Originally Posted by
jon c.
You may not buy that it's a political issue, but it is. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. And will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Given our extremely polarized society, there are a fair number of people for whom any mention of anything remotely related to caring for environment brands you as one of "them." Anyone who cares about the environment must be a liberal. And if you're a liberal, you must be a socialist.
Of course that's totally silly. There are people concerned with protecting the environment who are not on the left side of the political spectrum and environmentalism has nothing whatsoever to do with socialism or any other economic theory.
But as long as a significant part of the population continues to make these associations, it will remain a political issue and there will be backlash against things like advocating car free (or light) living that has little basis in reality. That it's baseless does not make it any less real.
They can play that game if they want to, but I'm not going to participate. They think they can simply brand any issue they're uncomfortable with as "political" and have it banned from our conversations. Is it okay to discuss the outrageous number of traffic fatalities (over a million) that occur annually in the world or have they decided that that topic is in the political realm, too, and mustn't be broached? Is it all right to discuss mass transit? Many of these people won't put up with that, either.
Concern about castastrophic global climate change and the environment are issues that have a lot to do with car-free living and they need to be discussed. It's as simple as that.