A problem with this idea is that hotels are expensive. If it's a trip that can normally done in a day and you have to make it two days and an overnight stay, that's a significant cost that...
A problem with this idea is that hotels are expensive. If it's a trip that can normally done in a day and you have to make it two days and an overnight stay, that's a significant cost that probably eats up any expected efficiency gain. It might be more emissions, too?
But I sometimes wonder whether driverless trucks would be easier to implement if they drove slower. People might not like trucks driving in the slow lane at 45 mph, but it would likely be safer.
But I sometimes wonder whether driverless trucks would be easier to implement if they drove slower. People might not like trucks driving in the slow lane at 45 mph, but it would likely be safer.
I get the point they are making, but every time these discussions happen it’s usually every option other than “how can we implement a better public transportation system”. Drives me crazy that...
I get the point they are making, but every time these discussions happen it’s usually every option other than “how can we implement a better public transportation system”. Drives me crazy that people are so allured by self driving infrastructure when THATS WHAT TRAINS ARE.
Not to derail the point that trains are a good method of transport but in the context of autonomous and self driving trains are also not it. The fact trains -the transport vehicle on a preset path...
Not to derail the point that trains are a good method of transport but in the context of autonomous and self driving trains are also not it.
The fact trains -the transport vehicle on a preset path with preset signals and preset timetables- are manned tells me enough about the future of self-driving cars.
The potential gains are different. Trains only require a two man team to run, and the US only recently illegalised one man teams:...
The fact trains -the transport vehicle on a preset path with preset signals and preset timetables- are manned tells me enough about the future of self-driving cars.
The potential gains are different. Trains only require a two man team to run, and the US only recently illegalised one man teams: https://apnews.com/article/two-man-train-crew-railroad-rule-72393a8ad58584ba2c5cdda8f2361130
Those crews are responsible for potentially hundreds of tons of freight, each. Getting rid of them doesn't save much money relative to the value of the cargo, compared to implementing self-driving on vehicles. Life span is also an issue - cargo trains stay in service for twenty years on average and fifty at max, so gradual upgrades aren't an option - reliability is more important innovation, not to mention the highly regulated environment that unlike cars, doesn't have vast popular support.
Entirely fair for the US, but I wasn't speaking from that perspective. The Netherlands has a very tight train schedule which is both cargo and people. Reducing the amount of machinists,...
Entirely fair for the US, but I wasn't speaking from that perspective.
The Netherlands has a very tight train schedule which is both cargo and people. Reducing the amount of machinists, conductors, and other personnel will absolutely be cost saving. Two man teams is not the case over here.
Regardless, whether or not it's worth it, my point is that it's not possible yet.
Many metros have automatic signaling and can be driverless with the right infrastructure investments. I was just in Paris, and I think 2 or 3 of the metro lines are driverless.
Many metros have automatic signaling and can be driverless with the right infrastructure investments. I was just in Paris, and I think 2 or 3 of the metro lines are driverless.
It's a start, yes. Which is to say that we're not entirely there yet with short distance rail, not yet possible on long distance rail, and not even close with cars.
It's a start, yes. Which is to say that we're not entirely there yet with short distance rail, not yet possible on long distance rail, and not even close with cars.
Trucks and trains are better thought of as connecting rather than competing. The same container might be moved by sea, rail, and truck when doing intermodal transport. Trucks can deliver to every...
Trucks and trains are better thought of as connecting rather than competing. The same container might be moved by sea, rail, and truck when doing intermodal transport. Trucks can deliver to every store, and most stores don't have a railway siding.
It would be interesting to read more about industry structure, though. Why doesn't more ground freight go by train part of the way?
Most ton-milage of goods moved by truck are not going to stores. They're long distance trips moved from port to distribution center, or factory to distribution center. The reason why so much of it...
Most ton-milage of goods moved by truck are not going to stores. They're long distance trips moved from port to distribution center, or factory to distribution center.
The reason why so much of it goes by truck is just price. We haven't federally subsidized the railways in the US like we've subsidized the highway system. It used to be that freight rail was the way to get goods from place to place overland. Every medium sized town had multiple rail spurs with warehouses that had track from those spurs. Boxcars could be individually shunted over, quickly unloaded and turned around. Goods would then go from those distribution centers to stores via small trucks or horse drawn wagons.
Those days are long gone though. Most warehouses don't even have railheads anymore. Freight rail either goes directly to some extremely large scale industrial facility like a refinery or foundry, or to a massive freight yard to be unloaded onto trucks to make another usually pretty long journey.
That's because highways are wholely subsidized by taxpayers, and rail lines largely are not. If rails were effectively cost free for end users like highways were, I'd expect that we'd see a lot more goods shipped by rail over time.
Those are some good points, and I do think there would be more shipping by rail if there were more government support for rail infrastructure. In particular, more rail lines from west coast ports...
Those are some good points, and I do think there would be more shipping by rail if there were more government support for rail infrastructure. In particular, more rail lines from west coast ports to further inland would help a lot with congestion.
But I don’t think it’s feasible to go back to a time before shipping by truck. Industry and shipping were once built around waterways and railroads because those were the main alternatives, but that was a long time ago. The cost of upgrading or abandoning all the infrastructure built since then would be enormous.
Infrastructure projects are more expensive now. Land and labor are much more expensive, there’s more stuff in the way, and safety and environmental laws are tougher. Reusing existing road and rail networks avoids huge costs.
Yes, all of that is true, but one thing I've noticed when talking about changing infrastructure is that sometimes, people treat built infrastructure as a sunk cost that you just buy, and it...
Yes, all of that is true, but one thing I've noticed when talking about changing infrastructure is that sometimes, people treat built infrastructure as a sunk cost that you just buy, and it remains there forever.
It doesn't really work like that though. Highways, railways, loading docks, loading bays and so on are things that require constant flows of cash to maintain, modify, and remain useful. If you cut off that flow, very quickly, I'm talking like, within six months, that infrastructure becomes unusable. The maintenance cost of this stuff dwarfs the initial capital expenditure after a few years.
What that means is that we actually can very easily change what types of infrastructure we have by slowly changing what we fund. If a highways maintenance budget gets slashed, for instance, it will become less and less usable over time, lanes will be forced to close, and fewer people will drive on it. You're not taking a bulldozer to the whole thing all at once.
These things also happen "naturally", meaning there doesn't have to be a massive formal project with trillions of dollars right on the front end to nudge infrastructure development. You just cut budgets in one place and raise them in other places. The bureaucratic apparatus takes care of the details of how and where to apply those budgets to get the biggest bang for their buck and to stretch it as far as it can go. So if you're in charge of highways and your budget gets slashed by 10%, you start closing less used highways to keep being able to maintain your important ones. It's not necessary for the legislature to vote to tell you to do that.
Meanwhile, if you manage rail, and your budget increases, you can start funding studies about where the best place to put a new rail spur would be based on demand.
Over time, those small changes build up and the status quo has totally shifted.
You can change a ton about how we do transportation by just carefully allocating budgets to incentivize behavior we think is better than others.
Yes, infrastructure costs money to maintain, and abandoning infrastructure does happen sometimes. It seems more likely to happen to railways? There are long-abandoned railways that got converted...
Yes, infrastructure costs money to maintain, and abandoning infrastructure does happen sometimes. It seems more likely to happen to railways? There are long-abandoned railways that got converted to bike paths. Maybe the opposite conversion would be possible if there were need, but it seems unlikely.
Another example: after the 1989 earthquake caused widespread destruction, some highways in San Francisco and Oakland got converted to surface streets because a lot of money had to be spent anyway to make the roads safe, and people had different ideas about what should go there.
I don't see the US abandoning Interstate highways, though. Consider what happens when a bridge collapses on a major Interstate. There was the I-35W collapse in 2007 near Minneapolis and the Francis Scott Key bridge this year. Nobody even considers not replacing them. They're too important.
They absolutely would be easier to implement. Lower speed reduces accident severity and reduces stopping distance. With a shorter stopping distance, the sensors don't have to see as far, which is...
But I sometimes wonder whether driverless trucks would be easier to implement if they drove slower. People might not like trucks driving in the slow lane at 45 mph, but it would likely be safer.
They absolutely would be easier to implement. Lower speed reduces accident severity and reduces stopping distance. With a shorter stopping distance, the sensors don't have to see as far, which is a major challenge with LIDAR and cameras. At 100s of feet, an obstacle might only be a few pixels or LIDAR returns, making it super challenging to try to figure out what it is or estimate its motion. Then you end up needing additional sensors specifically tuned for long distances. But the latter generally trades field of view for detail, making it tricky to know where to point them because roads are usually not straight or flat.
If I could get a (truly safe) autonomous RV, I would never get on a plane for domestic travel again. Just travel the country working remotely from my mobile office and tow a tiny car for local trips. Exit-to-exit highway autonomy at 45mph is probably within reach of current technology, but too niche to be a thing startups build.
I find myself wondering what the point of this article is. Is it a serious proposal? Is the author just trying to stir up drama …? What does this even mean? The ecosystem that humans fit into are...
I find myself wondering what the point of this article is. Is it a serious proposal? Is the author just trying to stir up drama …?
The objective here is to deenergize our society and rejoin the ecosystem as full members. We need to take up our obligations as a keystone species. There is some evidence that we have done so before.
What does this even mean? The ecosystem that humans fit into are parts of the African savanna, several thousand years ago. We aren’t and never were keystone species; it seems like the author threw that line in to sound profound? And what does “evidence that we have done so before” even imply; they just say that and move on to discuss another tangent?
I agree completely. Within the article the author admits that they don't expect anyone to take this suggestion seriously. Is he trying to convince us to take a similar but less drastic approach,...
I agree completely. Within the article the author admits that they don't expect anyone to take this suggestion seriously. Is he trying to convince us to take a similar but less drastic approach, or what? What are we supposed to take away from this?
Why is this not worth doing? Because I would never see my family again. Even if I still lived in the same state as them I would never see them after the first few years of this plan. Every night on the road is another day of work missed, another day of vacation that I can't spend with family. You add enough time to the travel and it's all travel, no family time.
I'm actually on board with degrowth as a more general concept, but this is absolutely not the way to get started. Probably not the way to finish it either.
Even ignoring personal travel restrictions, you'd never have anything to eat other than a few things you can reasonably grow in your climate, you'd likely lose your job due to the absolutely...
Even ignoring personal travel restrictions, you'd never have anything to eat other than a few things you can reasonably grow in your climate, you'd likely lose your job due to the absolutely profound economic destructuon, you'd likely have periods where you were very likely to starve to death due to local crop blights or weather issues, if you ever got seriously injured, you'd likely die due to insufficient access to medical care. Your kids would likely have little chance at a decent education or a meaningful career outside of what your local economy requires, and on and on and on.
Basically it would be a life not to dissimilar to being a medieval serf, except for extremely jarring transition to such a society that would likely result in bloody wars and billions of people starving to death. The proposal is ridiculous.
Well, nowadays we are THE keystone species in anyplace that’s been disrupted by humans. Invasive species need human management, deer need to be hunted by humans, native plants need to be actively...
Well, nowadays we are THE keystone species in anyplace that’s been disrupted by humans. Invasive species need human management, deer need to be hunted by humans, native plants need to be actively protected and planted and grown. Obviously it’s way more work than what a beaver might do (though they are productive little guys). But I can see the argument that we are, or at least could be, a keystone species for any environment.
This proposal is honestly insane. I don't think the author has really thought through the implications here, but they're so severe that he'd be better off just saying "the solution to climate...
This proposal is honestly insane. I don't think the author has really thought through the implications here, but they're so severe that he'd be better off just saying "the solution to climate change is to just stop emitting CO2" like yes, obviously, but making it illegal to emit CO2, assuming we could perfectly enforce that, would lead to the climate crisis being mitigated, but it would also, no exaggeration lead to billions of people dying within weeks of starvation, and more dying due to the inevitable resource wars.
The modern economy is able to support the amount of people it does in large part due to cheap large scale transportation. Without it, large swathes of the world would very quickly die due to starvation, and it goes without saying that the entire global economy would collapse, and even through some people live within walking distance of food production centers, those centers wouldn't be able to continue to produce food without the fuel, fertilizer, part and other deliveries they need regularly to function.
We're so far past where the entire population can be supported via walking distance deliveries that the proposal is outright ridiculous. The human population currently is what it is, and those are real people that are suffering currently, many of them starving. Any proposal to save the environment by effectively culling large swathes of the world's population are obviously immoral and should be completely discarded at face value.
As a quick edit:
I've been thinking about why this post ruffled my feathers enough to post about it, and I think I know why. I don't mind radical proposals that disrupt the status quo. I think they're vitally important in fact, even if they never get implimented. What I get annoyed with when I read things like that is when the people who propose them don't seem to have thought through even the most obvious, surface level implications of what they're proposing, or they have, but they don't address them. Taken at face value, this proposal is so ridiculous that it cant be taken seriously. If the author has addressed those issues and at least attempted to argue for why they're not actually issues, or proposed solutions for them, I probably would have been a little more keen to at least consider it. They didn't do that though. It struck me as really troll-y, or at least unserious because of that
Make land travel suck more and you make air travel suck less by comparison. Making that annual family road trip to Disney turn into a family plane trip to Disney does not use less energy. Honestly...
Make land travel suck more and you make air travel suck less by comparison. Making that annual family road trip to Disney turn into a family plane trip to Disney does not use less energy.
Honestly this is one of the least reasonable takes on lowering energy consumption that I have seen.
[..] [..] [..] There might be unexpected (bad) consequences to this approach, but I like that it's easily measurable and can be done using existing tools and frameworks such as speed cameras and...
How could industrial society be caused to use less fossil fuels immediately by one single course of action?
By slowing surface speeds. First step, strict enforcement of current posted speed limits, Next step, reduce speed limits annually, recursively, by five miles per hour / 8 kilometers per hour. Continue to walking speeds.
[..]
Globally industry consumes well over half of all the energy humans extract, and then transportation takes a bit over half of what’s left. Industry and transportation suck up over ¾ of all the energy used by humans on Earth, and without high speed surface transportation to bring raw materials in, and haul finished product out, only some microscopic fraction of current global manufacturing or other industrial practices could be maintained.
[..]
Slow speeds don’t imply stone axes. I don’t know how this could evolve. I can’t see the system that would evolve at a ten mph world top speed, but it wouldn’t look like this one. There wouldn’t be any jet bombers, just for starters.
I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not crazy. This is not what I expect us to do, this is what we could do if we actually wanted to reduce emissions and biosphere destruction. I understand that developed societies do not want to do any such thing unless they can do it under circumstances where they personally never have to notice anything happened. I have made the choice to write about the required actions, the pattern, the basic parameters of a workable system, without regard to how I expect it to be received in modern societies.
[..]
There might be unexpected (bad) consequences to this approach, but I like that it's easily measurable and can be done using existing tools and frameworks such as speed cameras and legislations. It could even be a grassroots movement to install speed limiters to your own personal vehicles.
With my science-fiction brain turned on: it'll be a norm to live in a mobile home that crawls at half the human walking speed in order to travel long distances on land.
Are we overthrowing capitalism to get there? If not, then you've created two separate classes of people that can't meaningfully intermingle - people that can work from anywhere, and people that...
Are we overthrowing capitalism to get there? If not, then you've created two separate classes of people that can't meaningfully intermingle - people that can work from anywhere, and people that have to be where their work is. If you work in the service sector or doing something physical, you simply won't be able to spend enough time with people that are constantly on the move to form relationships with them. Changing careers would change your entire social circle, and if it doesn't align with what your family does, you might just never see them again.
Also, are we limiting emergency vehicles in this way? Are we going to have people dying of strokes and heart attacks because it took an hour to get to the hospital that used to be 5 minutes away? If not, you're going to have people lightly maiming themselves to get from wherever they are to the hospital or the area near it more quickly.
I'm thinking of just taking a paycut and working 80% of the time. I did it at one point in my life, and I think it did something positive for my ability to remain functional. I used some of that...
I'm thinking of just taking a paycut and working 80% of the time. I did it at one point in my life, and I think it did something positive for my ability to remain functional. I used some of that 20% to write a technical book, and some of it for just nothing (playing games, browsing net).
Being able to do it is a privilege of course. Not everyone can just take a 20% hit.
A problem with this idea is that hotels are expensive. If it's a trip that can normally done in a day and you have to make it two days and an overnight stay, that's a significant cost that probably eats up any expected efficiency gain. It might be more emissions, too?
But I sometimes wonder whether driverless trucks would be easier to implement if they drove slower. People might not like trucks driving in the slow lane at 45 mph, but it would likely be safer.
Trains?
I get the point they are making, but every time these discussions happen it’s usually every option other than “how can we implement a better public transportation system”. Drives me crazy that people are so allured by self driving infrastructure when THATS WHAT TRAINS ARE.
Not to derail the point that trains are a good method of transport but in the context of autonomous and self driving trains are also not it.
The fact trains -the transport vehicle on a preset path with preset signals and preset timetables- are manned tells me enough about the future of self-driving cars.
The potential gains are different. Trains only require a two man team to run, and the US only recently illegalised one man teams: https://apnews.com/article/two-man-train-crew-railroad-rule-72393a8ad58584ba2c5cdda8f2361130
Those crews are responsible for potentially hundreds of tons of freight, each. Getting rid of them doesn't save much money relative to the value of the cargo, compared to implementing self-driving on vehicles. Life span is also an issue - cargo trains stay in service for twenty years on average and fifty at max, so gradual upgrades aren't an option - reliability is more important innovation, not to mention the highly regulated environment that unlike cars, doesn't have vast popular support.
Entirely fair for the US, but I wasn't speaking from that perspective.
The Netherlands has a very tight train schedule which is both cargo and people. Reducing the amount of machinists, conductors, and other personnel will absolutely be cost saving. Two man teams is not the case over here.
Regardless, whether or not it's worth it, my point is that it's not possible yet.
Many metros have automatic signaling and can be driverless with the right infrastructure investments. I was just in Paris, and I think 2 or 3 of the metro lines are driverless.
It's a start, yes. Which is to say that we're not entirely there yet with short distance rail, not yet possible on long distance rail, and not even close with cars.
Trucks and trains are better thought of as connecting rather than competing. The same container might be moved by sea, rail, and truck when doing intermodal transport. Trucks can deliver to every store, and most stores don't have a railway siding.
It would be interesting to read more about industry structure, though. Why doesn't more ground freight go by train part of the way?
Most ton-milage of goods moved by truck are not going to stores. They're long distance trips moved from port to distribution center, or factory to distribution center.
The reason why so much of it goes by truck is just price. We haven't federally subsidized the railways in the US like we've subsidized the highway system. It used to be that freight rail was the way to get goods from place to place overland. Every medium sized town had multiple rail spurs with warehouses that had track from those spurs. Boxcars could be individually shunted over, quickly unloaded and turned around. Goods would then go from those distribution centers to stores via small trucks or horse drawn wagons.
Those days are long gone though. Most warehouses don't even have railheads anymore. Freight rail either goes directly to some extremely large scale industrial facility like a refinery or foundry, or to a massive freight yard to be unloaded onto trucks to make another usually pretty long journey.
That's because highways are wholely subsidized by taxpayers, and rail lines largely are not. If rails were effectively cost free for end users like highways were, I'd expect that we'd see a lot more goods shipped by rail over time.
Those are some good points, and I do think there would be more shipping by rail if there were more government support for rail infrastructure. In particular, more rail lines from west coast ports to further inland would help a lot with congestion.
But I don’t think it’s feasible to go back to a time before shipping by truck. Industry and shipping were once built around waterways and railroads because those were the main alternatives, but that was a long time ago. The cost of upgrading or abandoning all the infrastructure built since then would be enormous.
Infrastructure projects are more expensive now. Land and labor are much more expensive, there’s more stuff in the way, and safety and environmental laws are tougher. Reusing existing road and rail networks avoids huge costs.
Yes, all of that is true, but one thing I've noticed when talking about changing infrastructure is that sometimes, people treat built infrastructure as a sunk cost that you just buy, and it remains there forever.
It doesn't really work like that though. Highways, railways, loading docks, loading bays and so on are things that require constant flows of cash to maintain, modify, and remain useful. If you cut off that flow, very quickly, I'm talking like, within six months, that infrastructure becomes unusable. The maintenance cost of this stuff dwarfs the initial capital expenditure after a few years.
What that means is that we actually can very easily change what types of infrastructure we have by slowly changing what we fund. If a highways maintenance budget gets slashed, for instance, it will become less and less usable over time, lanes will be forced to close, and fewer people will drive on it. You're not taking a bulldozer to the whole thing all at once.
These things also happen "naturally", meaning there doesn't have to be a massive formal project with trillions of dollars right on the front end to nudge infrastructure development. You just cut budgets in one place and raise them in other places. The bureaucratic apparatus takes care of the details of how and where to apply those budgets to get the biggest bang for their buck and to stretch it as far as it can go. So if you're in charge of highways and your budget gets slashed by 10%, you start closing less used highways to keep being able to maintain your important ones. It's not necessary for the legislature to vote to tell you to do that.
Meanwhile, if you manage rail, and your budget increases, you can start funding studies about where the best place to put a new rail spur would be based on demand.
Over time, those small changes build up and the status quo has totally shifted.
You can change a ton about how we do transportation by just carefully allocating budgets to incentivize behavior we think is better than others.
Yes, infrastructure costs money to maintain, and abandoning infrastructure does happen sometimes. It seems more likely to happen to railways? There are long-abandoned railways that got converted to bike paths. Maybe the opposite conversion would be possible if there were need, but it seems unlikely.
Another example: after the 1989 earthquake caused widespread destruction, some highways in San Francisco and Oakland got converted to surface streets because a lot of money had to be spent anyway to make the roads safe, and people had different ideas about what should go there.
I don't see the US abandoning Interstate highways, though. Consider what happens when a bridge collapses on a major Interstate. There was the I-35W collapse in 2007 near Minneapolis and the Francis Scott Key bridge this year. Nobody even considers not replacing them. They're too important.
They absolutely would be easier to implement. Lower speed reduces accident severity and reduces stopping distance. With a shorter stopping distance, the sensors don't have to see as far, which is a major challenge with LIDAR and cameras. At 100s of feet, an obstacle might only be a few pixels or LIDAR returns, making it super challenging to try to figure out what it is or estimate its motion. Then you end up needing additional sensors specifically tuned for long distances. But the latter generally trades field of view for detail, making it tricky to know where to point them because roads are usually not straight or flat.
If I could get a (truly safe) autonomous RV, I would never get on a plane for domestic travel again. Just travel the country working remotely from my mobile office and tow a tiny car for local trips. Exit-to-exit highway autonomy at 45mph is probably within reach of current technology, but too niche to be a thing startups build.
I find myself wondering what the point of this article is. Is it a serious proposal? Is the author just trying to stir up drama …?
What does this even mean? The ecosystem that humans fit into are parts of the African savanna, several thousand years ago. We aren’t and never were keystone species; it seems like the author threw that line in to sound profound? And what does “evidence that we have done so before” even imply; they just say that and move on to discuss another tangent?
I agree completely. Within the article the author admits that they don't expect anyone to take this suggestion seriously. Is he trying to convince us to take a similar but less drastic approach, or what? What are we supposed to take away from this?
Why is this not worth doing? Because I would never see my family again. Even if I still lived in the same state as them I would never see them after the first few years of this plan. Every night on the road is another day of work missed, another day of vacation that I can't spend with family. You add enough time to the travel and it's all travel, no family time.
I'm actually on board with degrowth as a more general concept, but this is absolutely not the way to get started. Probably not the way to finish it either.
Even ignoring personal travel restrictions, you'd never have anything to eat other than a few things you can reasonably grow in your climate, you'd likely lose your job due to the absolutely profound economic destructuon, you'd likely have periods where you were very likely to starve to death due to local crop blights or weather issues, if you ever got seriously injured, you'd likely die due to insufficient access to medical care. Your kids would likely have little chance at a decent education or a meaningful career outside of what your local economy requires, and on and on and on.
Basically it would be a life not to dissimilar to being a medieval serf, except for extremely jarring transition to such a society that would likely result in bloody wars and billions of people starving to death. The proposal is ridiculous.
Well, nowadays we are THE keystone species in anyplace that’s been disrupted by humans. Invasive species need human management, deer need to be hunted by humans, native plants need to be actively protected and planted and grown. Obviously it’s way more work than what a beaver might do (though they are productive little guys). But I can see the argument that we are, or at least could be, a keystone species for any environment.
This proposal is honestly insane. I don't think the author has really thought through the implications here, but they're so severe that he'd be better off just saying "the solution to climate change is to just stop emitting CO2" like yes, obviously, but making it illegal to emit CO2, assuming we could perfectly enforce that, would lead to the climate crisis being mitigated, but it would also, no exaggeration lead to billions of people dying within weeks of starvation, and more dying due to the inevitable resource wars.
The modern economy is able to support the amount of people it does in large part due to cheap large scale transportation. Without it, large swathes of the world would very quickly die due to starvation, and it goes without saying that the entire global economy would collapse, and even through some people live within walking distance of food production centers, those centers wouldn't be able to continue to produce food without the fuel, fertilizer, part and other deliveries they need regularly to function.
We're so far past where the entire population can be supported via walking distance deliveries that the proposal is outright ridiculous. The human population currently is what it is, and those are real people that are suffering currently, many of them starving. Any proposal to save the environment by effectively culling large swathes of the world's population are obviously immoral and should be completely discarded at face value.
As a quick edit:
I've been thinking about why this post ruffled my feathers enough to post about it, and I think I know why. I don't mind radical proposals that disrupt the status quo. I think they're vitally important in fact, even if they never get implimented. What I get annoyed with when I read things like that is when the people who propose them don't seem to have thought through even the most obvious, surface level implications of what they're proposing, or they have, but they don't address them. Taken at face value, this proposal is so ridiculous that it cant be taken seriously. If the author has addressed those issues and at least attempted to argue for why they're not actually issues, or proposed solutions for them, I probably would have been a little more keen to at least consider it. They didn't do that though. It struck me as really troll-y, or at least unserious because of that
Make land travel suck more and you make air travel suck less by comparison. Making that annual family road trip to Disney turn into a family plane trip to Disney does not use less energy.
Honestly this is one of the least reasonable takes on lowering energy consumption that I have seen.
Not that it makes it any more feasible, but his proposal does include air transportation as well.
[..]
[..]
[..]
There might be unexpected (bad) consequences to this approach, but I like that it's easily measurable and can be done using existing tools and frameworks such as speed cameras and legislations. It could even be a grassroots movement to install speed limiters to your own personal vehicles.
With my science-fiction brain turned on: it'll be a norm to live in a mobile home that crawls at half the human walking speed in order to travel long distances on land.
Are we overthrowing capitalism to get there? If not, then you've created two separate classes of people that can't meaningfully intermingle - people that can work from anywhere, and people that have to be where their work is. If you work in the service sector or doing something physical, you simply won't be able to spend enough time with people that are constantly on the move to form relationships with them. Changing careers would change your entire social circle, and if it doesn't align with what your family does, you might just never see them again.
Also, are we limiting emergency vehicles in this way? Are we going to have people dying of strokes and heart attacks because it took an hour to get to the hospital that used to be 5 minutes away? If not, you're going to have people lightly maiming themselves to get from wherever they are to the hospital or the area near it more quickly.
I'm thinking of just taking a paycut and working 80% of the time. I did it at one point in my life, and I think it did something positive for my ability to remain functional. I used some of that 20% to write a technical book, and some of it for just nothing (playing games, browsing net).
Being able to do it is a privilege of course. Not everyone can just take a 20% hit.