Why “Hating Cars” Actually Protects The Fossil Fuel Status Quo

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The YouTube channel Not Just Bikes recently dropped a 48-minute video titled “Every Reason to Hate Cars.” Honestly, the host brings up some valid points. He talks about traffic fatalities, the sheer amount of space parking lots waste, and how even EVs chew through tires and kick up microplastics. There’s really no room to argue on the facts there, even though I’m a “carbrain.”

If we lived in a vacuum, I’d probably nod along with some or even all of it. But we live in the real world, where strategy matters as much as facts. Being right doesn’t guarantee that you get the right outcome.

By taking such a radical, anti-car stance, purist urbanists are asking for something that sits miles outside the Overton Window for the average person. And worse, they are handing endless ammunition to the very people who want to protect the worst aspects of car culture.

The Overton Window Problem

If you aren’t familiar with the Overton Window, it’s basically the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. This window can shrink, expand, or move over time as society evolves and ideas of what’s acceptable change. But it usually takes a lot of work to change the window.

In North America, personal transportation is deeply ingrained in our daily lives. When someone stands up and says things like, “Cars ruin cities” or that we need to severely restrict or get rid of them, the average voter completely stops listening. It’s just too radical. It scares people. It makes them more resistant to any change that goes even remotely in that direction.

And you know who absolutely loves that fear? The legacy energy industry and defenders of the status quo.

Arming the Opposition

When urbanists push for absolute purity (car-free zones, Vision Zero 25 MPH speed limits, etc.), they give the defenders of the old way the exact soundbites they need. Fossil fuel advocates point to videos like this and tell regular folks, “See? They don’t just want you to buy a cleaner car. They want to take your truck, ban your freedom, and force you onto a bus with people who aren’t like you.”

That fearmongering may be dishonest, but it works remarkably well. It actively turns people against more modest but still achievable improvements. Instead of getting the proven improvements of clean air that accompany EVs, we instead end up with people utterly unwilling to make changes for fear that they’re getting onto a slippery slope, with an unimaginable car-free world and buses full of dark-skinned “superpredators” at the bottom.

Instead of making steady progress over decades, we end up fighting defensive political battles just to keep basic EV incentives alive or to prevent heavy-handed, restrictive regulations on e-bikes. While we can’t blame this all on unrealistic urbanists, their misguided participation in the public discussion of transportation certainly doesn’t help.

Progress Over Purity

If we want to actually improve our cities and our environment, we have to start where people are. We need to focus on modest, achievable improvements over time. Start with EVs. Add in e-bikes (with throttles and plenty of power). Add in modest improvements to bicycle infrastructure (open to e-bikes). 

Making EVs cheaper and charging networks more reliable moves the needle. Protecting the rights of people to use e-bikes without heavy government interference moves the needle. Adding cameras and sensors to pickup trucks to protect pedestrians saves lives without risking political blowback. Change can and does happen over time without anyone feeling like something is getting taken away from them.

Over time, the policies that urbanists want are achievable, but they have to come in stages and they have to acknowledge where people are at today. Closing off a downtown area to cars can make sense, but only with sufficient parking and bike rentals at the periphery. Suburbanites who have e-bikes for recreation need to be able to use them in the city without fearing licensing, registration, insurance, and anti-throttle policies.

Getting people to use public transit can also very much happen, but only if it’s paired with things like Park & Ride lots. We also have to steer clear of mindless security theater, privacy violations, or unconstitutional restrictions that scare suburbanites and tourists away from transit. 

If you take nothing else away from this article, take this: If we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we’ll find ourselves stuck with the exact same gas-guzzling, polluting status quo we have today.

Featured image: an e-bike in a sandstone canyon. Photograph by Jennifer Sensiba.