Cars or the planet? What would you choose?
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,161 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 59089
Me. Earlier*.
But jesting aside... We need to massively reduce our consumption levels. Forget climate change for a moment, but what's undeniable is that we're doing serious damage to the natural environment and damage I can see even within my lifetime(as a flyfishing type since my early childhood, there are artificial flies I don't use any more, because the naturals they mimic are nowhere to be seen any more). While we've made big steps as far as recycling, at least on the surface, enough to make us feel better when we put out our green bins anyway, we're comsuming so much more than any time in history. That's undeniable too.
On the car front, I drive an old car, coming up on 22 years old as we speak. So I'm kinda doing my bit for sustainablity. If more car companies kept a stock of spares in play that would be great, but that doesn't suit the bottom line(though some are starting to. Mercedes for one. You can get parts for every car they ever made. At a price. In Japan Mazda will rebuild your 90's MX5 from the ground up). Anyway it rolled off the line in December 1998. Since then over half of all plastics ever made since their invention have been produced. That is, if you'll pardon my French, fúcking insane.
And we're being bullshítted all the time to make us all think we're doing our bit. Buy your new phone and it'll be full of all sorts of stuff, plastics to the fore, and pretty much bugger all of it will, or even can be recycled, and what can will be in a once off downgraded form. Those recycling symbols you see on plastics? They were dreamt up by the plastic manufacturers to get ahead of the game and regulations.
On cars again: a 1920's Bentley is significantly more recyclable and less damaging to the environment than a new Tesla. I'm not singling out Tesla either. That goes for any new car you buy. The Bentley is made of steel and copper and rubber and glass and leather and wood. All recyclable and if it's left and rots into the ground a lot less damaging. A Tesla? Eh...nope.
Oh and you know that new model year for cars thing? When cars were first available to the ordinary man and woman on the street they were seen as a very long term purchase and enterprise. When advertising the Model T, Henry Ford said it "was the only car you will ever need". Until "everyone" bought one and sales dropped. Then other brands and Ford saw the need to make them a throwaway item. By the 1950's the US car turnover was around 5 years. The head of Chevrolet IIRC boasted that he could get it down to one year. You know the way cars rust? The Model T was made from vanadium steel. It doesn't rust. You can dig a Model T out of a swamp after 60 years, wipe the surface down and the panels will be good to go for the most part.
And that's before we get to the ability to repair all the new dopamine hits for dopes we all surround ourselves with. Your phone stops working? fúck it in the bin. Buy a new one. Repairing them is a purgatory. If you can get the parts. Same for your other IT gear. Apple led the way there and others have followed. You don't need no stinking upgrades and we've removed the options anyway, buy the latest thing! Household appliances aren't much better. Oh sure, we'll give you an "extended warranty" on your washing machine, but when it kicks the bucket in three or four years time it'll be "cheaper and easier" to buy a new one. Oh and we'll even take back the old one in exchange. Straight to the landfill.
That's how it's going and is today folks. We're all too brief (increasingly)renters of stuff between factory and landfill. Cars are a problem, but IMHO they're the tip of the fúcking iceberg.
*and yep I do heel and toe when downshifting. Not because of any skill or racing stuff, but because the Da(tm) taught me to drive and he learned on a 1930's car with no synchros, which was the fashion in them days. One of the reasons I failed my first driving test because the tester quite reasonably enquired of me: "WTF are you doing!!". In a dual control Starlet.
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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