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Terra Nova

the New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs
Nov 16, 2020Tony_Jeffers rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I enjoyed the personal and historical anecdotes very much; until without exception; he starts (slowly at first) to slip in some statistics then almost imperceptibly he starts adding more and more statistics until the readers are suddenly aware that they are being bombarded with stat after stat to the point they are impossible to comprehend. A great book for statistic lovers; daunting for everyone else. I am so Green and love the idea of a future world without cars. The carless urban habitats he describes as an alternative; however, strike me as a bit too densely populated for the comfort of most of us. Some thinking outside of the box is going to be required to create a carless future that is still going to be comfortable and livable for the majority of us. We are already headed there. Online shopping and product delivery services will eventually bring about the end of stores and markets for the most part. Most people will be able to work at home with grunt work being more and more taken over by robots and automation. There will be no more construction employment booms like we are seeing now. NASA is already planning to build Mars habitats with robots and there is no reason that Earth construction won't be taken over by robots soon. Even if we switch to all electric the personal car as got to go the way of the horse and buggy. A personal car (even without using fossil fuels) contains an enormous amount of resources just one electric car needs more raw natural material than a medieval village would use in a year. And even if it is non-polluting what about our overcrowded streets and highways? The parking situation alone is insupportable. I've recommended before in other comments that most people dump their cars and live walking distance from work and everywhere else they need to go like I do. This book as shown me that most people will need a whole new infrastructure and life dedication to a new lifestyle and paradigm to do so.