this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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The often ignored part of this argument is that 50% of the US population at least lives in rural states. I grew up in a town with less than 10k people.
I'm 100% for more public transit, I live in a city and take the train to work. But for most Americans they do not and for the foreseeable future will not have public transit. I'm all for fighting for it, but it will be centuries before that happens.
EVs are NOT a perfect solution. They are a stopgap. But right now with where the planet is we need something now, we can't wait for centuries.
As for the companies are worse? Yes, they are. That doesn't mean we should just be complacent. It means we should be demanding they change AND lowering our own emissions. It's going to take everybody changing their lifestyles. The rich are the worst because few of them cause a huge percentage, but that doesn't mean the huge chunk of carbon we all put out together is excused either.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6000 people and we had bus lines connecting it to larger cities and a bus line that went around the town as well, I never had to take a car anywhere and you usually didn't see more than 3 cars at once because everyone either walked or took the bus.
The problem with EVs is that won't be adopted at a rate to make a difference while building public transit could happen faster so as a stopcap they do nothing currently and probably won't until it's too late either while only working as a distraction while public transit could be just be built with the same political will behind it as EVs have.
Getting everyone to switch to EVs is not happening in several decades, for example here in Estonia people mostly buy old used cars because new cars are ungodly expensive EVs even more so, I have seen one EV in 10 years.
You may not believe it but there in Estonia you are lucky for your transit. My town of 15k ripped up their railroad in favor of a 4 lane highway. Americans love their car so much that they'll hurt themselves.
We also did not have a bus running through town, even the capital city of the state only had about 10 bus lines, all usually less than hourly, even during commutes.
So yes, I'm very pro transit, but people in America are literally centuries behind you folks in infrastructure
Yea, I have heard, that's why I'm saying a better solution would be to build proper public transit. Like a political group I'm a part of are trying to get the city to expand the tram network to the surrounding areas in the county. We got them to expand it to the harbor recently and the construction finished like at the second half of last year.
That's what I try to do here, I'm lucky that I'm in Seattle where we're having the largest rail expansion in the country right now. But most of the country is not so lucky. I'll always push for transit, that should be option 1. While waiting on transit, I say EVs are a better alternative than continuing to purchase ICE vehicles - which most of America is still doing. Push for transit, but individually use EVs if you still must drive.