An open letter to people who make machines (2020)

Individual pursuits, the questions, and actions toward reducing our fossil fuel use, done collectively, is the actual solution to our immediate problem to overcome: can I use less?

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originally published at 'no more nice cars' in 2020 (nmnc.substack.com)

When will you stand up and say, “No”?

When will you decide the status quo won’t do? That you’re no longer content designing, engineering, assembling, selling, or fixing whatever it is you’re busy doing. The structure cost-cut to within an inch of its life. The sub-par, untested airbag assemblies. The engines engineered to pollute in order to return an acceptable customer experience. Working for an automaker that invests in robots before people, software-driven “autonomous vehicles” before the real needs of its flesh and blood customers.

You know, the people getting into more debt driving more complicated vehicles. People who feel as though they lack viable alternatives…so they stay in some distorted cycle of buying and selling cars, mostly through main dealers and, in the West at least, mostly on credit.

None of the billion-odd personal vehicles on earth were ever created in a vacuum, for a vacuum. They are largely …