The rich are to blame for climate change

[Roland of Gilead]

Many jobs are a net drain on society. I don't just refer to lawyers and bankers, either. Most jobs in marketing, consumer retail, human resources, consumer manufacturing (vehicle production etc), administration, defence, border security, etc are a net drain on society from a consumption/opportunity cost point of view.

I don't think your list is quite so simple.   While it might appear that consumer manufacturing (vehicle production you mention) is a net drain, those jobs make possible some of the efficiencies in other jobs which are not a net drain, like farming, medicine.   Administration also doesn't have to be a net drain, it just gets bloated to that point.   Allocating resources is a very valuable job in society especially when the group gets large.   Defense and border security are also quite important to keep society running smoothly...without them you can get interruptions in the supply chain of important things like food and medicine.   

[nereo]

This is why I think the fairest thing to do is to tax the crap out of carbon and then send every household a cheque representing average household usage. Penalise over consumers and reward underconsumers. For once.

I could get behind this.
Gasoline, propane, natural gas and other "point-source" carbon sources ought to carry their own (high) carbon tax as well.

[GuitarStv]

This is why I think the fairest thing to do is to tax the crap out of carbon and then send every household a cheque representing average household usage. Penalise over consumers and reward underconsumers. For once.

I could get behind this.
Gasoline, propane, natural gas and other "point-source" carbon sources ought to carry their own (high) carbon tax as well.

I'm split on that.  I'd like to see decent public transit options in more places in North America to give people (especially the poorest) an alternative to simply paying more every time they fill up to get to work.  But I'm not sure if demand will ever get high enough to make public transit viable while cheap gas exists.

[nereo]

This is why I think the fairest thing to do is to tax the crap out of carbon and then send every household a cheque representing average household usage. Penalise over consumers and reward underconsumers. For once.

I could get behind this.
Gasoline, propane, natural gas and other "point-source" carbon sources ought to carry their own (high) carbon tax as well.

I'm split on that.  I'd like to see decent public transit options in more places in North America to give people (especially the poorest) an alternative to simply paying more every time they fill up to get to work.  But I'm not sure if demand will ever get high enough to make public transit viable while cheap gas exists.

Um... doesn't this accomplish both?  If you placing a direct carbon tax on gasoline and diesel, it gets more expensive.  Which pushes people to either drive EVs, or to take public transit

FWIW I also think we need to put far more money towards mass-transit systems in the US/Canada.  I find it frankly weird how much we will willingly pour into highway/interstate projects but how comparatively  little we will put towards mass transit.  Almost everywhere mass-transit is run by muni or the state, and people get their nickers in a twist when it invariably "loses" money each decade.  But I've never seen that kind of outrage that our (largely free to drive on) highways and autoroutes and freeways also don't "turn a profit."

[robartsd]

I find it frankly weird how much we will willingly pour into highway/interstate projects but how comparatively  little we will put towards mass transit.  Almost everywhere mass-transit is run by muni or the state, and people get their nickers in a twist when it invariably "loses" money each decade.  But I've never seen that kind of outrage that our (largely free to drive on) highways and autoroutes and freeways also don't "turn a profit."

Our culture has a huge blind spot for the infrastructure subsidy provided to private automobile drivers. Anything threatening to negatively impact that is generally met with stiff opposition.

[maizefolk]

I would agree that I think the solution to public transit right now is to increase public demand (by things like higher gas prices) rather than trying to get together enough public support to build public transit which is so good everyone will just start using it even when driving is cheap and easy.

[beee]

You can't have good public transport with the current American urban sprawl. Not enough population density. American cities are designed for cars, not people

[nereo]

You can't have good public transport with the current American urban sprawl. Not enough population density. American cities are designed for cars, not people

I don't buy that explanation at all.  There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

The bottom line is we've spent decades promoting individual car transportation often at the expense of public options.

[beee]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

[beee]

I think the current car-centric culture goes hand in hand with the sprawl caused by single-family houses. If you want a better public transport and cities for humans not cars, then you should choose mixed usage developments and more population density.

[nereo]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Ok, there’s Spain or France compared with the north-east -  each has a lower population density but a larger overall area, but mass transit options (particularly high-speed and commuter rail) are far more developed, particularly going from one metro area to another.   Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame. 

I think the current car-centric culture goes hand in hand with the sprawl caused by single-family houses. If you want a better public transport and cities for humans not cars, then you should choose mixed usage developments and more population density.

I agree that we have a car-centric culture because of our policies - here in the US our system is a reflection of the policies we have pushed so much, including SFH and a car-centric culture that encourages home ownership and car ownership, but stigmatizes taking public transit.

But to blame the underlying geography or population density is the kind of lazy punditry that frequently gets spouted for why mass-transit won’t work in the US.  “Oh, Europe is so much more densely populated” or “major cities are so much further apart” or (the one that always leaves me shaking my head) “trains just can’t work in our winters”.

[PDXTabs]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Ok, there’s Spain or France compared with the north-east -  each has a lower population density but a larger overall area, but mass transit options (particularly high-speed and commuter rail) are far more developed, particularly going from one metro area to another.   Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame. 

I would add Scotland and Russia, and honestly most of the globe.

[robartsd]

Yes, large regions with overall density lower have decent public transit in their cities. I'm not sure that any cities structured like ours (sprawling suburbia) have solved the transit problem. I'm not saying that we shouldn't change the structure of our cities, just that it is the lack of density in our cities that limits the viability of transit (not the overall density of our regions).

[PDXTabs]

I'm not sure that any cities structured like ours (sprawling suburbia) have solved the transit problem. I'm not saying that we shouldn't change the structure of our cities, just that it is the lack of density in our cities that limits the viability of transit (not the overall density of our regions).

I've been to rural Scotland, and rural America, and I've watched travel vlogs in rural Russia. I promise you, everywhere is better than here.

Bus and train service in rural Scotland sucked, but it sucked a hell of a lot less than than here, because it was non-zero. That is, there was some.

EDITed to add - and some of those dense western European cities have been working on the problem since the 70's oil shocks. We've just been ignoring it.

[triple7stash]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Nah

Cool friend should be part of that green movement, by being shot into a condom.
Nah?  I don't get it.  If the world had 10% of the current population, wouldn't most concerns over unsustainability subside?  Overfishing, pollution, resource depletion, etc

[nereo]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Nah

Cool friend should be part of that green movement, by being shot into a condom.
Nah?  I don't get it.  If the world had 10% of the current population, wouldn't most concerns over unsustainability subside?  Overfishing, pollution, resource depletion, etc

First, how could we possibly get to 10% of our current population (roughly 700MM, or about half the current population in China) without some sort of massive global genocide or a pandemic that makes Covid look like the sniffles? Even if we could just painlessly magic them out of existence over the next few decades it would cause an almost unfathomable disruption in our society.

Second, we already know that some have carbon footprints that are more than an order of magnitude larger than the global average, and that its certainly possible to live very well an carbon neutral at the same time.  Which means simply reducing the global population substantially wouldn’t have as great an impact as reducing the consumption of our current population.

[Paper Chaser]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

[jehovasfitness23]

Everyone talking about individuals putting the drain on things. Construction along with transportation (not just individual but ag as well as delivery of goods) are huge contributors. Way more than what Joe Schmoe does driving to and from work in any car they want.

New construction along with energy sector and ag are the biggest contributors. We are doomed without addressing those and well, good luck. If you don't recycle or have 3 kids instead of 1 it's a drop in the bucket even if you have an all EV car.

[nereo]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

I think you have the arguments backwards. There's a popular narrative here in the US that public transit can't work as it does in other parts of the world because of some inherent uniqueness of our population density, area, terrain and weather.  The problem with this argument is that "better"* public transit options exist in basically throughout the world in basically all different combinations of these factors. 

Whether you intended to or not, you also evoked the cost argument that's frequently used to explain the lack of public transit in the US.  Sure, the size of the area serviced matters, but it's one of the least important factors.  all else being equal (and it can never be equal) it's far cheaper to build through lower-density zones, despite the larger area and need to lay more track/road/tunnel. Terrain and climate matter a great deal too.

[Paper Chaser]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

I think you have the arguments backwards. There's a popular narrative here in the US that public transit can't work as it does in other parts of the world because of some inherent uniqueness of our population density, area, terrain and weather.  The problem with this argument is that "better"* public transit options exist in basically throughout the world in basically all different combinations of these factors. 

Whether you intended to or not, you also evoked the cost argument that's frequently used to explain the lack of public transit in the US.  Sure, the size of the area serviced matters, but it's one of the least important factors.  all else being equal (and it can never be equal) it's far cheaper to build through lower-density zones, despite the larger area and need to lay more track/road/tunnel. Terrain and climate matter a great deal too.

The real estate might be cheaper in less dense areas, but the cost of buying/maintaining is shared among fewer residents in these locations. Lets say it costs X per mile of transit line construction in Stockholm, and 0.5X per mile in Atlanta. But you need 6 times as many miles of track in Atlanta. And that's just the acquisition phase of the project.

Then you have to actually operate this new transit line. The cost of operating 1 mile of commuter rail isn't wildly different in a densely populated spot vs a thinly populated spot. But less dense places have fewer potential riders, and more miles of track and that impacts the finances for ongoing operation. The costs of operating transit networks over larger areas are higher just because of the area. Fuel/energy costs go up when trips are longer. More staff and equipment are needed to service the areas with similar frequency. More staff and equipment are needed to maintain more miles of tracks, and those maintenance trips require more travel time which reduces efficiency of those workers.

In Stockholm, you can say "there are 13k potential riders in this sq mi that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen" to justify a public transit project. In Atlanta it would be "there are 700 potential riders in this square mile that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen." That math is a lot different for a lot of reasons both during the purchase/construction phase and after it's up and running. And that ignores that personal vehicles are often more convenient and faster than public transit in most of the US, so of the 700 potential riders in Atlanta only a portion of them are actually interested in your transit project.

[nereo]

I don't understand what you are trying to argue here @Paper Chaser - my underlying point has little to do with Stockholm or Atlanta; that was just a throwaway. If you want to compare less dense areas with more developed mass-transit systems there are certainly plenty to chose from.

For better or worse the US has long prioritized building an interstate system that has very low fees for individual use.

[EngineerOurFI]

I won't bother talking about the original OP point or the article since I think the article and original points completely ignore the fact that if we're looking at the richest slice of the WORLD.....you're looking at every single American not just rich Americans.  Meaning you're also looking at mustachian Americans long before you look at whole sections of South America, Africa, Middle East, India, or China.

Let's talk about a few successes.  United Airlines and others have announced bold climate change commitments, so I'm frankly just less worried about emissions due to airlines than most, I guess (https://hub.united.com/united-pledges-100-green-2050-2649438060.html).  I'm extremely impressed with how paper-free our society has become.  I print substantially less paper to do my job, to handle government processes, etc.  I think our efforts in that space have been really fantastic.  The number of folks in younger generations that are excited about renovating older homes to stay in them longer is pretty exciting.  The MPG increases in cars over the past 40 years is really awesome and hopefully continues (yes, sure, hopefully we get fully green cars, but let's acknowledge the success of just increasing MPG).

I'm a little frustrated that people just immediately jump on the topic of "drive less and USA needs so much more public transit.  Like if we had trains everything would be fine."

We have dozens of things that can be fixed a lot easier and quicker than laying 10,000 miles of train tracks and changing the entire USA mindset on how they live their lives, where they live, and how they travel.  Let's maybe tackle some of these things before we start fixing the entirety of the USA transportation system.  Especially since transportation is only like 1/5 of overall emissions in USA.  There's a lot of other variables here that are massive contributors and talking about public transit and eating vegan plays into exactly the wedge-issue conversation topics that Fox News would love for people to get stuck on.

1.  I'm baffled at how in major metropolitan areas (I'm in a suburb of a Top 10 city by metro area) don't have recycling readily available for everyone.  My recycling provider no longer accepts glass.  Also, my recycling provider has changed the rules on other points 4-5 times in 7 years.  It's insane how complicated it's become.  Nobody can keep up.  Most of my neighbors were recycling glass for years after they stopped accepting it which probably meant that they're just contaminating the entire batch and it's all getting thrown away. I have family members in the area who no longer have the option to have recycling unless they pay some insane $90/mo fee even though it's part of the normal trash/sewage costs for most people and effectively free for most people.  So yes, people who don't have recycling pickup they could gather all of their recycling and drop it off at a central location several times per month....but that kind of barrier is going to prevent many people from bothering.  How is it not a priority to make sure we have universal recycling access - at least in major cities and metropolitan areas.  I get that ensuring recycling pickup in the middle of Wyoming might be prohibitively expensive - but the reality is that we aren't doing it in major metro areas.......and if you don't make it easy with easy access - people won't do it. 

2.  There have been a number of articles written on the USA inefficiencies in the recycling space.  Meaning the amount of recycled raw materials that get just thrown away.  Half of the problem is that much of the recycled raw material gets literally shipped to Asia to get processed where huge swaths of it are then thrown away in these third world countries.  We are making zero effort as a society to institute minimum standards on recycling so that we can recycle goods more effectively/universally and/or USE the recycled materials here in the USA so we aren't shipping the stuff back and forth to Asia.  https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/

3.  Europe actually burns their trash.  Not sure why we've made zero efforts to move in this direction even in "green/liberal" states.  I cannot begin to express the shock on my German friends' faces when I explained how USA landfills work.  Might as well have told them we murdered our pets.  https://www.bmu.de/en/topics/water-waste-soil/waste-management/waste-treatment-and-technology/thermal-treatment/#:~:text=In%20Germany%2C%20there%20are%2068,of%20about%20five%20million%20tonnes.

4.  If you have a yard and a single-family home and you don't compost, you don't really have any right to complain about lack of "green" efforts in USA.  Period.  I'm not sure how you make incentives for composting, but at least government ad buys and access to simple guides/trainings could be a good idea.  Composting certainly isn't one-tenth as popular as it needs to be.

5.  Incentives for solar -- Not sure why the new administration hasn't revived solar incentives, but the expiration of the 2019 solar tax credits was a pretty big kick in the nuts to anyone planning on doing solar on their house.  I personally know several people who talked about doing solar last year who stopped looking into it because the tax credits were gone.  Similarly, I know my neighbor across street was wavering on doing solar on roof and wound up doing it in 2019 in large part because the tax credit was enough to push the financial viability high enough.  We should offer some kind of additional corporate tax credit/incentive for new home builders to put solar on roofs in new neighborhoods.  That's how you **really** move the needle on drastically improving solar adoption in USA and start making it more popular/attractive.

6.  Universal access to birth control at low/affordable costs.  Not sure why we want any industrialized country to have girls/women who have unwanted pregnancies as a result of lack of access or lack of ability to afford birth control.  If someone can't afford birth control, then the government will likely have to help pay for the child.  I'd rather my tax dollars go to preventing the birth than paying for the child.  ACA obviously mostly fixed this issue in USA, so hopefully that remains true.

7.  I love me some Amazon Prime, but the reality is it's not super efficient to get random things dropped off delivered in a box for one item when I could just grab that one item or those few items at the store when I'm doing my weekly run for goods.  Even if Amazon's delivery network becomes 100% green, you still have the issue of packaging.  Little ironic when you see millennial households with 20 amazon boxes outside the front door as the ones complaining about climate change.  Personally, our family has drastically reduced our Amazon usage as a result of recent weather issues and COVID -- we've learned that our local stores are the ones we need to rely on when SHTF and thus we'd like to support them in between times when SHTF.

8.  Would be cool if everyone could afford farmer's market goods - but the reality is they're out of the price range of the average family.

9.  Rain capture systems.  Literally seems to be zero effort to make it standard or accessible to have any kind of rain capture systems.  In our area, it's perfectly legal for HOAs to ban you from using them in any capacity.  We'll need similar regulations as to what we had with solar that prevent municipalities/HOAs/etc from banning these types of things as long as they look reasonable according to XYZ standards.

10.  In general, I wish liberals would start using more confined arguments for individual topics rather than just arguing that everything has to be done because of climate change.  Can't we fix recycling and waste/landfills just because it's disgusting for the environment/trash in the ocean?  Can't we promote composting just because it reduces chemicals we have to put on our lawn and waste in landfills?  Can't we provide affordable birth control because it likely reduces our overall tax burden?  Rather than making a larger climate change argument, couldn't we just argue that incentives for solar make people more self-reliant and less grid-reliant (popular argument in Texas right now) and helps with cleaner air?  Can't we argue for rain capture systems because they are economically viable?  There's a reason the Clean air and clean water acts were successful - conservatives like clean air and clean water.  Trying to make everything in the world a much larger climate change argument is a lot less politically viable right now.  If you start the argument with "We must do this or your children will die and the oceans will rise and flood all coastal cities in X years," then 30% of the country just tuned you out and another 10-15% think you're an idiot.  Is that fair?  Maybe not, but conservatives have a lot of ammo in their arsenal where folks have made sensational, widespread climate change claims that have not even been close to coming true or were drastically altered just 1-2 years later.  But the point is there's other ways to make the argument successfully and those arguments should be the FIRST ones pulled out - not the climate change argument that works in the liberal echo chamber and falls on deaf ears outside of it.

[Paper Chaser]

I don't understand what you are trying to argue here @Paper Chaser - my underlying point has little to do with Stockholm or Atlanta; that was just a throwaway. If you want to compare less dense areas with more developed mass-transit systems there are certainly plenty to chose from.

For better or worse the US has long prioritized building an interstate system that has very low fees for individual use.

I agree with your point about historically prioritizing personal vehicles/roads over public transit. There's no question about that. In all but a handful of places in the US, a personal vehicle is faster than public transit (if transit exists at all) and they're really cheap to own compared to most places where public transit sees higher usage.

The original post that you responded to from beee said that in general, US population density is a hurdle for adoption of public transit, and I think your example of Atlanta and Stockholm proved that point to be true even while you were arguing against it. You gave Stockholm as an example of low density success of public transit and said that Atlanta pales in comparison. I just wanted to point out that the reason Atlanta pales in comparison is that is has much, much lower density than Stockholm. Stockholm has far more potential riders/train (potential demand/revenue), more tax dollars concentrated in a smaller service area (better funding and lower operations cost), and numerous ways that personal vehicle usage is discouraged (infrastructure, fuel pricing, taxation, etc).

[nereo]

I don't understand what you are trying to argue here @Paper Chaser - my underlying point has little to do with Stockholm or Atlanta; that was just a throwaway. If you want to compare less dense areas with more developed mass-transit systems there are certainly plenty to chose from.

For better or worse the US has long prioritized building an interstate system that has very low fees for individual use.

I agree with your point about historically prioritizing personal vehicles/roads over public transit. There's no question about that. In all but a handful of places in the US, a personal vehicle is faster than public transit (if transit exists at all) and they're really cheap to own compared to most places where public transit sees higher usage.

The original post that you responded to from beee said that in general, US population density is a hurdle for adoption of public transit, and I think your example of Atlanta and Stockholm proved that point to be true even while you were arguing against it. You gave Stockholm as an example of low density success of public transit and said that Atlanta pales in comparison. I just wanted to point out that the reason Atlanta pales in comparison is that is has much, much lower density than Stockholm. Stockholm has far more potential riders/train (potential demand/revenue), more tax dollars (funding) concentrated in a smaller service area (lower operations cost), and numerous ways that personal vehicle usage is discouraged (infrastructure, fuel pricing, taxation, etc).

ok, i see how we got there.  It wasn't supposed to be a comparison of Stockholm to Atlanta - I was using the country of Sweden and casually comparing it to a state of similar size and population (Georgia).  Public transit throughout Sweden is far more developed than Georgia, and it's largest city (Stockholm) is far more developed than even Atlanta, a city that's often held up as having a "good" (by US standards) public transit system (e.g. MARTA). Like I said, it was just a throwaway and not meant to be a direct comparison.

You don't have to look very far to find entire regions which have both low population densities and comprehensive public transit options - both within and between towns/cities. And of course you can also find examples of very high density areas. Ergo, population density nor total area is a convincing explanation why we don't have more mass transit here in the US.

As you said, we've made it so that cars are really cheap to drive, if you ignore the tax revenue which is spent on roads and bridges.

[PDXTabs]

First, how could we possibly get to 10% of our current population (roughly 700MM, or about half the current population in China) without some sort of massive global genocide or a pandemic that makes Covid look like the sniffles? Even if we could just painlessly magic them out of existence over the next few decades it would cause an almost unfathomable disruption in our society.

Second, we already know that some have carbon footprints that are more than an order of magnitude larger than the global average, and that its certainly possible to live very well an carbon neutral at the same time.  Which means simply reducing the global population substantially wouldn’t have as great an impact as reducing the consumption of our current population.

So, mostly OT, but if you look at farm land and fertilizer the world looks to be on shaky ground population wise. All conventional crops are fertilized by natural gas based fertilizers, one day we are going to run out of that stuff, even if it isn't in my lifetime. Also, the way we use those fertilizers is destroying topsoil, in fact, it looks like we'll run our of topsoil before fertilizer. That genocide might be brought on by starvation and poor planning. But we could mitigate some of the horror by actively reducing our population beforehand.

[bacchi]

5.  Incentives for solar -- Not sure why the new administration hasn't revived solar incentives, but the expiration of the 2019 solar tax credits was a pretty big kick in the nuts to anyone planning on doing solar on their house.

The tax incentive is still there. It just shrinks every year. It was 26% for 2020 and it's 22% this year.

7.  I love me some Amazon Prime, but the reality is it's not super efficient to get random things dropped off delivered in a box for one item when I could just grab that one item or those few items at the store when I'm doing my weekly run for goods.

Yeah, Prime sucks. MIT did a study about Prime vs online with regular shipping vs driving to the store.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Environmental-Analysis-of-US-Online-Shopping-MIT-%26-Weideli/e11bf9a425568379d02156fe964f47b624695b8a?p2df

tl;dr Online shopping (with USPS as the last leg) > Making a separate run, in a car, for a few items > Prime/expedited shipping


Pdf of the study: https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/ctl.mit.edu/files/library/public/Dimitri-Weideli-Environmental-Analysis-of-US-Online-Shopping_0.pdf

[PDXTabs]

Yeah, Prime sucks. MIT did a study about Prime vs online with regular shipping vs driving to the store.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Environmental-Analysis-of-US-Online-Shopping-MIT-%26-Weideli/e11bf9a425568379d02156fe964f47b624695b8a?p2df

tl;dr Online shopping (with USPS as the last leg) > Making a separate run, in a car, for a few items > Prime/expedited shipping

Pdf of the study: https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/ctl.mit.edu/files/library/public/Dimitri-Weideli-Environmental-Analysis-of-US-Online-Shopping_0.pdf

Interesting, I wonder how my Prime Day usage changes that. Also of interest in that study is that it is the packaging, not the transport that pushes Prime over the line. Also also, I wonder how the math changes if you manage to ditch your car.

[maizefolk]

So, mostly OT, but if you look at farm land and fertilizer the world looks to be on shaky ground population wise. All conventional crops are fertilized by natural gas based fertilizers, one day we are going to run out of that stuff, even if it isn't in my lifetime. Also, the way we use those fertilizers is destroying topsoil, in fact, it looks like we'll run our of topsoil before fertilizer. That genocide might be brought on by starvation and poor planning. But we could mitigate some of the horror by actively reducing our population beforehand.

FWIW, the reason producing syntentic fertilizers (nitrogen fertilizer specifically) uses natural gas is that stripping hydrogen atoms off methane is currently a cheaper source of hydrogen than electrolysis of water. Hydrogen from either source works equally well.

This is the same issue one runs into with hydrogen as a fuel source, and back when people were taking the idea of a hydrogen economy more seriously there was a lot of work going into making water electronlysis a more cost effective source of hydrogen. Don't know if any of this is still going on or if interest as waned alongside the interest in hydrogen cars. Hypothetically, given sufficient electricity from renewable/nuclear sources and we can keep the world in synthetic nitrogen fertilizer essentially indefinitely. And the big shift to no-till + cover crops in the USA is proving to do a surprisingly good job of slowing or even reversing the loss of topsoil.

In terms of non-renewable fertilizers/limits to growth I would worry more about phosphorous which is mined rather than manufactured and primarily comes from concentrated deposits, particularly in Morocco. It's not clear what the plan B is when those deposits run out.

[PDXTabs]

In terms of non-renewable fertilizers/limits to growth I would worry more about phosphorous which is mined rather than manufactured and primarily comes from concentrated deposits, particularly in Morocco. It's not clear what the plan B is when those deposits run out.

Thanks, I had forgotten about that. Personally I'm the most worried about the topsoil, but I'm not a professional farmer. In Kiss the Ground they point out that besides needing topsoil to live, replenishing it is actually massively carbon negative. That is, when your repair the soil it just gobbles up carbon. Conversely, destroying it is massively carbon positive.

As a slight aside accredited investors can actually invest in soil restoration notes with Iroquois Valley and anyone (well, lots of people) can buy a slice of their organic farm REIT.

[Laura33]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

I think you have the arguments backwards. There's a popular narrative here in the US that public transit can't work as it does in other parts of the world because of some inherent uniqueness of our population density, area, terrain and weather.  The problem with this argument is that "better"* public transit options exist in basically throughout the world in basically all different combinations of these factors. 

Whether you intended to or not, you also evoked the cost argument that's frequently used to explain the lack of public transit in the US.  Sure, the size of the area serviced matters, but it's one of the least important factors.  all else being equal (and it can never be equal) it's far cheaper to build through lower-density zones, despite the larger area and need to lay more track/road/tunnel. Terrain and climate matter a great deal too.

The real estate might be cheaper in less dense areas, but the cost of buying/maintaining is shared among fewer residents in these locations. Lets say it costs X per mile of transit line construction in Stockholm, and 0.5X per mile in Atlanta. But you need 6 times as many miles of track in Atlanta. And that's just the acquisition phase of the project.

Then you have to actually operate this new transit line. The cost of operating 1 mile of commuter rail isn't wildly different in a densely populated spot vs a thinly populated spot. But less dense places have fewer potential riders, and more miles of track and that impacts the finances for ongoing operation. The costs of operating transit networks over larger areas are higher just because of the area. Fuel/energy costs go up when trips are longer. More staff and equipment are needed to service the areas with similar frequency. More staff and equipment are needed to maintain more miles of tracks, and those maintenance trips require more travel time which reduces efficiency of those workers.

In Stockholm, you can say "there are 13k potential riders in this sq mi that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen" to justify a public transit project. In Atlanta it would be "there are 700 potential riders in this square mile that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen." That math is a lot different for a lot of reasons both during the purchase/construction phase and after it's up and running. And that ignores that personal vehicles are often more convenient and faster than public transit in most of the US, so of the 700 potential riders in Atlanta only a portion of them are actually interested in your transit project.

I'm going to agree generally with @Paper Chaser here:  density does play a significant role.  ITA, though, that we have over-invested in highways and under-invested in transit. 

First, I think we need to distinguish between commuter transit and long-distance transit.  The vast majority of people-carrying miles comes from people going to and from work every day, not people traveling from, say, NYC to Chicago.*  So let's start with the low-hanging fruit of getting people to/from work.  If we're going to be like Europe, that largely means subways and commuter trains.**
 
The issue with these systems is math.  It's not just that the number of people to share the cost is less as you get farther out; it's also that you just have much, much more territory to cover.  Let's look at it as a circle, because you're likely going to want to provide service in all directions.  The first mile out from the center covers 3.14 square miles.  The first two miles, though, cover 12.56 square miles.  That means the second mile covers (12.56-3.14) = 9.42 square miles.  So expanding the system from a one-mile radius to a two-mile one almost triples the amount of area it needs to cover.  And it continues as you continue to expand:  the third mile encompasses 15.7 square miles, and the fourth covers almost 22.  Each ring brings in a larger amount of territory than the last.  Combine that with the fact that the population is also going to decrease the farther you go out, and the cost of operating the system gets very high, very quickly.

For better or worse, American cities generally sprawl more, because they grew with the advent of the car.  That means it costs comparatively more to run a commuter system in the US than in Europe.  For example, I just took a look at Atlanta, and it looks like the main beltway/ring road is around 7-13 miles from the city center.  In Stockholm, OTOH, the main ring road appears to be about 1.5-2.5 miles from the center.  Now of course many people live outside the ring road in both locations, but you'd expect the ring road to delineate the most dense and thus cost-effective area to run transit.  If you assume say 2 mile average for Stockholm and 10 miles for Atlanta, that means that Stockholm would need to cover 12.56 square miles to cover that key area, while Atlanta would need to cover 314 square miles to do the same.

Again, I am not suggesting that we shouldn't do so.  But as long as money remains a constraint, the cost-effectiveness of any given solution has to be weighed against the cost-effectiveness of other possible solutions.  Given the distances involved, it would probably be a lot cheaper just to pay people to work from home in Atlanta.

Also:  I am using Atlanta and Stockholm only for illustrative purposes.  And Atlanta does have a mass transit system despite the costs.


* Although honestly, most people who do go from NYC to Chigago do use some form of mass transit; it's just that it's a highly-polluting form of mass transit.

** Many cities do already have commuter buses -- even Houston, which is not exactly in the liberal transit capital of the world, has commuter buses for people who live farther out.

[maizefolk]

Yeah, if we see rebuilding topsoil priced into carbon offset markets it'll definitely speed the process along even more. I know ARPA-E just put out a bunch of funding as part of the SMARTFARMs program to actually develop the different types of sensors and modeling which would be needed for farmers to be able to demonstrate how much extra carbon they're locking back up in their soils (and hopefully get paid for doing so).

[robartsd]

And the big shift to no-till + cover crops in the USA is proving to do a surprisingly good job of slowing or even reversing the loss of topsoil.

I've been aware of this in permaculture and other small scale circles for quite a while. I"m assuming you mean this is now making major headway in Big Ag--that is encouraging.

[maizefolk]

And the big shift to no-till + cover crops in the USA is proving to do a surprisingly good job of slowing or even reversing the loss of topsoil.

I've been aware of this in permaculture and other small scale circles for quite a while. I"m assuming you mean this is now making major headway in Big Ag--that is encouraging.

Yup. There are over 100M acres being managed with no-till in the USA today.* Cover crop adoption isn't so far along yet, people are still testing around for the cover crops which make the most sense in different environments/soil types/climates. But one definitely notices a lot more fields with SOMETHING growing in them after harvest than even 2-3 years ago and almost everyone has probably either experimented with them or at least knows someone who has.

If regulations on nitrate runoff end up coming through I predict we'd see well above 50% adoption for cover crops in just a couple more years.

*Well in 2017, we'll get our next set of data in 2022, but it's been consistently increasing.

[Chris22]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

I think you have the arguments backwards. There's a popular narrative here in the US that public transit can't work as it does in other parts of the world because of some inherent uniqueness of our population density, area, terrain and weather.  The problem with this argument is that "better"* public transit options exist in basically throughout the world in basically all different combinations of these factors. 

Whether you intended to or not, you also evoked the cost argument that's frequently used to explain the lack of public transit in the US.  Sure, the size of the area serviced matters, but it's one of the least important factors.  all else being equal (and it can never be equal) it's far cheaper to build through lower-density zones, despite the larger area and need to lay more track/road/tunnel. Terrain and climate matter a great deal too.

The real estate might be cheaper in less dense areas, but the cost of buying/maintaining is shared among fewer residents in these locations. Lets say it costs X per mile of transit line construction in Stockholm, and 0.5X per mile in Atlanta. But you need 6 times as many miles of track in Atlanta. And that's just the acquisition phase of the project.

Then you have to actually operate this new transit line. The cost of operating 1 mile of commuter rail isn't wildly different in a densely populated spot vs a thinly populated spot. But less dense places have fewer potential riders, and more miles of track and that impacts the finances for ongoing operation. The costs of operating transit networks over larger areas are higher just because of the area. Fuel/energy costs go up when trips are longer. More staff and equipment are needed to service the areas with similar frequency. More staff and equipment are needed to maintain more miles of tracks, and those maintenance trips require more travel time which reduces efficiency of those workers.

In Stockholm, you can say "there are 13k potential riders in this sq mi that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen" to justify a public transit project. In Atlanta it would be "there are 700 potential riders in this square mile that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen." That math is a lot different for a lot of reasons both during the purchase/construction phase and after it's up and running. And that ignores that personal vehicles are often more convenient and faster than public transit in most of the US, so of the 700 potential riders in Atlanta only a portion of them are actually interested in your transit project.

I'm going to agree generally with @Paper Chaser here:  density does play a significant role.  ITA, though, that we have over-invested in highways and under-invested in transit. 

First, I think we need to distinguish between commuter transit and long-distance transit.  The vast majority of people-carrying miles comes from people going to and from work every day, not people traveling from, say, NYC to Chicago.*  So let's start with the low-hanging fruit of getting people to/from work.  If we're going to be like Europe, that largely means subways and commuter trains.**
 
The issue with these systems is math.  It's not just that the number of people to share the cost is less as you get farther out; it's also that you just have much, much more territory to cover.  Let's look at it as a circle, because you're likely going to want to provide service in all directions.  The first mile out from the center covers 3.14 square miles.  The first two miles, though, cover 12.56 square miles.  That means the second mile covers (12.56-3.14) = 9.42 square miles.  So expanding the system from a one-mile radius to a two-mile one almost triples the amount of area it needs to cover.  And it continues as you continue to expand:  the third mile encompasses 15.7 square miles, and the fourth covers almost 22.  Each ring brings in a larger amount of territory than the last.  Combine that with the fact that the population is also going to decrease the farther you go out, and the cost of operating the system gets very high, very quickly.

For better or worse, American cities generally sprawl more, because they grew with the advent of the car.  That means it costs comparatively more to run a commuter system in the US than in Europe.  For example, I just took a look at Atlanta, and it looks like the main beltway/ring road is around 7-13 miles from the city center.  In Stockholm, OTOH, the main ring road appears to be about 1.5-2.5 miles from the center.  Now of course many people live outside the ring road in both locations, but you'd expect the ring road to delineate the most dense and thus cost-effective area to run transit.  If you assume say 2 mile average for Stockholm and 10 miles for Atlanta, that means that Stockholm would need to cover 12.56 square miles to cover that key area, while Atlanta would need to cover 314 square miles to do the same.

Again, I am not suggesting that we shouldn't do so.  But as long as money remains a constraint, the cost-effectiveness of any given solution has to be weighed against the cost-effectiveness of other possible solutions.  Given the distances involved, it would probably be a lot cheaper just to pay people to work from home in Atlanta.

Also:  I am using Atlanta and Stockholm only for illustrative purposes.  And Atlanta does have a mass transit system despite the costs.


* Although honestly, most people who do go from NYC to Chigago do use some form of mass transit; it's just that it's a highly-polluting form of mass transit.

** Many cities do already have commuter buses -- even Houston, which is not exactly in the liberal transit capital of the world, has commuter buses for people who live farther out.

There’s also this assumption that everyone lives in the suburbs and commutes to the city. In 15 years and 6 employers, this is the first job that’s true for me.  For most of my career, my commute has been suburb to suburb and there’s effectively no way to make that work in Chicagoland unless both your job and home happen to be on the same train line.

FWIW, everyone I know in this area who can possibly swing a train commute (meaning they work downtown), does it (preCovid).  If you work in the Chicago loop, it’s absolutely a good to great train system. And Chicago itself has the El which is pretty good to move around the city. But if neither of those fits your use case, you’re out of luck with public transport.

[beee]

particularly high-speed and commuter rail

Ah, you were talking about intercity public transit. I was mostly talking about intracity one. I agree with you on this topic. The trains are amazing, I miss this option here in western Canada. Americas made the bet on roads, and the road system is pretty good here (and probably costs a lot to maintain).

My point is that intracity public transport won't be good in suburban sprawls. Too much land to cover with not enough people to use it. It'll cost a lot to build and support all the necessary infrastructure needed, just as it costs a lot to support all the SFH neighborhoods on their own.

Car is and will be the default choice for low-density areas (where 3/4 of population lives). All at the expense of public places (good car-city is a bad city for people), and people who can't operate a car for some reason (too young/too old/too poor/disabled).

You don't have to look very far to find entire regions which have both low population densities and comprehensive public transit options - both within and between towns/cities. And of course you can also find examples of very high density areas. Ergo, population density nor total area is a convincing explanation why we don't have more mass transit here in the US.

Population density limits your public transit options within a city. You were given plenty of explanations why it is this way.

Public transport won't help Americas car-centric culture. Self-driving cars that don't sit still 99% of the time will do it though. Just imagine how much land can be taken back from all those parking lots.

[maizefolk]

One big thing many other countries do for public transit that we don't is allow the public transit agencies (or companies) to buy up and develop the land near their routes. If BART in SFO or the Muni in DC adds a new stop to one of their lines, they're creating a whole lot of value for the real estate in walking distance of that stop, which can now be developed into desirable high density housing whose residents will be able to walk and right to large parts of the city without ever having to set food in a far.

By letting the people who build that public transit capture some of the value they create by enabling clusters of viable high density housing, investing in more and public transit with more total stops becomes a lot more financially viable.

[uniwelder]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Nah

Cool friend should be part of that green movement, by being shot into a condom.
Nah?  I don't get it.  If the world had 10% of the current population, wouldn't most concerns over unsustainability subside?  Overfishing, pollution, resource depletion, etc

First, how could we possibly get to 10% of our current population (roughly 700MM, or about half the current population in China) without some sort of massive global genocide or a pandemic that makes Covid look like the sniffles? Even if we could just painlessly magic them out of existence over the next few decades it would cause an almost unfathomable disruption in our society.

Second, we already know that some have carbon footprints that are more than an order of magnitude larger than the global average, and that its certainly possible to live very well an carbon neutral at the same time.  Which means simply reducing the global population substantially wouldn’t have as great an impact as reducing the consumption of our current population.

Disclaimer— triple7stash stacked his insult onto my comment. That didn’t come from me. My comment about population is over a week old and written at the beginning of this discussion.

I wasn’t offering any solution to the overpopulation problem, just noting that with drastically less people in the world, our actions have less consequences. Depopulating the planet isn’t a short term solution to reducing pollution.

[ender]

particularly high-speed and commuter rail

Ah, you were talking about intercity public transit. I was mostly talking about intracity one. I agree with you on this topic. The trains are amazing, I miss this option here in western Canada. Americas made the bet on roads, and the road system is pretty good here (and probably costs a lot to maintain).

My point is that intracity public transport won't be good in suburban sprawls. Too much land to cover with not enough people to use it. It'll cost a lot to build and support all the necessary infrastructure needed, just as it costs a lot to support all the SFH neighborhoods on their own.

Car is and will be the default choice for low-density areas (where 3/4 of population lives). All at the expense of public places (good car-city is a bad city for people), and people who can't operate a car for some reason (too young/too old/too poor/disabled).

You don't have to look very far to find entire regions which have both low population densities and comprehensive public transit options - both within and between towns/cities. And of course you can also find examples of very high density areas. Ergo, population density nor total area is a convincing explanation why we don't have more mass transit here in the US.

Population density limits your public transit options within a city. You were given plenty of explanations why it is this way.

Public transport won't help Americas car-centric culture. Self-driving cars that don't sit still 99% of the time will do it though. Just imagine how much land can be taken back from all those parking lots.

One thing to consider is how different governments handle top down investment into things like this.

I was just watching a documentary last night about China's high speed rail systems. They are way ahead of the USA. Why? Sure, population density helps justify it. But what also helps? The government dumping hundreds of billions into that infrastructure.

The US federal government spends fractions of what other countries do on public infrastructure.

Sure, we can lament being a car centric culture. But part of that reason is there's just not a lot of options for people to not be car centric in a huge percentage of the states.

I'd LOVE to be able to take trains from my large city (Minneapolis) to say Chicago or even Des Moines or the other major metro areas nearby. That's not possible though.

[Laura33]

particularly high-speed and commuter rail

Ah, you were talking about intercity public transit. I was mostly talking about intracity one. I agree with you on this topic. The trains are amazing, I miss this option here in western Canada. Americas made the bet on roads, and the road system is pretty good here (and probably costs a lot to maintain).

My point is that intracity public transport won't be good in suburban sprawls. Too much land to cover with not enough people to use it. It'll cost a lot to build and support all the necessary infrastructure needed, just as it costs a lot to support all the SFH neighborhoods on their own.

Car is and will be the default choice for low-density areas (where 3/4 of population lives). All at the expense of public places (good car-city is a bad city for people), and people who can't operate a car for some reason (too young/too old/too poor/disabled).

You don't have to look very far to find entire regions which have both low population densities and comprehensive public transit options - both within and between towns/cities. And of course you can also find examples of very high density areas. Ergo, population density nor total area is a convincing explanation why we don't have more mass transit here in the US.

Population density limits your public transit options within a city. You were given plenty of explanations why it is this way.

Public transport won't help Americas car-centric culture. Self-driving cars that don't sit still 99% of the time will do it though. Just imagine how much land can be taken back from all those parking lots.

One thing to consider is how different governments handle top down investment into things like this.

I was just watching a documentary last night about China's high speed rail systems. They are way ahead of the USA. Why? Sure, population density helps justify it. But what also helps? The government dumping hundreds of billions into that infrastructure.

The US federal government spends fractions of what other countries do on public infrastructure.

Sure, we can lament being a car centric culture. But part of that reason is there's just not a lot of options for people to not be car centric in a huge percentage of the states.

I'd LOVE to be able to take trains from my large city (Minneapolis) to say Chicago or even Des Moines or the other major metro areas nearby. That's not possible though.

Well of course you can.  https://www.amtrak.com/midwest-train-routes.  You just (reasonably) don't want to, because it's slower than flying and more expensive than driving. 

I don't disagree with your fundamental point, though.  The problem isn't just cars; it's also our capitalist system and patchwork government.  If you're focuing on intrastate transport, like a nice subway system, the federal government can't do that directly; it is limited to things that cross state lines, like the interstate system and Amtrak.  OTOH, if you're looking at interstate transport, we not only have the existing investment in the interstate highway system, we also have lots of non-governmental competition, like airlines that get you there faster and bus lines that get you there more cheaply.  And there are significant constitutional limitations on the federal government's right to compete with private businesses, so even if it wanted to do something like build a high-speed cross-country train line, that would be subject to legal challenge for decades.

The way the government here could do that would be via grants and incentives for companies to step in and do it.  But companies in the end care about profit.  And so they'd look at the competition -- the ease of driving/low cost of busing for shorter distances, the quickness of flying for longer distances -- and see that they'd be losing money hand over first and say thanks but no thanks.  So to overcome that, you'd need the federal government to give continuing massive subsidies to support the industry.  Which is both politically untenable and likely to give rise to those same decades-long legal challenges.

That's why I think the bigger payoff is in commuter-based mass transit.  You just get a lot more people per mile covered, so you're going to require less subsidy over time.  But of course the federal government can't just do that, because in most areas that is intrastate, so again, we'd need a big pot of federal money as incentives for states and localities to make the investment.

[former player]

The USA target of a 50% cut from 2005 levels (approx 1600 million carbon tonnes) by 2030 means a further
cut from the 2019 level of 1442 to 800.

That means every individual, business and government entity making a 45% cut in their current carbon output within the next 8 1/2 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56837927

[bacchi]

The USA target of a 50% cut from 2005 levels (approx 1600 million carbon tonnes) by 2030 means a further
cut from the 2019 level of 1442 to 800.

That means every individual, business and government entity making a 45% cut in their current carbon output within the next 8 1/2 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56837927

That's eminently doable.

But it won't be done.

[maizefolk]

The USA target of a 50% cut from 2005 levels (approx 1600 million carbon tonnes) by 2030 means a further
cut from the 2019 level of 1442 to 800.

That means every individual, business and government entity making a 45% cut in their current carbon output within the next 8 1/2 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56837927

Realistically it means some individuals, businesses, and government entities making much more than a 45% cut and others making less.

But do keep in mind we've already maintained an averaged a decline in emissions of about 1.5%/year for more than a decade ending in 2019 (so not counting the bigger declines associated with lockdowns over the last year).

That means in the next 9 years we'd expect to cut another 13% anyway. Biden's proposal amounts to accelerating our existing rate of progress at cutting CO2 by about a factor of 3. Looked at that way it doesn't seem completely unachievable. And if we undershot and only speed up the rate at which we're already cutting emissions by a factor of two instead of three, that'd still be much better than not doing it.

[Plina]

There are plenty of regions throughout the world which have similar (or lower) population density yet have much more developed public transport.

examples?

Or take a look at places like Sweden that’s almost twice the size of the UK but has about as many people as Georgia (and a far more extensive rail and ferry line).  Stockholm puts Atlanta to shame.

I'm not sure Stockholm/Atlanta is a good comparison if you're arguing that density doesn't matter for public transit:
Stockholm has 975k citizens in an area of 72 sq miles (13,541 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta proper has 490k citizens in 137 sq miles (3576 citizens per sq mi).
Atlanta metro region has 6 million people in 8400 sq mi (714 citizens per sq mi).

Even if we had hypothetically identical taxation between the two cities, it would cost far more per citizen to have similar public transit in Atlanta due to the much larger area that needs to be serviced.

I think you have the arguments backwards. There's a popular narrative here in the US that public transit can't work as it does in other parts of the world because of some inherent uniqueness of our population density, area, terrain and weather.  The problem with this argument is that "better"* public transit options exist in basically throughout the world in basically all different combinations of these factors. 

Whether you intended to or not, you also evoked the cost argument that's frequently used to explain the lack of public transit in the US.  Sure, the size of the area serviced matters, but it's one of the least important factors.  all else being equal (and it can never be equal) it's far cheaper to build through lower-density zones, despite the larger area and need to lay more track/road/tunnel. Terrain and climate matter a great deal too.

The real estate might be cheaper in less dense areas, but the cost of buying/maintaining is shared among fewer residents in these locations. Lets say it costs X per mile of transit line construction in Stockholm, and 0.5X per mile in Atlanta. But you need 6 times as many miles of track in Atlanta. And that's just the acquisition phase of the project.

Then you have to actually operate this new transit line. The cost of operating 1 mile of commuter rail isn't wildly different in a densely populated spot vs a thinly populated spot. But less dense places have fewer potential riders, and more miles of track and that impacts the finances for ongoing operation. The costs of operating transit networks over larger areas are higher just because of the area. Fuel/energy costs go up when trips are longer. More staff and equipment are needed to service the areas with similar frequency. More staff and equipment are needed to maintain more miles of tracks, and those maintenance trips require more travel time which reduces efficiency of those workers.

In Stockholm, you can say "there are 13k potential riders in this sq mi that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen" to justify a public transit project. In Atlanta it would be "there are 700 potential riders in this square mile that would like to have a train, and they're willing to share the costs to make that happen." That math is a lot different for a lot of reasons both during the purchase/construction phase and after it's up and running. And that ignores that personal vehicles are often more convenient and faster than public transit in most of the US, so of the 700 potential riders in Atlanta only a portion of them are actually interested in your transit project.

Actually, the second largest city of Sweden, Göteborg, has about 583 k population spread over 173 square miles with a app densitet of 3350 per sq mile so it is pretty much equivalent of Atlanta proper or is slightly less dense. It is also the car capital of Sweden, with the headquarters for both Volvo car and Volvo trucks, built for cars. It still has a functioning public transport and I have managed to live + 7 years there without owning a car.

[Plina]

particularly high-speed and commuter rail

Ah, you were talking about intercity public transit. I was mostly talking about intracity one. I agree with you on this topic. The trains are amazing, I miss this option here in western Canada. Americas made the bet on roads, and the road system is pretty good here (and probably costs a lot to maintain).

My point is that intracity public transport won't be good in suburban sprawls. Too much land to cover with not enough people to use it. It'll cost a lot to build and support all the necessary infrastructure needed, just as it costs a lot to support all the SFH neighborhoods on their own.

Car is and will be the default choice for low-density areas (where 3/4 of population lives). All at the expense of public places (good car-city is a bad city for people), and people who can't operate a car for some reason (too young/too old/too poor/disabled).

You don't have to look very far to find entire regions which have both low population densities and comprehensive public transit options - both within and between towns/cities. And of course you can also find examples of very high density areas. Ergo, population density nor total area is a convincing explanation why we don't have more mass transit here in the US.

Population density limits your public transit options within a city. You were given plenty of explanations why it is this way.

Public transport won't help Americas car-centric culture. Self-driving cars that don't sit still 99% of the time will do it though. Just imagine how much land can be taken back from all those parking lots.

One thing to consider is how different governments handle top down investment into things like this.

I was just watching a documentary last night about China's high speed rail systems. They are way ahead of the USA. Why? Sure, population density helps justify it. But what also helps? The government dumping hundreds of billions into that infrastructure.

The US federal government spends fractions of what other countries do on public infrastructure.

Sure, we can lament being a car centric culture. But part of that reason is there's just not a lot of options for people to not be car centric in a huge percentage of the states.

I'd LOVE to be able to take trains from my large city (Minneapolis) to say Chicago or even Des Moines or the other major metro areas nearby. That's not possible though.

Money is one thing. I think the main thing is that that the government or collectives own most of the land i China. That allows the state to expropriate the land or basically throw out those living on it fast. So the time from decision to start building is a lot shorter then in democracies, where railroad constructions demands public consultations, permitprocesses that can be appealed, expropriation of land,which might lead to court hearings. So even if we threw the same amount of money on infrastructure, we could never beat the Chinese because they don’t need to give a crap of what their own citizens think.