"And there's several kind of off ramps that we've had over time, and we've always chosen the route that goes towards cars. And so like we keep embedding this thing into our lifestyle that really harms us. And these other countries, they've gone other directions. And it's really interesting to think about these off-ramps, these time periods where we could have gone a different direction, but we didn't."
"That flip that happened at the end of the seventies, when Reagan was elected in 1980. That, that to me is like such an important inflection point that, we had solar panels on the roof of the White House. We had people putting on sweaters and turning off lights and understanding that there's a limited amount of petroleum products in the world and that maybe we need to figure out how to make it so that"
Historical moments in the 1970s presented clear off-ramps away from automobile dependence, with cities like Copenhagen and Dutch municipalities choosing different mobility directions. Political shifts and entrenched fossil-fuel interests reversed early conservation and low-carbon adaptations, reinforcing car-oriented infrastructure and lifestyles in the United States. Visible behavioral responses included energy-saving actions and rooftop solar, indicating public willingness for change. The resulting policy and design choices embedded automobiles into daily life, producing ongoing harms. Effective change requires recognizing past inflection points, confronting fossil-fuel influence on policy, and implementing practical off-ramps toward car-free or less car-dependent cities.
Read at Streetsblog
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