If YOU drive a car, YOU support TERRORISTS. WORLD WAR 3

"If you can prove me wrong" -- In debate, that's called affirming a negative. The burden is upon the one 'affirming' to offer indisputable proof, not upon the one denying.

According to your reasoning, using the bus (which burns oil) will cause fewer to be murdered than using the automobile. But, even with the bus, people are still being murdered, right?

Hey, if I'm late for an appointment, the first mode of transport that comes to mind to get me there quickly is the bus.

Please keep in mind the car manufactures dismantling the public transit system in LA in the 1920-30' and what that has led to. Disatrocious consequences and horrible air quality, a corrupt president(both Bush's) and numerous other issues. Not so sure this isn't a more complex issue than just cars, but I will say that the oil industry are terrorists for the most part. Not neccessarily the low level workers, but the elite bastards influencing policy decisions to make a buck.

Fuck Rockefeller that genocidal bastard and his cronies!!!

there are lots of categories of alternatives to fossil fuel, but ethanol requires more energy to distill from corn or other plant matter per volume than the amount of energy it contributes to the car, so it is no long term solution. It's primary use is for reducing pollution. It would be worthwhile if the energy involved in production all came from renewable sources such as windmills or good hydroelectric, but in California, many power plants are polluting.
Biodiesel sounds pretty good. You can convert a car, or take a diesel car and pretty much throw all sorts of carbon-based stuff in the tank and it will go. However, if everyone were to convert, there wouldn't be enough left over cooking oil etc. for everyone. It still would involve recently grown plant matter, and thus wouldn't result in increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere like taking deeply buried fossil fuels from sinks within the earth and reintroducing it to the atmosphere.

"The World is Your Foister"

I used to live in Fresno, once a pretty area, but now choking in smog, mostly because of people's "freedom" to drive SUVs and live in sprawled out suburbs. Excuse me if I object to anyone's "freedom" to destroy the planet.

Cars produce poverty, and keep people in poverty. Its the
single biggest expense in most peoples lives. For people who
live in areas without good transit a car oriented society
tends to keep people in poverty. Need a job? Got to get a
car, ok so you scrounge and get a junker, now you spend
most of your income keeping the thing running. You could be
spending $35/month on bus rides instead, if only the busses
went where there are jobs.

Thats one blessing the bay area has, its rare that not
owning a car keeps you unemployed.

Californians hold a lot of the blame because we live in our cars. My God, if our neighbors invite us over for dinner, we'll drive the car next door. Car pooling and better use of public transportation would be a good start.

Cars cause a lot more problems than just greenhouse gases, smog, and fossil fuel depletion.

They cause the destruction of wild land and farmland in at least two ways: one, they help promote urban and suburban sprawl, leaving few large untouched areas; two, additional land is used for roads, freeways, and parking lots. Next time you're in the suburbs, look at a major office park or mall. Compare the amount of land the parking lot takes up and the amount of land the buildings take up. Chances are the parking lot takes up as much or more land area.

While the resource cost of maintaining and running a car is great, the up-front cost is also large. A typical car has a lot of metal - which means that a lot of ore was dug up out of the ground and smelted using a great deal of energy.

Atomization and the enclosure of public space: everyone's driving in their own car (often only one person to a car), not talking to each other, not seeing each other as human beings but depersonalizing other drivers as simply "cars". The streets used to be a place of commerce and social and political interaction, as well as transportation, but this public space has been taken over ("enclosed") by many small privatized units of space - cars. It is taken for granted by drivers and urban planners that THE function of streets is transportation, meaning of course automobiles. Challenging this single-track view is part of the motive behind Reclaim The Streets and Critical Mass.

Mechanization and sedentary behaviour: for millions of years, our ancestors have walked and run to get around. This has, in the last century, been replaced by machine transportation, and the consequent loss of daily exercise, leading to health problems and our increasing reliance on machine, not human, power.

For more on this sort of thing, look for books by Lewis Mumford, an excellent critic of technology and urban planning.

Also, about ethanol: currently, ethanol is not very renewable. Environmentalists often back the idea of ethanol additives, not realizing that a major force behind its promotion is ADM, Archer Daniels Midland, an enormous, greedy agricorporation desperate for new ways to make money by government subsidy. ADM appears to have been behind the recent banning of MTBE in California, since ethanol is the only other viable fuel oxygenate. Not that MTBE looks to be a good thing, but we don't need to put more money in the hands of corn agribusiness.

Are you sure you're not just biased nessie, because you have a tool box full of Snap-Ons?

I don't think any of the posters who point out some of the problems with cars want to take away your cars. They are merely pointing out some bad consequences of automobiles that not everyone may have been aware of. Perhaps that will help motivate people to find ways to meet their needs without cars. I figure that a mass trend away from cars (at least in urban areas) is at least as possible as a working class revolution and may perhaps be coincident.

>And no, I’m not prejudiced because I own tools and know how to use them.

Nessie, I suspect that particular excerpt was directed at me, and not the other commentator.

I happen to agree with you. The heading of the post where I mentioned "Snap-Ons" should have been a clue I was just kidding around :)

http://www.involution.org/sync-separator/pictures/janes-collages/research.html

Fascinating... I ponder these very issues while motoring down Highway 99 in an 8 Litre Pontiac Trans Am, shifting up and down through the noisy gearbox and marveling at the cookie cutter, disposable vehicles all around me. I prefer to think of this car as a sort of 'time machine' in that it depicts all the glorious excess that our nation has been known for. Come to think of it, after looking out in the driveway at my new Lincoln Navigator, all is not yet lost...Robert