Discussion
The issue I have with EVs and renewables is not that they aren’t a much less worse way to carry on with what we have been doing. They very probably are a lot less worse. (It’s early days and unintended consequences are murky af.)
The issue is that the *expectation* is that we will carry on being as mobile and as power-hungry as we have been. And the signs are very strong that that can’t work.
As tactics they look substantially more positive than fossils, but the *strategy* seems undeliverable
Electric cars seem the have brought the same mindset gas cars have of always needing bigger and newer. Most people would seriously do fine with a 2014 leaf (and you can still 3rd party upgrade them). But people seem to have this "need more" mindset. Like they will NEVER use 400 miles of range, 8 seats, 40000 lumen headlights, full charging in 15 minutes, and full self driving for anything at all, but they like having the OPTION to. It's like Stan from American dad with his SUV.
@urlyman I think the root of the problem is even dumber: aesthetics.
Like, at this point, robots could be moving goods everywhere, if we were not completely hung up on the physical form of the automobile.
Like, if we established robot-only lanes and corridors, they could get around safely, much as cars having to stay in the streets works. But those lanes and corridors don't have to be car-sized, or on the ground.
Cars and trucks are approximately as big as they are, to accomodate both a human driver and a large ICE motivator. A robot that carries letters could be much smaller, and much faster, and in a rationally designed underground tunnel system, robots of all sizes could move all manner of things, the benefit being less and less need for people to jump in their automobile to go deliver a piece of paper, or pick one up, or do any number of tasks for which our first instinct is to reach for the keys.
NYC had a pneumatic tube system, which yes, ultimately was scrapped because it would get jammed up a lot. But it worked well enough, compared to whatever else was available, that New York City built a whole infrastructure for it. If we replaced inert capsules and compressed air with battery-powered autonomous capsules that can navigate huge runs of underground pipe, the pipes and tunnels are probably there already in a lot of cities, abandoned by the old morlocks.
The biggest problem is a failure of imagination, and the mental torpor of calcified minds. None of the above is expensive for a nation, and if we pooled our fucking tax money we could start implementing it today.
@jpaskaruk nice thoughts. Imagination and courage needed
@urlyman The e-bikes seem to be much better solution, then electric cars.
They are marketed mostly as recreational and sports equipment, but actually: micromobility solves high percentage of use cases for individual mobility.
Maybe what we need is 100% replacement, but just replacement that works in typical weather, on a typical distance, with typical amount of baggage (eg. small backpack). And we need them to be somewhat clean amd shiny, to show some limited social status (because this is how things work, unfortunately).
I would think about design e-bikes just like design glasses. It may work, actually. It probably already works in many European towns (I am riding just repurposed electric MTB ;-)
@urlyman Although for buses, lorries and multi use vehicles (like our home visit cars in out of hours), it makes sense. Also we still have a lot of diesel trains which need changed to electric, but that requires new infrastructure on large swathes of track.
@nusher yes, within our current adjacent possibles I’m not arguing against cleaner techs, but I am arguing like hell against the *absence* of the realisation that they aren’t remotely enough
@urlyman I completely agree with you. On the other hand, I wonder why we shouldn’t make the most of the various options available during this transitional period?
Example: Until the mayor finally restores the old regional public transport, I could drive an EV instead of a fossile-driven car. In rural areas, people would remain mobile, particularly those with disabilities. And they’d still have the energy to keep fighting the mayor for years to come.
Many local changes will come but take time.
@NatureMC we should. No point in wasting good infrastructure already built.
We’ll get overtaken by events and then we’ll adjust more sharply despite all the earlier protestations of “oh no I couldn’t possibly contemplate that”
Yes. That expectation is a real challenge. Too many people claim that their life would be unlivable if they couldn't travel all over the continent or the world every year.
Too many economic projections are based on the 'induced demand' logic as building more highways to solve congestion; too little research is put into ways to reduce our power and resource needs.
I agree with you, especially because too many e-cars on especially US roads are way too large, because nobody has thought of regulating their size.
In a place where everything is built for the car, there is a place for e-cars as an interim solution, but eventually we need better solutions.
One example is Toronto, which unabashedly prioritises public transport and walking (and increasingly, biking) over car transport. THAT's the big win. Then, sure, let the remaining cars be e-cars.
@CelloMomOnCars @urlyman Notice to any non-Canadians in this thread that half the year is colder and more desolate and dark than many people who are not born here could probably handle. I always wonder how the people from the global South who have come here deal with it.
This means that half the year, walking is doable for the young, fit, and well-dressed, but biking is a high-stakes extreme sport where you can hit an ice patch and wipe out on a slippery road with cars any minute. There are people who do it, but they are just as extremely weird as me, who have only run GNU and BSD since about 2012. Yes, you can, but only extremists do, right now. Linux will continue to grow in its desktop share, but that will not change about biking in Canada in January.
You don't live in this climate without cars, to some degree, and that's not easy for those who have not experienced our winters to really grasp. But we could be doing better in all kinds of ways, I think mainly in terms of delivery of goods by robot rather than taking sending a car for them.
There's all this wasted effort at bringing fake robot cars that still need 1.5 remote human drivers into the streets designed for human habitation, turning real cars into silly RC versions. We could be digging compact tunnels, even elevated tracks and overpasses among skyscrapers, passages that humans would find claustrophobic and awful but could allow a machine to deliver a refrigerator to within X metres of its ultimate destination.
In Winnipeg, you can walk into old Hudson Bay Company store, which is at one end of Downtown, and walk all the way down to Main Street, to the Convention Centre, any major business plaze, all via mainly overpasses but also underground concourses. It was hoped that this would bring shoppers back downtown as the old retail mammoths went extinct, but instead the core has just rotted out, though there's still the university, government offices, and a lot of businesses.
Anyways, Winnipeg has lots of dead ground that we could establish as corridors for deliveries, they could be covered as necessary to protect the robots from the climate, and also as mounting points for the solar panels that would power the system, charging batteries for motive power to exist right where it's needed with no transmission lines...
this is all doable. But we lack the imagination.
@jpaskaruk points well made re climate. I do often wonder about future Brits living in a northern Canadian climate after AMOC collapse
@CelloMomOnCars thanks. It’s inevitable that we will incrementally recalibrate our sense of what we *can* do as material conditions constrain us ever more. That we are effectively not doing so at all, even though we can see what’s coming, is what I find infuriating
Think social tipping points.
Gay marriage seemed impossible, right up until it was legalised.
ADHD, the autism spectrum, and lots of other things are now widely accepted as prevalent. Why? Because we talk about them more.
We need to start talking about stuff. The polls say that we are very likely to find agreement in the people we talk to! The polls also say that we don't expect that. So let's start talking.
This was 2yrs ago, but the last time I went to Florida (I live in Europe) to visit my grandmother, there were many more people riding around on bicycles (including e-bikes) and a surprising amount of people on electric scooters; enough for me to notice and not think that that one person was an outlier. We met a young woman who had also gone to lunch with her grandmother and she was telling us how her e-scooter is what she uses to get around. In Florida.
So what I want to say is: I don't think electric cars are going to be the EV that revolutionizes American transportation. I think it is going to be the smaller EVs that change how people get around (worldwide). Mostly because they are not quite as expensive as a car.
In particular, let's talk about how much BETTER life is after the energy transition, after the transportation transition, and all the other transitions.
We are not going to shiver in the dark, no. We are going to live healthier lives, and have more friends, our children will have bigger lungs, and on and on and on.
@CelloMomOnCars I would like to sign your answer! That's the way.
Just a book recommendation for that way of change: "Saving Us" by @kathhayhoe
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