I have been watching lots of youtube documentaries during Christmas break and I think I was wrong about my enthusiasm for car ownership.
It is a fact that in places with poor public transportation having a car is a necessity. It is also a fact that I have overbought cars and also bought many cars that I could have kept longer. It was unhelpful for me to do these things.
I could try to explain my decisions by saying I was curious which is true, or that I wanted a safe car. However, it could have been equally possible that I could have been more thoughtful where I lived, and perhaps gotten an e-bike to get groceries and things.
Lately, I have been watching videos about the environment, transportation, e-bikes, and so on. I find myself remembering when I used to take public transportation and loved it. In Portland, public transportation was beautiful and well-maintained. It was a privilege to ride it. I loved the feeling of not having to worry about parking, and being able to go almost everywhere I wanted to go.
I love the freedom of having a car, but I don’t love the rest of car ownership. However taking this out of my context, I don’t love what cars are doing to the environment and I think that society really needs to rethink transportation in general. The next place I move will be to a walkable neighborhood and I don’t ever want to buy a car again.
This is a long way from a person who spent an embarrassing amount of money on cars and even wanted an RV. I like technology but we can have technology that doesn’t hurt the poor and contribute to our own destruction. As tempting as cars used to be, just like cigarettes, I think we need to go out of them as a society to be healthy.