this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
52 points (96.4% liked)

Fuck Cars

9826 readers
1 users here now

This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.

This community exists for the following reasons:

You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.

Rules

  1. Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.

  2. No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.

  3. Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.

  4. No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.

  5. No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.

  6. No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.

  7. No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.

Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Most people are aware that gasoline sucks as a fuel and is responsible for a large portion of carbon emissions, but defenders love to trot out that "if every end consumer gave up their car, it would only remove like 10% of carbon emissions"

I can find tons of literature about the impact gasoline vehicles have, but is there any broader studies that consider other factors—like manufacture, maintenance, and city planning—while exploring the environmental and/or economic impact of cars and car culture?

I know there's great sources that have made these critiques, but I'm looking for scientific papers that present all the data in a single holistic analysis

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[California Air Resources] Brake & Tire Wear Emissions
[NIH] Secondary particulate matter in the United States

so much, as you mention, is focused on the exhaust emissions, while ignoring the knock-on, indirect, and delayed effects

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

a couple more additions

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If we account to impacts on wildlife as well, there's displacement of species, stressors to local fauna, and the innumerable roadkills as well

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You occasionally see studies that include mention cost of manufacture - For instance Cuba technically has lower car emissions mainly because the embargo has forced them to constantly repair cars rather than get new ones. Not aware of any mention of the other facts like maintenance and city planning though, would be cool to see more data about it if it exists.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Re city planning:

The youtube channel Not Just Bikes has a lot to say about car-centric design, but isn't as data heavy as I'm looking for. They also have a series on the organization Strong Towns, whom does have more data in their critiques of car-centric city planning, but they spread everything out across half a day's worth of videos and recorded talks, and even more in podcasts and books and an online "academy."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I've read a few articles about the rubber from tires being one of the worst aspects of car pollution

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I don't know if there's any gasoline car vs electric studies, but there's been some research into, for example, carbon footprint of oil drilling vs lithium mining. Here's one of the articles that has a bunch of sources sited:

https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-footprint-of-lithium-ion-battery-production/#:~:text=Lithium%20mining%20does%20have%20an,GHG%20emissions%20during%20their%20use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

10% of a person's carbon emissions is still more than anybody's carbon footprint in the developing world. Every little bit helps and cars are the one source of carbon emissions that actually has some semblance of personal responsibility.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That and diet.

I probably shouldn't have framed the question as "in order to refute the 'only 10%' argument," it's also out of curiosity and accuracy. Anyone who resorts to "only X%" isn't arguing in good faith and won't settle for anything that's not the silver bullet that solves climate change entirely