It's absolute pie in the sky to think Americans will give up their cars. Walkability is great for a sunny Saturday morning farmers market. But that's not going to move the needle on carbon in any significant way. Living in a "walkable" neighborhood with two cars in the driveway is like recycling. It makes us feel like we're doing something meaningful to rationalize all the junk we buy on Amazon.
But one car per household would make a significant difference. It's not just carbon emissions. It's also the energy required to manufacture and ship the second car. You can still drive anywhere, anytime but one car forces you to coordinate and make choices. Gotta start somewhere.
> It's absolute pie in the sky to think Americans will give up their cars.
Yep. I live in a very walkable neighborhood and walk to work. Almost everybody else still drives a full size truck or SUV, even if they are only going a few blocks.
I think a lot of city dwellers fail to realise not everyone is attracted to urban life and some people actively disdain it. I really don’t like being in built up areas for more than a few days, if I lived in one I’d be a miserable alcoholic within a month. If you listened to half the people in discussions like this they’d pile us all into Warhammer 40k style arcologies!
Urban life genuinely holds no appeal at all for me, I’m just not wired for it. I know this isn’t true for everyone or even the majority but it is for a lot of people, I’d honestly rather emigrate to a foreign country with all the stress and work that entails than live in a city even for a year. My dream house would be an old stone cottage somewhere overlooking the sea with no light pollution and the nearest neighbour at least half a mile away! It’s not that I’m antisocial, it’s just that cities are sensory overload par excellence and I just feel really uncomfortable after a while of that. I’m social enough, but I prefer to have the choice to keep the world at arm’s length if necessary.
>>>But one car per household would make a significant difference. It's not just carbon emissions. It's also the energy required to manufacture and ship the second car. You can still drive anywhere, anytime but one car forces you to coordinate and make choices.
I know a woman who divorced her husband and moved back to Japan because they only had 1 car, and her lack of mobility kept her from getting a job or doing much of anything besides sitting in the house. I think they were living in the Atlanta suburbs, which I'm not familiar with.
But one car per household would make a significant difference. It's not just carbon emissions. It's also the energy required to manufacture and ship the second car. You can still drive anywhere, anytime but one car forces you to coordinate and make choices. Gotta start somewhere.