In perhaps one of the great ironies of human civilisation, mechanical devices to truly magnify human power came along as soon as we didn’t need them.

The average modern person, by one calculation, spends more than 1,600 hours a year to pay for their cars, their insurance, fuel and repairs. We go to jobs partly to pay for the cars, and we need the cars mostly to get to jobs. We spend four of our sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering the resources for the car.

Since the average modern American, by one estimate, travels 7,500 miles a year, and put in 1,600 hours a year to do that, they are travelling five miles per hour. Before people had cars, however, people managed to do the same – by walking.

By contrast, a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process.

  • TheFriar@lemm.ee
    2·
    8 months ago

    Well, to show how ridiculous their shit actually is, the whole “the left wants to sterilize you” thing came from a study talking about how having kids is the biggest contributor to climate change, ahead of eating meat.

    https://archive.nytimes.com/green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/having-children-brings-high-carbon-impact/

    and all the articles from NYT, WP, The Guardian, etc (the “lIbRUl MeEdIa!”) probably all citing this study that looked at the effect of having children.

    Yknow, studies. By scientists. To learn about the world around us. Lefty shit like that.

    It’s unfortunate because this one doesn’t fall into the trap of right wing propaganda fodder, it’s literally just a study discussing what having children means in a time where everyone is worried about having kids because, yknow, the world might not be very hospitable by the time they grow up.

    The climate solutions that we all agree are great personal choices you can make are easy pickings for them. But it’s funny, because all this talk about what we can do and most outlets just won’t even bring up large scale change that targets the biggest polluters, massive companies. Because that’s “anti-business” which is basically sacrilege these days.

    sigh

    …it’s a sad state of affairs. But I’ll keep riding my bike and taking the subway and buying local and all that. But it’s a drop in the ocean.