So, to immediately put my foot in my mouth: China: Kingdom of bicycles no more

Be worried. If you have given even a moment's thought to climate warming and its potential impact on our planet, be very worried. China, a nation of 1.3 billion people, has abandoned the bicycle as a principal mode of transportation and is now moving at a frightening pace to a car-based economy.

Do you blame them?

When we start riding bicycles to work then we can complain about them not using bikes to get to work.

We can complain anyway. That's one of the benefits of that Bill of Rights thingy that we have and everybody else doesn't.

why doesnt it get used? what can it achieve if it were to be used?

It wasn't a complaint, it was just the exact opposite of what I said before. I was using China as an example of a country that doesn't have too bad of a dependency on oil, but it looks like times are a changing.

I don't really get it. Why would China do this? In the US, we were settled after the invention of the car, so we built everything far apart because we could. Now we need cars because nothing is close to anything else.

In China, they have been doing just fine with bicycles. I assume things are close together if bikes work OK. Why switch to cars if it ain't broke?

Yes, China and India are very naughty... does not matter, we need to do what we need to do, period.
Doing what is right has nothing to do with what others are doing.
In fact, it gives one a stronger platform from which to argue your point.

It has everything to do with what others are doing. If our costs increase (as a result of stricter enforcement/higher standards) and their's don't then demand for our goods and services decline and jobs disappear, wages drop, etc.

I'm glad we aren't signing that stupid treaty - it hamstrings the US and lets China and India do whatever the hell they want. How many jobs are you willing to sacrifice over this?

well put!

Beestie: I don't understand your connection between the Kyoto treaty and lost jobs. Not that you're right or wrong, I'm just in the dark.
I think the number of jobs or the economic backlash shouldn't be as important as the overall death of the planet. If we wait till no one loses something from the changes, then it will be far too late- if it isn't already. I think the whole world culture needs to agree to a very proactive change in the way we treat the planet. Like the Kyoto Treaty as a start

Planetary death is hyperbole. Should we move past fossil fuels? Of course. Fossil fuels are old dirty tech, we can do better. The problem is the way way we move forward. Lots of our environmental friends look back at pre-industrial society as a model. Starvation, no communication, closed societies, human bondage, you know, the good old days. We John Waynists prefer to improve our way out of problems.

Because America gets special treatment over the rest of the world? :rolleyes: Grow up and learn that other nations will do anything to get to half the standard of living we have now and we have no right to hold them back.

Settled after the invention of the car? The population increased but most of the states and major cities were in place. Most of the land was spoken for and at least sparsely settled.
Sure levittown and commuting came along after the car but that was a chicken/egg deal.They used bicycles because it beat walking or a Water Buffalo. Being dirt poor, and not much they could do about it under Mao, it was the best they could do. It's hard to move a refrigerator or console TV on a bike, but they didn't have either, for the most part.
Most of China has extremes in weather, from bitter snowy winter to monsoons and tropical downpours. How much fun is that on a bike?
They didn't travel far because there was nothing to travel to, no malls, no Disney World, no resorts for the peasants.
Roads are shit, too. They just started their road overhaul to connect every town and city with decent roads for the first time in history.
You may see their lifestyle as quaint and bucolic, but I'm sure they're damn sick of it.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm....?:biggrinje

True but what really exploded the cities and urban centers was the National Defense Act of 1954 which funded the construction of the freeway system as a means to rapidly evacuate the city centers in the event of a nuclear attack.

Those freeways unintentionally led to the creation and growth of suburbia and the massive sprawl we see today.

OK, but if we hadn't spread out, where would we put 300 million people? :confused: