Electric cars are not going to save us from the consequences of lives built around #driving.
What fuels your car is a small part of the impact that cars and driving have on the #environment. While an electric car is marginally better at the point of use than a fossil fuel car, the fact remains that it's still a car.
So long as you continue to use cars, you are not part of the solution. If you cannot imagine a life without a car, you are the problem.
Electric cars are not #solarpunk.
Solar, maybe, but punk? Certainly not.
#Bicycles and #velomobiles are #solarpunk. #Walking and #handcarts are solarpunk. #Horses are solarpunk. #Urbanism is solarpunk. #CommunityGardens are solarpunk.
Highway speeds are never solarpunk. EVER. It's the going 100+ Kmh for 500+ Km at a stretch with 1000 Kg of cargo that makes cars bad.
A electric quadcycle that weighs 600 Kg fully loaded wth two adult humans and their cargo and goes 50 Kmh max for 100 Km on a charge is not the same thing.
There is no technology that can break the laws of physics.
The problem with cars is that they go fast, they go far, and they can carry literally a ton of cargo.
The availability of rapid transport over long distances of large masses with seeming no consequences caused us to built our lives as if the bill was never going to come due.
Guess what? THE BILL IS DUE.
@gcvrsa I make every effort to never leave my house. But I do have to drive to work.
In fact I'm pretty sure that in a couple of years there won't be much need to leave the land at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
> you are not part of the solution.
> you are the problem.
Solarpunk being used to shame people? Really..?
It's not the least bit unusual for ecologist circles to resort to those “tactics”, but frankly the solarpunk community of all things really, reeeeally ought to know better…
You were doing so well until your third paragraph.
Like it or not, most people simply are no in a position to just stop driving entirely. It would be better for half the people in world to cut their driving in half than for a handful of people to give it up entirely.
You shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Heck, I doubt you yourself truly do not get any utility from cars.
@AlexanderKingsbury @gcvrsa
Agreed, but the idea of speed, power, "performance" in all fields is assuming that usage of gas is efficient. It is on an economic point of view. Some make money of it.
Now, if you cut your grass with a scyte rather than with a lawn-mauer, you will have the satisfaction of the slow, patient work, the time spent spaking with your neighbors above the fence.
Least power and slow solutions have proven efficient on the global.
We should need tools to calculate it
@hrast I don't really hate cars, per se. I hate what has been done to human civilization and the environment because people used cars to build a culture hostile to humanity.
Like everyone else, I enjoy being able to go about my business easily and haul what I need to securely, without exposure to weather and undue exertion.
I just disagree that a car is the most reasonable means of accomplishing that goal, instead of better #urbanism #architecture #planning #housing #sustainability #transit.
@hrast I wouldn't say that a car is inherently bad. The thing is, though, there's no such thing as "just one car". We have well over 300 million of them in the US.
When you criticize "cars", people have a tendency to conceptualize this as a criticism of *their car*, NOT "criticism of a society based upon a sense of entitlement to 350 million plus cars", and so they feel personally attacked and get defensive, rather than considering the argument as it really is, on its merits.
@hrast But even a single car cannot exist and be particularly useful without a vast network of infrastructure and logistics that becomes self-justifying.
That's why people will say things, like, "But, I *have* to drive to work", when no, in fact, they do not. They are free to arrange their lives differently, to make different choices that would enable them to live comfortably and conveniently without cars. They just don't want to make those choices.
Gemma Seymour
Loop Farmer
Yenn dc ☂️
AKingsbury
Jdb_env
hrast