[mytailorisrich]

The majority of people do need a car even in Europe.

In France, unless you live in central Paris you do. In the UK, unless you live in central London yo do. Now, if you live around Paris or London you may be able to commute to work by public transport, and many people do, indeed, but many also commute by car, and the vast majority do outside of these areas. I'm sure the same applies to many other countries.

Edit: By the way I am French and living in England, so I know full well from experience how important cars are for the majority despite small islands of some town centres where people can do without.

> you live in an individual house

On the other hand, living in an individual house with a garden is much nicer than living in a flat and many people (including in Europe) either do that or aspire to that.

I'm usually getting a lot of flack here for saying this, but if preserving the environment means severe constraints on people's lives (housing, diet, transport, etc) then perhaps the way forward is to reduce the global population to a point where that everyone can enjoy life while still preserving the environment.

My vision of an ideal future is everyone able to live in nature, in a house with a large garden, rather than in tower blocks, in pods, only eating what's allowed.

[cycomanic]

>The majority of people do need a car even in Europe.

>In France, unless you live in central Paris you do. In the UK, unless you live in central London yo do. Now, if you live around Paris or London you may be able to commute to work by public transport, and many people do, indeed, but many also commute by car, and the vast majority do outside of these areas. I'm sure the same applies to many other countries.

Actually in France it's much more than Paris, living in Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulouse, Besancon to name just some cities I'm familiar with, you can live without a car. Similarly in a lot of German cities even down to population levels of 50,000 people you can often live perfectly fine without a car.

>> you live in an individual house

>On the other hand, living in an individual house with a garden is much nicer than living in a flat and many people (including in Europe) either do that or aspire to that.

And a lot of people at the same time want those houses to be right in the city centre as well, and can't afford it. Also I think the flat vs house trade-off is a huge function of type and quality of flats and the city planning.

>I'm usually getting a lot of flack here for saying this, but if preserving the environment means severe constraints on people's lives (housing, diet, transport, etc) then perhaps the way forward is to reduce the global population to a point where that everyone can enjoy life while still preserving the environment.

Sounds like a great idea. It's funny how people regard reducing carbon emissions by changing behaviour (e.g. moving to flats, using less cars ...) unrealistic, but then put suggestions like this forward. How would you reduce earths population by a factor 2 in the next 100 years? Even if you could somehow do this, there would be huge economic implications (much bigger than going to a zero carbon economy in the same time).

> My vision of an ideal future is everyone able to live in nature, in a house with a large garden, rather than in tower blocks, in pods, only eating what's allowed.

What are you willing to give up for that future, because the reduction in population that would make this possible doesn't come for free.

[mytailorisrich]

> It's funny how people regard reducing carbon emissions by changing behaviour (e.g. moving to flats, using less cars ...) unrealistic, but then put suggestions like this forward.

I'm not suggesting that this is unrealistic or that we should not reduce emissions.

However, my view is that we live and work to make our lives more interesting and enjoyable, not to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of squeezing ever more of us on the planet.

The end of population growth, and even more population reduction, are massive changes to the way society and our economy work, I fully agree.

But ultimately this is unavoidable if we accept that population cannot grow forever on a finite planet (and it is already expected that it will stabilise of even decrease by the end of the century). I'm suggesting that we should therefore embrace this and see it as a positive rather than a negative (which is the usual view) because it has tremendous potential for making quality of life better for all humans in a sustainable way.

[bovine3dom]

Transport options available to me living in mid-sized European city:

- Tram

- Train

- Electric bicycle hire

- Electric moped hire

- Bicycle hire

- Foot

- Taxi

- Bus

- Own bicycle / ebike / electric scooter / moped

- Aeroplane

- Own car (if you can afford ~€40k to buy a parking space)

- Ferry

Transport options available in American suburbs:

- Own car

It seems to me that most Americans are already living under severe restrictions : )

[vel0city]

I'm in an American suburb. Transport options available to me:

- Lightrail

- Train (Amtrack station downtown, accessible from lightrail)

- Bus (w/bike rack, bus stop 100ft from my front door)

- Electric bicycle hire

- Electric scooter hire

- Foot (nearest grocery is 1.2mi, nearest restaurants are 0.8mi)

- Taxi

- Own bicycle (bike trail from neighborhood to the office park where I work)

- Aeroplane (lightrail goes to one of the largest international airports)

- Own Car (large driveway, two car garage w/ electric vehicle charging)

- Own bicycle

- Own Motorcycle

[bovine3dom]

That sounds great, why aren't there more places like that in the US or why don't I hear about them? Do you find you have to use your car often?

(Although living 2km away from a supermarket is an alien concept to me. I have three within a hundred metres.)

[vel0city]

You might not hear about it as much because sadly the mass transit is underutilized by a lot of my neighbors. Also, people usually really prefer the freedom of having private transportation. Like, just riding a bicycle so max of ~5mi or so, I have maybe an option of three different supermarkets (six if you include pharmacies, which usually do stock some groceries). If you add a simple bus route, that adds maybe another two. If you choose to take a car, its literally more than dozen different super markets within a 10 minute drive which would have been an unrealistic bike ride or a complex bus path, which is not something you want to do with a week's worth of a family's amount of food you're carrying.

Its then the same thing when it comes to going to restaurants. I can easily walk to three or four restaurants. Bike, add another handful. Bus, add another dozen. A 10min drive? Literally a dozen options of practically any kind of food you could possibly imagine.

So you get less choices for more time if you ride a bike or take the bus. This is the math that most Americans do. Since its somewhat cheap to own a car for most of the US, they don't even stop to think of the cost of driving versus the cost of riding a bike or walking or taking the bus.

As to having a supermarket close by, the supermarkets near me as absolutely massive. The Kroger near me has at least 30 aisles, a full deli, full bakery, full butcher stand, full florist, fresh sushi station, massive produce section, and a hot and ready to go meal area. And its only about average sized for the area. If you've never seen them, modern American supermarkets are incredibly massive, larger than what I've seen of most European groceries. There's usually a bit of distance between them because they're such massive places. Its often not just a small hole in the wall grocer with a dozen or so aisles and a produce section.

[bovine3dom]

Thanks for replying, it's really fascinating.

I think part of the difference is density - my city is only about 3km x 3km. If I cycled 5 miles I'd end up in the next town along. I just looked on TripAdvisor to see how many restaurants were within that range but it maxxed out at 1,000+.

We do have big supermarkets too, at the edge of the city - about 75,000 sqft eyeballing it on Google Earth, apparently only a bit smaller than the average Walmart. I've never really seen why I would go there, except perhaps for ease of parking if I was going to buy a huge amount of food with a car. And this is France so even the tiny supermarkets make room for a bakery : )

So the maths here is mostly that cars are just negative. I'm very optimistic that electric bikes will begin to dominate transport in European cities - we just need to build the infrastructure to make sure that they're safe to ride.

[vel0city]

> about 75,000 sqft eyeballing it on Google Earth, apparently only a bit smaller than the average Walmart

The average Walmart is twice that size at ~180,000sqft.

[tialaramex]

It's not just London. I live in a city on the UK's south coast, I can drive but I don't, and I have never owned a car. Many people I know here also don't own cars, some of them can't drive. I've worked for outfits in London, in Nottingham (visiting about once a fortnight, train, hotel, train back) and here in Southampton, not a problem.

London is better because the Tories weren't able to abolish its public transport network and sell it off piecemeal - because the government's own workforce lives there and can't get anything done without that transport system, but even in a city with a dysfunctional semi-privatised mess of a transport system it's still just better than trying to turn everything into highways stacked upon highways forever so everybody can use private cars. There's actually a 70s-80s division of my city that was built with that approach, over the river, and it's awful there. But it's nice here and further into the city.

> perhaps the way forward is to reduce the global population to a point where that everyone can enjoy life

I definitely think people who believe this should agree which of you will die so that the others can "enjoy life". Are you volunteering? Because if not you don't have an actual proposal here, just ordinary selfishness.

[mytailorisrich]

> I definitely think people who believe this should agree which of you will die so that the others can "enjoy life". Are you volunteering? Because if not you don't have an actual proposal here, just ordinary selfishness.

Why do people feel the need to always make this sort of ridiculous comment?

Population cannot keep growing forever but it is still seen as positive and needed. First step would be to remove all incentive to have more children and to prioritise education and family planning worldwide. Then, we can think of how to adapt society to the consequences (which are coming anyway because that's already starting to happen). I'm only suggesting that we should embrace the trend instead of trying to delay it.