Fair enough. Sounds like you favour the idea of human rights but disagree on some specific conceptions of exactly what those rights are?

Right, it’s like when people try to justify colonialism. Would they be okay with their country being conquered and turned into a colony? No? Okay, so we’ve established colonialism is wrong. Everything after that is increasingly ludicrous special pleading. ‘Oh, but country X was more economically developed, so it was okay,’ is only a consistent argument if you actually go on to say ‘… and that’s why it would be a good thing if South Korea conquered Italy.’

There are also specific articles in the universal declaration of human rights that I think are wrong

Do you mind saying which ones?

Normally, to be honest, it’s because they want to hurt someone. Look at the Conservatives in the UK, who are desperate to repeal human rights legislation so that they can send refugees to Rwanda without right of appeal.

Note that those Conservatives still think that they have human rights. Their excuse for depriving refugees of human rights is that some of them have entered the country illegally. Yet, none of them thinks any Conservative MP should be detained arbitrarily or deported, even though they now acknowledge that they, their government and their party have broken the law in various ways. No, they want to strip rights from other people. Their argument doesn’t wash.

You’re probably right about the post-COVID thing of not wanting to be in enclosed spaces, actually. There was also a big increase in cycling right after the 7/7 bombings, for similarly depressing reasons.

Yes, I think the increase in WFH is likely the biggest factor. Still, the bike lanes are probably helping more people make active travel decisions and keeping them safe when they do, so it’s all good!

I mean, just google what a Ulez camera is, man. It’s to enforce a low-emissions zone, so that cars don’t kill people with air pollution. It’s an expansion of the already successful low and ultra-low emissions zones in London.

The explosion didn’t hurt anyone but that was pure luck. You cannot safely blow something up on a public road. Anyone who’d been walking, cycling or driving by at the wrong moment could’ve been seriously injured or killed. Again, this is obvious.

And, yes, anyone who responds to a public health policy with explosives is an extremist.

A few people here have pointed this out already, but people have thought the End was pretty Nigh for about as long as we’ve been thinking about things.

Other people are countering this point by saying, ‘Ah, but this time it’s real!’ which doesn’t prove anything. People thought it was real all those previous times (the ecological collapse on Easter Island, or the Bronze Age collapse, or the Roman Civil Wars, or the Black Death, or the French Revolution or the Cold War etc.) and not many of them killed themselves or joined suicide cults, so why would people act differently now?

This isn’t to be pollyannaish about things. All the examples I gave above really did kill huge numbers of people and the Cold War in particular really could’ve caused the collapse of modern civilisation (if a nuclear war had broken out). Climate change, war and resurgent fascism are truly huge problems. I just don’t think the particular example of suicide cults is a very likely development.

It makes the roads safer and that saves lives. It reduces pollution, saving more lives. It also saves space. That doesn’t save lives, granted, but it’s still a good thing.

If we accept any use cases for cars (and I do, personally), even if it’s primarily in the short to medium term while we build better urban infrastructure, then we should also advocate for those cars to be as small, as safe and as clean as possible.

Exactly this. There are some clear use cases for cars and even for SUVs (possibly only if you literally live or work on a large farm). There’s no case for driving an SUV in a city. It’s antisocial behaviour at best and actively threatening at worst!

This will help to ameliorate that!

To be honest, I’m sick of trying to politely persuade people to stop killing other people with their idiotic cars. All cars are bad, yes. SUVs are the worst. It’s perfectly reasonable to try to solve a wicked problem by going for the worst offenders first.

The Netherlands does have a lot of low emissions zones.

The article partly addresses this.

Good point, we should use the steam rising off these dudes to power turbines for clean electricity, instead of letting it leak wastefully into the atmosphere.

Damn, the scientists at the lab for reducing flame wars are gonna be pretty sheepish when they find out.

Okay, pal. Stay angry and ignorant.

They go exactly in the middle, of course. Straight to Purgatory.

It explains in the article what the criteria used were. You’re welcome to critique that, of course, and I have done elsewhere, but you should read the article, if only so you can critique it properly!

According to the study I read, we in the developed world generally do, but in the less industrialised world, people generally don’t. Which was itself really interesting!

Further thoughts: This reminded me of something I read a while back about assuming that people who have one virtue also have all the others. Like, why should we assume that someone who is (e.g.) honest is also generous?

I think that has some applications here. Okay, so cyclists are, it seems, more community-minded. Does that mean they possess all the other virtues? Are cyclists also less likely to steal or to cheat on their partners? We don’t know and this study doesn’t tell us.