So, mass surveillance for everyone under the guise of “think of the children!” while billionaires are trafficking and raping them.

Thanks.

So it’s mainly for costs and money. It’s an entirely valid reason. What’s a bit disappointing is that some are delaying the purchase of a car now to save money, but still want one eventually. It’s still a good thing, but kind of still perpetuates car dependency on the long term.

I never owned a car but it’s mainly because I don’t want to drive a gas burning vehicle that can kill other people around me. I wouldn’t drive one if they were electric and free, unless they’re the size of a golf cart.

The financial side is obviously a plus. It allows me to spend more on housing, because it’s important to live in a place with services nearby.

It’s also keeping me somewhat fit. I can walk a few km, or can easily cycle a few dozen km. And I’m just mentioning the environment but it’s obviously better for it if we avoid using cars.

Yet as mentioned in my previous comment, it often feels like society is pressuring me and people without cars to join the trafic and the race to find parking. Like the vibe of the article, everyone with a car around me tells me that one day I’ll have no choice but to give up and get one. It’s just a matter of time and inevitable. Some have told me I’m not even a real adult as long as I don’t have a car.

Apparently I can’t read this without a subscription.

However as someone that lived more than 20 years car free in Quebec, I wish them good luck and lots of patience.

Living without a car in a city, town or village is easy but to me the biggest hurdle is intercity transit. Trying to visit my friends and family is an exercise in patience that often ends up with me telling myself that society really wants people to buy cars. In a way, it shows that young people don’t want cars, because the buses are full of them, literally. The bus line that I use more frequently is saturated and there’s people standing from the back to the door. Meanwhile there is a railway going parallel to this route with infrequent and underfunded commuter trains.

Every time I need to go in another city or town without a car and it’s outside of my metropolitan area, I feel like nobody gives a fuck about transit and intercities. I feel like a second class citizen and after decades of being car free, I’m often thinking of giving up and drive a fucking car.

It’s also getting worse with coaches. I can’t go to places where I could go without a car 20 years ago because routes are cancelled. The town that I grew up in had passenger trains and coaches until the 90ies. Now there’s nothing in a radius of 40 km.

The ministry of transportation from the current government in Quebec once said that it wasn’t the responsibility of that ministry to offer public transit to the citizens.

The message from our provincial and federal governments is clear: get a car.

So to all the car free Canadians, thank you for your patience and sacrifice. Thank you for sometimes putting your life in danger by cycling or walking in places dominated by cars. Thank you for showing the example even if it’s not always easy.

Apparently Trek has a pretty long list of recalls.

Of course. I just haven’t got over how bad of a slogan it is.

Cool, exporting pollution. Also, Canada is not for sale. Except for its natural resources.

Every time the constitution is on the table the country nearly implodes.

Will all the provinces agree on a new constitution this time? It only led to two referendum the few last times we tried.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the race but I just checked and apparently it’s not going well for his aspirations. Good.

Sa croisade pour le troisième lien Québec-Lévis et sa sortie intempestive contre les tergiversations de Christine Fréchette à ce sujet n’ont pas été payantes.

Unfortunately Fréchette didn’t admit yet that this is a bad idea, she’s just “unsure” about the proposed route. And sadly Drainville is like a cockroach. If/when he loses, I expect him to find his way again into a party in power and continue pushing his BS.

As Bernard Drainville of Québec’s CAQ once said, “lâchez-moi avec les GES”. Meaning something like “won’t you drop it with those greenhouse gases”. His last title was the head of the Ministry of Environment and Fight Against Climate Change. And he proudly announced that the ban on internal combustion vehicles planned in 2035 was scrapped. He cried on TV when his party announced that maybe building a third bridge over the St-Lawrence for $10G to save a few minutes may not entirely be a good idea.

He’s also the xenophobic idiot that introduced "“Québec’s Charter of Values”. It didn’t work but he still continues to this day to push his xenophobic agenda under the guise of secularism.

He is a despicable human being, and until recently he was responsible for the Ministry of Environment in our province, until he resigned. And the shittiest part is, he resigned to run as the next leader of the CAQ and could be our next premier.

In any way, whatever the next party in power, Québec probably won’t help. Nobody really wants to. Every election everyone just wants economic growth. Ask them what’s the most important every election? They’ll tell you the economy is the most important thing, obviously! And have you seen the price of gas?! It’s robbery! Gas should be cheaper!11!! That’s what’s important!

So no, we won’t meet any climate target.

They’re still killing a few billion other animals yearly, just that those are “accidents” instead of being on purpose.

Very large numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates are killed on the world’s roads every day. A Humane Society volunteer survey conducted over three Memorial Day weekends in the 1960s estimated that one million vertebrate animals are killed by vehicular traffic daily in the United States. A 2008 Federal Highway Administration report estimates that 1 to 2 million accidents occur each year between large animals and vehicles. Extrapolating globally based on total length of roads, roughly 5.5 million vertebrates are killed per day, or over 2 billion annually.

I’m glad that she’s good at her job and does the killing. It’s nice to have people with the right job for their skills. When you’re good at piloting killing machines, then you do what you’re good at.

Yeah, about that.

My province just had a very dry summer with very low water levels. Some wells dried up.

At some point farmers were wondering how they would be watering their crops if it got any worse.

Or what about flash flooding, either on flat ground, or in mountain towns? Or wild fires?

There’s certainly places safer than others, but a lot more people are going to be affected than just coastal inhabitants.

“It will help regulate overpopulation”

-Billionaires

And all this because we refuse to slow capitalism down. The most important question on everyone’s mind when there’s elections is the economy and money. We need economic growth. Can’t tax billionaires. Can’t stop the consumption machine. Economic growth!

The sad thing is that most people are willing to relocate to avoid the effects it will have on them financially. It’s not because it could help to mitigate the change; they won’t move into a 15 minutes city. We’ll just perpetuate the sprawl elsewhere and continue what we have always done before.

It’s even more sad when I look at images of natural disasters, and beyond the immediate lost of lives, seeing people lose their things and run (drive) to buy even more things produced by the very system that is causing more frequent and intense natural disasters.

Beyond legislation and enforcement, it’s been disappointing to try to explain those things to people around me for decades, hoping they will make the connection, only for them to end up being mad at high gas prices. Also, that survey asks about inside the US only. What if people from one state don’t want immigrants from another state? It’s gonna be interesting to see when the next inevitable question in a decade or so will be if people are willing to become climate refugees in other countries, and if citizens of other countries are willing to accept them.

I still use IRC. There are now modern web clients like The Lounge or Convos that can display/share images in the channels, keep history and push notifications. Apparently Convos can do video chat but I never tried it. Unfortunately I’m not aware of screen sharing features for any of these.

So on a very simple setup, you need an IRC server, then install and connect one of those clients to your server, and use them through a web browser, either on a computer or on a phone.

It’s obviously not entirely Discord-like, but it is a simple way to chat and share images.

But they’re gonna continue to consoom and drive their individual giant SUVs everywhere. Don’t worry they will be electric so buy buy buy.

Anyway, AI running in datacenters powered by fossil fuel will surely find a technological solution to our consumption problems.

Surely we can’t just stop consooming.

And don’t forget to recycle!

My nation has been under occupation by the English since 1760 and I have no special love for the actual country that was forced on us. The patriots tried to fight against the English; they were captured, and hung. One capitalist master over another, I’m not fighting for that.

We survived for 260 years in a country that was stolen and in a union that was forced on us. We will endure the Unitedstaters if they take over, as we endured the English.

Plus, an escalation and more spending on the military is exactly what the orange turd wanted in the first place. You are being played over FUD.

The world will be such a better place when the poor will fight one another for a line on a map while the rich pockets the money from military equipment sale. But at least everyone is employed and has a job!

What a wonderful way to keep people employed, by pivoting from engines destroying the environment and killing people to, well, exactly the same. It’s certainly a win for them, and us to continue being paid to make death machines. Their union is smart to want to get a piece of the military budget pie.

Just like the US, let’s have common folks earn a living from making military equipment, and depend on those jobs. Great idea. It’s not at all contributing to spending public money on the military instead of useless social programs.

My city does it for raccoons because tourists find them so attractive that they approach and feed them.

In fact the southern regions of Quebec are frequently doing it for raccoons, skunks and foxes, in localized areas.

There’s articles in the news on this subject but most people don’t pay attention to this.

Anything but reduce car usage or invest in public transit. No, the solution to everyone wasting energy to move a personal multi ton vehicle around, and prevent parking lots from worsening climate change, is to install solar panels on top of every parking lot and road.

Cars will one day be made by green energy, powered by green energy, recycled by green energy, and be entirely carbon neutral, of course.

They will still emit tons of microplastic particles but we’ll eventually find a technoloical solution for that, I’m sure. They will still kill billions of animals every year but it’s not related to climate so no biggie. They will still kill one human every 30 seconds but again, not a climate issue. They augment the risk of cardiovascular diseases and make people fat. They are also a source of noise pollution and stress for millions of poor people living near freeways. And they are also an expensive status symbol. But none of this matters because they will be electric, and have solar panels on top of parking lots, thus solving the problem once and for all!

Personally I’d prefer we get rid of parking lots and build housing on top of it but, where will people park their climate friendly cars?!

Anything but to admit cars are an environmental problem.

EDIT: Sorry about the abrasiveness. I did read a study a few months ago about installing solar panels on top of parking lots and they did have a positive impact, but it’s just impossible to do this on every open air parking lot and road because of material and cost. Even if it could have a positive impact on localized areas, it’s never gonna be enough to have an overall impact.

Just to give you an idea of how much parking there is in the world, you can look for those maps where parking lots are highlighted. This is for Flint, MI. This is for Philadelphia. I tried to do it for a town of about 80k people in Québec (Drummondville), and just gave up before being done. And that’s just counting parking lots, not roads. How many solar panels do you think we should produce to cover all this?