PowerSwitch

https://www.independent.co.uk/environme ... 84806.html

"The costs to both the NHS and society at large were highest in cities, and diesel vehicles were the worst offenders in terms of harmful pollutants.

In total, the scientists concluded the health cost of an average car in inner London over the vehicle’s lifetime was nearly £8,000. For diesel cars this figure was nearly double.

Pollutants emitted by these vehicles such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, or PM2.5, have been linked with an array of health risks including lung cancer and heart disease."[/i]

Petrol engines consume far more fuel than diesels, diesel has its particulate problem etc.

Each is worse than the other. Time to move on.

Yup, stop fukkin travelling. Think of the time you wouldn’t waste because you’ve decided you’re not in the wrong place after all.

If you can’t walk it, it’s too far..

OK you stop traveling? Will the food, clothing, beer and wine stop traveling towards your home when needed and will the garbage stop traveling away from you? I'm fine with it as long as the answer to both is yes.

Well, go back a couple of hundred years for the country our ancestors invaded, attempted genocide, and plundered. Before that there was a sustainable system and the fastest transport was the horse, but most people walked. Same goes for most other countries. Australia, before again our ancestors screwed it, everybody walked. Unless they were so young they were carried. No problem with clothing supplies, and garbage? What’s that? Everything bio-degraded, if it wasn’t eaten.

woodburner wrote: .....Think of the time you wouldn’t waste because you’ve decided you’re not in the wrong place after all.....

Yes I have often observed many folk distractedly driving at a fair rip apparently from one place they don't want to be to somewhere else they don't want to be!

Sometimes I think we consider the down sides to car travel to be a recent discovery but this is not the case at all. One of the joys of rereading "Overshoot" by William Catton, at a very leisurely pace, is discovering just how contemporary were the preoccupations of many of the authors he references from the end of WWII onwards.

One of my favourite excerpts, from 1948, reads:-

"Our tensions find outlets in driving at high speeds that reduce the efficiency of our cars. We build into our automobiles more power and greater gas consumption than we need. We use the press and radio to push the sales of more cars. We drive them hundreds of million miles a year in pursuit of futility. With the exhaustion of our own oil wells in sight we send our Navy into the Mediterranean, show our teeth to the USSR, insist on access to Asiatic oil - and continue to throw it away at home."



[/i]

The idea of sitting in half a tonne of metal or, in the case of the US, a tonne to get from A to B is ridiculous if you think about it: all that wasted energy to move that metal not to mention the wasted energy in its production.

And that food could still get to us if we walked to the local shops as I often did when I was a child. And the food would get to us quicker if we didn't send it 100 miles (or 1000 in the US) to a central distribution depot before sending it back again to the consumer. Local food has many advantages. If we grew the zero calories in our salads at home instead of transporting them to us using thousands of calories from Spain; that would help the situation a lot.

If we worked on our computers from home, as was the original thought, we would avoid a massive amount of travel but then the Little Hitler in the office wouldn't get their power kick in having us under their immediate control.

And as for holidays, what happened to the outdoor swimming pools that I used to frequent in the summer in my childhood. Our local one was only a half hour walk away. They were out competed by cheap holidays in Spain and Greece. A tax on aviation fuel would redress that balance together with some solar heating of the pool water.

What we really need is a complete change in human nature and habits.

I doubt that we could eliminate car travel in the foreseeable future, but seeking to reduce it would be a good start.
Unfortunately, despite the odd bit of greenwash, local and national government policies are encouraging car travel over public transport or walking.

The real costs of motoring continue to fall, and cars are better specified and more comfortable than ever.
Bus services are getting less frequent and in my experience less satisfactory, new trains are often worse than the old ones and are hugely expensive.

Walking is in effect discouraged by the closure of local shops and employers and the move to out of town shopping centres and trading estates.
And letting children walk to school is regarded as child neglect !

There has to be a move away from demonisation of those who do not want to 'work' for de man, along with support for providing for oneself more at home, turning lawns into growing areas and subsidising permaculture and organics.

A citizens' income could be paid for very easily by eliminating tax havens and other monetary shenanigans.

emordnilap wrote:.......... subsidising permaculture and organics. ....

you missed off "to the same extent that chemical farming is subsidised."

There's a particular type of person who says (words to the effect of) "Why should I pay for your healthcare?" My reply, "I don't drive - why should I pay for your roads?" usually gets them lit-up about "but your food, goods, etc..." to which my riposte is, "yes, quite. A healthy workforce/friends/punters/forces is an asset..."

Note I don't even have to bother mentioning the ethics of it - this is an argument for use with the ethics-free.