While I live on a street with many cars driving by all day, I thought being a few storeys up would reduce the amount of pollution from vehicles... apparently not at all!
In Washington state they have a report from the legislature that has spending in each county compared to tax revenues. This is very sensitive because of course Seattle money goes out to the whole state. There's a second version of that report that tries to compute the economic benefit of the rural areas, separately from the actual tax revenues, I'm sure this was created to lessen the sting.
I want to keep our economy and the people in it living. But we need to have a shared reality.
One county, Lake County, had the good manners to cancel a planned vote of secession in late 2015 after the rest of the state paid to put out an enormous wildfire there.
rural folk think the same way of Urbanites as you think of them. they think everyone should get out of the cities and stop being a polluting leech who is detached from the natural state of humans living in equillibrium with nature.
Now, also look back a century. Rural life existed - not exactly the same but also with improvements like healthier communities because people bought locally rather than driving 2 hours to Walmart or Costco. Raising the price of gas would benefit all of businesses which have been out priced by companies who don’t have to pay for externalities. Sharing a ride might seem like a good trade in comparison to learning that your staple crop no longer grows in your region or that the hundred year flood/fire is now a decadal experience.
Also, remember that this isn’t a ban on cars. It’s a financial cue pushing people to drive less, combine trips, buy the vehicle with the specs they actually need rather than the heavily-marketed guzzler, etc. People like having way more horsepower than they need but nobody is really inconvenienced without it.
That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for. But if you’re going to squeeze people out of cars, you should probably have a solid plan to deal with the outcome.
>That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for.
My point is direct economic recovery of those externalities is going to be largely regressive, and that the idea of that investing in bicycles and buses is a suitable replacement is incomplete...particularly in non-metro regions.
This may be true in some areas, but not most.
The problem is that we spent most of the 20th century designing the country around cars, and especially discouraging transit as something generally for poor/brown people. Even in cities which have things like subways, urban design almost always massively prioritized suburban commuters over transit users. People make horrible financial decisions because having a big, late model vehicle is such a social status signal.
The problem is changing that puts us in a prisoner’s dilemma: on an individual level in much of the country it’s best to keep piling your money into a depreciating mostly-idle asset because you need a critical mass of riders for transit to be cost effective. Using things like higher gas taxes to pay for things like road maintenance and pollution remediation can work well but people who are used to being subsidized will complain bitterly as soon as you ask them to pay the true cost for what they use.
Basically the idea is we then take the tax income raised by a societally harmful activity (like driving) and redistribute it to individuals like the ones who are scraping by so that tax is revenue neutral.
Best to keep in mind both sides of the equation, because we can only eat one of these things.
Americans can buy food from anywhere. There's an oversupply that is difficult to deal with because the farming industrial complex constantly improves yields. We already get food from Mexico, south america, Canada, fish from the ocean all over. We stupidly subsidize ethanol, we should get rid of that. We need to keep some food production going, both for national security but also because the rural areas are already decimated with job loss and lack of opportunities for people. Every town is full of closed shops and the nearby Walmart supplanted all local things, except maybe a bar.
My family has farms in the south and midwest, I want to support farming and those farmers. The US govt pays us not to plant part of our crop. And they also have price supports on crops which basically sets the price. Of course we all benefit from cheap food. Much of the profit is gone from farming. Most young people take outside jobs because you can't make a living unless you have very large mass scale (this is not exactly a new discovery).
My dad lives in a big city in Texas and inherited his mom's farm. Someone else farms it, he doesn't have anything to do with it. 30 years ago there were some salt of the earth farmers but they all sadly died, at least in my family.
There are programs to buy back citizens' dirty vehicles, in Vermont they tried to reduce the old truck fleet to lower CO2 emissions. The problem is the owners were just fine with their trucks, why should they need to retire their machine before its' time?
There is a process of convincing here, mere economics hasn't been enough. We need all citizens, not just one party or the other, to help fight air pollution. I recognize the poorest will have the hardest time, which means those in power should support climate justice for lower income or frontline communities.
This does not seem to be happening now because nearly everything is shut down and what is still running is operating at less than max capacity.
Industrial pollution largely from coal combustion.
If you're driving gently (to maximize regeneration), a hybrid or EV pretty much only uses the brake pads to hold the car at a stop. Deceleration is done entirely with regeneration, for maximum energy recovery.
Until you drive down a hill, another driver does something unexpected, you have to take a poorly marked turn, there's a stop sign around the bend etc...
That person is probably referring to the Tesla feature where when you don't use the gas pedal, the system is slightly recharging the batteries all the times (via magnets). You can turn this off if you don't like it. Then you get used to a driving style where you take your foot off the 'gas pedal' before you need to stop and the car slows down on it own (through regen braking), and so the 'UX' is you just selectively apply the gas pedal or not to go fast or slow down. If you need to stop suddenly you use the brake. It's an automatic thing after a while, you don't need to think about it. I sometimes have to get used to a 'regular gas car' that doesn't have this when I drive something else.
Normal brakes use 100% friction, which of course causes substantial heat, and increases wear and tear on the pads, the rotor, and brake fluid. These type issues are why it's often recommended to use a lower gear down hills so you can offload the brakes with engine friction.
So not only does regenerative braking produce less dust, but it produces less heat, and the brakes/rotors/fluid are on average cooler and in a state where any needed braking causes less wear.
They still have brake discs & pads, but mostly just for panic stops & holding in place when stopped.
The only time you need brakes is keeping still and emergencies.
I just had my 2012 Volt rear brake discs replaced due to corrosion. The discs were almost unused but too corroded to pass inspection.
They can be roughly grouped into hydrocarbons, other plastics, aerosolized solvents, other absorbed aerosolized chemicals, inert particles.
It's actually a good question, and I'm disappointed to read middlebrow dismissal of it.
As long as we want to go fast, there will be some brake dust in the air. Brake pads can be made out of a variety of materials, and we want to use the ones which are least harmful to our lungs and other organs.
That takes research, not emotional appeals to disgust (from the Latin, meaning "bad to eat").
For example, I wouldn't sprinkle dirt all over my food. But I'm perfectly happy for my food to grow in dirt. Does that mean contact with dirt = bad? No.
As for the dirt: plants act as natural filters, they select that which is good for them using their root systems and use that to build the rest of the plant as they go along. Some plants can be used to extract certain materials from the soil, others do the opposite and will react by rejecting the contaminants. What exactly happens depends on the plant, soil conditions, humidity, amount of sunlight and lots of other factors besides. Not all dirt is good, not all plants grown in all dirt are good, not all dirt is the same.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...
It is preferable to having to drive in back-to-back traffic though, I agree.
I thought I'd get used to it, but as the time passed, I got more and more sensitive to it. Strange.
That's because you stopped making noise yourself. That masks a lot of environmental noise. Ditto of course for a chunk of your neighbors. So then your hearing adapts: it becomes more sensitive so you're more alert in case predators come and visit your cave.
That kept you safe in the stone age, today it will keep you awake at night from traffic.
You could try a masking sound, white noise or ocean sounds should mask traffic quite well. Not very loud, just loud enough to even out the variation. Good luck! Loss of sleep is terrible. I wrote about it recently: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dealing-with-insomnia/