We need to rapidly ramp down the use of fossil fuels and replace them with technology that works today, such as photovoltaics and nuclear fission (in the interim). Aspirational projects that might possibly have a working proof-of-concept in a decade or five are not part of the solution to the climate crisis.
Why? Because quantum leaps are small? The metaphor is not comparing it to the size of the quantum leap; the metaphor is that quantum leaps are discontinuous.
Fusion is "too late" the same way every other decarbonization tool is too late. It doesn't matter. Do it anyway. In 200 years the people who threw up their hands will be seen as short-sighted.
We already know what we need to stave off climate catastrophe: solar and wind, with storage and hydrogen synthesis, might be enough. Each cent pissed away on useless frivolity incrementally reduces our chance of success.
If you grant that then you should also go the distance and grant that fundamental plasma physics research is useful to humanity.
In order to eliminate cars, however, it will require a drastic readjustment of our urban planning policies. Land use policies are what made cars viable and public transport unviable.
Or, the opposite? How could you be so out of touch as to think society did not depend on all the masses of people who continued going to work continuing to go to work?
Realize these are the low wage workers who will be tasked to pay for your carbon tax, and they won’t blink an eye at re-electing Trump, who in such a case would be the left wing candidate regardless of his party affiliation.
Other people don't understand why someone would pay $4,000/month to live in an NYC apartment that would maybe qualify as a large closet elsewhere.
Fuel economy tests show that, in city driving, a conventional gasoline car's gas mileage is roughly 15% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F. It can drop as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips.
This describes commuting as a percentage of total trips, but it would be more useful to find the percentage of total vehicle miles traveled. I imagine that would be higher than 15%.
Good transportation policy is actually good land use policy, and good land use policy is great climate policy.
We don't need fusion reactors in space to stop climate change. We need walkable neighborhoods, an international carbon price and more trains.
The harmful fantasy being sold to the public is that we can solve climate change while still having the vast majority of people living in far flung suburbs and driving a seven person truck 10km to go pick up a carton of eggs.
A daily 55 min commute - which is the average both-way time - generates far more carbon than a daily 20 min trip to the store and back.
It's not difficult to imagine a situation in which someone does not /strictly/ need a car (it also seems urban life is quite common these days). It should also be extremely easy to imagine having a car as extremely beneficial.
(By the way: epidemics still being far from forgotten, it's really odd to paint collective, "public" transport as aproblematic.)
Now, to attack the problem, one could also (and in some contexts primarily) hit house heating. There are voices recommending heating limited to 16°C/61°F. The issue is just about quality of life. Including enabling operations. Hacker should be attentive on their instruments, since they are instrument crafters.
Since the control of resources has always been linked to their price (which is also equivalent to, or actually including, an externality tax) - so given a clear alternative -, I am not sure how the whole idea of "we will do without", restricting "freedom" (in abstract terms, as a primary value for constitutional decisors) and operation, came to be.
(Up to not seeing "the car" as a life changing revolution... Reading just recently the first pages of a history text, the car was immediately mentioned as "expanding the possibilities for movement to unimaginable heights even for the richest of fifty years before". It has always been very clearly a most prominent gift of engineering, as if a third dotation of natural limbs: it's odd to now read about it as "negligible".)
Interurban rails and other form of mass transit gained prominence especially in the early 20th century. They were eventually outcompeted by cars on a wide variety of factors, including public support for funding of roads.
It's not too difficult to imagine freight traveling on streetcar rails.
(Up to not seeing "the car" as a life changing revolution... Reading just recently the first pages of a history text, the car was immediately mentioned as "expanding the possibilities for movement to unimaginable heights even for the richest of fifty years before". It has always been very clearly a most prominent gift of engineering, as if a third dotation of natural limbs: it's odd to now read about it as "negligible".)
The car is simply not as viable without proper infrastructure and implicit subsidies.
So? What do you mean, what is your conclusion from that?
You wrote that «we don't need ... cars». I wrote that you don't "need" (much) heating either, relevantly to impact, but the impact on quality of life can be massive. Try performing intellectual (reduced motion, in general) activities in the cold. Try buying groceries without a car when living in a very low density, non urbanized area. Maybe you don't care about the advantages of a car: to others they are vital.
> The car is simply not as viable without proper infrastructure and implicit subsidies
So? What do you mean?
You dismissed the car as expendable, I noted that it has been called an historical revolution with a massive impact in the quality of one's life, for good.
Cars work fine on dirt paths. Not as good as on roads, but they still work. Sure, it's tricky to go through a forest, but otherwise they're ok.
If most people who needed a car could just pick one up at their chosen departure point and abandon it at their destination, and if that were massively cheaper than private ownership (which it should be, because shared cars would see much greater utilization), that would slash the number of cars on the road.
If these were self-driving, then presumably if the model you want doesn't happen to be at your departure point, you could just ask it to come to you.
Whenever people state things like this it shows that this person is out of touch with reality.
It's much easier to just make them all electric and decarbonize grid production.
that's exactly what they did for cars in the first place.
If they were smart -- the urban planners -- they would get all computational and build highly accurate models of the cities they work for that people could just go online and check out. Then planners could create new versions of the real city, testing different ideas and sharing them interactively with the public.
Most planners these days seem to just say "mass transit GOOD!" and "cars BAD!", without really any substance behind it. This often doesn't really convince the public of much.
Cars were immediately, obviously valuable to individuals - they gave people the freedom to go where they want to, with whom they wanted to, when they wanted to, and often allowed them to carry things that would otherwise be difficult to carry while doing so. Something which was otherwise very difficult to do previously.
If you use public transit, it’s very difficult to go somewhere others do not want to go, or at a time when others do not want to go. You’re tied to what everyone else wants, pretty explicitly, since unpopular routes or schedules get less frequent (or no) coverage, and are expensive to run. You also can’t carry arbitrary heavy stuff since that tends to require infrastructure that is difficult to carry by hand or is not compatible with typical people on foot.
Public transit is a system efficiency win, but a general loss for any outliers for individuals.
And since everything is public, it adds a lot of friction if you want to go with someone who you otherwise would have issues being seen with in public, or are going somewhere/doing something you’d rather not publicize, or who struggles with crowds or similar problems (such as those with disabilities, children who are too young to self ambulate well, etc).
Not unsolvable, but adds friction.
Cars are (when roads aren’t completely mangled anyway), individual luxury items - because they enable a large degree of useful freedom for individuals.
It’s no wonder that every economy that is able to pay for them goes crazy until it turns into a tragedy of the commons situation.
(Emphasis added)
The idea that we can eliminate the use of cars with urban planning policies is a clear indication of someone who has never spent any significant amount of time outside a city, or at least has never seriously thought about what it means.
Most of the land in the world is not urban. Many millions of people live outside urban areas. That's not going to change. Probably ever. Though I'm a strong proponent of massively increased public transit systems, including both high-speed rail corridors and normal-speed rail branching off into smaller areas, cars will remain by far the most efficient means of point-to-point transport outside of well-planned urban centers (even in good rail corridors, outside of the very common cases they solve) for the foreseeable future.