Originally Posted by Chris L
No they won't. They'll just keep paying whatever it costs to drive, and make whatever sacrifices they deem necessary to make sure they can keep putting fuel (be it oil, ethanol or whatever else) in their cars. The only thing that will change is the amount of money they have to fork out to do it.
I don't agree with this. Cars may be an addiction, but its social pressure that feeds the addiction. I think a good survey would show most people don't even like dealing with the things as much as they're forced to. To solve the problem we have to change the social pressures, which basically means pro-bike anti-car propaganda. We need less movies like 40-year-old-virgin where practical cycling is made fun of, and more movies where the daily-grind of driving a car is upstaged by a bicycle driving hero/heroine. But more importantly, we need to show that you can circumvent car dependence in cities that were even built around cars.
Everybody looks at bikes/mass transit/etc as something that only works in new york or chicago or portland. Somebody needs to show that people in towns like mine, where public transit is a joke and a city of 300,000 has 10 bike lanes, can still get around without driving.
Don't show the Californians or the New Yorkers that they can do it, show the midwesterners that they can do it.