I don't own a car. I take public transit everywhere, and I do think personal vehicle use has real environmental costs. But I don't think driving is inherently unethical.

I live in Seoul, and the city makes transit easy for me. That's not a virtue. It's a condition I happen to benefit from. Some people live where transit barely exists, or where it doesn't get them to work, school, or care. In those places, driving is not optional.

The same is true of flying. In parts of Europe you can cross borders by train. In island nations, or in places with weak land connections, flying may be the only realistic option. “Just fly less” means very different things in those places.

A lot of what gets called my ethical choices comes from the conditions I live in. That makes me wary of turning structural failures into personal morality. If the alternative is missing or unusable, shaming people for not choosing it solves nothing.

When environmental harm gets framed as individual moral failure, attention shifts away from the structural changes that would actually matter. It's not an accident that oil companies spent decades popularizing the idea of the personal carbon footprint.

@hongminhee thanks for this post, as it shows that similar thoughts are thought all over the world and there are similar situations. In Germany @SheDrivesMobility is fighting for a change regarding the usage/options of public transport in thinner populated areas, as our mobility has to change. In his book „The Ministry for the Future“ the author proposed blimps for air travel and solar sail powered ships for overseas travel. We are not yet there, unfortunately.

@hongminhee nicely said, and I agree. (Also, I was lucky to use Chinese trains and Seoul subway fall 2024! I want more time in Seoul...I thought I would need my daughter to translate, but I found it easy to go places alone.)

@hongminhee Cosign

@hongminhee - 100% agree with this, change comes from a mix of personal decisions and addressing systemic failures, and what's ethically right will be dependent on circumstances. I guess the only universal ethical factor is that everyone should do as much as they reasonably can to enact positive change.

In any case, systems are the collective behaviour of individuals, so systemic change still starts with individual action, just of a different kind.

@hongminhee

The "unethical" is on the part of city designers, counties, cities, states, and countries that incentivize building for cars instead of for buses, trains, and bikes.

@hongminhee it's not a problem of personal choice, it's the design of policy we created leading to that personal choice.

@hongminhee

It's both personal and environmental.

@hongminhee
Very much agree.
I live in rural Scotland where transport links are less than patchy, and having a car is a necessity. Our car is electric, thankfully, but but we have to have it or I can't get to and from work. There isn't a public transport alternative that gets me there on time!

@hongminhee exactly.

I think flying is excessively demonised. It accounts for less than 2% of emissions. It's like 10% of surface transport. But by going after flying a certain class of eco people can look down both on those who drive up to the private jet terminal in a giant range over, and the people who are going 3 hours away for their one 2 weeks holiday of the year. Without actually tackling any of the far bigger sources of emissions

I wish there was more campaigning for public transport

@hongminhee yep.

Here, in Atlanta, public transit is so limited that you have to drive most of the distance you want to travel, just to get to the train system.

@hongminhee While I do agree with you in principle, I also think that certain personal choices can have a long tail of consequences that can be avoided. I find it good and necessary to make driving in places with good public transit very inconvenient. I do find it necessary to make local populations fight for more transit in more places. So it's not as simple as "countryside = driving". Why not increase living density wherever possible, so that transit and other sustainable options are possible?

@hongminhee I like how France is coupling it to rules. "If a destination can be reached by train below 2h (or similar it was) then a plane route there can be removed."

If we would turn all of this into similar logical rules the of course you would just not apply them to say... the canaries.

@hongminhee EXACTLY ALL OF THIS!

For me getting to a doctor - depending on severyty - would mean walking a kilometer, taking a bus ir worst case an ambulance.

For someone in the Maldives, it may be hours if not days on a boat or an air taxi.

@hongminhee brilliantly written!

@hongminhee @thibaultmol that is true. But people choose to fly to cities for a weekend break. To take a vacation on another continent instead of somewhere they can drive. I’m not saying I never do that. But these are choices, and they can be made differently.

@hongminhee One the one hand, yes. On the other hand, in many countries car owners are the biggest obstacle to reducing car usage because they tend to view minor inconvenience (e.g. one lane less, or a bit less parking) as equivalent to death threats.