If one lives in an area of mainly large to medium cities, all packed close together, one might make some sense of this argument. Of course, it assumes that individual choice should be subjugated to the Group ... the committee, or perhaps, the Commissar? I'll skip that for now.

When one lives in an area of small towns of a hundred or so "clear" up to 40,000 in a few widely-spaced places, the author's expectation would mean that one would simply stay at home quite often. As there IS no public transit that could at all affordably cover the thousands of miles of County roads in my county often enough to get anyone to doctors, schools, work, any place they needed to be ... short of spending perhaps a couple days a week in a motel room in a town or something.

And compared to many counties in my home state of Oregon alone ... my county is somewhat "populous". And btw ... we have accommodation for many thousands along the coast of our state, including several thousand private houses ... that people of middle-income to quite modest actually buy and live in, or rent out for 'holiday' use at quite reasonable rates. So ... though this is a nice bit of ideological verbiage, it doesn't seem to fit the real world I live in at all.

I do have acquaintances in say New York City who, as a "poster" up above notes, haven't had a car in years. Great for them, they live in such close (and dense) proximity with several million other people that such things as subways and buses and walking to get things works very, very well.

I live two kilometers outside of a small town. I have several acres to care for, including 5 that we mow, many trees to manage, all that sort of thing. I need a vehicle that can carry rough and dirty things about ... so we have a pickup. We also have a nicer car, a 2-year old Kia Sorrento, so that we can get the three of us (or 6 if older son+wife and older daughter are home) can go someplace together and also so that we have a decent vehicle for our professional needs. We also have a "beater" old big van, used very little, but capable of carrying the large items we need to move now and then with our property. We have a doctor within a couple kilometers (but again, no public transportation) ... but all other doctors and facilities such as hospitals and radiology ... and most of our clients ... are between 20 and 70 kilometers away. Again, with no transit options available.

And I can't imagine how one could expect to schedule things with our clients (which we often do either at their place or parks or elsewhere) using public transportation if such was to at least some extent available.

This isn't at all the 'life' shown in the pictures of the blog itself, nor is the vast majority of our country anywhere near like that street-view. For us, that argument that starts this off is simply irrelevant.

Neil

sorry, not sure what you mean exactly.... and feel free to elaborate on your thoughts about this topic... would love to hear them.

Just read the blog, you'll find all about nature and oil here. And also can find my posts about cars.

@babypanda

I have good news for you. Nature will do that smart monkeys can't by themselves :-)