USA SUBURBS ARE #APARTHEID BY HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

there are whole libraries filled with books and studies about how USA suburbs are some of the most totalitarian systems ever created by humans. go look up “islands of totalism”.

suburbs couldn’t exist without the destruction of Native & African American communities and cultures and outright #ecocide in the name of oil.

you don’t come here to tell me how breaking up suburbs isn’t necessary to fight the #petromafia and their fascism.

@blogdiva nodds in agreement

https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/116317903062268245

@blogdiva

$4, from what I've read, isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Not even the US has the ability to prevent $5, $6, $7 gallons by May.

@blogdiva

Petrol is priced by the liter in Europe, and when I was there in the 90s, the per-liter price was higher than our per-gallon price. They used the revenue to build public transportation. I've been saying since then we should as well.

Start with a one dollar a gallon gas tax and increase it a dollar a year indefinitely.

@blogdiva For comparison, gas in my corner of Europe would be about 13.5 USD/gallon right now.

(This is in NL, arguably one of the pricier markets but not the most expensive by far. 2.33€/L E95 gasoline = 11.8 €/gal (4.5L) = 13.56$.
For the last few years it would have been closer to 10$, so this isn't much of a spike yet. I expect prices will keep rising as the supply constraints start to hit.)

@blogdiva It is already ±$6 in parts of California. I would like more mass transit, but in a county of 65,000 people in the California foothills, one can only expect so much.

I still need some kind of vehicle to transport 40 lb sacks of chicken feed. My birds insist.

(and the two full-size bags of potting soil, 5' plant trellises, and 15 gal pots, waiting to be unloaded, when it stops raining)

@blogdiva

The thing about gas is, it's a trap.

Your car uses it up. Kinda like printers and ink. My car has about 97k miles on it, and my fuel stats say my average is about 35 mpg. (I only drive in city traffic, cuz I'm legally blind and can't exceed 45 mph).

97,000 divided by 35 is about 2770 gallons. Using data from the US Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPMRU_PTE_STX_DPG&f=W) the average price per gallon for the life of my car is $2.59.

That's $7,175 approximately. And that gas is *gone*. It's like toilet paper - you only use it once. Renewables are like a bidet - you use water, but water is part of a cycle - it can be cleaned and reused.

There's an excellent video about this by Tech Connextras on YouTube called "You are being misled about renewable energy technology," on the Tech Connextras channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgxb8I1nk2I

@blogdiva amen. When are you running for office because killing the suburbs is on my agenda, too!

The only draw back with $20/gal gas prices is that if oil is expensive then coal isn’t and that is a problem.

@blogdiva it's a but of a tangent but I hate the word "suburb." It's so vague as to be completely useless. It's everything that isn't a major city center but also not wilderness or farmland.

It's how towns like mine justify not providing the public transit and bike infrastructure they should despite having a population density higher than most of Chicago.

@blogdiva

Tbh it’s such a fucking trip seeing the same shit play out in the ME for the same reasons by the same old white dudes.

Shit has not changed one bit in 36+ years.

No blood for oil was exactly what we painted on the walls of the school lol

@randahl

@blogdiva In the US it was a 1.5 mile walk to our nearest coffee shop, which was the closest shop of any kind - I walked to the cafe only about three times in more than ten years. I was sick of having to get in the car for every single errand.

When I moved back to the UK, I spent three weeks traveling by bus and train to different towns and cities. I found a perfect walkable place with good transport links and a lively high street, but there are an awful lot of towns with abandoned centres and out of town retail parks with limited if any bus services. Away from the major population centres, it would be difficult to cope without a car.

I'm coming up to three years happily car-free, but the UK could still use more effort revitalising towns and improving public transport links.

I spoke to shop owners in my travels, the main problem that they shared was extortionate shop rents. For tax reasons, it seems the property owners literally do not care if the shop is empty or occupied. I suspect also that the "value" of the building is related to the rent cost - whether or not there are tenants.

Another town (Harlow, where I lived as a kid) used to have a thriving shopping centre and a large busy market. The town council decided to use the market stall space rents as a revenue stream. Within a few years the market was gone. Now, the market square with its almost entirely gutted surrounding shops looks like a set from The Walking Dead.