it seems to be, is making the smallest possible change to address the main "problem" the perceive. An individual can imagine this future; their day-to-day doesn't change much, they just drive an EV, and maybe have some solar panels on their roof.
But implementing this vision requires massive changes on a societal level.
So if big changes are necessary, why not rethink transportation from the start?
Neil E. Hodges
in reply to Brewski • •like this
😀🚲 and Darwin Woodka like this.
😀🚲
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •Any tax that would significantly increase the costs of gasoline, diesel, LPG, NG, or heating oil is going to be a non-starter in the US, because the US is utterly dependent on infrastructure and land use policies that assume the profligate consumption of fossil fuels to substitute for better design.
People can't just pick up and move, rebuild houses, rearrange their whole lives to use less carbon quickly, so any tax is going to be viewed as punitive and unfair.
gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •Transportation and HVAC are the two leading sectors for fossil fuel consumption, and both of them are driven by sprawl, which is driven by land policy.
We need land policy that incentivizes people to live, work, learn, shop, and play in higher density settlements, which result in more efficient buildings and obviate the use of transportation fuels. Only then will we be able to successfully implement carbon taxes at the necessary scale.
😀🚲
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •😀🚲
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •On those points, you are of course speaking to a fellow member of the choir. I am poor, and I live in a small town in Vermont with hardly any public transit or bicycle infrastructure, where most people claim to be environmentally-conscious, but sprawl all over the landscape in their leaky 200 year old homes, driving hither and yon.
We're slowly improving, added a new arterial painted bike lane, got part of a shed roof over one bike parking rack, and hopefully more soon.
gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •I've been car-free for over 2.5 years, a year-round primary transport cyclist in Northern New Sngland Winters.
Our biggest transit benefit is we have an Amtrak station, direct to NYC, and a new station is being built, though it is still only one train a day in each direction. A new evening only microtransit bus service is starting downtown this month. We have a thriving and growing community of cyclists with cargo bikes.
gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •Also, our local library has a ebike lending program, and I've just agreed to be a volunteer to help check bikes in and out, this season.
I'm looking forward to spreading the good word of ebike.
😀🚲
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •What I mean to say is that public policies which incentivize land uses that allow us to live with comfort and convenience within smaller radii will naturally lead to reduced transportation dependency and reduced energy consumption. It's a win-win for everyone but the landlords, the oil barons, and the automotive industry, all of whom leech off of the rest of us.
If you start with simply making cars more expensive to operate and homes more expensive to heat and cool, buy-in is tough.
😀🚲
in reply to gcvsa ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 • • •bluGill
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •@gcvsa
We first need to make it possible to use Transit and bike in the first place.
If you don't have transit (even a bus) within 800 meters of your front door - which is common - then you don't have transit. If you do have that transit; but it comes only hourly, is slow because of all the stops and turns, or it is more then 10 minutes to a transfer point with lots of other transit options - then you don't have useful transit even though it theoretically exists.
If all the places you might want to go to on bike are setup for cars: they face a highway, with fences you have to go around for double the crows flight distance, then have drive thrus traffic blocking sidewalks, and no bike racks to park at : you don't have bike access.
Once it is reasonably for someone to use bikes are transit, only then can we talk about making driving hard.
😀🚲
in reply to bluGill • • •bluGill
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •@gcvsa none of that matters as there is no reasonable option except to drive so making driving harder doesn't get people to not drive.
If you make reasonable options to driving many people will start using them. Then we can talk about how to deal with the stragglers would could walk/use transit but are not - and we would also have the support of people who have figured out that reasonable options exist. However if you start before there is a reasonable option you just make people mad and get voted out of office.
Note that we are talking about real estate here. Location location location applies. Some parts of the US have reasonable options and can start looking at getting people to stop driving. Others do not and need to focus on that.
😀🚲
in reply to bluGill • • •Kevin Cianfarini
in reply to 😀🚲 • • •