Grand River Transit

[plam]

And yeah, families DO want to have a livable planet for their children. But guess what, NOTHING we do will make a difference. All it will do is make people live elsewhere, and depress the economy. We’re a small country population wise, with a huge area. We’re not the problem. And I have been preaching, and no parishioners obviously, cars will be mostly electric in the future.

You make some valid points about understanding why others think the way they do, but I feel like this part totally undercuts your argument.

Canada has terrible per-capita emissions, and electric vehicles aren't going to change that. Only a fundamental change to a more dense urban form, more European, will do that. Saying that it's pointless and we can't do anything is EXACTLY the problem. Per-capita we're a terrible emitter of CO2. So unless you have justification for why Canadians should be entitled to more CO2 than other countries, we need to be taking action.

Whether people want car-dependent suburbs or not is as irrelevant as whether people want private jets or not, it's not something we can afford for every person. Our CO2 budget is as real as our economic budget, people just don't like to be told that.

To be clear, I don't fault people for owning cars. I own one too (though an EV, as even if not a solution, they are better). But at a societal level, we need to be making changes to how we build our cities.

Individual actions aren't going to get us out of this mess. It really does have to be systemic change with how we build our societies. Car-dependent suburbs are not viable.

Just to add onto the CO2 point: in Ontario natural gas currently supplies 29% of electricity; the rest aren't CO2 emitting. But that doesn't account for all the CO2 cost of suburbs. There's also embodied costs in the concrete that it takes to build these houses and the supply chains for them. Also, even electric vehicles produce particulates from tires and brakes. Not CO2 but it is pollution.