Quote:
Originally Posted by bikegypsy
The car is probably the most destructive element for humankind.
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Who were the first people to buy cars, other than the wealthy as toys? Rural doctors to save lives. Farmers to transport goods to market without rotting. Ambulances to rush people to hospital. Firefighters to swiftly reach burning houses.
In 1900 1/3 of the commercial grain harvest was gobbled up by horses and 1 million tons of disease-causing manure had to be shovelled off the streets of New York and London every year.
The nature of transport requires there to be a dominant mode at all times. Even if we replace the car with something else, in time, it too will be seen as some polluting, resource-draining health hazard that, when it first arrived, was emancipatory and liberating.