In lots of places the tailpipe emissions of a modern car are cleaner than the air.

CO2 is a pollutant, but it's not a toxin when the concentration is low and oxygen is available.

That conveniently ignores the non-tailpipe emissions, for example dust from tires and brake pads. I also suspect that it's only true in the lab, I have the pleasure of cycling through many clouds of noxious soot from supposedly modern cars whose owners just happen to press the throttle harder than what the NEDC requires.

I find the first statement hard to believe. Running a car in a closed space is deadly.

"I'll take 'facile and reductive statements' for $100 please, Alex."

CO2 is demonstrably emitted as a pollutant, but it's only a fertilizer in pretty poetic sense: Plant growth is bottlenecked by other factors.

And water is essential for life, so that must mean it’s impossible to drown, right?

Funny that people who say things like this and “CO2 is only 0.04% of the air” don’t want to try injecting 0.04% of their blood volume of hydrogen cyanide and seeing if such a tiny amount of something can have an effect…

So is rape ....

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/12/more-co2-in-the-a...

By that logic, so is ammonia.

Care to take a big huff off a farmer's anhydrous ammonia tank?

> Even today we are pumping so many toxins in to the air to deliver a slower, less efficient, and more expensive form of transport.

Slower than what?

Walkable cities + public transport. When I had a car it used to take me a minimum of 10 minutes to get anywhere. Cars have spaced out everything so far that over all we spend so much more time traveling. Now I live in a walkable area and almost everything I need is a few minutes away on foot, or a 20 minute train trip to the main city area.

I swear that living in NYC for nearly two decades has made me incapable of making a grocery list and shopping like pretty much everyone else in the country (only slightly kidding). I just walk down the street and grab what I need.

I did just miss the 6 train by 15 seconds and am standing on the platform as I write this, which I guess is annoying? I’ll take it over driving in traffic though.

Whenever I leave NYC and go anywhere else in the US, walking a mile feels like an act of silent rebellion.

Had a friend from Texas move near me in Australia and they have just been exhausted trying to keep up because they aren't used to walking. Walking here is the fastest and most convenient way to get around. By the time you get your car out and find parking, you could have already been there on foot.

You'll observe that the rate of obesity is extremely low in the walkable areas which I really think is heavily because the people there live more active lifestyles just getting around day to day.

The rate of obesity is low because of survivorship bias, nothing more, nothing less. For obese and/or disabled people, living in New York is an absolute nightmare if you can’t afford public transit.

Despite loving the city amenities, culture, nightlife, one of my family members had to give up and leave NYC because he couldn’t afford cabs everywhere and hated showing up to events late and sweat-soaked otherwise.

> The rate of obesity is low because of survivorship bias, nothing more, nothing less

You think the rate of obesity is not at all affected by the amount of walking?

You miss the point. People who want to walk and live that lifestyle live in New York. People that walking is painful for generally leave.

It’s like saying wearing bikinis on beaches seems to cause weight loss.

It's some of the effect, but absolutely not all. You said it's pure selection bias, no more, no less... That was your point.

I'm the same person, but the last place I lived I averaged 7k steps and now I average 4k steps. That clearly affects my level of health and weight.

> For obese and/or disabled people, living in New York is an absolute nightmare if you can’t afford public transit.

Obesity has increased in recent years as people from all walks of life exercise less and eat out more.

Even when adjusting for poverty and race, studies have shown that close access to parks and other walkable areas, combined with good public transport, reduces prevalance of obesity.

Try vacationing a couple of weeks in a city that isn't build around cars and has good public transport, maybe you'll understand. Tokyo is nice for example. Note that there still are cars in Tokyo, nobody is banning cars.

I mean, yeah - They're pretty enthusiastically telling us that's what they want to do. It's not a conspiracy theory if they're actually advertising it...

Railfans in high places?