Show up to the DMV with several million dollars and I guarantee you can find someone who let’s you skip the test. Same deal.

Ok but…

Yes, but it’s very slow.

It’s interesting that this doesn’t talk about attacks on transformer cooling oil, or any kind of attacks on petroleum refinery or drilling equipment. Probably because the later would have been unthinkable in the 90’s.

And car drivers will never going to be minority, because it’s impossible to replace flexibility of the car.

Helicopters are far more flexible, but you wouldn’t make the same argument because it would be absurd. Cars will not be dominant because we will either replace them or society will collapse and destroy the vast logistic network they need to exist.

I haven’t owned a car in years. I have two kids, and I’m able to take care of all my needs with a bakfiets and a longtail bike. There are things that would make bikes far more flexible, like more bike cars on trains and metros.

But it’s honestly good enough. Sometimes you just don’t do things, or things are a bit harder. I accept that trade because I’m not literally destroying my children’s future.

It would be easy to ban cars from Amsterdam or Utrecht. They aren’t banned in Amsterdam because there are too many people who are too rich to walk. It’s not about flexibility there, it’s about keeping the ultra rich safe.

Cars are only affordable and flexible because they have been made that way. Roads are massive investments that take away funds from other infrastructure. They are supported by massive subsidies: fuel, infrastructure, military, etc.

The moment you stop dumping money in to maintaining the status quo, even as it kills us, is the moment that cars and planes stop being the best option.

Car drivers are already the minority in Amsterdam. In the core metro area, there’s less than .6 cars per household, while there are more bikes than people. If cars “will never be the minority,” how are they literally the minority rights now?

Which ones? Personal transport can be fixed with better urban design and EVs for the edge cases. Logistics can be largely replaced by rail, bike, and small EV. That leaves container shipping, which actually mostly moves fossil fuels, interestingly enough. A good amount of aircraft can be replaced with high speed rail or sleeper trains.

“Oh, but what about flights over the water?” Have you ever heard of a “ground effect aircraft?” This isn’t even new tech. Google Project 903.

“Oh, but I have to be at a meeting in Beijing TOMORROW!” Yeah, fuck you, you don’t. Business has unreasonable expectations that can be brought in to line with reality. Like, is it really worth killing us all to force the world to move this fast? No. This is fucking nonsense.

Between downshifting, designing things more efficiently, and using alternatives, a whole lot of this problem is solved.

And that’s literally what “phase out” means. It means you replace a bunch of stuff and then work on figuring out anything that’s left. So yeah. You’re wrong.

Unless you’d like to explain why you’re not.

Is it the only way though?

Well, there it is

I’m just going to leave this here, for no reason in particular. https://youtube.com/watch?v=m1lhGqNCZlA

Unrelated, but there needs to be a “Mr Choppy” gif for replies to this meme in particular.

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For anyone unaware of the context, the political compass is literally fash propaganda intended to appropriate the word “libertarian” from the left, creating the illusion of an antiauthoritarian capitalism. And it worked.

Context matters. The US isn’t trying to greenwash anything right now. It’s external image has completely collapsed. Meanwhile, China is working really hard on it’s external image.

I agree though that the US is one of the most internally propagandized country. Chinese propaganda also operates differently. In China, propaganda comes from the state and corporations are extensions of the government. In the US, media is controlled by corporations and the government is an extension of the corporations.

But the context was on clean energy, and Chinese greenwashing propaganda is ahead of the US.

I was really hoping for a different type of ICE car to be on fire…

The US is much more fragile than it seems. It was able to dominate the world by leveraging control of oil and currency to maintain the internal caste system. Fascism is expensive though, and it’s already choking.

Genocide is a last gasp to maintain power. There is no way to prevent revolution, so the right is flailing. They believe that if they reestablish the “demographic distribution” that existed at their height, they can maintain power. Basically, they think they can ethnically cleanse the US back to the right. But that can’t work. Nothing can possibly work because it’s all over for them. So yeah, the US isn’t going to last much longer… Especially now that they’ve nuked the soft power they used for so long to keep everything in check.

“But I’ve been indemnified!” yelled the oil ghoul as he was carried off to be burned at the stake by pitchfork wielding pesants…

China is the same, but better at propaganda. There can be no centralized solution.

In Parable of the Sower, only the rich drive cars and those are basically armored vehicles… Which Octavia Butler predicted in 1993. Still on track for that I see.

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Well, lobbying in the US means “bribing” and if you’re just going to talk to them without money in hand they don’t give a fuck. Since the film is set in the US, that kind of matters. Lobbying against oil anywhere in the world is basically just ignored. Again, direct action gets the goods.

Lobbying is “begging for permission” from people who have been paid to not care. “Direct action gets the goods.”