this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
1003 points (88.3% liked)
Fuck Cars
9881 readers
4 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Exactly. Corporations ABSOLUTELY are a problem we NEED to fight. But its also not an excuse to pretend we're all completely blameless. People get furious when you tell them we cant sit around and wait for climate change to magically fix itself or billionaires to magically become good and stop. But that WE are going to have to actually make changes and put our money where our mouths are
To be clear this isn't quite my own argument; even though I am saying that transportation emissions are too substantial to be ignored, I am skeptical of "personal responsibility" type solutions. I think it would be better to approach this with stuff like taxing companies based on employee commutes, taxing oil, urban planning and improved public transportation.
Even those require individuals to do something though. Since the government and basically every corporation is entirely opposed to this. You still have to march and protest and call your representatives and fight for it. There's no reality where this ever changes with no one doing anything beyond an occasional Facebook post. However, even if suddenly our politicians and billionaires all had a change of heart, the necessary changes to effectively combat this environmental catastrophy would mean a complete upheaval of our lives. Cars and animal products either cease to be made or are so expensive barely anyone can afford them. We'll be using public transportation and bikes and eating mostly vegan diets and bringing our reusable bags to our zero waste grocery stores. Itd force people to do all the things that various groups are already trying to get everyone to do (and to be clear im not sitting on my high horse claiming i already do all that, because i dont) There's no way through this where we solve the problem and it doesnt require all of us to change our own habits
Yes. But that doesn't mean it makes sense to frame things as being about who is 'good' and who is to be blamed, or that the impetus for change should be personal initiative to adjust away from unsustainable lifestyles. What's needed is uncompromising policy solutions, and ones that are designed by experts to actually have a direct impact. People often get confused about what matters and what doesn't, and proportionality. For instance restrictions on plastic bags at grocery stores is totally negligible for climate change, and arguably makes the situation slightly worse. Meat consumption has a significant impact globally, but in a first world context is relatively insignificant compared to the other things we do to create emissions. The problem isn't that people aren't choosing to live virtuously, since even if they did many attractive definitions of virtuous would not produce the needed results, and realistically that is not a viable way for human behavior to be adjusted anyway. The problem is that the circumstances around us shape our lives, and impel us to live in an unsustainable way, and that is what has to change.
Basically I think it just has to be more things like, accepting that deliberately high gas prices are a necessary sacrifice for the wellbeing of humanity, rather than asking everyone to choose to drive less and pat themselves on the back when they manage it and feel shame when they do not.