this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
1103 points (96.3% liked)

xkcd

8773 readers
9 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Alt text:

An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (18 children)

Electric cars is not the solution. Sure, it's an improvement, but for a real solution you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation. Trains, trams, busses, whatever. Build it in a way that doesn't suck. Assuming american, the US had (past tense) amazing train/tram networks decades ago. Every warehouse had a rail spur, and since walking was considered ok people weren't obese fatasses.

I drive a scooter. It is possible to live without a car, although it does have some difficulties sometimes. If your job is within 10 miles of your home or less, then you don't need a car for your commute. If I can do it so can you. I'd still rather take a bus, if it existed.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Idk why ppl are down voting this, bro is literally just advocating for public transportation

Ig it's all the insecure pickup truck bros

Edit: typos

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I think people (not me, I agree with glitchdx, overall) are probably down voting because it's a classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, with a healthy dose of smug mixed in. Smugness is a great dialectical tactic if you hope to entrench people deeper into their views, rather than convince them to consider alternatives through reasoned discussion.

Do I agree that ideally we'd have robust public transit and increased usage of smaller, greener personal transport solutions? Of course I do.

But, incrementalism is progress. Valuable progress. We could argue whether it's more likely to get us to the aforementioned vision of robust public transit or not, but history has proven time and time again that progress takes time and is resisted tooth and nail by monied interests. I don't like it either. I want to wave a wand and have everything change. OP is right. Electric cars are not the solution. But treating symptoms while you work on curing the disease is best practice.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)