If North American culture could learn to build new small cities that didn’t need cars - as the old cities were built - and successfully market and sell them to today’s suburban crowd, we’d have a much better chance at stopping this.
It kills me, though, just how impossible that would be.
There has to be jobs in those small cities, or people would just travel more and you'd improve nothing. There are barely remote jobs for programmers today - and for some creative types there are some remote jobs. But to make your scenario practical there needs to be a lot more remote work. In a few years when my kids are past high school, I'd love to move to a mountain city somewhere and enjoy the wilderness, at least for a while. I'm an experienced programmer with a good resume and even I'd take a while to get a remote job that pays reasonably.
It's much worse for people who aren't in the fortunate "programmer class" to get remote work. A little city supports a few people working in shops and restaurants and cafes, but the mass of the people need more.
>It kills me, though, just how impossible that would be.
Is it though? It seems completely like a matter of will. I've thought about this exact idea before. How much VC would it take to build a small town? A couple billion? People are throwing gobs of money ten times that at absolute nonsense right now. Why couldn't we use it for meaningful progress instead?
The allure of gambling is powerful. Everyone can estimate ROI on a planned community. Nobody can estimate ROI on hot air, so it "could" be "the next" whatever-the-last-thing-was. Nobody wants to be the one who passed on Facebook or Bitcoin in 2014 to invest in something boring like housing.
Statistically huge pops like those are extremely rare. Someone wins in the casino but statistically it won't be you. Statistically you are better off making rational investments. But... FOMO and daydreams and... there was that one time! ... rat pushes lever, rat pushes lever...
Aside a small number of exceptions US citizens hate using public transit themselves. This is reinforced by how public transit stations are always on the most undesirable real estate. If you’re successful you have a car, only the poor/unsuccessful/unusual don’t have 1 or more cars in their household.
India has ~300 million people still living without electricity, and they're not going to stay that way for much longer. India also has massive accessible coal reserves; the cheapest and easiest path to bringing electricity to everyone.
You can focus on North American culture all you want, but the developing world has a far greater size and they're following North America's footsteps.
The climate situation will not be averted, not without destroying a lot of people who indirectly want to increase their carbon footprint by improving their lives.
We're headed for major conflict, and have been for some time now. Asking North Americans to reel in their consumption now is like begging the winners of a competition to not reap the benefits so the losers can have it now that they're arriving at the finish line.
It's the ugly truth, reality is unfair, and this isn't going to be pretty considering the vast quantities of people arriving.
In my view, most people have to earn a living, and choose whatever housing options are available in the town where they work. And once we're dug in, we're dug in. My family has a lifestyle where we avoid car use for the most part, but not everybody is so lucky.
Why not go big and move everyone into a dozen mega cities like Tokyo. Everything you can want is just one or two subway rides away, so you don't really need a car. Maybe add a touch of Copenhagen to add bike friendliness...
It kills me, though, just how impossible that would be.