Boycott Cars man.

Thank god the cult guy who is actually too much of a wus to join the cult is gone.


edited it slightly since he's a lifetime supporter

 

I have a bike and am proud. for going long distance, I go for carpooling or the bus. I'd rather burn calories than burn gasoline, i'd rather smell flowers than new car smell glue. I bike everywhere, and rarely need to go anywhere farther than a couple miles.

 

Man... that was one heated debate. I walk everywhere I go. I won't lie it's partially because I don't have my licence. (The bereau has screwed me out of it a few too many times.) But it's also because I want to try an' help our Mom get out of her slump we've put her into. Oh an' no offense to either of u guys who were fightin' through most of this post but arguments are the worst an' least effective way to get through to other people. Perhaps if you an' the majority of the human race tried to solve it with as few insults an' abusive words as you could we'd be at peace. Yes I know if you look at a few of my posts I've argued but I try to stay neutral in all I post. Peace out

 

Consider yourself fortunate, you're not paying car payments, taxes, insurance, registration, and, worst of all, gas.

Cars are a necessary evil for many of us. It's really bad in the US, 'cause our public transportation system sucks, and the whole culture revolves around owning a car, unless you live in a big city like New York or something.

I go to work...so I can buy more gas...so I can go to work...it's an addiction.

And you're right, we gotta chill, especially since we all have the same ultimate goals, we can't change the world if we can't get along.

 

have you ever tried to get head while driving a bicycle? its not easy...
but what the hell, I would be willing to try.
We would all need horses though.
and they would need to rip up all the pavement (yay!)
I would support that.
Plus all these fucking Oil guys like faggot ass BUSH would be screwed.
ha ha ha ha

if we go with the bikes, i want a pee-wee herman type bike!

 

I personally dont drive, however I plan on going on a trip to california to just travel the coast. A bus for that matter
However I longboard skateboard. Its a great mode of transportation I skate 20 miles a day sometimes. Bikes rock too...also scooters are great, 100 miles to the gallon.
If I could get by without driving I would, but I play drums in a band so...

 

FUCK man, ripping up the pavement....
Everyone here should try longboarding. Seriouslly. It will open new doors.

 

I agree with boycotting automobiles. I had a car at one point and i never had money, now i dont own one i can save. I see alot of people would totally fight this boycotting notion because of reasons that werent around 60 years ago. Pre WW2 everyone rode public transportation like railroads and buses and only the rich had cars, but because of POOR city planning and transportation planning and the auto industry destroying the public transportation infrastructure we have massive traffic jams everyday. I for one would love to see old style city planning so people can HAVE a choice to walk, or ride a bus, or train, or drive. We dont have that luxury today. Did you know 40% of travel is within 5 miles, which is IDEAL for walking, bikes, or public transport? Before WW2 cities were laid out in a grid pattern and "downtown" is where you would do your shopping and/or worked. Public transportation is perfect for this kind of commuting pattern, but now they have office parks, shopping malls, big box retailers, and put the hospitals and main post offices in the suburbs. That killed public transport as we know it. A car based sociaty hurts everyone. The young and the elderly are the most affected. The children cant go any where now without mom or dad driving them. The elderly cant get to doctors or grocery stores because there is NO public transport in alot of "communities". I qouted that because everything is fractured in these towns and cities so how can it be a community?.

 

Hello Siknik,

So true. Most people have cars because they need them to get to work
so they can pay for their cars (and insurance and parking and driveways
and garages and repairs and gas and interest on car loans...)

Pretty funny, really. But not quite that simple. (see below).

Right on. But don't forget this: The car lifestyle, because of its incredible
inefficiency (like all industry) employs an enormous number of people.
In the typical "community" this might be 1/5 to 1/4 of the people living
there.

And it also creates enormous profits, most of which go pension funds, private
retirement plans, college funds, charitable foundations and insurance funds
(not to just the rich, as so many ignorant people believe). There are also
billions in direct charitable donations and in taxes that go to every layer
of government.

Not to mention the "defensie" industries and the "defense" department,
which employ tens ofmillions of people directly and indirectly and largely
exists because of the need to acquire new lands and resources and
markets and cheap labor pools to make the incredibly greedy car
lifesyle possible.

All corporations have to grow. If they don't, then everyone is stuck where
they are until someone above them dies or retiries. And that's the end
of the American Dream. Which is the Planet's Nightmare.

You mention above that once upon a time only the rich had cars. That's
still true, It's just a global economy now. If you own a car, you are one
of the richest people in the world.

This is but one of the reasons myself and many others believe that
this system is rotten from its very foundations and that the only real
solution is to re-write civilization.

Build a new one from the ground up.

The Liberal=Progressives want us to believe that it's a mismanagement
problem, that if we will just trust them and let them run things that everything
will be all right.

But this is obviously not so. How long has their "environmental movement"
been growing? 37 years since the first Earth Day? And every year the
planet has been in worse shape than the year before and the rate of destruction
keeps increasing dramatically.

LIttlefoot













If we were to go over to mass transportation and walking and bicycles,
there would be a massive depression that


The more efficient forms of transportation

 

I like hybrids, I think the government should give every single driver a FREE hybrid. Bicycles are a great idea, too or going by train or bus. Saves a lot.

 

yeah man i aint getting a car my thumb can get me where i need to be, if not bus, bike, train

 

But the trouble with hybrids is that they are NEW and have to be MANUFACTURED, thus doing even more damage to the environment. There are so many THOUSANDS of old cars still on the road. If they all were taken off the road for the sake of the environment, and new hybrids were manufactured and sold to take their place, the harm done all the way from the manufacturing on down to the methods of doing the jobs required to make the money to purchase the new cars would probably surpass the harm done by the existing cars...
There are so many things which CAN be fixed, like reorganizing the way cities and suburbs are set up, creating situations where so many personal cars are not necessary, and in the process, allowing the small family businesses to once again thrive.

Our "government" and our accepted social ways are our biggest enemy. We are handed many of these wonderful but expensive THINGS, then when we very obligingly work to buy these THINGS, we are told we are bad because these things we are buying are causing harm to the environment. So they offer us NEW things to buy to replace the old ones, even tho the old may be just as functional as ever. It goes for cars and everything else too. The "throw away society". They centralize and regionalize everything, which causes local businesses and schools to shut down and the need to travel longer distances for necessities, then they bitch because we use too much gas and oil...

We get all caught up in what kind of car we have, or what our diet consists of, or what sort of lightbulbs we use, as if it would make one bit of difference what one individual does in the greater scheme of things. But in reality we need to be changing the way we are fed the propaganda of how we must live. We need to realize that those who are OFFERING us all these alternatives are the REAL criminals. After all, what do you get when you offer a small child cookies? Most likely they will take the cookies and want more. Even if it might be bad for their teeth or some such thing. But instead of the guy who gave the kid the cookies getting in trouble, the kid gets in trouble and gets scolded for eating something that's bad for them.

So, it's all about alternatives. Thinking outside the box. I think we need to TAKE BACK OUR WORLD from those money/power hungry folks who have created the situations that pretty much FORCE us into doing things that AIN'T GOOD for the environment by not offering the alternatives we need. And then hope for the best. We can all do our part, but that's all. If we don't feed the greed by buying into the system, then maybe they'll figure out it's not working any more. It's that way in all things.

 

The automobile industry got rid of the railways for this reason, ironic how this vision of yesteryear's independence has led to our demise today. Public transportation, in the form of trains and buses, needs to be revitalised and integrated into our culture so that it's viable and the American people can accept it. Cars need to be down-sized and made more efficient, but if they can make public transpo work, they can tax the shit out of cars, maybe have a sliding scale where people with hummers pay the most.

Then there's farmers and tradesmen, who need some form of machinery to function. That throws a monkey wrench into the equation because
now you've gotta determine if they should be taxed based on a need for the machinery, and that opens doors for corruption. A mileage tax might work well, since local farmers and tradesmen wouldn't drive so far for what they need to do. This would also encourage more independent local economies.

This all goes against the grand design of what's happening now with globalisation and corporate domination, but that could change. The oil crisis we're going through now is, on some levels, a good thing, because it's giving people incentives to get off their asses and consider alternatives.

The change won't happen all of a sudden, but gradually. A sudden shift would destroy the economy, but I suspect we're headed in the right direction, the writing's on the wall, people wanna do the right thing...

 

Right on.

Littlefoot

 

Hybrids are based upon the specious idea that the only harm done to the
environment by cars is what comes out of their tailpipes.

When that accounts for only about 5% of the problem.

Building on what Earthmother had to say:

Mines, smelters, metal refineries (like open-hearth furnaces for
steel), coking plants, rolling mills, foundries, assembly plants,
roads and power supplies and water supplies and fuel and
building materials and heavy equipment needed for this end of things alone....
All of the pollution of the air and soil and water and land clearing involved...

Then there's the road/parking/repair/fueling infrastructure needed for
the everyday use of cars.

And the fuel infrastructure, from wells to pipelines to wharves to storage
depots to refineries to tanker trucks and railroad cars.

Not to mention the military industries and bases needed to control the
world's petroleum reserves. I do not believe there is a single military
base that is not now, or destinated to be, a SuperFund site.

If you really want to talk about preserving the health of the environment,
you are going to have to drop cars from the equation.

There'll be an Earth-friendly car just about the time there's a peaceful WMD.

Littlefoot

 

Hey Mellow Yellow,

That sounds wonderful, but, no offense intended, I've been hearing plans like
that for about 40 years now. And none of them have ever come to fruition,
no matter how hard good people have tried.

The reason is simple and painful: You can't make a silk purse from a sow's
ear. All over the world, for centuries now, people of numerous cultures have
made a variation of the same mistake. They have thought that they could
take what they want from this System (the Industrial-Capitalist Empire)
and decline what they don't want.

None of those cultures, starting with the 'Native Americans', exist anymore.

Those nations and other large cultural groups that are still trying are classified
as "terrorist" states and cultural groups by the ICE. Just as the 'Native Americans'
who resisted the theft of their lands and the destruction of their cultures were
referrred to as "terrorists" in the newspapers (the only real media) of early
America.

An Earth-friendly, peaceful, and non-exploitative (of people) civilization
is utterly inimical to a civilization like the ICE. Like water and oil, they
can't possibly coexist peacefully. The ICE will allow no one to refuse to
participate in its economy or to refuse to make its natural resources available
to the ICE.

Yes, it is possible to mount an effective and non-brutal defense against the
ICE, to use shields instead of weapons, but not if you are dependent upon
trade with it. Or with anyone.


LIttlefoot

"Industry _is_ violence." --Ghandi

 

Well it seems like Littlefoot and Earthmother are on the same page as me. when i saw the bickering i couldnt pick a side I wasnt really trying to totally ban cars(even thou that would be nice) i just want people to use their cars less, like i said in an earlier post 40% of car usage can be negated. Imagine more people walking or biking and getting the excercise they need to stop this obesity trend. I know a few people who bike or walk to work daily, and they save money and stay in shape at the same time! I hope more people listen to this messege.

 

everyone must face and slay their own demons.
everyone who is economicly coerced into indenturing themselves to them, is as much a victum of, as they may be, quite possibly against their otherwise better judgement and will, a contributer to, the problem.

we don't live in a world where there are few enough of us to ALL survive by going out and living off the land.

that being said of course, the use of combustion to generate energy and propell transportation IS the problem, along with everything that goes into supporting doing so. and the illusion of symbolic value being a neccessary and default condition remains the primary motivation for THAT.

it is, however, a policy and leadership level problem, not one that can be ENTIRELY solved at the individual level. i would only hold culpable at the individual level those who cheerlead for perpetuating it.

real alternatives can and do exist, nor are they pie in the sky. only the political obsticals created by major economic intrests make them seem like the latter.

human scale guideway based systems of mechanical transportation, propelled by non-combustive means, such as stored energy like flywheels (the perry people mover, eleminating the chemistry and manufacture of batteries), stored compressed air might be another clean way of doing that, even batteries are less harmful then our current reliance upon combustion, and even more so, in the smaller proportioned vehicules with onboard solar recharging. exotic as any of that may sound, simply because it is not what we are used to thinking of or in terms of, these are all proven and reliable tecnologies, which would give us a transportation infrastructure that would give us the same bennifits and comfort zone so many are so unwilling to relinquish their emotional attatchment to.

what they also require is a major chainge of heart, from what we are familiar with at the policy and policy making level.

and for that votes count as much as individual personal action. both of course do, both of course are neccessary. and those who do cut down on automobile usage, or eliminate it entirely ARE casting those always counted votes at the gas station cash register, likewise at the public transit farebox.

=^^=
.../\...

 

You covered too much ground, Let's deal with that statement for the moment.

What do you think we live off of? I can't imagine, but I assure that we live off
the land. There isn't anything else to live off of.

And we do it in an incredibly destructive way. Compare someone who eats
out of a garden in their backyard, who has used only handtools and no
chemicals, to someone who eats from a market with the exact same foods
in their diet as the first person.

Do I have to go into details? The person with the garden gets superior food
for less overall work and the damage done to the environment is a tiny fraction of
what that caused by the person eating from the market. Even if the food
came from local farms, the amount of harm done to the environment is still
much more than that caused by living off a garden in your backyard.

No trucks or roads or fuel needed...And no need to exploit the farmworkers
to keep the cost of the food down....

So not only are we living off the land, but we can obviously do it in a much
more Earth and people-friendly manner.

Littlefoot

 

The problem isn't so much the physical construction of the system I'm describing. Europe has an efficient public transportation system that's reasonably convenient to use. Many of their citizens don't even own cars, and the ones they do own are small and fuel efficient. Furthermore, they tax cars big time, it costs a lot of money to obtain a license, and gas is expensive. I still think a sliding tax scale makes sense. You pay a flat tax in proportion to the mileage your vehicle is rated for, then you pay taxes on the gas you buy (the "mileage" tax). The proceeds from the taxes would go into the development of the public transportation infra-structure.

The problem is the oil whores who run this country would lose profits, and they won't allow any such changes to happen until the oil's tapped out.