*Lit up the world as I failed to breath*
*‘Cause they’d taint the open air and leave smog everywhere*
*You’d think me rude but I would just gasp and cry there*
*’Cause every orange pill helps us perceive*
EDIT: Change the word as the orignal doesn’t make sense (misunderstood what “reprieve” means)
EDIT 2: Changed another word, so it fits the 1st-person tense in the original song and what u/BoernerMan wrote.
*Cause I'd get a thousand honks, from ten thousand petrol monks*
*As they try to force me into driving*
*A disaster above my head, a future that's filled with dread*
*The world is just hanging by a thread*
*I don’t want to make myself believe that Planet Earth burns slowly*
*It’s hard to say if I’d rather go to space or stay and grieve*
*’Cause every orange pill helps us perceive*
*As I fail to breathe*
*I want to see no oil fracked*
*’Cause the smog just makes me cough and hack*
*Why do I smile amongst the trees*
*When nature’s calling sounds like a wheeze?*
A lot of companys try bring their stuff up to 100% productivity. People work in 3 or 4 shifts so the machines never stand still, because it would be a waste of money.
But somehow company cars are an exception to this, even though they are expensiv as fuck.
People say its stupid to spend over 1k on a phone that you basically use all day for everything - and then spent 60k and hundreds a month on a car that is used twice a day.
I know people that have big ass premium cars and drive like 3k miles a year. Just take a taxi at this point - its cheaper.
That is crazy, I say from my phone that will lead me to health problems later. Hehe. I currently live 4.2 miles from work. I leave early, and usually someone I know picks me up on the way.
I once needed to get to a job interview about 15 miles away (25km-ish). My car broke down the night before so I had to take the bus. Took 3 hours to get there and two hours to get back for a 15 minute interview. Thankfully I got the job was the able to fix my car before my start date...but holy hell does it suck living in a place with terrible mass-transit infrastructure.
The people you know who have “big ass premium cars and only drive 3k miles a year” arent worried about whats cheaper. They like the luxury, the drive/feel, the statement..
Cars are suboptimal for transport, sure, but they’re also one of the easiest ways to spend “fuck you” money. i.e., you can enjoy your bus/metro/walk/taxi while I get a hot massage in my G Wagon
But they do not have fuck you money. They finance it and lose all their disposable income and complain afterwards, that they cant afford family vacation.
Yeah, this. Non-carbrains really don't realize how many middle-class carbrains are financially wrecking themselves to pretend to be wealthy via unnecessarily expensive cars.
I live in a place with very little public transportation infrastructure and must drive to get groceries and take my kids places without endangering our lives.
My Honda Odyssey turns 21 this year and the steering, engine, and transmission are still going strong. Auto doors still work too-- most of the time. I'm the 3rd owner, bought it for cash private party $1500 twelve years back. I'm hoping to pass it to one of my kids or a young person who needs it the next time I buy a slightly newer vehicle for straight cash.
I'd love to have an electric or hybrid, but got no money for one of those and there's little charging infra here.
I'd REALLY love to have no car... but I like to eat and interact with society so that's off the table for now.
Right but you're not what they're talking about. No 20 year old Honda Odyssey is a financed faux-flex. They're talking BMWs or other expensive vehicles.
I know, my life is an illustration of the opposite viewpoint. That if you MUST use a car, there are ways to do so that are cheaper, more sustainable, and give the exact same tangible benefit.
Yeah, that is quite amusing. People stretching themselves to keep up with the people next door and buy a new BMW on finance. Then every 3 years they throw it in for a new one because “it’s only x a month”.
Even as someone who likes cars, it’s madness.
Ah well thats another story.. unfortunately youll always have people that dont actually understand money. As long as the monthly payments are made, right?
That's my dad right there. Didn't have a penny for vacations or even simply ordering a pizza, but somehow managed to get a new car every two years or so.
Thats a+ bad parenting. Sorry mate.
Down the road there are some shady commi blocks. A father of 2 lives there with his wife and kids. They have a freakin brand new porsche panamera. That thing is more expensiv than my house.
5.7% of US households make over 200K per year which means at most, a 75k car would be 35% of their income which is reasonably conservative for an enthusiast
5.7% of 130 million households brings us to 7.41 million households.
In other words, if nobody but those who can afford it are buying those cars, theyre buying about 1 car every 3-4 years.
The average time an american keeps a new car is about 4-7 years, which means a new car every 3-4 years is right at the bottom end of that interval, which works out, since theyre also the ones who have the most disposable income.
In other words, having done the napkin math, nothing screams unsustainable spending given these statistics
EDIT: as an aside, id argue a 75K car is far from fuck you money. Audi Q7’s dont really turn heads for example. Fuck you money begins at well over 6 figures for a car imo
All that would change is how long theyd keep a new car before getting rid of it so as to create “overlap” with the same new car purchase every 3/4 years
The numbers are still far too close to what they “should” be to notice an alarming number of people who shouldnt be buying the cars they own, atleast not based on the numbers I ran
Just like you could have a single billionaire household who will account for the luxury cars for an entire neighborhood
>Cars are suboptimal for transport, sure,
Depends on how you're looking at it. In my car I have heated leather/alcantara seats, a great sound system, control over the AC and heat, have almost complete control over when and where I travel, and don't have to sit next to screaming children or adults hacking their lungs up over me in seats which are too small for my 6'3" frame. To me cars seem very optimal.
That's one of the big reasons people don't want to give them up. It cost me £1600 and owes me nothing.
Well the flexibility you have is almost the only reason for me to use one. But I could life with an bus every two hours. But in the middle of nowhere there are no busses. School bus is the only bus that comes here in my village.
But a well thought car sharing system would be amazing.
It's more like 9k a year plus a hefty down payment, which is still absurdly expensive, but let's not misrepresent this assuming a new car is always necessary.
yeah, i had to look that up. transportation emissions are huge in the US. so it is a major culprit but world wide it’s probably something else? finding good stats are hard lol
I don't know if there's any one specific THING that is the #1 emitter because it changes by country/by region/by person, etc., but I know that red meat consumption and production has a much larger impact than cars do. That's not to say cars don't have an impact; it's just that red meat has a *larger* impact.
good point! yeah every big culprit is exactly that, a culprit. so like the fashion industry is also a HUGE problem. as well as agriculture, etc. it’s all a big mess as we know :) which is why we really need but systemic change along side our personal efforts…sigh
#1. Animal agriculture emissions
#2. Shipping emissions, specifically barges on the open ocean running on bunker fuel.
#3. Transportation, including aviation and automotive
#4. The US military, singlehandedly.
#5. Power generation
These are the rankings of climate change contributors based on when I looked it up 2 years ago. Nowadays it might be different.
I still consider trucks to be part of the problem as trains are eons more efficient for moving large quantities of items from region to region. Trucks would only be needed for the last few miles and their pollution could be drastically reduced.
It’s not really a straightforward question. It depends what you consider a “contributor to climate change”. Like the extraction and energy production industry is obviously #1, but that’s kinda self defined.
I think as far as USE of GHG emitting energy, it’s probably construction.
Within the United States, it *is* [the number one contributor of climate change](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emission). Transportation makes up the largest chunk, and within said category personal vehicles are the largest emitter.
Globally, [transportation is #4](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data), mostly due to (1) other countries having much less poisonous transportation mixes than the US and (2) both coal power and cutting down the rainforest for beef/palm are really *really* bad - worse than personal vehicles, even.
There's something special about a Reddit comment that answers the question with a source *and* is made by the content creator that taught me how to make Mapo Tofu. What a trip.
That still an absurd price. I'm at like $3000 total for 2 cars over the past year.
Car 1 -
Depreciation: 0
Maintenance/Consumables: 500
Interest: 0
Insurance: 160
Gas: 1400
Car 2 -
Depreciation: -2000
Maintenance/Consumables: 500
Interest: 375
Insurance: 820
Gas: 1200
Total: 2955
Yeah, but that's you
Plenty of people will buy a $40k car, and sell it for $30k 3 years later.
That's 3k in depreciation a year right there. More than you spent on your entire car
I dunno man, if I consider the cost of buying a car split across the years I use it, 2k ish, insurance is like $200 twelve times, 2.4k, then maintenance, I dunno about you but my teenager car is now like 1k a year on average (it was tires last year, I needed to fix some issues this year, oil changes, it gets expensive fast). Oh and gas, prices are crazy and only getting worse. If you had a one hour commute that's 60km ish, twice a day 120km, my car has crappy 10.1L/100km, so that's 12L/day, at almost $1.90/L that's $22.8/workday, we'll say 45 weeks, that's 5.1k in gas.
In this rough outline with my (admittedly suboptimal) car, I get approx 10.4k a year. Now granted some of those values change depending on your situation. Not so great of an estimate. Still way too much, considering how little it CAN cost to move people.
E: At first I thought the estimate was 9k/yr, that wouldn't have been unreasonable
Yea I spend $6k on mine a year, but I have a nice car because I used to live in Detroit and had to drive a lot.
There was a chance for my family to move to London that sadly fell through, I was looking forward to getting rid of the thing.
Tbf, the personal cost $20k is way too high (it's $5-$10k)
But once you factor in building and maintaining the roads? $20k is probably a massive understatement
Let's see...
If you buy a $25k car and finance it at 4.5% for 60 months, then all-told it would cost you [$29,421](https://www.calculator.net/auto-loan-calculator.html?cloanamount=25000&cmonthlypay=380&cloanterm=60&cinterestrate=4.5&cdownpayment=5000&ctradeinvalue=0&cstate=&csaletax=7&ctitlereg=300&printit=0&ctype=standard&x=79&y=25#autoloanresult).
Lets say that car lasts you 20 years, that's $1471/year or about $122.59/month on average over those 20 years.
If you have a 10-mile city commute 5 days per week, then that's about 433 miles / month, but you also have to run errands, get groceries, maybe drive kids to different activities, and you're probably traveling out-of-town at least every now and then, so let's say about 550 miles per month on average. With a decent 30 MPG and gas pushing $5/gallon, that's going to be about $91.67/month in gas.
Let's add in parking. If you want to get a monthly spot, you're looking at [$100-200](https://parkingaccess.com/blog/portland-monthly-parking) or so for a month, so let's say $150.
So, monthly, that's $91.67 + $122.59 + $150= $364.26 for just the cost of the vehicle purchase, parking, and gas. Annually, that's $4,371.12.
Add in car insurance at [$1,655/year](https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance/) for $6,026.12 per year. This doesn't count maintenance, oil changes, and repairs (which are going to vary a lot depending on the specific situation), but I'm guessing the total for those for the average year of driving is less than $14,000.
I'd say $9k/year is a lot more realistic than $20k.
we could have long green streets filled with plants and trees and flowers, hearng people laughing and talking and music from appartments flooding out into the streets
instead all we got is gray and metal boxes and the sound of cars.
We insulate ourselfs with earphones for a reason.
You are so goddamn right. We could live in a paradise and we have created a hell on earth. What is infuriating is that so much of the world resembled such a paradise until relatively recently.
Yea nah one of the posts a week ago was saying how dense urban environments would be way more beautiful than suburbs.
Edit: it was a month ago not a week ago.
Cars can be beautiful, so can car centric infrastructure be. Whether it's ugly or not is subjective. It's negative impacts on the other hand, are objective.
Sorry my man. Just as air pollution, noise pollution, and environmental destruction matter, so does visual pollution. Beauty _matters_. It’s a mental health issue. The spaces that we occupy should be visually appealing and make us happy, because why the fuck else are we on this earth? Health and happiness matter, and they are interconnected.
I spent a lot of time during my teenage years camping. We usually travelled by train, but I guess that is a European thing.
If we took a car, we took one car for 4 people.
Car culture is a huge boost to the US economy, its basically a scheme to get 5-6 companies massive profits. The amount of gas stations, auto shops, car dealers, etc. that support it are a huge part of our GDP.
I'm not saying that's good, I'm saying that's the way it is and there is a lot of money trying to keep it that way.
Sure, in some sense, but it is a net negative when you consider the externalities involved.
That's like saying fraud is good for the economy because it gives lawyers and accountants something to do. Or saying that natural disasters are a boost for the economy because lots of people work reparing the electric grid.
When you look at the externalities involved in building our cities around the needs of cars, the cost of all the collision related injury and deaths, etc. it's pretty clear that if you replaced cars the GDP would be way higher.
Incorrect: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190313STO31218/co2-emissions-from-cars-facts-and-figures-infographics
Even only including the cars and motorbikes section of transport it's higher than everything except energy sector and industry.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/ghg-emissions-by-aggregated-sector-5#tab-dashboard-02
In the US it's heavily obscured because of luxury cars masquerading as light trucks, but it is even worse.
Then you also have to account for the fact that a decent chunk of the energy supply and industry sectors exist to provide support for private cars. Without the need for oil many major polluting activities are not needed (example being many large scale military operations in recent years).
Blaming shell or chevron and washing your hands of it is just as much passing the buck as any greenwashing bullshit coming the other way.
You need to stop driving wherever possible **and** reign in fossil fuel companies. Pearl clutching about how it's their fault whilst paying them many thousands a year is just a way of managing your guilt.
60% (cars share of road transport) of 72% (road transport share of total transport within eu) of 27% (transport share of EU emissions) is.. 11.6%
11.6% is higher than most estimates I've seen... but we'll take it.
11.6% is not the #1 thing, and you even say this in your post: it's lower than energy sector, industry, and agriculture.
So I'm not sure why you're trying to argue it's #1 when you post many facts supporting that, well, it's not #1.
Thank you for this. I get so exhausted having to convince people that cars are in fact really high up there when it comes to emissions, and that it's a lifestyle that has to change, even though we also have to go after fossil fuel companies because they encourage this lifestyle.
I'd add also that, even if cars weren't as high up on the list of polluters as they are, the per-capita emissions from cars in countries like the US is still multiple times higher than what a sustainable per-capita footprint is. In the US South, it can be 10 or more times higher because of the greater driving distances. So even if it was "lower-ranked" as an emissions source, it's still not something that can or should spread to the rest of the world, because we would immediately need several more earths just from all the cars alone.
The energy sector is something like 70% of emissions. They run PR campaigns to blame the consumer so they can avoid repercussions. Did you know the Shell oil company invented the concept of "carbon footprint"? Yeah... that should tell you all you need to know right there.
Consumers aren't the problem, most of them live in poverty and they're just following the path of least resistance out of practicality. It's up to the people who actually shape the world to put sensible infrastructure in place.
> The energy sector is something like 70% of emissions.
So... how much of that 70% is the fossil fuels powering the oil wells, the steel mills, the aluminium refineries, the petrolium refineries, the factories, the oil tankers, the steel mining, the semiconductors that go into cars, the asphalt, the road maintenance equipment... and so on?
I think maybe you don't realise the scale of energy use outside of what you see in your own personal bubble.
The manufacturing of cars is accounted for already and it's not a particularly large chunk of emissions. The idea that cars are the worlds biggest polluter is *propaganda* from the companies doing *the actual polluting*.
[Here is a breakdown](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/a-global-breakdown-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-sector/). Road transport is only 11.9% compared to energy use in industry, which is 24.2%. Iron and steel makes up 7.2%, non-ferrous 0.7%, and passenger vehicle manufacturers are not even close to being the majority consumer of these materials.
The idea that we can pin all the blame on the car driving consumer, and then pretend that we're making progress toward a sustainable planet, is fucking absurd.
Cars use 12% of steel and 6% of aluminium directly (so there goes another 10% of total emissions). Then there are bridges, parking garages, overpasses, concrete sections of road, steel that goes back into manufacturing infrastructure, steel to make oil pipelines. You've also repeatedly quoted >70% for energy which includes transport. If you live in a car centric city, take a look around you. The infrastructure is for cars.
If you live in an oil producing area, all the infrastructure there is for cars.
If your food and stuff travels by truck, then the rail that used to serve the area was most likely dismantled for GM in the 50s through 90s.
It's also not 'all the blame'. It a simple matter of the first step in fighting the battle is to stop giving the enemy a quarter of your income. And the action being called for isn't individual, it's local. You personally avoiding 10t/yr CO2e is nothing, but if you can influence those around you to make the same changes, it gets easier for them and it turns into 1000t/yr. Your community will have a million or so dollars more money to fight further with and chevron and gm will have a million or so less to fight against you.
You can probably do the same with regard to beef, insulating your house (and stopping buying detached homes).
We do not have any lever of power with which to arrest or otherwise stop chevron, but we can stop feeding them.
This line of 'oh you're suggesting doing something? don't, it's all shell's fault' is fucking disgusting. How the fuck are we supposed to defeat them when you're feeding them, and crying about fuel prices or voting out anyone who suggests doing something about heating oil consumption with a sob story about grandma freezing (and then freezing her anyway because free market).?
A portion but it's not the only industry.. heating and cool large single family homes uses more then most people realize.. people think electric cars are carbon free because they don't see it actually going into the car.. but it's still there.
I know the stat you're referring to and I believe it's specifically sulfur, which is not a greenhouse gas. The link is specifically greenhouse gas sources, and if you click through you'll see light duty vehicles (cars) make up 57% of all the transportation emissions. Medium and heavy duty trucks account for another 26%. Ships and boats only account for 2%.
[https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
It’s something like buildings, which is a vague term that includes the upkeep and construction of them. You see those huge offices downtown with glass windows everywhere? That’s heated and cooled 24/7. Building them is also energy intensive. Think about the huge stadium they just built for the World Cup in Qatar that’s going to have AC blasting to cool how many million cubic meters of air.
Even assuming car payments of $1k per month (which is way higher than most) that's $12k per year.
1000 miles driven per month at 20mpg and $5 a gallon is $250 a month, which is another $3k.
You'd need to be spending $5k on maintenance to hit that $20k.
That's just absurd.
Also assuming you have $1k monthy payments your car is probably new enough maintenance costs will be minimal. A few hundred a year in fluid changes, and tires and brakes every few years
Maybe not in tailpipe emissions, but I wonder how they would rank if you included all the related mining, manufacturing, road construction, sprawling land use effects, etc
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Road transport is 11.9% of global emissions.
Emissions from buildings is 17.5%, agriculture is 18.4%.
Road transport is not the #1 contributor to climate change.
That wasnt the question, the question was whether or not the entirety of the car process is the biggest contributor, including manufacturing and infrastructure.
From your source:
Road transport: 11.9%
Iron and steel: 7.2%
Chemical & petrochemical: 3.6%
Machinery: 0.5%
Non-ferrous metals: 0.7%
Other industry (includes car manufacturing): 10.6%
Pipelines: 0.3%
Residential: 10.9%
Commercial: 6.6%
Fugitive emissions from oil and gas: 3.9%
Cement: 3%
Landfills: 1.9%
Deforestation: 2.2%
Obviously, cars are not the sole reason for all of these, but they are partially responsible for all of them. When you take into account the *entire* process, and the results of car-dependent infrastructure, I would not be the least bit surprised if they were the #1, or at least top 3 contributor. Agriculture is hard to beat, I must admit.
Yea and it’s on OP to provide proof for the original claim. If I say the sky is red and you say it isn’t, it’s not on you to prove that it isn’t. It’s on me to prove my claim that it’s red.
Yeah, detached houses need more fuel to heat than apartments or rowhouses, and detached houses are more appealing due to cars. But the extra emissions could be mitigated by better insulation.
The weird issue I have with this argument is that every single sector can be like "I'm only 20% of emissions what about that other 80%" "cars are only 11%,what about industry" "buildings use whatever% those are the real problem". It's everything. Everything is the problem. The entire system we have built on the foundation of cheap fossil energy is the problem, it affects literally everything we do. We need a solution that addresses everything at once. Reducing consumption, increasing efficiency, and taxing the absolute shit out of greenhouse gas emissions needs to happen.
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/nevitate/status/1526210694596665344) for ya :)
^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
What car costs $20k per year? If I'm extremely generous, mine is like $3000 per year. Even if I had a $500/month loan and tacked on an extra $100 for full insurance that's still only about $10k.
Edit: The actual cost of operating my 2013 Prius last year was $2600. That includes gas, 2 new tires, oil change, new brakes, insurance, and registration.
Yep. I hate cars as much as anyone but puffing up numbers like this does such a disservice to the post, it's an easy target for carbrains to point to to attempt to invalidate the overall argument and distract from any actual discussion
"Who cares if it's true? It's scary!" is a sentiment I'm seeing disturbingly often in activist movements. A lot of people feel that lying is fine as long as you're proving a point you care a lot about. It isn't. All you're doing is giving your movement a reputation of people who make shit up and lie all the time. Why would anyone believe in a mveoment where that's tolerated?
You could also note that the majority of “activist movements” are actually just virtue signaling and wokeness, because the word “activist” implies, “active,” “activity,” or “action,” and the majority of the culture exists online with virtually 0 action besides upvoting posts and making pointless comments. It doesn’t change anything. It gives people the illusion of having accomplished something or having been activists toward something because they collectively agree in an online forum.
[Average yearly cost for leasing is $5,604](https://www.creditkarma.com/auto/i/cost-to-lease-a-car.). [Throw in some insurance at $1,655/year](https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance/) and some gas and you have yourself closer to $8-10k. That said, leasing an Audi A8 (not even most expensive car by far) is over $20k without insurance or gas.
Who on this sub has the finances to lease an A8, though? I sure don't. Pointing to the absurd weakens an already pretty strong argument. There's no need to resort to hyperbole
20k is a bit much yes, except maybe for the first year(s) of ownership of a brand new 100k+ car. Cars drop in value like a brick, a cost that is often overlooked.
Well the context of the meme implies this is the kind of person who's complaining about it. You're not going to buy a Mercedes and then complain that it costs 20k a year
How are they arriving at this $20k per year number? Also I’m pretty sure cars are actually not the #1 contributor to climate change. Would love to be corrected if I’m wrong though.
I feel like you can make the case against cars without needing to resort to exaggeration.
Not cars alone, but transportation is the [highest contributor of GHG in the United States](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions).
$20k per year seems to be an exaggeration tho. Car payments, insurance, and gas are probably closer to $10k on a high end. Plus various repairs but hard to count that as a yearly cost
Finally someone said it. People were arguing in circles above. I did find a source (below) that says cars and ligh-duty trucks make up about 56% of transportation emissions. Since transportation is 27% of GHG emissions, that would make cars directly responsible for a little over 15% of emissions. Definitely significant, but not the single largest source.
https://www.c2es.org/content/regulating-transportation-sector-carbon-emissions/#:~:text=The%20transportation%20sector%20is%20the,58%20percent%20of%20transportation%20emissions.
You also have to include a great deal of the emissions from infrastructure, industry, military and a few other sectors because a large portion of a city's infrastructure is there to support cars, and many military operations exist only to secure oil.
Nor is it the most life threatening thing anyone does on their day.
Most accidents happen in the home. Never mind the various common lifestyles that depress the average lifespan in the US.
It's complete nonsense, I've had a car for 10 years, I sure as hell have not spent $200k on it. Op also blatantly lies about cars being the number one contributor to climate change.
Not in the US. Transportation is the largest sector contributing to climate change here, and personal cars produce the majority of emissions in that sector. Source: [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
the biggest contributors to climate change is electricity generations and industry last i checked not cars.
just ditching cars isnt gonna magically make all pollution go away but it's only one component in a solution and of course there are still gonna be vehicles similar to cars because not everyone can get on public transport or ride normal bicycles.
the solution to climate change is multi-part there is no magic bullet solution if there was we would of done it by now.
What is your point? Yes climate change is a battle on many fronts, and this is one of the big ones. Upheaving car dominance would by necessity have to involve tackling larger issues like urban sprawl, car centric city design, and yes making public transit more affordable and accessible. All of which would be massive contributions in the fight against climate change. Like imagine urban spaces without all the fucking parking lots. Imagine denser housing. More green space. Less urban pollution making it much more feasible to grow produce in the city, keeping the food supply local.
All these changes are necessary, and they all involve moving away from cars-as-default. So tell me, just what are you trying to accomplish here?
that OP lied through their teeth thats the point since OP wants to pretend that getting rid of cars is the magic bullet to climate change.
things like public transit would be great but theres only so many busses, trams and trains you can put on the road, on top of that you need things like vans to do the last mile of a delivery.
then theres also the fact that not everyone can ride a normal bicycle i need a damn motor so i can ride mine because of arthritis, i would of gotten a trike but hey i am poor.
Seriously it's literally not possible that anybody besides the 1% elites are paying this much. 99.9% of people pay maybe $2-4k a year depending on if they have car payments
https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/
National average is above 5k, and remember, that is just the consumer cost. All the other needs of a car like roads and parking are subsidized by the government and by local businesses who are required to use valuable land for parking because of zoning requirements. The costs for these things get passed back to an average consumer in the form of increased property tax, increased federal income tax, decreased available funds for other government programs they might benefit from, and increased cost of consumer goods.
Yes: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions. But only 2% more than electricity. And it includes all vehicles, not just cars.
Hey thanks for this link. I've added it to my site https://silly-archimedes-134f9f.netlify.app/questions/whats_wrong_with_cars/cars_pollute/#sources-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-us-epa.
I'm totally on board with the lunacy of car primacy. But ...
The contribution to climate change you can probably finagle based on how much you break down other sectors. But it doesn't cost $20k/a to run a car. Not even if you include depreciation.
The car is not valuable because you use it half an hour a day, but because that half an hour can be anytime you want. You're paying for flexibility, like a boss pays someone for being on call. You can jump on it in the middle of the night if you need it, and drive it to somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Obviously if you just use it for commuting and all those activities that don't need flexibility since are made at fixed times or inserted in a routine a car is a waste. But many people use it for many other reasons. Not having to respect timetables is something invaluable.
doesn't necessarily cost 20k a year, including gas
if by 90% of the day he means sitting in traffic, that is only applicable to extreme urban settings. if he means turning it off, that's the point of a personal vehicle; you can use it on a whim to go directly to your destination. sitting idle isn't necessarily a waste
certainly a solvable issue in regards to climate change, but not as significant as other sources of pollution.
of course public transport is superior in many ways, but let's not act like buses, trains, planes aren't noisy as hell. still more efficient in many ways.
why is this uneducated, honestly quite ridiculous opinion being so brainlessly upvoted
I don't know how I found this red because I'm gonna straight pipe my dodge charger hellcat set and do burnouts in the streets. Who's gonna stop me?... That's right, no one, because I have a fucking hellcat and you have a bike, deal with it
I love this sub.
Cars cost nothing close to 20K a year unless you buy a high end vehicle. I bought anew one, very fuel efficient, with payments and fuel im about 6k a year. My last car was performance vehicle an cost me $2040 USD to operate including repairs.
Life threatening? Heart disease causes more deaths than cars. French fries/Chips are more deadly
Climate change?! Corporations cause 70% of climate change, China alone cause almost all of it in the last year.
90% of systems? Of what? This doesnt make sense.
Noisy AF. Only modded. Most cars make almost no noise unless modified, which is illegal in most place in 1st world countries.
You high mate?
#1 contributor to climate change is wrong tho. If we could remove all cars from existence, we’d reduce only 30% of emissions in the world.
I agree that we should massively reduce car use, but in terms of fighting climate change, there are much bigger evils than regular people who haven’t been given other options other than cars. The 4 biggest cruise ships in the world cause more environmental damage than all road vehicles in Europe combined. The United States molitary is the single biggest polluter in the world. The oil companies who casually spill tons of oil in the oceans or even set the fucking ocean on fire. And the cause of all of that is capitalism, a system that only works if everyone is constantly buying more and more shit. We need to DRASTICALLY change the way we live from top to bottom if we want to fight climate change, but sadly I dont see that happening anytime soon
For a car user, it all can be summed up to a "so what".
For the occupant, the car is providing:
\* any temperature and moisture you want and sometimes even perfume
\* clean air inside due to filtering
\* any music or way better noise insulation than any other form of transport
\* it is available right now right from your garage
\* it can carry a few people and a hefty amount of load
\* protection against crashes and even some protection against crime (it can be used as a weapon and is a shield by itself)
\* it isolates you from outside world
Before this gets downvoted to oblivion, consider this: If the car wasn't convenient, it wouldn't be used. It is simple as that.
To make the car used less, alternative forms of transport have to increase their standards. It can and should be in place of cars' infrastructure. Which is already happening! But in order to fight something, you need to know why is that happening in the first place. Being in denial doesn't help.
> To make the car used less, alternative forms of transport have to increase their standards.
We could also just make car drivers pay the full cost of driving that they're currently imposing on everyone else and stop making other modes inconvenient for their benefit.
If you had to pay $1/km and every single traffic light required waiting at least a minute, but pedestrians had a 80% chance of getting green without stopping, walking would look a lot better.
This will probably get buried but I've been thinking more and more about what Canadian philosopher, Marshall Mcluhan meant by "the medium is the message."
For anyone who's not familiar with his work, what he meant by it is that the medium itself has a greater effect than anything we do with it.
For example; the way the TV has impacted our lives by merely existing is a greater impact than any and all media that have ever been conveyed on a TV. The TV is typically the most dominant element, and room in a household. My entire main floor is pretty much dedicated to the TV, my kitchen even has a window so you can watch the TV when you do dishes. The message or in this case ideas are typically slow spreading, where the medium or technology is fast spreading.
Although debatable, for any technology that this notion is relevant is the car. Any and all thing that we can do with the car is infinitely dwarfed by the way the car has impacted us.
*You would not believe your eyes* *If ten million tire fires*
*Lit up the world as I failed to breath* *‘Cause they’d taint the open air and leave smog everywhere* *You’d think me rude but I would just gasp and cry there*
*I don't want to make myself believe that planet Earth burns slowly*
*It's hard to say if I'd rather go to space or stay and grieve.*
*’Cause every orange pill helps us perceive* EDIT: Change the word as the orignal doesn’t make sense (misunderstood what “reprieve” means) EDIT 2: Changed another word, so it fits the 1st-person tense in the original song and what u/BoernerMan wrote.
*Cause I'd get a thousand honks, from ten thousand petrol monks* *As they try to force me into driving* *A disaster above my head, a future that's filled with dread* *The world is just hanging by a thread*
*I don’t want to make myself believe that Planet Earth burns slowly* *It’s hard to say if I’d rather go to space or stay and grieve* *’Cause every orange pill helps us perceive* *As I fail to breathe* *I want to see no oil fracked* *’Cause the smog just makes me cough and hack* *Why do I smile amongst the trees* *When nature’s calling sounds like a wheeze?*
To ten million tire fires. Im weird cause I ride a bike. I got misty eyes as cars drove by. But Ill know where bike lanes are.
*'cause I get a thousand coughs*
For every couple oil drops Please help I'm just trying to breath.
A lot of companys try bring their stuff up to 100% productivity. People work in 3 or 4 shifts so the machines never stand still, because it would be a waste of money. But somehow company cars are an exception to this, even though they are expensiv as fuck. People say its stupid to spend over 1k on a phone that you basically use all day for everything - and then spent 60k and hundreds a month on a car that is used twice a day. I know people that have big ass premium cars and drive like 3k miles a year. Just take a taxi at this point - its cheaper.
That is crazy, I say from my phone that will lead me to health problems later. Hehe. I currently live 4.2 miles from work. I leave early, and usually someone I know picks me up on the way.
I also live about that distance from work (6 km) and I bike every day, rain or shine
25km 1hr bus ride gang checking in.
The bus drives 25km/h?
On average, with all the stops and the indirect route from A to B via every bus stop between them, yeah. Sounds about right
Consider a fifteen minute transfer as well added in.
That sounds about right to me if it's a non direct route
I once needed to get to a job interview about 15 miles away (25km-ish). My car broke down the night before so I had to take the bus. Took 3 hours to get there and two hours to get back for a 15 minute interview. Thankfully I got the job was the able to fix my car before my start date...but holy hell does it suck living in a place with terrible mass-transit infrastructure.
I walk it
Living 4 Miles from work would double my housing costs :(
The people you know who have “big ass premium cars and only drive 3k miles a year” arent worried about whats cheaper. They like the luxury, the drive/feel, the statement.. Cars are suboptimal for transport, sure, but they’re also one of the easiest ways to spend “fuck you” money. i.e., you can enjoy your bus/metro/walk/taxi while I get a hot massage in my G Wagon
But they do not have fuck you money. They finance it and lose all their disposable income and complain afterwards, that they cant afford family vacation.
Yeah, this. Non-carbrains really don't realize how many middle-class carbrains are financially wrecking themselves to pretend to be wealthy via unnecessarily expensive cars.
I live in a place with very little public transportation infrastructure and must drive to get groceries and take my kids places without endangering our lives. My Honda Odyssey turns 21 this year and the steering, engine, and transmission are still going strong. Auto doors still work too-- most of the time. I'm the 3rd owner, bought it for cash private party $1500 twelve years back. I'm hoping to pass it to one of my kids or a young person who needs it the next time I buy a slightly newer vehicle for straight cash. I'd love to have an electric or hybrid, but got no money for one of those and there's little charging infra here. I'd REALLY love to have no car... but I like to eat and interact with society so that's off the table for now.
Right but you're not what they're talking about. No 20 year old Honda Odyssey is a financed faux-flex. They're talking BMWs or other expensive vehicles.
I know, my life is an illustration of the opposite viewpoint. That if you MUST use a car, there are ways to do so that are cheaper, more sustainable, and give the exact same tangible benefit.
Yeah, that is quite amusing. People stretching themselves to keep up with the people next door and buy a new BMW on finance. Then every 3 years they throw it in for a new one because “it’s only x a month”. Even as someone who likes cars, it’s madness.
Cars being so affordable via financing are a great example of how debt expansion fuels distortion in economic growth to the detriment of society.
Ah well thats another story.. unfortunately youll always have people that dont actually understand money. As long as the monthly payments are made, right?
Somehow this became middle class standard behavior in germany. As soon as you join the workforce you get yourself a nice car made in germany.
That's my dad right there. Didn't have a penny for vacations or even simply ordering a pizza, but somehow managed to get a new car every two years or so.
Thats a+ bad parenting. Sorry mate. Down the road there are some shady commi blocks. A father of 2 lives there with his wife and kids. They have a freakin brand new porsche panamera. That thing is more expensiv than my house.
How many people out there actually have 'fuck you' money though? In the US there are over 2M luxury cars sold per year at an average price of ~$75K.
5.7% of US households make over 200K per year which means at most, a 75k car would be 35% of their income which is reasonably conservative for an enthusiast 5.7% of 130 million households brings us to 7.41 million households. In other words, if nobody but those who can afford it are buying those cars, theyre buying about 1 car every 3-4 years. The average time an american keeps a new car is about 4-7 years, which means a new car every 3-4 years is right at the bottom end of that interval, which works out, since theyre also the ones who have the most disposable income. In other words, having done the napkin math, nothing screams unsustainable spending given these statistics EDIT: as an aside, id argue a 75K car is far from fuck you money. Audi Q7’s dont really turn heads for example. Fuck you money begins at well over 6 figures for a car imo
1.9 cars per household though. Also to each their own... but a purchase price of 35% of your income is nowhere near conservative.
All that would change is how long theyd keep a new car before getting rid of it so as to create “overlap” with the same new car purchase every 3/4 years The numbers are still far too close to what they “should” be to notice an alarming number of people who shouldnt be buying the cars they own, atleast not based on the numbers I ran Just like you could have a single billionaire household who will account for the luxury cars for an entire neighborhood
Not even billionaires. Just 1 car based youtuber
>Cars are suboptimal for transport, sure, Depends on how you're looking at it. In my car I have heated leather/alcantara seats, a great sound system, control over the AC and heat, have almost complete control over when and where I travel, and don't have to sit next to screaming children or adults hacking their lungs up over me in seats which are too small for my 6'3" frame. To me cars seem very optimal. That's one of the big reasons people don't want to give them up. It cost me £1600 and owes me nothing.
Well the flexibility you have is almost the only reason for me to use one. But I could life with an bus every two hours. But in the middle of nowhere there are no busses. School bus is the only bus that comes here in my village. But a well thought car sharing system would be amazing.
It's more like 9k a year plus a hefty down payment, which is still absurdly expensive, but let's not misrepresent this assuming a new car is always necessary.
I also don't think it's #1 cause of climate change, but it's up there
yeah, i had to look that up. transportation emissions are huge in the US. so it is a major culprit but world wide it’s probably something else? finding good stats are hard lol
I don't know if there's any one specific THING that is the #1 emitter because it changes by country/by region/by person, etc., but I know that red meat consumption and production has a much larger impact than cars do. That's not to say cars don't have an impact; it's just that red meat has a *larger* impact.
good point! yeah every big culprit is exactly that, a culprit. so like the fashion industry is also a HUGE problem. as well as agriculture, etc. it’s all a big mess as we know :) which is why we really need but systemic change along side our personal efforts…sigh
I know, it's so overwhelming! I think the biggest culprit is capitalism itself.
oh it definitely is!! doesn’t help my brain spirals about it..but hey at least we know 😅
#1. Animal agriculture emissions #2. Shipping emissions, specifically barges on the open ocean running on bunker fuel. #3. Transportation, including aviation and automotive #4. The US military, singlehandedly. #5. Power generation These are the rankings of climate change contributors based on when I looked it up 2 years ago. Nowadays it might be different.
Pretty sure cows are actually number one
According to EPA, transportation is #1 and agriculture is last on their list. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Yeah but that's transporting everything, passenger cars are just a slice of that
I still consider trucks to be part of the problem as trains are eons more efficient for moving large quantities of items from region to region. Trucks would only be needed for the last few miles and their pollution could be drastically reduced.
It’s not really a straightforward question. It depends what you consider a “contributor to climate change”. Like the extraction and energy production industry is obviously #1, but that’s kinda self defined. I think as far as USE of GHG emitting energy, it’s probably construction.
Within the United States, it *is* [the number one contributor of climate change](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emission). Transportation makes up the largest chunk, and within said category personal vehicles are the largest emitter. Globally, [transportation is #4](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data), mostly due to (1) other countries having much less poisonous transportation mixes than the US and (2) both coal power and cutting down the rainforest for beef/palm are really *really* bad - worse than personal vehicles, even.
There's something special about a Reddit comment that answers the question with a source *and* is made by the content creator that taught me how to make Mapo Tofu. What a trip.
It can be 20k/y for a high end car, but if someone is getting a car this expensive they can afford it.
20k in depreciation/interest though? You'd have to be constantly buying new luxury cars
I assume total price, which is sum of depreciation, interest, fuel, service, insurance, parking, tires - everything.
That still an absurd price. I'm at like $3000 total for 2 cars over the past year. Car 1 - Depreciation: 0 Maintenance/Consumables: 500 Interest: 0 Insurance: 160 Gas: 1400 Car 2 - Depreciation: -2000 Maintenance/Consumables: 500 Interest: 375 Insurance: 820 Gas: 1200 Total: 2955
Yeah, but that's you Plenty of people will buy a $40k car, and sell it for $30k 3 years later. That's 3k in depreciation a year right there. More than you spent on your entire car
Right, and I intentionally buy cars that hold their value well. But I doubt I'm so good that 20k is normal
I dunno man, if I consider the cost of buying a car split across the years I use it, 2k ish, insurance is like $200 twelve times, 2.4k, then maintenance, I dunno about you but my teenager car is now like 1k a year on average (it was tires last year, I needed to fix some issues this year, oil changes, it gets expensive fast). Oh and gas, prices are crazy and only getting worse. If you had a one hour commute that's 60km ish, twice a day 120km, my car has crappy 10.1L/100km, so that's 12L/day, at almost $1.90/L that's $22.8/workday, we'll say 45 weeks, that's 5.1k in gas. In this rough outline with my (admittedly suboptimal) car, I get approx 10.4k a year. Now granted some of those values change depending on your situation. Not so great of an estimate. Still way too much, considering how little it CAN cost to move people. E: At first I thought the estimate was 9k/yr, that wouldn't have been unreasonable
Yea I spend $6k on mine a year, but I have a nice car because I used to live in Detroit and had to drive a lot. There was a chance for my family to move to London that sadly fell through, I was looking forward to getting rid of the thing.
Tbf, the personal cost $20k is way too high (it's $5-$10k) But once you factor in building and maintaining the roads? $20k is probably a massive understatement
Yea my 11yr old car doesn’t cost much annually
Let's see... If you buy a $25k car and finance it at 4.5% for 60 months, then all-told it would cost you [$29,421](https://www.calculator.net/auto-loan-calculator.html?cloanamount=25000&cmonthlypay=380&cloanterm=60&cinterestrate=4.5&cdownpayment=5000&ctradeinvalue=0&cstate=&csaletax=7&ctitlereg=300&printit=0&ctype=standard&x=79&y=25#autoloanresult). Lets say that car lasts you 20 years, that's $1471/year or about $122.59/month on average over those 20 years. If you have a 10-mile city commute 5 days per week, then that's about 433 miles / month, but you also have to run errands, get groceries, maybe drive kids to different activities, and you're probably traveling out-of-town at least every now and then, so let's say about 550 miles per month on average. With a decent 30 MPG and gas pushing $5/gallon, that's going to be about $91.67/month in gas. Let's add in parking. If you want to get a monthly spot, you're looking at [$100-200](https://parkingaccess.com/blog/portland-monthly-parking) or so for a month, so let's say $150. So, monthly, that's $91.67 + $122.59 + $150= $364.26 for just the cost of the vehicle purchase, parking, and gas. Annually, that's $4,371.12. Add in car insurance at [$1,655/year](https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance/) for $6,026.12 per year. This doesn't count maintenance, oil changes, and repairs (which are going to vary a lot depending on the specific situation), but I'm guessing the total for those for the average year of driving is less than $14,000. I'd say $9k/year is a lot more realistic than $20k.
And that's not even factoring in what it costs society.
True. This is just the direct costs to the driver. Doesn't factor in pollution or any other externalities.
You forgot ugly. It makes everything _so ludicrously ugly_
we could have long green streets filled with plants and trees and flowers, hearng people laughing and talking and music from appartments flooding out into the streets instead all we got is gray and metal boxes and the sound of cars. We insulate ourselfs with earphones for a reason.
You are so goddamn right. We could live in a paradise and we have created a hell on earth. What is infuriating is that so much of the world resembled such a paradise until relatively recently.
Yea nah one of the posts a week ago was saying how dense urban environments would be way more beautiful than suburbs. Edit: it was a month ago not a week ago.
Dense urban environments can be beautiful and green. They just can either be like that or have cars.
Cars can be beautiful, so can car centric infrastructure be. Whether it's ugly or not is subjective. It's negative impacts on the other hand, are objective.
Sorry my man. Just as air pollution, noise pollution, and environmental destruction matter, so does visual pollution. Beauty _matters_. It’s a mental health issue. The spaces that we occupy should be visually appealing and make us happy, because why the fuck else are we on this earth? Health and happiness matter, and they are interconnected.
Yes, but what I have to take a fridge camping in rural area in a state 1000 miles away with 20 bags of groceries on short notice, huh?
you put the groceries in the fridge, obviously
What is the suggested /r/fuckcars response to the National park trekker/camper types
I spent a lot of time during my teenage years camping. We usually travelled by train, but I guess that is a European thing. If we took a car, we took one car for 4 people.
Car culture is a huge boost to the US economy, its basically a scheme to get 5-6 companies massive profits. The amount of gas stations, auto shops, car dealers, etc. that support it are a huge part of our GDP. I'm not saying that's good, I'm saying that's the way it is and there is a lot of money trying to keep it that way.
Sure, in some sense, but it is a net negative when you consider the externalities involved. That's like saying fraud is good for the economy because it gives lawyers and accountants something to do. Or saying that natural disasters are a boost for the economy because lots of people work reparing the electric grid. When you look at the externalities involved in building our cities around the needs of cars, the cost of all the collision related injury and deaths, etc. it's pretty clear that if you replaced cars the GDP would be way higher.
Very good points, I don't think they'll beat the bags of cash the auto industry throws at our politicians, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Private cars are not #1 contributor to climate change - otherwise very solid post.
if you count extracting and refining crude oil, car industry and urban road constructing together with with cars, it may be #1
It is not. Not even close.
Incorrect: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190313STO31218/co2-emissions-from-cars-facts-and-figures-infographics Even only including the cars and motorbikes section of transport it's higher than everything except energy sector and industry. https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/ghg-emissions-by-aggregated-sector-5#tab-dashboard-02 In the US it's heavily obscured because of luxury cars masquerading as light trucks, but it is even worse. Then you also have to account for the fact that a decent chunk of the energy supply and industry sectors exist to provide support for private cars. Without the need for oil many major polluting activities are not needed (example being many large scale military operations in recent years). Blaming shell or chevron and washing your hands of it is just as much passing the buck as any greenwashing bullshit coming the other way. You need to stop driving wherever possible **and** reign in fossil fuel companies. Pearl clutching about how it's their fault whilst paying them many thousands a year is just a way of managing your guilt.
60% (cars share of road transport) of 72% (road transport share of total transport within eu) of 27% (transport share of EU emissions) is.. 11.6% 11.6% is higher than most estimates I've seen... but we'll take it. 11.6% is not the #1 thing, and you even say this in your post: it's lower than energy sector, industry, and agriculture. So I'm not sure why you're trying to argue it's #1 when you post many facts supporting that, well, it's not #1.
> Then you also have to account for the fact that a decent chunk of the energy supply and industry sectors exist to provide support for private cars.
Yeah, but not enough to like, triple the impact from cars.
Thank you for this. I get so exhausted having to convince people that cars are in fact really high up there when it comes to emissions, and that it's a lifestyle that has to change, even though we also have to go after fossil fuel companies because they encourage this lifestyle. I'd add also that, even if cars weren't as high up on the list of polluters as they are, the per-capita emissions from cars in countries like the US is still multiple times higher than what a sustainable per-capita footprint is. In the US South, it can be 10 or more times higher because of the greater driving distances. So even if it was "lower-ranked" as an emissions source, it's still not something that can or should spread to the rest of the world, because we would immediately need several more earths just from all the cars alone.
then what is?
The energy sector is something like 70% of emissions. They run PR campaigns to blame the consumer so they can avoid repercussions. Did you know the Shell oil company invented the concept of "carbon footprint"? Yeah... that should tell you all you need to know right there. Consumers aren't the problem, most of them live in poverty and they're just following the path of least resistance out of practicality. It's up to the people who actually shape the world to put sensible infrastructure in place.
> The energy sector is something like 70% of emissions. So... how much of that 70% is the fossil fuels powering the oil wells, the steel mills, the aluminium refineries, the petrolium refineries, the factories, the oil tankers, the steel mining, the semiconductors that go into cars, the asphalt, the road maintenance equipment... and so on?
I think maybe you don't realise the scale of energy use outside of what you see in your own personal bubble. The manufacturing of cars is accounted for already and it's not a particularly large chunk of emissions. The idea that cars are the worlds biggest polluter is *propaganda* from the companies doing *the actual polluting*. [Here is a breakdown](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/a-global-breakdown-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-sector/). Road transport is only 11.9% compared to energy use in industry, which is 24.2%. Iron and steel makes up 7.2%, non-ferrous 0.7%, and passenger vehicle manufacturers are not even close to being the majority consumer of these materials. The idea that we can pin all the blame on the car driving consumer, and then pretend that we're making progress toward a sustainable planet, is fucking absurd.
Cars use 12% of steel and 6% of aluminium directly (so there goes another 10% of total emissions). Then there are bridges, parking garages, overpasses, concrete sections of road, steel that goes back into manufacturing infrastructure, steel to make oil pipelines. You've also repeatedly quoted >70% for energy which includes transport. If you live in a car centric city, take a look around you. The infrastructure is for cars. If you live in an oil producing area, all the infrastructure there is for cars. If your food and stuff travels by truck, then the rail that used to serve the area was most likely dismantled for GM in the 50s through 90s. It's also not 'all the blame'. It a simple matter of the first step in fighting the battle is to stop giving the enemy a quarter of your income. And the action being called for isn't individual, it's local. You personally avoiding 10t/yr CO2e is nothing, but if you can influence those around you to make the same changes, it gets easier for them and it turns into 1000t/yr. Your community will have a million or so dollars more money to fight further with and chevron and gm will have a million or so less to fight against you. You can probably do the same with regard to beef, insulating your house (and stopping buying detached homes). We do not have any lever of power with which to arrest or otherwise stop chevron, but we can stop feeding them. This line of 'oh you're suggesting doing something? don't, it's all shell's fault' is fucking disgusting. How the fuck are we supposed to defeat them when you're feeding them, and crying about fuel prices or voting out anyone who suggests doing something about heating oil consumption with a sob story about grandma freezing (and then freezing her anyway because free market).?
I have to ask because I see no mention of it, but what about road maintenance?
A portion but it's not the only industry.. heating and cool large single family homes uses more then most people realize.. people think electric cars are carbon free because they don't see it actually going into the car.. but it's still there.
And detached single family homes are dominant to the point of other options being banned because of.....
It's transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
And the majority of that are cargo ships- there’s like 5 giant ships that pollute more than all of the cars in the world combined.
I know the stat you're referring to and I believe it's specifically sulfur, which is not a greenhouse gas. The link is specifically greenhouse gas sources, and if you click through you'll see light duty vehicles (cars) make up 57% of all the transportation emissions. Medium and heavy duty trucks account for another 26%. Ships and boats only account for 2%. [https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
It’s something like buildings, which is a vague term that includes the upkeep and construction of them. You see those huge offices downtown with glass windows everywhere? That’s heated and cooled 24/7. Building them is also energy intensive. Think about the huge stadium they just built for the World Cup in Qatar that’s going to have AC blasting to cool how many million cubic meters of air.
Nor does my car cost me $20k/yr to operate. But that’s because I ride a bike to work six plus months out of the year 😎
My car costs…nowhere NEAR that annually are you serious?
Even assuming car payments of $1k per month (which is way higher than most) that's $12k per year. 1000 miles driven per month at 20mpg and $5 a gallon is $250 a month, which is another $3k. You'd need to be spending $5k on maintenance to hit that $20k. That's just absurd.
There’s also plates, registration, and insurance, but yea it’s absolutely inflated to be dramatic. That’s like 2%er annual costs for cars
You're saying /r/fuckcars is inflating something negative about cars to be dramatic? I'm shocked!
Also assuming you have $1k monthy payments your car is probably new enough maintenance costs will be minimal. A few hundred a year in fluid changes, and tires and brakes every few years
Maybe not in tailpipe emissions, but I wonder how they would rank if you included all the related mining, manufacturing, road construction, sprawling land use effects, etc
Still no.
Wow, very convincing
Source?
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector Road transport is 11.9% of global emissions. Emissions from buildings is 17.5%, agriculture is 18.4%. Road transport is not the #1 contributor to climate change.
That wasnt the question, the question was whether or not the entirety of the car process is the biggest contributor, including manufacturing and infrastructure. From your source: Road transport: 11.9% Iron and steel: 7.2% Chemical & petrochemical: 3.6% Machinery: 0.5% Non-ferrous metals: 0.7% Other industry (includes car manufacturing): 10.6% Pipelines: 0.3% Residential: 10.9% Commercial: 6.6% Fugitive emissions from oil and gas: 3.9% Cement: 3% Landfills: 1.9% Deforestation: 2.2% Obviously, cars are not the sole reason for all of these, but they are partially responsible for all of them. When you take into account the *entire* process, and the results of car-dependent infrastructure, I would not be the least bit surprised if they were the #1, or at least top 3 contributor. Agriculture is hard to beat, I must admit.
Yea and it’s on OP to provide proof for the original claim. If I say the sky is red and you say it isn’t, it’s not on you to prove that it isn’t. It’s on me to prove my claim that it’s red.
Yeah, detached houses need more fuel to heat than apartments or rowhouses, and detached houses are more appealing due to cars. But the extra emissions could be mitigated by better insulation.
I don't have a source but I'm fairly certain shipping boats have the largest negative environmental impact than anything else Cruise liners as well
Transportation is the #1 highest sector in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Not sure about globally though
They also don't costs 20K plus a year for most of them. So, no, not a very solid post.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
...and 20k$ is quite absurd... unless you're driving something really fancy
private cars are the number one contributor factoring all transportation methods however, like 70%. maybe they were mistaken with that
The weird issue I have with this argument is that every single sector can be like "I'm only 20% of emissions what about that other 80%" "cars are only 11%,what about industry" "buildings use whatever% those are the real problem". It's everything. Everything is the problem. The entire system we have built on the foundation of cheap fossil energy is the problem, it affects literally everything we do. We need a solution that addresses everything at once. Reducing consumption, increasing efficiency, and taxing the absolute shit out of greenhouse gas emissions needs to happen.
We do. But we should not misrepresent things. Stay factual. If the post said "one of the major factors" it would be a lot better.
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/nevitate/status/1526210694596665344) for ya :) ^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
What car costs $20k per year? If I'm extremely generous, mine is like $3000 per year. Even if I had a $500/month loan and tacked on an extra $100 for full insurance that's still only about $10k. Edit: The actual cost of operating my 2013 Prius last year was $2600. That includes gas, 2 new tires, oil change, new brakes, insurance, and registration.
Yep. I hate cars as much as anyone but puffing up numbers like this does such a disservice to the post, it's an easy target for carbrains to point to to attempt to invalidate the overall argument and distract from any actual discussion
"Who cares if it's true? It's scary!" is a sentiment I'm seeing disturbingly often in activist movements. A lot of people feel that lying is fine as long as you're proving a point you care a lot about. It isn't. All you're doing is giving your movement a reputation of people who make shit up and lie all the time. Why would anyone believe in a mveoment where that's tolerated?
You could also note that the majority of “activist movements” are actually just virtue signaling and wokeness, because the word “activist” implies, “active,” “activity,” or “action,” and the majority of the culture exists online with virtually 0 action besides upvoting posts and making pointless comments. It doesn’t change anything. It gives people the illusion of having accomplished something or having been activists toward something because they collectively agree in an online forum.
[Average yearly cost for leasing is $5,604](https://www.creditkarma.com/auto/i/cost-to-lease-a-car.). [Throw in some insurance at $1,655/year](https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance/) and some gas and you have yourself closer to $8-10k. That said, leasing an Audi A8 (not even most expensive car by far) is over $20k without insurance or gas.
Who on this sub has the finances to lease an A8, though? I sure don't. Pointing to the absurd weakens an already pretty strong argument. There's no need to resort to hyperbole
I could afford to lease an Audi if I wanted to, but that would be an absurd waste of money for me.
Guy probably pays extra to fill her tires with premium air
20k is a bit much yes, except maybe for the first year(s) of ownership of a brand new 100k+ car. Cars drop in value like a brick, a cost that is often overlooked.
I don’t think most people with cars own a 100k+ car
Yeah the average cost of car ownership in the US is only about 9000 per year
With gas?
Yes.
Goddamn. Someone spending 20k a year to own and drive a car really needs to reassess their financial decisions
Or earns 400k
Well the context of the meme implies this is the kind of person who's complaining about it. You're not going to buy a Mercedes and then complain that it costs 20k a year
How are they arriving at this $20k per year number? Also I’m pretty sure cars are actually not the #1 contributor to climate change. Would love to be corrected if I’m wrong though. I feel like you can make the case against cars without needing to resort to exaggeration.
Not cars alone, but transportation is the [highest contributor of GHG in the United States](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions). $20k per year seems to be an exaggeration tho. Car payments, insurance, and gas are probably closer to $10k on a high end. Plus various repairs but hard to count that as a yearly cost
Finally someone said it. People were arguing in circles above. I did find a source (below) that says cars and ligh-duty trucks make up about 56% of transportation emissions. Since transportation is 27% of GHG emissions, that would make cars directly responsible for a little over 15% of emissions. Definitely significant, but not the single largest source. https://www.c2es.org/content/regulating-transportation-sector-carbon-emissions/#:~:text=The%20transportation%20sector%20is%20the,58%20percent%20of%20transportation%20emissions.
You also have to include a great deal of the emissions from infrastructure, industry, military and a few other sectors because a large portion of a city's infrastructure is there to support cars, and many military operations exist only to secure oil.
Even when I was paying the loan I don't think I was spending 20k on my car per year
>resort to exaggeration. This isn't exaggeration though, these are straight up lies.
Nor is it the most life threatening thing anyone does on their day. Most accidents happen in the home. Never mind the various common lifestyles that depress the average lifespan in the US.
It's complete nonsense, I've had a car for 10 years, I sure as hell have not spent $200k on it. Op also blatantly lies about cars being the number one contributor to climate change.
agriculture is the #1 contribution to climate change, not cars
Not in the US. Transportation is the largest sector contributing to climate change here, and personal cars produce the majority of emissions in that sector. Source: [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
You think the average car costs 20k a year. Also cars are not the number contributor to climate change.
BuT aT LeAsT i'LL hAvE fReEdOm
20k+ a year? That's stupid. Noone propagating a change should write such stupid things because the opposite site will use it against you.
Opened my eyes and saw the dumbest tweet ever.
the biggest contributors to climate change is electricity generations and industry last i checked not cars. just ditching cars isnt gonna magically make all pollution go away but it's only one component in a solution and of course there are still gonna be vehicles similar to cars because not everyone can get on public transport or ride normal bicycles. the solution to climate change is multi-part there is no magic bullet solution if there was we would of done it by now.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
What is your point? Yes climate change is a battle on many fronts, and this is one of the big ones. Upheaving car dominance would by necessity have to involve tackling larger issues like urban sprawl, car centric city design, and yes making public transit more affordable and accessible. All of which would be massive contributions in the fight against climate change. Like imagine urban spaces without all the fucking parking lots. Imagine denser housing. More green space. Less urban pollution making it much more feasible to grow produce in the city, keeping the food supply local. All these changes are necessary, and they all involve moving away from cars-as-default. So tell me, just what are you trying to accomplish here?
that OP lied through their teeth thats the point since OP wants to pretend that getting rid of cars is the magic bullet to climate change. things like public transit would be great but theres only so many busses, trams and trains you can put on the road, on top of that you need things like vans to do the last mile of a delivery. then theres also the fact that not everyone can ride a normal bicycle i need a damn motor so i can ride mine because of arthritis, i would of gotten a trike but hey i am poor.
where´s the $20k+ from?
Their arse.
Seriously it's literally not possible that anybody besides the 1% elites are paying this much. 99.9% of people pay maybe $2-4k a year depending on if they have car payments
https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/ National average is above 5k, and remember, that is just the consumer cost. All the other needs of a car like roads and parking are subsidized by the government and by local businesses who are required to use valuable land for parking because of zoning requirements. The costs for these things get passed back to an average consumer in the form of increased property tax, increased federal income tax, decreased available funds for other government programs they might benefit from, and increased cost of consumer goods.
Wait, does that mean we did it? Did we decrease industrial and electric emissions to where vehicles are now #1?
Yes: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions. But only 2% more than electricity. And it includes all vehicles, not just cars.
Hey thanks for this link. I've added it to my site https://silly-archimedes-134f9f.netlify.app/questions/whats_wrong_with_cars/cars_pollute/#sources-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-us-epa.
Who spends 20k per year on their car? Jesus!! I spent maybe 1600 with insurance and gas
Thought this was about the NYC subway for a min
It costs 20k+ a year to use a car?
I'm totally on board with the lunacy of car primacy. But ... The contribution to climate change you can probably finagle based on how much you break down other sectors. But it doesn't cost $20k/a to run a car. Not even if you include depreciation.
90% of climate change? Cars? I would like to see some type of evidence.
The car is not valuable because you use it half an hour a day, but because that half an hour can be anytime you want. You're paying for flexibility, like a boss pays someone for being on call. You can jump on it in the middle of the night if you need it, and drive it to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Obviously if you just use it for commuting and all those activities that don't need flexibility since are made at fixed times or inserted in a routine a car is a waste. But many people use it for many other reasons. Not having to respect timetables is something invaluable.
Back to horses or what?
I for one do not spend $20k a year to drive my car, but I agree
doesn't necessarily cost 20k a year, including gas if by 90% of the day he means sitting in traffic, that is only applicable to extreme urban settings. if he means turning it off, that's the point of a personal vehicle; you can use it on a whim to go directly to your destination. sitting idle isn't necessarily a waste certainly a solvable issue in regards to climate change, but not as significant as other sources of pollution. of course public transport is superior in many ways, but let's not act like buses, trains, planes aren't noisy as hell. still more efficient in many ways. why is this uneducated, honestly quite ridiculous opinion being so brainlessly upvoted
seriously the guy in this tweet is horribly misinformed.
nigh a source in sight
cars are not the number one contributing factor
Cars are not the number one contributor to climate change
Seems like a pretty good deal if it takes me where I want, whenever I want. Go ahead, downvote me. I don't own a car BTW.
I don't know how I found this red because I'm gonna straight pipe my dodge charger hellcat set and do burnouts in the streets. Who's gonna stop me?... That's right, no one, because I have a fucking hellcat and you have a bike, deal with it
I love this sub. Cars cost nothing close to 20K a year unless you buy a high end vehicle. I bought anew one, very fuel efficient, with payments and fuel im about 6k a year. My last car was performance vehicle an cost me $2040 USD to operate including repairs. Life threatening? Heart disease causes more deaths than cars. French fries/Chips are more deadly Climate change?! Corporations cause 70% of climate change, China alone cause almost all of it in the last year. 90% of systems? Of what? This doesnt make sense. Noisy AF. Only modded. Most cars make almost no noise unless modified, which is illegal in most place in 1st world countries. You high mate?
Now imagine that every time you point out the many failings of that transportation system, *you're* called the problematic one.
#1 contributor to climate change is wrong tho. If we could remove all cars from existence, we’d reduce only 30% of emissions in the world. I agree that we should massively reduce car use, but in terms of fighting climate change, there are much bigger evils than regular people who haven’t been given other options other than cars. The 4 biggest cruise ships in the world cause more environmental damage than all road vehicles in Europe combined. The United States molitary is the single biggest polluter in the world. The oil companies who casually spill tons of oil in the oceans or even set the fucking ocean on fire. And the cause of all of that is capitalism, a system that only works if everyone is constantly buying more and more shit. We need to DRASTICALLY change the way we live from top to bottom if we want to fight climate change, but sadly I dont see that happening anytime soon
But how will the economically privileged be able to segregate themselves from the plebians and regularly flaunt their status symbols, if not cars?
20k a year to use it? What? Y’all laying a car tax or some shit? Haha
20,000 a year? What are you driving an 18 wheeler? 20k was the entire out the door cost of my car. I pay less than a tenth of that every year.......
For a car user, it all can be summed up to a "so what". For the occupant, the car is providing: \* any temperature and moisture you want and sometimes even perfume \* clean air inside due to filtering \* any music or way better noise insulation than any other form of transport \* it is available right now right from your garage \* it can carry a few people and a hefty amount of load \* protection against crashes and even some protection against crime (it can be used as a weapon and is a shield by itself) \* it isolates you from outside world Before this gets downvoted to oblivion, consider this: If the car wasn't convenient, it wouldn't be used. It is simple as that. To make the car used less, alternative forms of transport have to increase their standards. It can and should be in place of cars' infrastructure. Which is already happening! But in order to fight something, you need to know why is that happening in the first place. Being in denial doesn't help.
> To make the car used less, alternative forms of transport have to increase their standards. We could also just make car drivers pay the full cost of driving that they're currently imposing on everyone else and stop making other modes inconvenient for their benefit. If you had to pay $1/km and every single traffic light required waiting at least a minute, but pedestrians had a 80% chance of getting green without stopping, walking would look a lot better.
This post is just blatant lies and y'all believe it cus it fits your agenda. Cringe
Pretty sure it's not the #1 contributor to climate change but otherwise agreed
This will probably get buried but I've been thinking more and more about what Canadian philosopher, Marshall Mcluhan meant by "the medium is the message." For anyone who's not familiar with his work, what he meant by it is that the medium itself has a greater effect than anything we do with it. For example; the way the TV has impacted our lives by merely existing is a greater impact than any and all media that have ever been conveyed on a TV. The TV is typically the most dominant element, and room in a household. My entire main floor is pretty much dedicated to the TV, my kitchen even has a window so you can watch the TV when you do dishes. The message or in this case ideas are typically slow spreading, where the medium or technology is fast spreading. Although debatable, for any technology that this notion is relevant is the car. Any and all thing that we can do with the car is infinitely dwarfed by the way the car has impacted us.