this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Report says a large part of it is due to increases in severe weather events due to climate change so I guess you reap what you sow. Still doesn't begin to capture the costs of car usage but at least it's a start. Sucks for lower income people who need a car but we need things like this to push people away from car ownership and onto public transit otherwise the inertia of car dependence will stimy any efforts to improve public transit.
Inb4 "but public transit sucks right now I need a car", yes it does but no politician is going to invest in making it better if everyone's driving. We need to push people onto public transit so they can experience how bad it is and pressure there representatives to improve it. If we don't the status quo will remain, the planet will get warmer, more severe weather events will happen and people will die.
I keep arguing this and people don't like it. The pain is necessary, we need people to be inconvenienced so they demand we solve the problem. Our greatest enemy is little stopgap solutions that kind of help people now at the cost of their future, like subsidizing oil to make gas prices cheaper.
It really sucks that people who are already having a hard time, people who don't have money or time, are going to be the first to feel the pain. There's definitely things we can do to help, but we all know that at least America isn't going to do those things. I just don't see a better way. Kicking the can down the road isn't going to help them either, it's just going to put them in a worse spot later.
wow what a really shitty and uncaring way to look at this good job for your lack of humanity, cunt.
Reducing car usage will improve the world
You have to have a pretty limited view of humanity to think this is uncaring. Higher insurance costs and people driving less is mostly just inconvenient for people in rich developed nations. Meanwhile the climate change mostly caused by the excessive pollution of those people is and will cause even more suffering due to severe weather events, drought, famine etc. This will disproportionately effect the most vulnerable people in developing and poor countries which have contributed way less to climate change. Look at a map of per capital emissions then look at one for countries that will suffer the most due to climate change and tell me how that is fair or humane.
But yeah, I'm unsympathetic, go on and tell a person dying of heat in India whose never even driven a car how I'm inhumane for not feeling more sad about you paying more for car insurance, cunt.
How bout the poor people that relay on their cars to live and also have little to begin with. They suffer just as much as any others but go on on your fucking high horse im sure those who live in 3rd world countries really effected by climate change are sooooo thankful they have a shitstain like you cheering for the struggle of other working class individuals, you unemphatic virtue signaling sack of shit. The corporations that actually contribute the majority to climate change sure love shitheads like you.
So much name calling and so little argument. This same "what about the first world working class" argument can be made about ending gas subsidies or adding gas/carbon taxes. It can also be made about increasing labor standards, and thus costs of goods produced, in the third world. "If we don't use sweatshop labor to produce shoes than a working class person in the u.s. might have to pay double for there shoes, and if you don't feel bad for them then your heartless". Not everything that is good for the first world working class is good for the working class as a whole.
The "corporations are actually the problem" argument completely ignores the fact that those corporations are emitting that much to meet western demands for consumption.
The fact remains westerners and Americans especially need to drive way less and consume way less if we want to prevent climate change. That means if your lifestyle relies on driving and consuming that amount you'll need to change your lifestyle. That will be painful, but not as painful as the horrors the people of the third world will suffer if we don't.
Yes because fucking surely having higher insurance to bleed even more money from the working class before implementing proper public transport is surely the right fucking way to go about it. Ill make sure to tell the mother of 3 living out of her camper she should be grateful for what she has because comparatively someone in a third world country has it worse. really love the sweatshop comparison and how it doesnt make any fucking sense to the situation well done fuck face.
If it's not the right way to go about it then how should we do it? Like I said in the beginning no politician is going to advocate for public transit when all there constituency drives, and the only thing that's going to get people to not drive is to add more friction to driving, which will require making drivers lives more difficult.
Also this isn't insurance companies profiteering, they are currently in the red due to increased claims caused by severe weather events from climate change. To lower insurance costs would require subsidies, which we shouldn't be using on a means of transport that is destructive to the environment.
As for the sweatshop argument let me spell it out since you seem a bit dense: the western lifestyle, including the working class, is subsidized by the exploitation of both the working class of the third world as well as the environment. Stopping that exploitation will require increasing the cost of living for westerners. If you stop sweat shop labor that working class mother of 3 will have to pay more for her kids shoes. If you end gas subsidies and add a carbon tax that working class mother of 3 will have to pay more for gas. If you don't subsidize car insurance that mother of 3 will have to pay more for that. All of these would add to the burden of that mother but they will also alleviate the suffering of those in the third world and future generations significantly more. There are also ways to alleviate the burden of the mother too: universal childcare, paid maternity leave, affordable public housing, federal jobs guarantee etc. that don't require incentivizing destructive lifestyles and forms of production.