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Comment by papa-whisky | Hacker News Reader

Give me convenience or give me death...

Tangentially, this line of thinking has become very commonplace in the US.

People will wait in drive-thru lines that take twice as long as parking and walking in for coffee, food and even school/daycare/camp dropoff/pickup. It's baffling to me but, on the upside, I'll gladly pick up their slack and be in/out twice as fast.

Public transportation is not wide spread or serious but even in the places where it is an option (NE corridor), people often rather spend an extra 20/40/60 mins in a vehicle (theirs or a rideshare service) than use public transportation.

In an individualistic country like The Netherlands people will typically pick what is best for themselves. You need to give them a better alternative if you want to influence their decision making.

Nobody is trading a 20 minute drive for a 60 minute bus trip in order to create a better neighbourhood. Get that bus trip down to at most 30 minutes and people might reconsider.

> people will typically pick what is best for themselves. You need to give them a better alternative if you want to influence their decision making

Or remove/penalise the more convenient (but harmful) alternatives. We shouldn’t kid ourselves, we’re going to need sticks as well as carrots if we want to avoid disaster

What disaster?

The climate disaster

For that, you're going to need to stop banning nuclear power and start embracing technological progress (including but absolutely not limited to EVs).

You may be listening to the media a bit too much. The concept of 'climate' is increasingly used in a similar way as 'social justice' in some political discussions – as a broad idea to justify various authoritarian policies.

The government deciding how to use tax money is not authoritarian. Making people and companies responsible for eating the cost of automobiles isn't authoritarian either, if anything I'd say it's the opposite.

A big part of the reason why automobiles are so successful is that the cost are externalized. If oil companies and automobile manufacturers were forced to pay the cost of climate degradation they'd starve. But they're essentially on a type of welfare - where the people, and gov, eat those costs instead.

If we're playing welfare anyway, we might as well use it for public transit. And, as an aside, climate change is a real thing. It's not even up for debate. And yes, in order to solve a problem, you need policies. The "try nothing and hope it works" approach has been our approach forever and surprise! It doesn't work.

People do eat the cost of automobiles, what are you talking about? There is a federal gas tax, there are toll roads, there are property taxes, there are license and registration fees, there are even speeding fines, parking fines, etc etc. Cars also have an extremely positive impact on economic activity. They've enriched the lives of people, empower them to live in more affordable locations with higher standards of living, get access to goods shipped in from outside the state and outside the country at cheap prices, get access to overnight delivery on any food, product, or service, access to alternative schooling, medical care, ambulance services, fire rescue, police coverage, etc. etc.

The climate has not degraded, it has warmed slightly. It is not even as hot today as it was in the early Holocene. The earth has actually greened from the CO2 fertilization affect, increasing the leaf area index on one quarter to one half of earth's surface over the past 35 years (https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...).

There are far less deaths from natural disasters today than there was 100 years ago (in large part thanks to automobiles enabling people to evacuate and emergency responders to be activated).

Welfare is paid for by the same tax payers that are paying for gas tax, property tax, income taxes, etc. By no means should they be forced into some ideologue's vision for how "a perfect society" should work.

Yes exactly. People, you and me, eat the cost of automobiles. NOT the automobile manufacturers or the oil industry. We take most of the cost, they've externalized it to us, i.e. they are on welfare. Just in a roundabout way.

If you put those costs on them instead of us, they would be in very hot water. And they may be motivated to change their business practices.

And I won't comment on the urgency or scale of the global climate. It's not worth an argument.

Listen to scientists.

> You need to give them a better alternative if you want to influence their decision making.

Exactly! Offering compelling alternatives is the only way to change behavior in a way that's a win-win for both you and the people who prefer the option you don't.

I don’t actually think urbanism is antithetical to convenience, it’s just another form of achieving convenience by having more amenities close by (“15 minute cities”). I personally live in NYC despite being fully remote, because of how accessible literally everything is, it’s instant gratification paradise.

Extremist approach will never win any popularity and sway masses in such direction, so if you want to position some push for greener cities from extremist or even eco-terrorism perspective (so popular among young in western Europe these days), good luck seeing any results that would make you happy and actually achieve anything you wish for.

World is more complex mixture of various people than just similarly-minded people. Number of examples in the past where people feeling righteous and above the rest imposed pretty harsh things on general population. Not the way we should be heading.

We have serious issues with ecosystem, but even removing 100% of the cars alone won't solve any of those (plus it won't ever happen) so let's be a bit more smart.

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