Pros of golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) replacing all private cars within a city:

  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
  • Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
  • Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
  • Electric
  • Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
  • Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
  • Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters

Cons:

  • Less profit for GM and ExxonMobil
  • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    Okay I really am not sure what to say here. The way you address those things sounds like you don’t have any understanding of how either rural life works, or how those industries work.

    You have proposed making company towns for mines, which used to be a thing (and sadly still are in some places). The loss of workers rights and the solidification of corporate power. Is guaranteed with company towns. Two things that I think we can both agree are not good for the world.

    Second you proposed. Centrally located services for the few farmers who are allowed to live in the country. This could easily put them 6 to 8 hours drive from any kind of service. I am not just talking about a guy to fix the tractor, but banking and insurance services (I don’t want to go into the details but no those services are unique to farming and can’t be online only). Plus we have things like groceries, medical services, farm surplus, and ect. All happening on an individual scale, ignoring any kind of economy of scale. Plus I don’t want to drive 16 hours for milk, do you?

    All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones. This would of course require ICE not EV because the charging infrastructure is not there. Of course we could put the infrastructure in that would allow charging. Though as long as we are doing that maybe we could just let these people live near their point of work. It is cheap to move electricity down wires it is expensive to move people.

    You also missed my point about the rise of the city. First as you point out a very small fraction of the population lives in the country. So even if they had a much higher energy use(I have never seen any information to suggest that is true.) It would still be a small fraction of total energy use. It seems like we would get a lot more energy savings by getting the urban environment to reduce energy use buy just 1% per person than say a 10% per person reduction in the rural environment.

    As for the idea that the country uses more energy. You are welcome to cite a source if you have one. I would be surprised if that was true. We don’t have street lamps that on on all night. Or 24 hour stores that keep the lights on for just a few sales. Nor do we have the all night clubs or all the ride share people idling their engines. That and more is all energy use only found in cities.

    Lastly it was not until the industrial revolution and the rise of the urban environment that there was any significant rise of the mean global temperature. Here is a handy graphic from xkcd https://xkcd.com/1732/ It shows how it took 22000 years for the planet to warm 4°C as it left an Ice age and a hundred years to raise 1°C with the start of the industrial revolution. It is on track to raise another 3.5°C in the next hundred years. This rise in temperature has a very strong positive correlation with the rise of industrial cities. It seems quite possible it is not the country that is the problem but the cities.

    As for why I think the rural environment has its place. It has much lower noise, light, water, and air pollution. I have drunk water right out of the mountain steam, watched comets from my front porch and seen the pine trees light fire when the morning sun hit the ice on them. I don’t hold it against people that enjoy the city, but it is not for me.

    Did I miss any of your points?

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      You have proposed making company towns for mines,

      Nope, you’re the one who said that. You can’t put words in my mouth and then say why the thing you said is bad. What I said is that they should be densely populated.

      Deadwood, South Dakota is famous as a “wild west” town, but the reason that it exists because of the gold rush. And, guess what, it was densely populated. You can look up historical images, you’ll see that even if it was a “rural” location built around mining, it was densely populated because at a time when cars weren’t an option, it made sense to make a dense area.

      Second you proposed. Centrally located services for the few farmers who are allowed to live in the country.

      Again, putting words in my mouth. If you can’t make your point without doing that, I’m just going to say I won because clearly you can’t actually attack what I’m actually saying. At no point did I say anything about people being “allowed to live in the country”. I only talked about farms being the only place where you actually had to live on-site in a very low density rural area.

      This could easily put them 6 to 8 hours drive from any kind of service.

      That’s absurd. There’s nowhere in the continental US that’s a 6 to 8 hour drive from a built-up area that exists today.

      So even if they had a much higher energy use(I have never seen any information to suggest that is true.)

      “cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year”

      “Why the difference? Aside from environmental factors, it’s a combination of infrastructure and behavior, Battles says. The compact construction of urban condo towers and apartment buildings helps insulate their indoor climates, while large homes common in less dense areas need more energy for heating and cooling, and have a harder time keeping air from leaking outside.”

      https://www.treehugger.com/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-energy-efficient-4863586

      The research is everywhere. Dense housing where people share walls means lower heating and/or cooling bills. Using public transit instead of a car means far lower emissions for transportation. Smaller housing means less energy to heat and cool, and fewer leaks.

      All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones.

      Suuuuuuure…

      because the charging infrastructure is not there

      Riiight… because when talking about a theoretical future world where more people live in built-up areas, the right thing to do is to consider current charging infrastructure.

      Did I miss any of your points?

      Pretty much all of them, and deliberately it seems.