this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities (theconversation.com)
submitted 10 months ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/bicycles@lemmy.ca
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Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.

The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will not feed in fast enough to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years. Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions.

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[–] Devorlon@lemmy.zip 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The video is about how people in Finland still cycle.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It used Finland as the best case scenario. The argument is not as strong when your comparing it with the best case. The average case would be the rest of Europe and they don’t get as much snow.

[–] Devorlon@lemmy.zip 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Canada gets more 4X the amount of snow than the Netherlands… Canada doesn’t remove snow as often cause there is more of it…

Your original argument is that Canada gets more snow than the Netherlands which is why it's cycling infrastructure isn't ploughed as much / isn't as good. The video actually shows that Finland does deal with snow and many still bike.

Yet now you say Canada, a country that's known to be cold and have lots of snow should be compared to the EU average instead of similarly cold countries. Why shouldn't we compare Canada to Finland?

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I actually made a mistake originally, I got the locations mixed up, my apologies.

But I personally don’t think Finland is a big enough example, at just 5 million, it’s a different ball game.

Having said that, I fully support my country (Canada) spending more money on infrastructure including better bike paths, but I have doubts it would work as well as Finland, we have way more suburbs.

[–] Devorlon@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I had this big comment, but just as I posted it my internet died. TLD±RW

I agree suburbs are hard to redevelop, we refocus cities to work for the people living in them, give suburbanites trains to cities and restrict cars. Which frees up space to allow for better winter cycle infrastructure.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah I agree with that. I think we are way more behind in terms of good trains and public transportation. Better bike paths would help but if people still need cars to commute from an hour away cause there is no train and houses are expensive downtown, your city centre would still be a giant parking lot.