[apo]

> “What Elon Musk wants to produce is a lifestyle,” Zulkifli said Wednesday when asked about the entrepreneur’s comments. “We are not interested in a lifestyle. We are interested in proper solutions that will address climate problems.”

Electric cars are poor, even counterproductive stand-ins for long term solutions such as public transportation and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle. They hide a multitude of externalities forced on the public and not paid for directly by owners or manufacturers.

Climate change aside, it's not hard to imagine a country as densely populated as Singapore opposing electric cars.

[ozborn]

Electric cars are not at all "counterproductive" for long term solutions to climate change. They are one piece in the big picture of fixing climate change, drawdown.org ranks electric vehicles as #26 on their solution list. (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank)

Also, by your qualifying "long term" I assume you think they are fine short and even intermediate term? Given the urgency of the climate crisis, short and intermediate term matters - a lot.

I agree with you that public transportation and the "elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle" (hard to define, but giving you the most charitable interpretation here) is very important. However, we don't have to choose one or the other, the decision as to which car to buy is typically an individual decision and I would think it correlates well with support for greener public transportation. Additionally, I fine it hard to believe that even in the long term there will be no need electric cars in more distant areas. Finally, development of electric cars and their infrastructure will also support electric public buses used for public transportation.

I'm glad Singapore is pursuing public transportation (a no-brainer in a city state) but the claim that it is not a "proper solution" isn't helpful and worse, it assumes that there is a solution. There isn't. There are MANY solutions which will be implemented at different speeds, with different levels of effectiveness and by many different organizations and individuals.

In general, it is better to encourage any useful efforts on this front rather than arguing that solution X isn't "proper" or less effective than solution Y.

[thatfrenchguy]

> Electric cars are not at all "counterproductive" for long term solutions to climate change. They are one piece in the big picture of fixing climate change, drawdown.org ranks electric vehicles as #26 on their solution list. (https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank)

That thing is literally written by Americans who are 95% likely of living in a car suburb. Of course I’d also put electric cars as a necessity if I were them, they don’t want to change their lifestyle (which, you know, is why we’re in this in the first place).

[augstein]

So serious question: What should they do?

Some solutions come to mind, but they would obviously only work for a fraction of the people currently living in suburbs:

- Work remotely

- Move closer to the city

- Connect suburbs to viable public transportation solutions

[AnthonyMouse]

> Connect suburbs to viable public transportation solutions

This is the thing that can't work. Public transit inherently requires density. Otherwise you have a bus that only comes twice a day and is still mostly empty because there aren't enough people per unit area to fill it.

Expecting commuter rail to eliminate cars in Spokane or Colorado Springs is delusional. It only works at all in major cities and even most of the cities in the US don't have enough density to make it really efficient -- and are prohibited by zoning laws from building at the density necessary to make that happen.

More to the point, even if we fixed the zoning today, it would take many years to actually build the density required to make it work, and until then people are still buying cars. And electric cars are better for the climate than gasoline.

[asdff]

It's way better to ride an ebike to the commuter rail station than a tesla to work. Build excellent bike networks for the suburbs. It's as cheap as sidewalk and/or paint.

[DoctorOetker]

I want to know AnthonyMouse's response to your argument: the treshold density in walking distance versus the treshold density in cycling distance will scale quadratically with the distance (since area is quadratic function of the radius), an electric bike that extends your range twice, will result in a 4 times higher "effective population density" for public transport to make sense.

Edit: just adding that any environmentally responsible form of personal transport doubles range, also results in quadratically (so four times) fewer stations and stops to be built, and linearly (so only half) the total length of rail or road to be laid and maintained

[thatfrenchguy]

If you build the rail, density will come. Bikes are also cool.

[JetSpiegel]

> density will come

Unless the NIMBY blocks high-rises.

[bazooka_penguin]

Restructuring communities around bus hubs doesnt sound like an awful idea to be honest. Even if everyone had a car, since it's the suburbs, it would probably cut down on day to day traffic and allow people to have more affordable housing.

[izacus]

> Electric cars are poor, even counterproductive stand-ins for long term solutions such as public transportation and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle. They hide a multitude of externalities forced on the public and not paid for directly by owners or manufacturers.

Sure, but that's the solution you get from people who've never really experienced a well designed public transportation system. It's essentially a "faster horse" solution to traffic pollution issue which doesn't address the reasons behind the insane amount of tarmac space in modern US cities.

[lonelappde]

People aren't dumb. Building a city requires decades of coordinated action by thousands to millions of people, and it only works if rich people volunteer or are coerced to give up the disproportionate amount of real estate they enjoy, and no one gets a luxurious amount of space. It's not a matter of individuals seeing the light.

[timerol]

It's also a matter of the government allowing a city to be built. This sounds trivial, but is actually the biggest component to the lack of affordability in SF and NYC.

There are places where a lot of people want to live, but the gov't is actively preventing housing being built there. Instead of allowing the next increment of development (SFH -> missing middle -> mid-rise apartment buildings -> high rise apartment buildings), many US cities do their best to block development wherever possible. The only developments that can make it through the process are 1) huge, 2) well-backed by capital, and 3) hugely profitable.

We need less Hudson Yards, and more of https://twitter.com/mnolangray/status/1163863367439802369

[wbl]

NYC billionaires did not stop nyc from being a city.

[everdrive]

Very serious question here:

Do you propose that everyone should live in a city in the future? Or that public transit should extend into the suburbs?

[baby]

If your question was serious you would focus on starting with public transportation in cities, which the US lacks.

[_fq4v]

Which us city lacks public transit in the city center?

Not trying to be thick but in all american cities ive lived in, there was sufficient transit in the urban core. I understand arguments that it doesnt extend satisfactorily to the suburbs but your claim is much more specific

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem isn't that there is no transit in the city center, the problem is that the city center isn't allowed to expand or increase in density, so more people can't actually live there.

Then more people live in the suburbs, but you need a car to get from the suburbs to the city. Then you get more demand for roads and parking in the city and people stop using the public transit even there.

[rumanator]

> Then more people live in the suburbs, but you need a car to get from the suburbs to the city.

Your assertion ignores the fact that network coverage means nothing if the time to traverse the network just to get from point A to point B is much more expensive, time-wise and economically, than simply using personal transportation to get to where you want to go.

[AnthonyMouse]

That isn't inherently true in the city center. If you have the population density to run subways every ten minutes that aren't subject to traffic jams, you can get from one part of the city center to another faster on a subway than in a car. But that only works if both of your endpoints are on a subway line, which requires more people to live in the city center than they currently do.

[tathougies]

> the problem is that the city center isn't allowed to expand or increase in density,

This I totally agree with

[baby]

Compare that to asian/european cities and you understand why even in large cities in the US people prefer to use uber.

[tathougies]

I've traveled extensively in Europe. While transit was available in most cities, and usable, aside from the real metros, like London and Paris and Barcelona, and a few gems, like Budapest, transit was often not frequent enough and clearly took longer than a car. The reason I took transit was it was cheaper in absolute terms, and, as a student, my time wasn't worth much. Also, that was pre-uber. I daresay that if I visited those places today -- places like Oslo, Prague, Porto, Rome, Dublin, etc -- I would have taken uber. It would be faster, and my time is worth more.

The only Asian cities I've spent any noticeable time in are Bombay and Hong Kong. Bombay -- I guess it's called Mumbai now -- is a shit show, in every sense of the word. It's one of the largest cities in the world. Transit is awful and dangerous. The only reason my parents took it growing up was because when they were young they were too poor to afford anything else. When we go back now, as rich foreigners, we always take a private driver or taxis everywhere. It's just not worth it.

Hong Kong is a different story of course, due to the British influence and the fact that it was Britain when I last visited. Also, its constraints as a small island mean transit is a must have. And I would agree that it's transit system is better than most American cities.

That all being said, the American cities with densities approaching that of London, Hong Kong, etc all do have rather good transit options. As I stated elsewhere, the issue is the US has no large cities in the European and Asian sense. Our cities are sparsely populated. Yes, a lot of that is due to government policy, but it's also due to the fact that America is -- for the most part -- completely empty land.

[stjohnswarts]

I agree, the buses are usually empty to half full. Unless you get soldiers marching people out to buses the US to go work for the "greater good" everyone is going to use cars until the traffic jams become simply too long.

[asdff]

I wonder what city you are in. My bus to work is standing room only and double length.

[everdrive]

No disagreement there. I'm just curious what this looks like if we advance our infrastructure enough. I'm not suggesting we prioritize suburbs at all. (I wasn't actually suggesting any course of action)

I am curious if the intent here is that people should not live in the suburbs or the country, just in cities where transportation can be most efficient.

[moosey]

The car is one of the ultimate goals of individualism: constant access to what Mills called "Negative Liberty", essentially the freedom to do whatever physical thing you desire to do at any given time. Unfortunately, that means that the subject must self-coerce themselves into believing it's ok that everyone own a car, and something that we can maintain forever. I wonder how many people in the US refuse to believe climate science simply because the idea of losing their car is physically painful.

When individualism leads us down a path of bad decision making (building electric cars rather than the far superior collective path of building up mass transit), I'm always reminded of a scene from the Cixin Liu "Rememberance of Earth's Past" books, where an individualist decision is made that ultimately dooms the people of the solar system, and the person who would have been the true hero of the story only gets to tell that decision maker that they are a child before he is sent off to prison.

This is essentially our battle against climate change right now: technologists trying to make enough toys to keep the rabble of toddlers happy so that we can actually fix the problem.

[davidivadavid]

Owning a car is absolutely not an example of negative liberty. Owning a car is a privilege. Negative liberty is the freedom not to have your basic freedom infringed (it's essentially analogous to the non-aggression principle). Not the freedom to do "whatever physical thing you desire to do."

[chrisco255]

There's huge tradeoffs between cars and mass transit that you're completely failing to acknowledge. Mass transit works fine when you have a high density urban core. It doesn't work well for suburban or rural populations, which is most of the land area of the U.S. Not everyone is going to live in a dense city nor should they.

[outlace]

Even if electric vehicles do not substantially reduce greenhouse gases, they do pollute the air far less assuming you have cleaner electricity generation.

Moreover, ending the reliance on unsustainable fossil fuels is an end in itself. It would reshape global geopolitics and of course there’s a ton of destruction that happens from oil spills and oil extraction. Going full electric has many benefits beyond just reducing greenhouse gases.

[spodek]

> long term solutions such as public transportation and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle

Would it be too off-topic to mention the most effective solution: having fewer children?

> a country as densely populated as Singapore

Nope, population control seems on-topic.

[fzeroracer]

Population control isn't the issue because we're already consuming far more than we should per person. Even if you completely stopped the growth rate of all nations, that doesn't change the fact that the first world lifestyle is at odds with climate change.

[spodek]

Population and per-capita consumption are both issues.

[esoterica]

The birth rate in Singapore is one of the lowest in the world at 1.14 children per woman, far below the replacement rate of 2 and below the United States at 1.8.

How much further do you expect it to fall?

[reirob]

From all the cities that I used, Singapore was the one where I used most often taxis, because they were so cheap. It may have changed since 2004, but I think even for Singapore having electric cars, even for taxis might be better. What am I missing?

Other than this I agree that for cities public transportation, together with good infrastructure for bicycles is very important, because in most cities driving your car yourself is so bad: it is slow, demands a lot of attention, getting a parking place is often very difficult.

[pcdoodle]

What about inspiration? Huh? The fact that you can buy salvaged tesla batteries and experiment for an even greener future. We gotta take steps, and this company is feeding the american keep up with the joneses framework along with car heads desire for horsepower. Don't give me this externalities BS. We need it mass produced because it's a stepping stone.

[stjohnswarts]

I don't agree. I think it's a positive. Not everyone agrees with your utopian public transportation and cutting back to as minimalist a life as possible.

[Bizarro]

...and the elimination of the suburban commuter lifestyle

How are the central planners planning that one?

[CydeWeys]

If you correctly price in the negative externalities of burning gasoline, then the suburbs suddenly get a lot more expensive, and it makes more sense to densify.

[scottlocklin]

It's not working well in France with the Giletes Jaunes. Basically taxing the suburbs told a large social class of working poor people they have no right to exist. I suppose you could try warehousing them in the projects, but good luck with that.

[DennisP]

Also makes more sense to stay in the suburbs and get electric cars.

[asdff]

Half the lifetime pollution from a car happens during manufacture. Lets not buy more shit that does the same a-b.

[DennisP]

Building the physical infrastructure for all those suburbians to live in the cities would also have a carbon impact.

In practical terms, in five years or so it's not going to be hard to get people to buy electric cars instead of gasoline, but it will still be practically impossible to get them to give up their houses, back yards, and cars to go live in the city.

[xondono]

whatever you do with fossil fuel prices, it won’t do much if you don’t price in the negative externalities of zoning restrictions

[Bizarro]

All your solution does is hurt middle-class and poor people.

[Scoundreller]

Write them a cheque. Or increase the amount of income you can earn before income tax is paid.

Then they get all the benefits of conservation without being poorer, while particularly punishing those that don’t rearrange their lifestyles.

[selimthegrim]

Doesn’t Canada do this?

[Scoundreller]

Yes. I don’t quite trust the government’s accounting, but yes.

[SauciestGNU]

I am largely opposed to regressive measures like this, but in this case I tend to believe the continued survival of our species and our planet supercede concerns about temporary inequalities imposed by our solutions.

[noonespecial]

Still we must be vigilant that our solutions don't accidentally (or intentionally!) factor down to "there's too many humans, lets starve out some of those poors".

[SauciestGNU]

I completely agree with you about that. There are a number of climate change solutions (particularly around population control measures) that land uncomfortably close to eugenics. As a side note, my wife and I are not having children precisely because of the climate crisis. We don't want to bring children into a world that is looking increasingly unsurvivable.

[wait-a-minute]

There are much better solutions that target the actual large polluters. People living in suburbs is a small percentage of total global emissions, especially when you consider transportation of goods. Transporting goods across the oceans is a far larger percentage of emissions than people living in suburbs.

If the goal is to continue to survive as a species, there are much more effective strategies to implement.

[kasey_junk]

You can (and we need) to do both.

Suburban living on average doubles the climate impact of the same number of people in a city. The OP notes correctly that this externality is not correctly priced in the current market.

[stjohnswarts]

Police enforcement at gun point then. Are you good with that?

[wait-a-minute]

The amount of carbon emitted from people driving to and from suburbs is actually a small amount compared to the real big polluters. It makes no sense to target such a giant restructuring of society for so little gain.

[mistrial9]

instead of trying to quantify this statement, let's look at trends and actions in governance (since this is not new)

from the Global Climate Action Summit 2018, convened by CA Gov Jerry Brown:

Every 5 weeks, China adds a fleet of electric buses equivalent to the entire London bus fleet – 9500 buses. Technologies are now market ready, societally acceptable and economically attractive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport by 51% by 2030, through electric vehicles, mass transit and adapting the global shipping fleet. A complete global and technological shift to electric vehicles now looks very likely and, given recent announcements from cities, countries and car manufacturers, is possible between 2020 and 2030. However, the transformation will slow dramatically without strong national and city policies, for example setting target dates to ban internal combustion engines.

[antoineMoPa]

Any data supporting this statement?

[falcolas]

Have a look at a google search on “cargo ship pollution” and draw your own conclusions.

Simply moving cargo, the lifeblood of our economy, across the oceans burns hundreds of tons of fuel oil - releasing more (and more varied) pollutants into the atmosphere and oceans. One ship, by some reports, emits as many emissions as some 50 million (or more) cars. And there are well over 9,000 on the ocean.

[vkou]

This is a common misconception.

Cargo ships pollute more SO2 and NO2 than personal automobiles. Those two gases cause acid rain. Acid rain is a problem, yes.

They pollute a lot less CO2, though, which is the gas that is actually going to kill us if we don't stop emitting it at the rates we emit it today.

A cargo ship is the most efficient form of transport, in terms of CO2/kg/km.

A personal automobile is the least efficient.

[wait-a-minute]

And that is why researchers are proposing we bring back Zeppelins! Zeppelins that are 10x as long as the Empire State Tower is tall, to be exact. Way better for the environment, can be operated autonomously, and cheap to produce.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/zeppelins-stopped-flyin...

[lorenzhs]

Those numbers are for some very specific substances (which are also bad, nobody's contesting that), but not for CO2-equivalent emissions. It's the same kind of dumb number as that cloth bag reuse count vs plastic. Technically true for some aspect, but utterly misleading.

[thatfrenchguy]

The Wikipedia article does not say this: « It also includes greenhouse gas emissions. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates that carbon dioxide emissions from shipping were equal to 2.2% of the global human-made emissions in 2012 »

[nostalgk]

As well, is this really something that harmful to the environment? I get that people driving > people not driving when it comes to climate harm, but I don't want to live in a city and I feel like there are much larger climate concerns (in manufacturing, for example) that outweigh passing the blame onto suburban commuters.

[asdff]

Smog from freeway traffic is very real and harmful to public health.

[tinus_hn]

Electric cars are not perfect. Better keep burning fossil fuels!

[lonelappde]

The most ecological thing to do is to kill ourselves. Any environmental plan has to allow for people to love rewarding lives, or else it's not a good environment for humans.