Geez, here is another issue for which we’ve known about for 40 or so years that requires “urgent Action” for the past 40 years already
Wake me up when we finally do something
Boomers have categorically chosen apathy in favor of their own self interests since 1970. By the late 90s, they were a wrecking ball.
I disagree. People who live their entire lives being relentless bombarded by consumerist propaganda and pro-capitalist disinformation are not truly free to vote against it, nor were they given the chance. Al Gore cared more about the environment than Bush, but he was still a capitalist that supported car dependency and the military industrial complex.
So you’re absolving “Generation Me” of ever having to think for themselves? The same generation that could have educated themselves for less than the price of new car, and simply chose not to because a high school diploma was enough?
Millennials were just as heavily, if not more propagandized, and yet, as a cohort, we have skewed far from Baby Boomers (ie Millenials are killing x), while retaining the ability to be critical of the systems we have inherited. We are also far more educated and far more in debt. All as a result of Boomers subsidizing their own welfare on the backs of their children and grandchildren.
Baby Boomers collectively failed upward, soaked up benefit after benefit while telling themselves that they deserved their station in life, and then pulled up every ladder behind them.
So, hard disagree.
Which is why replacing First-past-the-post voting is so important. We need to have more then two options.
Democrats believe in democracy right? What’s the hold up blue states?
Given that Gore actually won the election it’s arguable that his concessions towards climate change, that it was real for a start, was the reason the election was close enough for him to lose the election. Voters loved the comforting lie over the hard truth then and they still do.
Especially given the yahoo Trump wants to appoint that doesn’t believe in climate change even in 2024 is pretty damning of our ability to do anything about it.
Jimmy Carter told Boomers to put on a sweater and they kicked him out of office.
Most probably simply didn’t know. A lot has to do with policies made by politicians that did know. Don’t pretend to be better, you would have done the same back then with the information you had. Remember, no internet.
lol, ok.
Despite your unfounded assumption, I’m old enough to know what it was like living pre-internet. Information was there, for those who chose to seek it out. Boomers, on the other hand, are the living definition of Dunning-Kruger. So no, they don’t get a pass. They chose to remain ignorant and uneducated, and when they gained any advantage, they made sure that those who came afterward would NOT. That’s not just a lack of awareness, it’s mean-spirited and selfish. Which fits “Generation Me,” to a T.
Well, no.
I am from the generation after the boomers but I grew up right before the Internet exploded onto the world and i can tell you that you would never see that sort of information unless you were looking for it. I know people love to shit on boomers, hence boomers being an insult word these days, but many simply couldn’t know better.
Hell, I didn’t know and believe me, I was (and still am) the kind of person that loves to read new things STEM. I had subscriptions on scientific magazines and I do remember reading articles about it being anything, scientists already knew about car tired being a problem, but it didn’t go beyond some reports. The general population didn’t know and pretending that they could have and should have known is simply disingenuous.
If you were alive at that time then you too know that it wasn’t that easy.
You might as well just take the long nap.
No ones gonna do anything.
We’re gonna keep wringing our hands about it, desperately shout time is running out…and watch time run out, then shrug our shoulders and go “Welp, nothing we can do about it now”
Got the vasectomy already. I’m all set to become the most unreasonable person in the chaos wastes.
We need to convince billionaires to care. They are the ones who hold all the real political power.
nah, guilliotines exist and are very convincing.
we dont actually have to take orders from them.
they dont care about anything but their money and the bunkers where they think they’ll hide during the coming man made disasters
convince billionaires to care
Nah, just get santa to solve our crisis
More realistically like 15 years, but, yeah, same difference in the end.
Yeah no, I’ve seen reports back in the early 90s about this in the Netherlands where they saw microplastics.ftom.tires being a huge problem
K
If only there was a highly efficient mode of transporting people that didn’t use tires. Ah well, nothing can be done I guess.
Yes, imagine if there was a fast and safe way of transport. Something like made to run on steel bars in order to reduce friction. I don’t know. I’m just imagining, I watch too much science fiction.
My city’s metro system uses rubber tyres, :(
Brisbane? Their metro is literally a bus 😂 the council are so proud of it too.
Our public transport in Vic leaves much to be desired but at least we have a well developed tram system that reduces the number of tyres in the collective fleet.
We did just outlaw e-scooters which was necessary because the infrastructure and community education wasn’t there and it was dangerous. But long term e-scooters do serve a place in a less car reliant community. Bike infrastructure investment is decades behind what it needs to be.
Much like everywhere, the oversized nature of “yank tanks” seems to be a large factor in every single thing wrong with cars and car infrastructure these days.
Smaller, lighter cars don’t wear through their tyres as fast 🤷
What if we wrapped the tyres in bags to contain all the dust?
Paper bags, obviously
They’d be easiest to recycle.
Can we take the tyres out of the environment?
Sure, just put them in bags.
This is also yet another reason SUVs are bad: bigger tyres, higher weight, more wear, more pollution.
It’s also another reason to have lower speed limits: less friction, less wear, less pollution.
You want trains because they are good for the environment.
I want trains because chugga chugga choo choo.
We are not the same.
Why not both?
I learned recently that speed limits are determined by studying the speeds driven and setting them at the 85th percentile.
So what we can do to lower speed limits is to find a place they’re doing a traffic study and repeatedly drive over them at very low speeds.
We can lower the speeds driven by putting bushes right next to the lanes. They increase perceived speed.
Action won’t happen. In fact, we’ll increase the amount of pollution!
This is the way
The factory must grow.
Ahhh ups this is reality. Better don’t over do it.
That’s on top of all the brake dust cars spread.
A little asbestos never hurt nobody
(Edit: Nvm. I just looked it up, brake pads no longer use asbestos, which is cool at least)
Brake pads are also moving away from copper. Little improvements over time
Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Planes
And Automobiles!
NO.
so, basically, drive on three wheels and the problem’s solved?
If all you bike owners drove unicycles we wouldn’t be in this mess
WULRUS WULRUS WULRUS
But electric cars will fix everything. Thats what electric car manufacturers said!
The only thing I see amerikans taking ‘urgent action’ on is making sure a few select convicted criminals avoid doing any prison time.
Also, we’re due for a new high school shooting record. Maybe we can break it this next time.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
We are far from good: Cars ruined walkability. Most suburbs are under constant tyre roar within a kilometer from a freeway. Stroads are hideous and biking there is dangerous.
Tyre dust went onto fields, into crops, we ate the dust, gut illness became common. Heard of gluten free? People are sick.
This would be good: https://www.quora.com/What-new-types-of-public-transport-could-there-be/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
But we let the free market lock us into a technological dead-end. Ending the market religion in state affairs would be good. Some things need a 100-year plan. https://lemmy.world/comment/10858248
I’m not arguing whether cars are good or bad for society as a whole.
I’m just saying that if the choice is between internal combustion engines and electric motors, it’s a no brainer.
Slightly better isn’t good enough.
I take your point, but unfortunately we live in the real world and we have to be realistic.
That’s why this is so important. Now that we’re finally starting to move to electric vehicles and can see a future with no exhaust and much less brake dust, that tire pollution stands out even more.
Electric cars are not here to save the planet, they are here to save the car industry.
Trains and busses, actually.
Trains seemingly solve all problems that were created by a bunch of rich people
I’ll get the rope, you keep an eye out for the sheriff Handsome Dan.
Lots of things contribute to this. Vehicle weight (extra stress on the tires), wheel alignment (toe-in/out causes scrubbing which causes more wear), unmaintained suspensions (worn out shocks, struts and bushings causing the above), burnouts (obviously, but, even in winter being the guy doing a burnout on summer tires while trying to get up an icy hill or across the intersection still counts), tire compound, road design, and driving style. If we had more cargo trains doing logi instead of long haul trucks we could probably cut down on a lot of pollution both in exhaust particles and tire particles.
Yet another problem not solved by EVs
It’s actually made a little worse by EVs because of battery weight.
But the manufacturer and my government said they were eco-friendly, what do you means my 6000 pounds of steel and plastic isn’t good for the planet?
Not with that attitude.
Not surprised but happy that someone identified this source
Guess science has given up on maglev
would this apply to bycicle tyres as well? also, why is it spelled that way?
Yes, though note that tire and road wear scale with the 4th power of the vehicle weight. If a person on a bicycle weighs 200 pounds and a person driving a car weighs 2000 pounds then the car is going to have roughly 10,000 times as much tire wear (and microplastic shedding) as the bike.
Now consider that people on bikes can even weigh less than 200 pounds and cars can weigh far more than 2000 pounds (I heard of a recent electric SUV that weighs 8000 pounds) and it becomes clear that bicycles are a complete non-issue, relative to cars. An 8000 pound car is equivalent to 6.25 million 160 pound bicycle + rider pairings.
Now consider the effects of 18-wheeler tractor tailors with a maximum weight upwards of 80,000 pounds. These things absolutely disintegrate their tires. If you’ve done any highway driving you’ve likely seen the shredded debris of tires on the shoulder of the road.
Edit: as an addendum I’d like to note that electric vehicles tend to weigh a lot more than ICE cars, by upwards of 1000 pounds. This is one of the reasons I’m dismayed at the rush to EVs: it’s going to accelerate the microplastic problem even as it reduces CO2.
Yes i agree. I have never driven but have been i a car due to medical reasons, but have rode a bike and plan to bike again once im a weight that a bike can sustain (im 370 right now). ive seen thoese tire “husks” on the highway sometimes.
also, why is it spelled that way?
British spelling of tire is tyre
is that why its called the tyburn tree? a phonetic usage of the British language?
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I can’t imagine much microplatics are getting chipped off of them. The tires have thousands of pounds of pressure being put on small surface areas when you round corners, where as a plastic bottleneck can dolphin into the water if hit by a large wave and not nearly as much friction placed on it.
How I imagine it
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What I’m getting is I’m going to need a lot more digital bottle nosed dolpin bottles to emulate this.
25% of all microplastics isn’t worthwhile to fix? Even if it was 10%, thats worthwhile. Would a 10% raise make an impact on your life? I know it would on mine. We can have people focusing on multiple problems and i think its wrong to dismiss people trying to fight tire plastics just because you think theres a bigger boogeyman, we can save the environment from multiple angles at a time. Even if we recyle 100% of the tires we make, that does nothing to stop the wear down plastics which is where most of these microplastics are coming from in roadway runoff
You say that the plastic island has been slamming for decades, while cars have been using tires for decades too. Some countries have started banning single use plastics so they’ve already started focusing on that problem as well.
Wow, now imagine what tractor tires are doing to the fields we grow our food in. Plus the exhaust and tires deposit heavy metals. I have been bitching about this for years. We need drone fleets in fields and to ban tires and exhaust in fields.
The tires aren’t breaking down like they do on asphalt. Not the same.
I come from farmers. They are still breaking down and still an issue. They also cause soil compaction. Anyone familiar with farming understands that tractors aren’t good for soil
That we know of.
We have all the data in the world to verify this. Yes, that we know… which in this occasion, is pretty much confirmed until proven otherwise. Claims with no evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Where have all the steel wheels gone?
They went around smaller steel wheels:
I wish it was pure iron dust wearing off that steel, but no. The flying drone idea seems good, but for harvesting?
Exhaust gas is poison.
The relatively high amount of metal contents emitted from diesel engines strongly suggests that the measurement on the control of metal contents in diesel fuel should be taken in the future.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231003006241
As, Hg and Se exhaust emissions were dominated by fuel combustion while Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn exhaust emissions were dominated by lubricant oil combustion.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231012006942
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-know-if-I-have-heavy-metals-in-my-organs/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
I think we could eventually do drone fleets for harvesting too, yes. It should be the new standard so we stop poisoning ourselves.