this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
28 points (96.7% liked)
Europe
1668 readers
366 users here now
News and information from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
(This list may get expanded when necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].
founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
Personal EVs are not a solution. We need less cars overall, not replace combustion with EV. EVs still significantly contribute to pollution, noise and car-centered infrastructure. EVs are just the car industry's way of continuing business as usual without changing anything and is not environmentally friendly.
The only solution is more and better public infrastructure, more bikes and walkable cities, where the important things are either close by or sufficiently accessible by public transport.
EVs are not the solution but they should be part of the solution.
And EVs are still better then combustion engines. Even better the EU is not going to be able to match Chinese subsidies. So the EU car industry is going to die and replaced by Chinese cars. However those will have a much harder time lobbying for car focused infrastructure. Just compare Germany and the Netherlands for example. One has a massive car industry and the other does not.
That works in small rich countries. There's just so much area outside of big cities that we need to address as well.
Naah. Not really:
re: rich countries: Car infrastructure is very, very expensive and the additional car infrastructure between every building also makes life in cities much more expensive. Also, cars themselves are very expensive. So, no, you don't need to be rich to build public transit and bike lanes. It actually makes most sense when you're not.
re: small countries: For one, "small" doesn't make any sense โ "densely populated" makes a bit more sense. However, when you look at it, the vast majority of humanity lives in cities today and their commutes are short, even in the US. And these commutes would in fact on average become shorter with more public transit and biking.
Cars have a place but right now, any industrialized nation has several times more cars than it would need, especially if city planning were more sensible.
There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this, while also transitioning people away from petrol cars to much, much cleaner cars.
Not everyone is privileged enough to live in a city. Especially not one that has great transport links and lots of stuff nearby.
Cars will be around for decades, whether you (or I!) like it or not, so it makes sense for them to be as low-impact as we can make them.
As we replace ICE cars with EVs people will think "problem solved" and refuse to fund transit, bike lanes, denser housing. I see the point you are making but I'm worried society's capitalist attitude will use EVs as an excuse to kick the can of centric planning down the road.
We need to both. We need to bring all urban areas up to walkable standards and make them serviceable by transit. We need to provide EVs for rural people and those who refuse any other mode of transit for whatever reasons.
Just building the same way but with EVs instead of ICEs is still a massive impact on the environment. It wastes vasts amount of valuable urban lands while also being one of the least energy effecient modes of travel.