@hongminhee

I would say cut back on unnecessary business travel to hotels and conference rooms but let people visit other countries and experience other cultures.

@hongminhee Many people actually do have a choice about where and how they live. My ability to live comfortably without a car is not merely happenstance, a happy effect of where I live, but because I made personal sacrifices to live where I live. These absolutely were ethical choices. Stop excusing failure to take personal action and accept personal disadvantage.

@hongminhee not sure tarnishing carbon footprint reporting as the "oil company choice" is particularly helpful. People do have agency - to varying degree (e.g., nobody obliges people to buy supersized US SUV's, fly private jets etc.). And producer based accounting is anyway what drives NDC's.

The moral angle of sustainability is imho a quagmire that we barely started unravel. E.g. people feel "normal" to inherit financial assets, how about inheriting also family environmental liabities? 🤔

@hongminhee So many people are forced into owning a car to get anywhere. Americans especially, in cities that only work for car owners. I'm lucky to live with plenty of transit options, in a relatively small European city I can cycle and walk around pretty easily (however much they tried to ruin it back in the 60s.) And it's well connected to the UK's national rail network. I can access many shops and services in my neighborhood. So I've got the option of being car free. So many don't.

@hongminhee I also don't own a car, I took a conscious choice to pick an area with good public transport before moving in... On the other hand I live in Ireland and yeah, it's either plane or ferry to get anywhere. I wish I could use trains.

@hongminhee
Seoul was great to live in, from a no-car perspective, even twenty years ago! It wasn't just the public transit either. I lived at the top of a hill, and people would come up our road selling heavy things like watermelons from their truck, so that customers didn't have to carry it all the way home by foot. The population density is what made that possible, I suppose.

@hongminhee As a resident of Hawaii Island in an area with little public transportation, thank you. When I lived in San Francisco, I mostly got around on public transit. Not an option yet. But I drive an electric vehicle and do what I can.

@hongminhee The level of implied impending doom is absolutely delightful. LoL

@hongminhee I have lived in many different situations and this can't be truer.

Sometimes I was in such a small town I had to take the car to buy bread.

Sometimes I only take the car to do long trips to badly connected cities.

Do I use the car as less as possible? Yes.

Do I still own a car because it is a need on my situation? Also yes.

"But you could rent a car and not own it" environmentally it would be the same. And more expensive to me.

@hongminhee Man... I hate everything written here. I just wished there was public transit where I lived to where I work existed. My work requires me to drive to get from point A to B. With that being said, the public transit I do have access to isn't half bad. Finding work close to me seems less than ideal, but if something does come about, I'd happily use it here in order to use my car less. I like this way of thinking. Thank you very much random internet person.

@hongminhee

First rate post. Thank you for taking the time to build this so well, for making the insight, for formulating it into a message, and for making the message respectful.

Ta.

@hongminhee The first ten words just made me hear Sham 69.

«I don't need a flash car to take me around
I can get the bus to the other side of town»

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JEsN3YFz-Kg

#Sham69

@hongminhee Driving might not be optional for some people, but the normalised way of driving actually prevents others from, for example, taking a bike.

Taking a bike medium distances used to be a normal activity in many parts of the world where it's now dangerous because of people driving their cars too fast, too close, and too much.

If a car driver consider bikes and pedestrians annoyances that are "in the way" on a country road, the driver is forcing car culture on them.

@hongminhee So much this. Even while there's a moral dimension, it's not black and white, and the system of washing harms as 'personal responsibility' when people who reinforce the systems have names and addresses is not good at all.

@hongminhee

Public transport to get to/from employment is fine, if one say works in an office, a school etc, you turn up and stay in the same place all day. However if you work somewhere and need to visit clients, you need to get to them, and public transport does not go everywhere, this is the case if you work as a care worker, solicitor and other jobs.

@hongminhee I don't own a car or a driver's license. I live downtown, so I walk, run, and take public transit everywhere. And I agree 100%. It's like you said, our choices depend on what's available where we live. Blaming people for these choices lets the real problems go unfixed. Who am I to judge others?

@hongminhee same thing w plastic recycling. its available in my current municipality, but who knows if what i put into the recycling bin actually gets recycled. in my hometown, their recycling program only ran for 5 years because the city cldnt sell their trash anymore.

@hongminhee

For ne, the question is how many externalities am I willing to impose on future generations. What share of the worlds CO2 emissions am I willing to be personally responsible for due to my decisions?

What proportion of the planets non-renewable resources am I willing to consume? How many earths would it take to maintain my lifestyle, and who pays the consequences - my grandkids in 50 years, or the global south?

@hongminhee If it is true what I read days ago, that the tiny percentage of billionaires flights accounts for 50% of planes emissions, it is so clear who should fly less. And why they won't.

@hongminhee
It's the dose that makes the poison, is a saying in Germany and in my opinion that fits good for the things you pointed out.

Driving and flying isn't the problem but how it's done, regarding to the technology that's used to do it, to this day a very pollution heavy one but there are cleaner alternatives that work as well.

Like you already mentioned, it's a structural problem and not a individual moral failure. 😉

(Added some hashtags for better visibility in the Fediverse, feel free to use them in your own post.)
#Transportation #PublicTransport #Public #Transit #Car #Plane #Driving #Flying #City
@bestiaexmachina