Distilled water is for radiators
You’ve jumped to many erroneous conclusions. I am an American living in the USA. I am a mature individual with experience living around the world, including in Europe where many families happily exist without cars (I know many people there who don’t even have a driving license). Your point about how a car-based infrastructure helped defeat the Axis is, respectfully, absurd, and it’s quite outdated to try to lord that over Europeans at this point.
Do you realize that the USA actually had a better mass transit system in the first half of the 20th century? And that both the modern highway system and the cheap-auto-for-all (Volkswagen = “car of the people” in German) were two of Hitler’s favorite projects. (No, I am NOT saying all drivers are Nazis, or saying the desire to drive a car is malicious or anything like that, I am just pointing out the historical record concerning car-based infrastructures re WW2). In fact, I would bet that Rosie the Riveter and much if not most of the workers in the US weapons factories during WW2 took public transit to work.
It is not “my desire for you to live the way I think you should” that motivates me; it’s a simple fact about the connection between the epidemic of cancer and lung diseases in the USA and air pollution, which at the very least should give car-worshippers pause.
Let me ask you a question. Do you mind if people smoke around you or your children, to fill the air in the room with proven carcinogenic air pollutant? If so, why shouldn’t we all mind when cars do the same with exhaust into our air? People who are addicted to tobacco harm others and themselves with their smoking; cultures that are addicted to cars do the same.
Thanks for giving me some laughs.
‘cheap-car-for-all’: Model T long preceded the VW
‘epidemic of cancer and lung diseases … and air pollution’ What utter nonsense. NO facts exist to support this. Air pollution is much reduced in response to the major reductions in auto emissions. No device has seen such rapid improvements over the last 50 years - HUGE improvements.
And making the comparison between smoking and cars is another in your long line of extreme exaggerations. Comparing a necessary aspect of society to an addictive drug (and to Nazis) is the lowest form of intellectual discourse.
Sorry, but you’re just showing historical ignorance about the Volkswagen, but we can drop that whole tangent since you’re the one who brought up the WW2 and car-based infrastructure. You’re also blatantly twisting what I said about concerning WW2, which is strange since everyone can clearly see what I wrote, that I was not comparing anyone or anything to Nazis. To accuse me of that is truly to engage in low and dishonest discourse.
So, CCC, are you going to put up the money to create a nationwide mass transit system and passenger rail across the country? Is there a way to make this work where my 75 mile round trip commute to and from work will be a viable and reasonable option for me, and will be preferable to taking my own vehicle, and will be cheaper? You didn’t say where in the USA you live, but I suspect you do not live in a rural area if you are living a car-free lifestyle. Anybody in my community who lives car-free is not doing it by choice because the only jobs in my town pay minimum wage. That’s why I commute to the city to work. I have a child to raise, and I can’t do that on minimum wage. I do my part to stay green, though, despite my commute. I drive a 20 year old rustbucket that I refuse to retire to the junkyard. It has a minimum of oil leaks and a slightly defunct emissions control system, in other words, not bad given the age. Granted, it is in far worse condition than most of the vehicles that were traded in during “cash for clunkers”, which I believe was terrible for the environment. Personally, I see driving my car as more green than buying a brand new Prius. If you need this one explained to you, perhaps someone else who shares my point of view on this topic will happen along before I do.
You are absolutely right. Environmentalists are now coming around on the fact that the greenest car to drive is the one you already own, simply because of the pollution created to manufacture and ship a new vehicle. Depending on who you talk to, “Cash for Clunkers” may have stimulated the economy, but the fact that they destroyed the old cars made it an environmental disaster.
Of course rural areas might have more need for personal transport than urban ones, and yes the economic situation/system of the USA makes for hard choices for all of us, and yes many of us are doing our part the best we can, so we don’t have to get defensive/offensive about it. The point in general is that if we are going to do anything remotely sustainable and against the polluting of our planet, minimizing cars will be a main part of that, and de-emphasizing the car-worship. It’s not rocket science, since models for this exist in Europe already, and it doesn’t take mysterious philanthropy, since countries with less money and smaller economies do it.
Cash for Clunkers stimulated new car sales amongst the upper middle class and lower class wealthy. It did sell a lot of new Priuses, but it also took a lot of perfectly nice 5-10 year old cars off the road permanently. Nearly everything traded in during that program still had a lot of usable life left in it, and could have been redistributed to the needy, or even offered as trade for the real clunkers, oil burners, and gas swillers out there. There was even one guy who traded in his 2007 Cadillac Escalade with 20,000 miles in for a Prius during that program. He took the $4500 tax credit, even though the dealer offered him something like $23,000 trade in for it. He said he wanted that polluting gas guzzler off the road for good. I believe that ordering manufacture of any car, especially something like an Escalade, using it for three years, destroying it, then ordering manufacture of another car, especially something like a Prius, is the farthest thing in the world from being green or doing good for the environment. Manufacturing that Prius did more harm to the environment than that Escalade could have done in it’s entire usable life.
I jumped to those conclusions because you never answered my original questions…and your persepective seems typical of a young college student.
You cannot possibly compare the European lifestyles you allude to with the lifestyles in the U.S. Everything about them is entirely different. And, by the way, I love Europe. And there’s a lot of places there I never got to visit but would love to.
Yes, the highway infrastructure is considered a major asset for us in WWII. Not the only one, but a major asset. Our ability to move materaisl quickly and easily around the country was considered crutial to our ability to repidly and successfull ramp up our war production, and many believe that had we not had our highway infrastructure the war might have lasted far longer…and been far more difficult to win.
Please do not accuse me of “lord[ing] over” the Europeans. I have the utmost respect for them and realize that WWII was an Allied effort, and not just a U.S. effort. The war was in fact fought largely in Europe, and they paid a far heavier “price” than we did. With the exception of Pearl Harbor, the war never arrived on our shores.
I love this statement: "It is not “my desire for you to live the way I think you should”. Your entire thread has been an ardent effort to convince us to live the way you think we should.
I’ll defer to Texas’ reply to the cars vs. smoking argument. His response is better than mine would have been.
By the way, my first car was a “peoples’ car”. a '61 Beetle. There’s no arguing that Hitler was one of the most brutal and evil humans that ever lived, but even he recognized the importance of a good highway system in a war. That, and only that, was the reason it was one of his favorite projects. His goal was world domination and the “supreme being”, not kindness toward the people.
I’ll give you credit, you’re defintely persistant.
I agree with your conclusions that the greenest thing to do is keep the existing cars on the road.
What the Cash For Clunkers actually did was steal from future sales. When the nimbers were analyzed after the fact, the sales spike from the program was immediately followed by a corresponding sales drop of comparable volume. In short, it was $3B ($4B was earmarked, but only $3B spent) total waste of our tax money. Well, unless you consider there to have been a PR value.
One reason a European lifestyle will not work in the US is because of the vast differences in the two countries. Take a look at Europe on a map and compare it to the United States. Look at the population figures. Europe is composed of a number of small, densely populated countries. The United States is, for the most part, a sprawling, agricultural country. This is why there are a lot of small, rural communities and why personal transportation is a necessity in the daily lives of many of us. Sure, you can do without a car in the vast majority of the moderate to large sized cities, but a lot of people in this country don’t want to live in the big cities. I was born and raised in a small town, and life in the big city does not appeal to me. I like being able to leave my car, house, and garage unlocked and not worry about my stuff growing legs and disappearing. One of the last times I stayed at somebody else’s house in a larger city, I was awakened at 3AM by the police kicking down the neighbor’s door. I don’t like the idea of having to deal with that kind of stuff on a daily basis. I enjoy the lifestyle I live, I choose to live it, and it happens to necessitate personal transportation. I don’t think my lifestyle qualifies as “car addiction”, although I do enjoy motorsports, muscle cars, and repairing my own vehicles, as well as those of friends and family members.
I’m not sure of any PR value to the cursed program. I don’t think I’ve heard a good word about it since it happened.
MB, are you saying NOBODY bought a new car in the cash for clunkers program who would not have otherwise done so? I wouldn’t know if the number of people who bought a new car just because of the program is significant, but I am sure it isn’t zero. Also, attributing the slump that followed to the ending of the program is possible, but it is also possible to attribute that slump to the recession. What you have shown is a correlation, not a cause and effect relationship.
Most of the population of the USA live in cities, I believe. A nationwide transit system would not be logistically difficult or inappropriate at all. In fact we had more of one in the past, when more passenger trains ran throughout the country.
Vaclav Havel says the act of living free is tied in with the act of remembering the past. It’s a bit of forgotten history that public transit was intentionally targeted and eliminated in the USA in the 1940s and 50s. This may seem farfetched but it’s a matter of historical and Congressional record. Many cities had light rail systems that were destroyed in hostile takeovers by front companies for the car industry, with a wink and a nod from Congress, which later investigated, found them guilty and gave them a slap on the wrist. At the same time our cities’ good public transit was dismantled, so-called urban planners enforced the shift to suburban, car-based housing developments. Meanwhile cities did things like passing laws banning pedestrians and bicycles on the newly-created expressways, effectively making alternate transportation illegal.
I am not telling people to live the way I think they should, unless you say that pointing out that our house is on fire is the same as somehow forcing people to leave the burning building. I think it’s not force but common sense. I have cited several reports from the such organizations as the W.H.O, the EPA, the American Cancer Society showing the simple truth that cars->air pollution->deadly diseases.
I think your premise that “You cannot possibly compare the European lifestyles you allude to with the lifestyles in the U.S. Everything about them is entirely different” isn’t true at all. Everything? Like what? It’s not Outer Mongolia we’re talking about.
The reason it’s illegal to walk or ride a bike on the expressway/Interstate is because it is stupid and extremely dangerous. I don’t even like changing a flat tire on the side of the road with cars and semi trucks whizzing by me at 70mph. Walking or riding a bike would seem all the more disconcerting. I don’t think these laws are some sort of conspiracy by the automakers or government to ruin the environment, it’s more a matter of public safety and preventing Darwinism from taking over population control. I also wouldn’t want to be on foot or a bicycle and experience what happened today on the highway. A semi had a trailer brake failure, which caused one hub to lock up on the trailer. There was smoke, sparks, and flying debris (chunks of tire and metal) everywhere. Nothing hit my car when it happened, but I was still glad to be inside a car so, if a large chunk of tire decided to come flying at me, it would hit my car rather than my face. Another example of the whole public safety thing.
It’s stupid and extremely dangerous to bike or walk there because it was designed that way. The point is that expressways can be built with bike and pedestrian lanes on the sides behind a barrier, like there is on the bridge near me. Crying “conspiracy theory” is a low form of discourse – it’s a fact that cars were emphasized in the planning of the suburbs and alternate transport was simply left out.
Try going to Denmark or Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, the streets are full of bikes that have right of way. In Denmark I never saw such courteous drivers before, who really gave way to bicyclists on the turning circles on the (yes) expressways. They are less in thrall to car culture there.
Going by car has hidden costs that get absorbed by society, that we all have to pay for. In effect when you go by car, I (and everyone else) helps pay for that, which is why it seems so cheap when it fact it exacts a huge toll on us all.
The rest of us are having a civil and rational discussion, so why do you suggest “we” all ignore it? It’s an insult that everyone here should react to your call to a herd mentality. If you don’t want to participate, fine, though your point is fallacious. The choice is not between cancer and a world without “cars, personal transportation, motorsports” etc, but about being forced to use polluting, harmful cars in the mass commute to work or to travel vs. greener, sustainable, cleaner, less harmful alternatives
Especially those coal fired ones… 