Cars are the among worst inventions of all time

Where do you see humanity in 1000 years?
on Earth?
somewhere else?
extinct (maybe for the best)?

To get to my local town centre by bus, I have to walk 5 minutes down the road and then catch the bus, which stops at several stops, and the overall journey takes 20-30 minutes depending on traffic. If I drive there myself, taking a different route by which the buses don't run, the journey takes 5 minutes total. Obviously, 10x shorter as the other guy put it is an overstatement, and if you're going cross-country then a train is going to be faster, but within your local towns, owning a car is always going to be quicker and so much less hassle.

Was going to post my own rant, but this guy summarises it nicely:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142043

If we care so much about the environment, why not ban cars entirely, and have a good network of public transport? It works in many European cities. People in rural areas need cars you say? Move them to cities. Trains are prone to union action? They don't need human drivers any more.

Ever since the invention of the car, population density in cities in the West has decreased. Infrastructure built for cars reduced space for human habitation and services in cities. A thousand people making the same journey in cars spews out more pollution, and takes up more space, than the same number of people in buses, or trains.

At the moment we are targeting industry with emission cuts, at huge cost to society, but we could instead ban cars; imagine the fall in emissions.

Electric cars are not a saviour; most electricity is not renewable; if it were, then it would be expensive or from nuclear sources.

I'm not aware of any European country that has banned cars, so your claim that "it works in other countries" is baseless..

Not countries, but some cities have banned cars in large parts of the city, which doesn't result in the chaos that people are claiming it will.

You can still use cars to get around the city, and get out of that city to go somewhere else. Completely different to the total ban and forced urbanisation you're proposing, which would not work for all sorts of reasons that lots of people have already brought up.

Electric cars do a lot of harm to the environment; electricity isn't just created from thin air, it is created by burning coal, oil, gas, a fraction of it from renewables. The point is, public transport is so much more efficient; the same fuel/electricity it takes to power a few cars could power a bus, but a bus carries more people

What if we don't actually care that much about the environment?

It's weird but this is my opinion.


I live in a nice area with clean air and no congestion, but overall I care much more about a strong economy than all the *******s about saving the environment, at the same time, I do believe that electric cars will become mainstream and technology will save us anyway.

Now this is interesting see, because I know an affluent, nice village that refused having two wind turbines placed on a hill nearby (they would only be able to see the very tops of them) because it would be an eyesore and lower their house prices etc etc.

Yet, other people have to live with coal fired or nuclear power stations near them, to provide electricity for those in the village.

This reeks of such hypocracy and nimbyism, maybe the village should do without electricity for a few weeks and maybe then they would be greateful someone is willing to build a turbing nearby.

If we moved you from you nice town to a polluted area, i'm sure you'd start caring pretty quickly.

BTW: 'transport' as a catagory is a hugh contributor to global climate and pollution in general. Diesel cars, because of their numeracy as well are truely aweful for air quality. I remind you also that money is worthless by comparison to the environment.

Cars are good, but also pretty terrible. They dominate whole areas, streets etc. The problems they have are, like a lot of things exacerbated by population.

I'd like to see more cycle and padestian only routes with more padestrianised city and town centres where only bicycles and people are allowed

Trams are an ingenious invention and replacement for cars on a town scale too.

And petrol/diesel is created from thin air? You should look up the refining process for crude oil see how much non-renewable electricity that uses.....

My point was that electric cars are not the best solution.

I hope that's hypothetical, it actually saddens me a lot that people don't see they are sawing through the branch they sit on.

We ban lots of dangerous items - guns, chemicals, drugs - and cars should be no different, seeing as they are destroying the entire flipping planet!

Not really, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, since trains are considerably faster than cars.

Heavy duty vacuum cleaners are useful, but have been banned by EU for environmental reasons. If they are banned, why not cars?!

You could walk... which, if you are eating from McDonals, you probably should do

Jobs and the economy... using this logic, we should be glad for the existence of the mafia, since they employ people!

Cost of living in cities is high, but so is the price of driving everywhere.

Is that the only argument for the existence of cars? We ban lots of dangerous items - guns, chemicals, drugs - and cars should be no different, seeing as they are destroying the entire flipping planet!

SHUT UP YOU TART!


Our planet is still relatively intact even after countless hits from asteroids. If you look at the Moon, Mercury and other solar system bodies that have had little weathering or geological activity then you will have an idea of how much the Earth has been struck in the past. One asteroid was so big it wiped out some dinosaurs, caused catastrophic climate change which wiped out the rest, plus other plants and animals. Cars only cause mild climate change.

You would be bloody daft to argue that a car is more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. Well a few nukes have been set off aswell. Im sure if you YOUTUBE "tsar bomb" or "nuclear explosions" you will find that in fact, our planet is pretty tough. Tough enough that driving cars will not actually cause the Earth to disintegrate (unlike EVERY asteroid that hit it, and an asteroid is way tougher than a car!).

Its quite possible that Shoemaker-Levy 9 (wtf named it that?!) could have destroyed our entire flippin planet, but it didnt hit our planet. If anything cars are more likely to kill off plebkind than anything else.

Not really, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, since trains are considerably faster than cars.

Just because our planet has survived a certain amount of damage, you tart, does not mean that it can survive any amount of damage

True. A black hole, supernova or certain other huge astronomic event could destroy it. There isnt much tho, and absolutely nothing yet that man could do to physically destroy our planet, or even our Moon which would be considerably easier.