There’s only so much you can change urban sprawl. In the US especially, high gas prices just mean people who are middle-class or below can’t afford to get to work. Last summer, 6% of my salary after tax went into the commute to and from the office.
You can change a ton. Especially in an urban sprawl environment.
Urban sprawl means it’s comparatively easy for people to get PV, heat pumps for heating/cooling and EV chargers at home.
With that, you make yourself completely independent of high gas prices.
Yes, it has high up-front costs, but the long-term benefits are massive. And with enough pain comes political momentum, which can be used to get state subsidies for that kind of stuff and that way you and your country can become independent of importing fossil fuels while at the same time reducing harm to the climate.
And yes, it needs to hurt quite bad first to cause such a big systematic change.
There’s only so much you can change urban sprawl. In the US especially, high gas prices just mean people who are middle-class or below can’t afford to get to work. Last summer, 6% of my salary after tax went into the commute to and from the office.
You can change a ton. Especially in an urban sprawl environment.
Urban sprawl means it’s comparatively easy for people to get PV, heat pumps for heating/cooling and EV chargers at home.
With that, you make yourself completely independent of high gas prices.
Yes, it has high up-front costs, but the long-term benefits are massive. And with enough pain comes political momentum, which can be used to get state subsidies for that kind of stuff and that way you and your country can become independent of importing fossil fuels while at the same time reducing harm to the climate.
And yes, it needs to hurt quite bad first to cause such a big systematic change.
And that’s where the Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness comes into play.