Posted by Epoxy (66.26.80.19) on November 29, 2002 at 09:42:12:
In Reply to: Re: Pollution? Yeah! posted by Ryan (65.141.164.186) on November 29, 2002 at 03:10:36:
> People who drive SUVs in the United States live in the suburbs mostly. Metropolitan areas in the US are huge and because of this people put all kind of mileage on them just driving to work.
Yes. It is because of this - a long commute to work, people living in suburbs - that bicycles and mass transit are largely impractical in the US. Only if you live inside a city do such solutions work well. I can think of some exceptions (Metro-Rail in South Florida), but those are pretty particular to the geography of the area (the linear nature of development in Florida).
> Nobody bicycles or cross-country skis to work like they do in Finland. Transit in the US is pathetic. There is almost twice as much transit usage per person in Montreal and Toronto just to the north of us than in New York City. And there is twice as much transit usage per person in NYC as in Chicago, and there is twice as much transit usage per person in Chicago than in other large American cities. You get the picture.
That is interesting. I wonder why that is the case? Is it the way the cities are laid out? Fear of crime? Quality of transit systems? Maybe it is just a capacity issue, like perhaps the subways in NYC are maxed out but the population is just huge, but in Montreal there are millions fewer to ride?
> When you look at HOW MANY people in this country have SUVs, it doesn't even matter how far they are driven. It's still a major problem. But in this huge country with huge area cities, they are driven far. And the worst thing is that Americans don't look at other countries for solutions like they should. We'll have to destroy our environment and gas prices will have to be driven up to $5.00 a gallon before people start looking at using bikes and transit more. The force of historical inertia and American stubbornness is sad, really.
I see no evidence that automobile pollution is destroying the environment, at least in the US. I mean, what are the comparative levels of air pollution caused by agriculture, generation of electricity, commercial trucking, or manufacturing? Air quality in many cities around the world is much worse than most cities in the US, even though per-capita car ownership is highest here. Have lung cancer rates sky-rocketed because of evil SUVs, or are bird species being wiped out, or what? I read somewhere that the forest fires last year created more air pollution than all the human-generated waste combined.
I still believe the biggest problem with human existence (as it impacts the environment) is: human existence, and the tendency of organisms to breed maximally. Every new human wants what every other human has: a home, security, transport (of whatever variety), amenities, entertainment, etc. All of these come at the expense of what already exists. I think if people are concerned about the future of the planet then they ought not reproduce.
This doesn't mean that they shouldn't *also* seek improvements in technology, but the problems technology imposes on the environment are really secondary to the fact that there are 6 billion humans scurrying about paving over ecosystems, burning down forests so they can eat steaks, and digging up mountains so they can build more fuel-efficient hybrid cars.
I guess the attraction to demonizing SUVs is that they are so *visible*...because the ecosystem that got destroyed mining the steel for your Honda Insight is invisible - out of sight out of mind - then it's perfectly okay, and not a real issue at all in people's minds. The fact that the toxic waste from hybrid cars' batteries will pollute the earth somewhere when these cars are dumped in 10 years is also not an issue.