Im confused by your animosity when I mostly agree with you, but nothing I’ve said is wrong. Different people are comfortable with different levels of risk when biking but that does not mean it can’t be done. Cold weather biking is very doable in cities with warm clothing and if needed, studded tires. People go outside in cold weather to walk and for recreation all the time, biking is not some bizarre activity that is impossible to do in the cold. I’ve biked in places with cold snowy winters and places with mild slushy winters, if theres been a lot of snow that hasn’t been cleared yet, I usually opt for transit on those days. If I am not comfortable riding a bike in those conditions though, I certainly wont be comfortable driving.

car-dependency makes biking distances prohibitively expensive in the one way that you clearly have never had to think about: time

This is an argument that I find surprising. Maybe Im not as good at scheduling as other people but if a 5 minute car ride turns into a 15 or 20 minute bike ride, is that really that much extra time? Is your whole day going to be ruined? Or a 15 minute car commute turns into a 30 or 40 minute bike commute, is that extra time really not worth the cost savings? Not to mention the time you dont have to spend at the gym now. There are loads of people that choose to live somewhere where they have to spend over an hour commuting to and from work by car. Personally I think an hour long commute by bike would be much more pleasant.

I see a lot of lame excuses as to why people cant ride their bikes. But most of these are solvable problems. Safe infrastructure is, in my opinion, the only factor that needs to be addressed to get people on bikes. Unfortunately we have administrations that are actively adversarial against this sort of change. Rather than tell people that it is hopeless to try to ride a bike in our society, I am telling people that it is very much possible to make the choice to ride a bike if you are dtermined enough. If people are saying that they cant bike places because its too cold or too rainy or too far, I am going to give them solutions, I am not going to just say that our infrastructure is too awful to support that choice in the first place. The best way to get people advocating for safe cycling infrastructure is to get more people on bikes. Im sorry that you’ve given up on change.

If I were to debate you it would go something like this:

Internal combustion engines are the largest contributors to man made climate change, and ceasing there use entirely would immediately drop the output of pollution to more sustainable and manageable levels.

Evidence of this was seen during COVID lock down.

“During the current COVID-19 pandemic (CP), human activities, which are considered as major sources of various pollutants, were stopped partially to completely almost globally, resulting in reduced pollution levels (Zambrano-Monserrate et al. 2020; Muhammad et al. 2020; Saadat et al. 2020; Gautam 2020b). Community mobility reports (https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/) depict that human mobility decreased by 90% between 23 February 2020 to 05 April 2020, specifically in European countries (Muhammad et al. 2020). During the same time, a sharp decline in air pollution was noticed worldwide. Climatologists predicted that greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (NO) emissions declined to levels not observed since World War II (Global Carbon Project 2020; Zambrano-Monserrate et al. 2020). Some recent studies have shown that atmospheric emission of multiple pollutants such as NO2, CO2, CO, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 significantly decreased (ESA 2020; Saadat et al. 2020; Dantas et al. 2020; Mahato et al. 2020; Quéré et al. 2020; Ju et al. 2021; Mostafa et al. 2021). Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed the reduction in NO2 pollution near Wuhan and the trend continued across China (NASA 2020; Dutheil et al. 2020).”

Individuals can make this happen again by simply taking extra time and effort to not use internal combustion engines. If every person with a non commercial vehicle gave it up where possible (Like living in major cities) we could see a turning point in Climate change.

Unfortunately due to a feeling of privilege, intense propaganda, and in many cases sheer laziness people generally do not want to put in any effort to make a difference regarding their personal carbon footprint.

Giving up the internal combustion engine would also allow for a complete redesign of urban environments. Another big factor in the warming planet: Concrete and Asphalt. Removing roads in cities, parking lots, and replacing them with walking paths and more trees, would immediately help cool the planet as there is less heat stored on the surface.

Another wonderful option is storing that heat as energy for use later, like Iceland does with their roads.

In conclusion, the use of personal vehicles and the required infrastructure is incredibly damaging to the environment and removing both variables would see an immediate net positive in regards to climate change. Those who choose not to do their part are a major problem, and saying that is not “insulting those who hold” such an irresponsible, unscientific, and damaging opinion.

Enjoy your toys while you have them.

Take care.

Nobody is making choices for you.

The story is literally about tariffs on cars.

I am just saying that you can make another choice

Of course I can. I could choose to walk everywhere barefoot. I’m not going to, though, for the reasons I’ve explained.

Plus it means less time needed at the gym.

I don’t spend time in a gym anyway. I am fit enough and I have better uses of my time and money. Most people don’t go to a gym.

I dont know where you live, but most people live within 5 km of grocery stores, shops, etc. Which is maybe a 15 to 20 minute bike ride, not an hour.

In other comments in this thread I’ve mentioned there’s a grocery store very close to where I live, it’s about 5 minutes to bike there. But I don’t, because even when the weather is nice I still need to haul groceries.

I am not here to debate you or anyone else.

<Proceeds to write seven paragraphs of debate>

In other comments in this thread I’ve mentioned there’s a grocery store very close to where I live, it’s about 5 minutes to bike there. But I don’t, because even when the weather is nice I still need to haul groceries.

So its not a time issue for you? You just dont want to carry groceries on your bike?

Why does Canada tariff them? Do they have domestic production they are protecting?

I physically can’t carry the groceries on my bike. You’re making a lot of assumptions about people here.

Investment in Canada ? How soon we forget the lesson NorTel taught us.

What’s hilarious about this is that the road outside my place is in fact under construction right now and is not easily accessible by foot, it’s an extra ten minute walk to the next bus-stop and busses have been behind by half an hour to an hour as a result of the poor timing. Not everyone can live in the wealthy metropolises my guy, sorry that this shatters your morality.

“You can find extra three hours in a day to use transit, bike, or walk.” Nobody said anything about walking OR transit you privileged douchebag, this was about bicycles in car-dependent cities. So telling that you read this as “evil capitalist” as though it isn’t exactly fucking that system that has caused this. No, people do not in fact have three hours in a day that they just choose to not use. Some people work sixty hour weeks with children. “Screen time” as a cause for “wasted” time is fucking hilarious and a reminder of avacado toast as the root cause of wage stagnation.

Such inane liberal nonsense, you don’t want a better world you just want to feel better.

That was quite a while ago, but if you want a trade/investment deal to make those pensions whole, idc. It would be peanuts. Any Nortel design expertise being in Canada to help new Huawei subsidiary, with SMIC chip plants in Canada would be a more progressive offer to improve Canada.

Threaten Apple, Google, Nvidia markets if you want to get US friendliness. Grumble about the past to remain CIA colony.

Once cheap imported EVs is sold in Canada, there’s no way for Canada to build its own EV industry, which would remove the demand for batteries to be made in Canada

You misunderstand, what you said was rude enough on its own to warrant animosity. You fundamentally do not understand what you are talking about because you lack the basic empathy and systemic knowledge to even identify the problem; you have presumed that by the grace of god you have divine answers and never questioned why you think what you think. Who benefits from such a shallow narrative?

“Personally I think an hour long commute by bike would be much more pleasant.”

I know that may come as a shock to you, people are not just dumber than you. Most people do in fact make good decisions based on what resources they have available to them, and time is extremely limited for us poor peasants who have to work for a living. It does not matter if you think infrastructure is the only reasonable barrier and most people are just big lazy dumdums, because infrastructure is not getting fixed in most places in this country. As with many Canadians, I do not live in a place where it is safe or practical to use a bike regularly, that is a fact. The closest grocery stores to me are about forty minutes round trip by bike and would require me to traverse a six lane highway to access, that is not acceptable when it is a ten minute drive with nearly zero risk to my body. Yes, that is too much time because again, this may be shocking to you, people with work and responsibilities also have significantly limited energy in their day that would be expended not only by the biking itself, but the stress of risking your life to make the trip. People who work fucking forty to sixty hours a week on swing shifts with kids are not obligated give up whatever time and energy they have to maintain their health and home to force the use of a bicycle to make up for being forced to have a car. It is pointless.

Your comfort is irrelevant, I do not give a shit if this reality makes the world more incomprehensible to you. Grow up, not everyone has your resources and you’ve been privileged enough to get what you’ve had.

Unreal level of pompous douchebag energy here, I will not be paying attention to you and I will not read whatever bullshit response you cobble together.

I’m not sure if you just couldn’t understand my statement and attempted sarcasm here or if this is a genuinely bad response that unironically blames the bike. I’m clearly pointing to culture as the root cause of this, particularly the predominance of neoliberal politics and settler-colonial relationships with the land, so I assume it’s the former but that doesn’t apply.

What? You don’t have $7,000 to spend on a bakfiets that couldn’t even fit all your stuff anyway?

The only person making assumptions her is you who seems to believe im some wealthy city-dwelling socialite who doesn’t work for a living. I ride my bike because its less stressful and cheaper than owning a car. I could hardly afford a car if I even wanted to.

You give all these reasons why you cant ride a bike and that’s fine, those are your reasons. But you act like everyone else is in the exact same position as you and everyone just simply is not able to ride a bike even if they wanted to. That simply is not true, lots of people are in a position where they can bike but choose not to. Im tired of people acting like the reason they make these decisions is because they have no choice. Maybe thats true sometimes, but most of the times I think its just that people dont want to and we would all be better off if people were up front about it.

OP suggested we focus on bicycles instead of cars and a bunch of people come out saying “well bicycles dont work for me or anybody else” and I have been saying they can work for a lot of people if they just made the effort. This is apparently a privileged position? I didn’t realize living in the most populated city in the country makes me a privileged elite but apparently that’s all it takes.

Panniers? Baskets? Trailers? E-bikes? You already said you have a bike so unless you cant ride it, there are plenty of solutions to that problem

You have no idea how much groceries I purchase.

This whole thread you’ve been telling me all about what I should be doing with my time, my resources, my life. You know nothing about it but you’re keen to tell me how I should live it. Have I told anyone “no, you should ditch your bike and use a car instead?” No. People should use whatever form of transportation works best for them, based on their own needs and opinions.

Didn’t Lion Electric go bankrupt?

You’ve just been listing reasons why you cant ride a bike for anything. Just say you dont want to ride a bike.

Here’s the comment where I acknowledge that yes, I physically could ride a bike. I could spend hours out of my day pumping pedals to haul cargo around. It would be exhausting and waste a ton of time but I could theoretically do it.

What else do you want me to do? You seem very free to tell me what I should be doing with my time and effort, what else am I doing wrong with my life that you know better about?

Or maybe my time and comfort is worth more to me than satisfying you, and that’s fine because different people have different priorities. Go ahead and pedal everywhere, let neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stop you. It stops me. If you want me to bike everywhere then you’ll need to offer some kind of solution to those things, the way that cars already solve them for me.