Imagine a world where we don't all have the right to drive...

[Andy in Germany]

How long is it you've been in Germany, that's what English roads are like now

Ah. Good point.

Eighteen years, as you asked...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

We just need Sustrans to design the national car network. Then they would all be busy pushing their cars through muddy fields, trying to lift them over barriers, and trying to spot the signs the size of a postage stamp, whilst we take the direct cycle ways, A roads, B roads...

 

[mudsticks]

I’ve been killed to death five times this week and it’s only Tuesday :-)

Ain't reanimation a wunderful thing..

 

[mudsticks]

We just need Sustrans to design the national car network. Then they would all be busy pushing their cars through muddy fields, trying to lift them over barriers, and trying to spot the signs the size of a postage stamp, whilst we take the direct cycle ways, A roads, B roads...

Genius - Yukon for Transport Minister - Now ...

 

[Thomson]

We used to have two cars till last year, I sold mine and now cycle 120 miles a month at least, She has our only car. And yes she could probably do without the car most days threw the week. And get a bus to work at weekends. If we had to make do without we would find a way. But it wouldn’t give us the life we have when she’s off weekends and we go on day trips and long drive holidays. Plus with two young kids if anything happens. we will never go back to two cars tho. Too much hassle. Most houses near us have two car households. One has three. Parking is abit off a joke sometimes. But the shed does me fine :-).

 

[Wobblers]

Imagine a world where your freedom to move around is restricted.
Imagine a world where you can't read the local classifieds, hook a trailer and go fetch your new spare bed.
Imagine a world where you can't put a bike in your car and find a nice scenic place to start a ride.
Imagine a world where you are at the beg and call of time tables.
Imagine a world where choice is taken away from you.
Imagine a world where more fuel is consumed by piecemeal deliveries than by bulk personal shopping.
Imagine a world where insanity prevails.

And yet this is the world of tens of millions of people in this country who can't or choose not to have a car, let alone the majority of the 7.5 billion people on this planet. It is not essential for existence. Nor is a car a requirement for a happy fulfilling life.

As for insanity... the reality is that traffic jam in the morning as everyone rushes to get to work (it's ironic that car ownership is sold on the idea of personal freedom, when in fact it is mostly used for the drudgery of getting to and from work). Or that our roads are so clogged with parked cars it is now an active impediment to driving those very same cars. Or the tens of thousands who die every year in this country alone due to the pollution of those cars. Or that a vital irreplaceable resource, one that runs most of the world's irrigation pumps, is a feedstock for fertiliser and pesticide manufacture and is critical for mechanised argiculture - is in fact responsible for most of the food on your plate - is being squandered in such a way.

Our descendants will not thank us.

 

[slowmotion]

And yet this is the world of tens of millions of people in this country who can't or choose not to have a car, let alone the majority of the 7.5 billion people on this planet. It is not essential for existence. Nor is a car a requirement for a happy fulfilling life.

As for insanity... the reality is that traffic jam in the morning as everyone rushes to get to work (it's ironic that car ownership is sold on the idea of personal freedom, when in fact it is mostly used for the drudgery of getting to and from work). Or that our roads are so clogged with parked cars it is now an active impediment to driving those very same cars. Or the tens of thousands who die every year in this country alone due to the pollution of those cars. Or that a vital irreplaceable resource, one that runs most of the world's irrigation pumps, is a feedstock for fertiliser and pesticide manufacture and is critical for mechanised argiculture - is in fact responsible for most of the food on your plate - is being squandered in such a way.

Our descendants will not thank us.

It rather depends on how much you drive your motor, doesn't it? Anyway, there are perfectly sound reasons for using them. If you would like to carry five sheets of 18mm MDF back from Builder Depot to my house over a weekend, send me a contact number. Ownership of a car/van , per se , shouldn't be judged as some kind of knee-jerk eco-crime.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

And yet this is the world of tens of millions of people in this country who can't or choose not to have a car, let alone the majority of the 7.5 billion people on this planet. It is not essential for existence. Nor is a car a requirement for a happy fulfilling life.

As for insanity... the reality is that traffic jam in the morning as everyone rushes to get to work (it's ironic that car ownership is sold on the idea of personal freedom, when in fact it is mostly used for the drudgery of getting to and from work). Or that our roads are so clogged with parked cars it is now an active impediment to driving those very same cars. Or the tens of thousands who die every year in this country alone due to the pollution of those cars. Or that a vital irreplaceable resource, one that runs most of the world's irrigation pumps, is a feedstock for fertiliser and pesticide manufacture and is critical for mechanised argiculture - is in fact responsible for most of the food on your plate - is being squandered in such a way.

Our descendants will not thank us.

Maybe the number of descendants in your model is the problem. But that aside, take your Utopian vision back 150 years and apply it so that people had to prove that they needed a horse and cart. Now imagine those villages today. They'd be perfect anachronisms. No progress, plenty of in-breeding, no cross fertilisation of ideas and technologies, no markets to exchange goods in and no dance in the other village where your great-grandfather met his wife.

The pollution problem will be solved. There's no need to live in a pit of doom.

 

[Drago]

The pollution problem won't be solved so long as market forces are allowed to remain. the prime driver of consumption. Too little, too late is a very polite term to describe current efforts - without absolutely massive change the world over, the planet is borked, and fiddly round the fringes simply won't do the job.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

The pollution problem won't be solved so long as market forces are allowed to remain. the prime driver of consumption. Too little, too late is a very polite term to describe current efforts - without absolutely massive change the world over, the planet is borked, and fiddly round the fringes simply won't do the job.

The necessary market forces are there. The move is towards electric. If you don't believe me, just ask Honda, Nissan and JLR workers what's happening. Going electric by itself isn't a solution, of course, I know that. It merely moves the pollution elsewhere. We now have to solve the problem of generating clean reliable electricity in absolute abundance. The technology for that is there - nuclear - but there's no ideological appetite for that at present. The powers that be are still stuck on renewables, which isn't the solution it presents itself as.

There is no need to live in a pit of doom.

 

[raleighnut]

Nuclear power is not the answer, I had this argument nearly 40yrs ago with my Father (He was part of the team that wrote the control programs for Hartlepool and Heysham power stations)

What do you do with Nuclear Waste after the reactor is scrapped and what happens when one goes 'pop'.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Nuclear power is not the answer, I had this argument nearly 40yrs ago with my Father (He was part of the team that wrote the control programs for Hartlepool and Heysham power stations)

What do you do with Nuclear Waste after the reactor is scrapped and what happens when one goes 'pop'.

That's the classic response to nuclear.
Nuclear waste is easily contained in a very, very small space. Look it up, you'll be surprised. It isn't what's portrayed.
The deaths from nuclear incidents is minute compared to death from other power generating schemes. They're just more emotional. A good analogy is a plane crash vs a steady stream of road deaths which don't reach our consciousness.
Nuclear is clean, reliable and cheaper than any renewable.
With enough nuclear plants churning out cheap, reliable energy, we can power the world's cars in two ways - fuel cells and electricity.

There is no need to live in a pit of doom.

 

[raleighnut]

That's the classic response to nuclear.
Nuclear waste is easily contained in a very, very small space. Look it up, you'll be surprised. It isn't what's portrayed.
The deaths from nuclear incidents is minute compared to death from other power generating schemes. They're just more emotional. A good analogy is a plane crash vs a steady stream of road deaths which don't reach our consciousness.
Nuclear is clean, reliable and cheaper than any renewable.
With enough nuclear plants churning out cheap, reliable energy, we can power the world's cars in two ways - fuel cells and electricity.

If we had put the same resources into wind/wave/tidal and solar generation then we would already be there, unfortunately the waste product from that doesn't go bang unlike 'spent' fuel rods. The main reason for nuclear energy was in the production of bombs.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

If we had put the same resources into wind/wave/tidal and solar generation then we would already be there, unfortunately the waste product from that doesn't go bang unlike 'spent' fuel rods. The main reason for nuclear energy was in the production of bombs.

Naaah. Name one incident where the waste rods went bang. There is no danger in well-managed waste storage.

Wind/wave and tidal is much more expensive and currently subsidised with your tax money. Wind is terrible for reliability. When there's no wind, they have to burn fossil fuels. For every megawat of wind capacity, you need a megawat of quick-fire fossil fuel capacity. That's two plants per plant. It is stupid. Germany followed that route and now has the most expensive, dirtiest electricity in Europe. France in contrast, went nuclear and is bathed in excess and much less emissions.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Consumerism is a huge issue, I went into a supermarket the other day, they were selling strawberries, in February! why? why should anyone 'need' to eat strawberries in February, (why anybody would want to eat them at all is another question)