Spread out living (which is equivalent to car dependent living) has a knock on effect on consumption of everything, and it is more than a linear relationship.
The more spread out people are, the further water, electricity, gas, sewage, trash, food, human bodies, and everything else has to travel. Energy is mass times acceleration times distance.
In other words, detached single family homes with garages and 2 cars driveways on a quarter acre lot preclude any environmentally conscious changes one could make, barring the miraculous discovery of some new technology that supplants fossil fuels. Or drastic reductions in population.
The simple, but not politically viable, solution is to increase fossil fuel taxes so much that it forces people to give up detached single family homes and individual cars and move into apartment or rowhouses so that public transit can be implemented.
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Spread out living (which is equivalent to car dependent living) has a knock on effect on consumption of everything, and it is more than a linear relationship.
The more spread out people are, the further water, electricity, gas, sewage, trash, food, human bodies, and everything else has to travel. Energy is mass times acceleration times distance.
In other words, detached single family homes with garages and 2 cars driveways on a quarter acre lot preclude any environmentally conscious changes one could make, barring the miraculous discovery of some new technology that supplants fossil fuels. Or drastic reductions in population.
The simple, but not politically viable, solution is to increase fossil fuel taxes so much that it forces people to give up detached single family homes and individual cars and move into apartment or rowhouses so that public transit can be implemented.