But yeah that would require work, let's just cry about losing convenience and continue perpetuating the same cycle again, since we have no options but to commit to our clearly unsustainable model
Personally, I’d prioritize suboptimal solutions which prevent a rise in ocean temperatures.
2. A pun.
While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago.
As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan. Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards?
[0] Though I may be wrong about this. Part of the reason why Amtrak still exists in it's current form is because it's a de-facto subsidy from Acela[1] riders to rural towns with no airport links.
[1] Me: Mom, can I have a Shinkansen?
Mom: No, we have a Shinkansen at home.
Shinkansen at home: acela.jpg
I don't think anti-car people call for rural public transit as much as they ignore rural, suburban, and exurban areas altogether. They call for "banning cars" (or drastically reducing them) without articulating how this would actually work outside of dense cities.
> While "make everything dense again" is kind of the end-goal, the way we get there isn't so much by "forcing" people to move into dense urban areas. At least, not unless you consider markets to be a form of coercion, in which case everything is "forced" all of the time and I have no argument for you. What happens is that we stop overplanning zoning codes, let commercial and residential zones mix, and allow the market to do it's job rather than just lining the pockets of whoever bought into the neighborhood 30 years ago.
I'm kind of fine with this (I like walkable neighborhoods!). I would like more mixing of residential and commercial (more, smaller shops), but I think it's a foregone conclusion that this would result in the kind of dramatically increased density that makes European-style public transit ubiquitous (a lot of people like space, and there's a lot of it in the US). I certainly don't think that's going to happen on a time scale that allows us to skip EVs while meeting climate targets like the OP suggests.
> As to your point about urban chauvinism, I do want to point out that while New Urbanism (the thing you're talking about) is really prevalent in urban spaces, so are NIMBYs. It's not so much "everyone should live like us"; it's an argument between people who want city centers to actually be cities and people who still think mixed-use land is the path to crack-era Manhattan.
I'm not sure what New Urbanism is, but I would be fine with urban people quibbling about how urban spaces should look (I live in a major US city); however, this debate isn't scoped exclusively to cities.
> Dense urban spaces are already so desirable now that pretty much every formerly-cheap neighborhood has been gentrified to the hilt. If more people want to live in a dense urban area, then why shouldn't the housing market be allowed to cater to that desire and expand the urban core outwards or upwards?
I don't think this is true except perhaps in NYC or the Bay Area. But in general I don't think anyone has a problem with the concept of expanding urban density (although there's surely some NIMBYism from people who don't want their suburb to be the target of urban expansion).
EVs, like carbon offsets, are a necessary part of a carbon-zero future, but they don't actually get us any closer on their own.
But that would still reduce the problem by a factor of what? 100? With all the other side effects of needing smaller roads, reducing congestion, ... .
Every vision of a low-carbon future requires many things to change. You're saying we should let the current slow movement on electricty generation be an excuse for not moving on EVs (despite the fact that they're an improvement regardless). You could similarly argue that the slow movement on EVs should be an excuse from not improving electricity generation (despite the fact that there are improvements regardless).
Whataboutism about one vision is worthless until you have a better vision, where we can compare the practical and political tradeoffs between them.