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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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While I'm a card carrying bike nut and plant-based eater, I feel we can make more of a difference encouraging people to do things that are less all in.
Work commute too far right now? Maybe start replacing the small car trips with bike trips.
Veganism unthinkable? Maybe try a meatless day or two a week.
Something people can wrap their heads around, and after trying, realise they haven't died.
I'm not a vegan but, are there really people who eat meat 7 days a week?
I live in regional Australia, there are people who eat meat every meal.
Does it not get boring?
I'm not the one to ask, I don't eat meat.
While I'm also a card carrying bike but and plant-based eater, I think that in many places the answer is also better public transport. When I lived in a big city, busses, subway stations, trams, etc were always 5-10 minutes away, both walking and waiting for the next one.
I live in a smaller town now of ~40,000. However, only ~13,000 live in the actual "town", roughly 20 minutes of walking. The rest of the people live anywhere from 10-60km away. Grocery stores can be anywhere from 10-30km away. Iove biking into work when the weather is nice, but it also snows six months out of the year. Even for a "small trip", you're looking at 20km round trip in hilly terrain to the nearest anything that isn't a neighbor. Busses exist, but out in the countryside they'll come twice around 6am and then twice around 6pm, and none at all during weekends. So if you're not working in the middle of the week, you're SOL unless you're prepared to spend 12 hours in town.
It's also a chicken and egg problem though, everyone has a cat because public transport isn't great. But public transport isn't great because there's no demand, because everyone has a car.
This issue is definitely not only in my town, 70% of the country is dotted with small towns like this and the same issues. Not everyone is physically capable of biking 20km on a summers day, let alone in -20°C on a half meter of snow, so they have almost no choice but to drive.
I live in a town of about 20,000. The adjacent regional centre (80k people) is about 35km away. We're the opposite of snowy, we have highs in the mid 20s here right now in the dead of winter, high 30s to mid 40s with high humidity in summer. I bike commuted to the regional centre for years, but again, I'm aware I'm a bit extreme.
Agreed better public transport is also important. We're lucky, our buses run about hourly throughout the day, you are a bit screwed at night.
The luxury! It's been a bit of an annoyance for us since we moved out of the town center and into the countryside... If we want to have a night out with drinks involved, either gotta book a taxi or have a nice friend to drive us (or one of us just doesn't drink, but that sort of defeats the purpose of us going out for drinks together...)
The culture here is also just more car-centric. If I bike to work, which honestly is downhill almost all the way, all my coworkers look at me like I'm some Olympic athlete. Like cmon, it takes less than 40 minutes, it's not exactly impressive.