He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time
That’s what i have been doing… Is that wrong, or just too much anti-consumerism to be presented as a good thing in our society?
He’s right honestly, cars, especially electric cars, produce a large portion of their CO2 emissions when they are manufactured.
We would all be better off if people kept their “gas guzzlers” but only used them rarely. A car in a garage has zero co2 emissions.
Which is one reason this anti WFH campaign pisses me off so much. We could cut emissions quite a bit just from that but we can’t even do that little because: greedy assholes.
Was I the only one who, during covid lockdowns, was amazed at how fucking clear the air was? Did everyone just forget? Idk why most humans can’t look at that and go “we all need to make this permanent” and then do it. But we evolved to prefer the worst of us in charge.
Anyway. Yeah. I WFH and drive about 5000 miles a year. And we tend to keep our cars 10-15 years. It’s way more affordable than a new car every few years, assuming you get a car that has low maintenance costs. More people oughta do that.
Seriously… Covid was an eye opener me as well.
It was so much quieter outside. The air was cleaner. Animals were returning to previously deserted areas at remarkable rates.
Everyone was itching to get back to “normal,” but normal was what was causing all of the destruction on the first place.
The government should literally be paying people to stay home and do nothing. I remember reading somewhere that it is more cost effective in the long run. Rather than fixing damage and rebuilding cities after increasingly severe natural disasters.
I live on a really busy parish road and I noticed the same thing. The first 3 months of the COVID timeline were great. My company sent everyone home and we all worked remotely and the traffic on the road at my house dropped to almost nothing. It was glorious. I’m still working from home because my company sold the office building they owned and hasn’t built a new one. I can’t say the same for other companies because traffic is horrible in front of my house. The noise and the air quality are back to pre COVID levels of suck.
Anti-WFH is because companies know workers have so much mobility and a virtual workforce can leave to work for any company in the world. It’s a form of lock-in. People don’t like disruption or change, so they are less likely to leave for a higher paycheck. To be honest I’m surprised more American companies haven’t leveraged work from home to shift non customer-facing white collar jobs to Eastern Europe.
Anti wfh I think is run by business office real estate owners. I could be wrong, but wfh fucks them the most. Their investments gotta pay off and real estate is never supposed to go down in price, I’ll fucking stab you bitch or something like that, the conversations I have heard at charity galas.
I dont think so because businesses love shedding fixed overhead so it’s more likely they are trying to get a return on their investment or they think it’s worth the trade off. I’m convinced half the company’s moving to southern states are doing so just to reduce overhead but using the current red state/blue state zeitgeist as cover.
Ya but then rich people would be slightly less rich. We can’t have that.
Yeah, this is the industry blaming a famous person for making sense.
Replacing the gas guzzlers with EVs would be great, but the cost/benefit ratio isn’t there. If you need a new car and can afford an EV, get one.
Car manufacturers need to do more to make EVs more affordable. They need to do a better job making their argument that they are good cars with significant environmental benefits.
They won’t, because they still want to sell gasoline cars.
Conversions are another option that just aren’t being used because of red tape. The paperwork takes nearly as much work as the actual conversion.
Admittedly the last time I looked into a conversion was like 20 years ago, but back then it would have cost as much as a new car. Has the price come down at least?
They offset all those emissions by the time they’ve reached like 80k km in places where electricity is produced using coal (compared to a gas vehicle that increases its total emissions as time goes) so no, he’s not right actually.
That’s not even taking into consideration the wear on emission equipment and cars age.
If most people replace their cars every three years they’re not getting to 80,000 km before they buy a new one.
Do they though?
And it’s not as if these cars were sent to the scraper, they’re sold on the used market and replace gas cars.
According to Mr. Bean’s original article, that’s the average length of car ownership in Britain due to the prevalence of three year leases.
And it doesn’t matter if they’re going on the used market because there’s still another new car getting built that doesn’t have to be.
Yeah, the policy causes more cars to be sold, which is also an important thing to take into account.
But you initially said “If most people replace their cars every three years they’re not getting to 80,000 km before they buy a new one.”, and that is plain wrong, the car is not scrapped after those 3 years, so when it changes owner for the first time is irrelevant. And that 80k km is worst case scenario, that assuming all electricity is generated in the least environmental way possible, in practice it’s often <40k km that there is already a break even because not all electricity is generated by coal.
Except that is ignoring the filtering effect of the used market. As a car ages and changes hands, it is likely to replace an older, less efficient car. How else could we replace the oldest cars that are going out of service due to being at the end of their life?
It’s not like the people that are buying old used cars are suddenly going to afford an expensive new car. Instead, they need an affordable used car.
Are we sure newer cars are more efficient ? With dieselgate and recent articles about how Co2 emissions are better in lab but same on real conditions, we are allowed to have fat doubts.
If like the guy further up this thread you only drive 8k km a year that’s going to take 10 years to reach parity. The Li-Ion battery may not even last that long.
Obviously if you drive for work or commute long distances that can’t be covered by public transport then an EV makes sense, but with the expansion of WFH it may not for many.
That’s 80k km if you live somewhere where electricity comes 100% from coal, where I live with hydro it’s under 20k km. You’re also making an assumption without knowing how much that 8k km emits with their gas car.
To give an example with numbers…
Gas car produces 5 tons of CO2 when being manufactured and then emits 1 ton a year driving 8k km
Electric car produces 10 tons of CO2 when being manufactured then emits 0.25 tons a year driving 8k km
After 6 ⅔ (we’ll round it up to 7) years the EV compensated for the extra CO2 required for its production and has emitted 10 + (7 x 0.25) = 11.75 tons of CO2. Meanwhile the gas car has emitted 5 + (7 x 1) = 12 tons of CO2 and the difference will keep increasing.
As for the battery failure scare, it’s a non issue with the vast majority of models and it ignores the extra maintenance required on the gas car that also pollutes.
We’re about 10k past that mileage where we’re supposed to be having battery issues, maybe need a replacement, with our Prius and they aren’t happening. I’ve been wondering if it was just a scare from the salesman to push me to an ICE. We’ve kept on top of the maintenance and it’s been the most reliable car I’ve ever driven. Might just be a Toyota thing tho. I set aside the money for the repair and I’m waiting, but I’d really rather spend it on hookers and blow.
I know that the hybrid version was/is a taxi driver favorite and some drove 600k km and the battery was still ok 🤷
The Nissan Leaf is the biggest culprit I think, they decided not to actively cool the battery and if people drive to work, charge, go back home, charge, it cooks it…
The best car for the environment is the one you have.
That’s the thing though, no it isn’t.
If you continue driving a gas car it continues to generate emissions, if you switch to an electric car it offsets it’s emissions (compared to switching to another gas car or keeping the same gas car) after max 80k km and after that it’s a better car for the environment than whatever gas car you would have been driving instead and that you keep driving and that keeps increasing its carbon footprint.
You’re taking a useful piece of equipment, a perfectly running car, and doing what with it? Scrapping it? Reselling it? Just letting it sit? None of those make sense from a “save the planet” perspective.
You can scrap the internal combustion car. Sure, it won’t make any more emissions itself, but it does cause demand for another EV to be manufactured RIGHT NOW, which has opportunity cost - manufacturing is expensive, monetarily and environmentally. Would this eventually even out, yeah, probably but it’d cause a lot of stress in the short term.
Reselling it is probably the MOST environmentally friendly option, but that car is still making emissions. If the buyer of your internal combustion car already had a car, it’s the same problem as scrapping it, kicked down 1 more chain link. the emissions necessarily increase. If they didn’t already have a car, well now there’s the same combustion engine car on the road, and we made a new EV to fit demand.
Letting the car sit is a bit of a sunk cost fallacy, I admit. The manufacturing cost of the car has already been paid, and it has useful life left in it. This is where we have to actually make a cost-benefit decision. If the car is older, yeah probably don’t drive it anymore. If it’s less than 20 years old, it probably has enough life left in it to offset the benefits of producing a new EV right now. This just feels like scrapping it, with even more junkyard requirements.
Obviously this isn’t all on the individual level, one person doing any of these things isn’t causing any shift in demand, but if everyone suddenly started having that mentality, I don’t think it’d end well at all. Use what you have, don’t buy until you have to or comfortably can. Reuse is as important as reduce and recycle.
It makes sense to resell it only if it replaces another car that pollutes more than it does, otherwise your logic only works if you ignore the fact that the gas car has a carbon footprint they keeps increasing when the electric car doesn’t (or it increases slowly enough depending on what’s used to generate electricity that it still eventually becomes carbon negative compared to continuing to use the gas car).
There’s a sunk cost already spent for an ICE car that’s already been produced. There’s an opportunity cost to swapping to an EV immediately. My point is simply that the situations are complicated enough that the only reasonable “one size” approach for a heuristic to balance those costs is one along the lines of “replace your ICE car when it’s reached the end of its useful life, and replace it with an EV”.
No, this probably won’t be the best overall. That requires individualization. Someone still clinging to a 40 year old gas guzzling truck would be better off scrapping it. Someone who bought a sedan in, like, 2017, it still has a few years of well performing life in it would do best to keep it til it dies and then replace with an EV.
Do you want me to explain why marginal analysis is flawed or do you already understand?
I live in a car city but I only use it to go groceries or maybe an event. I go twice a week tops.
All my friends told me I should have gotten a Tesla and that because I’m a tech guy that I’d buy a Tesla. I’m like, I don’t drive enough, so I bought a used Civic.
By the time this Civic needs to be retired, there should be plenty of affordable options for me? Or maybe I can move to a place that doesn’t require one.
Absolutely the most reasonable take. Reduce your trips, and use what you already have until it’s dust. Let the EV industry grow, tech advance, and manufacturing processes clean up a bit, slowly adopt, and transition over.
nah even an ICE car in a garage is not neutral : it needs oil & filters changes every 1-2 years if you want to keep it running, and gas does not like to be stored more than 3-6 months.
This said, so you are so right we should stop using cars as much as possible and walk, bike, take public transports, or rent when needed.
Genuine questions:
Does the creation of lubricating oil actually cause a notable level of CO2 emissions? (I guess that depends on synthetic vs mineral?)
Does gasoline “going bad” and having to be disposed of produce CO2 emissions? or, since it’s destroying gas that would otherwise be burnt, is it actually carbon negative?
It depends on how much you drive, and what you drive. If you have a Prius and drive 2000 miles a year the emissions payoff for getting an EV would probably be longer than you’d even want to keep the car. If you’re in a diesel F350 and do 20,000 miles a year, mostly city, then yeah an EV will be net zero in like 5 years or less.
As I’m sure someone will mention inevitably, not using a car in the first place is the best option. Public transit, walking, biking, are all much better solutions.
Anti-consumerism is bad because it would expose the fact that our economy is overproducing shit we don’t need, so we would need a massive reorganization of society. You can tell who that is bad for.
A portion of the public thinks that anything saying that you shouldn’t immediately hop on the electric car bandwagon this moment is saying that electric cars are failures entirely. Drive your internal combustion car til it’s dead, it’s already here and will be phased out itself over time. No sense in making significantly higher artificial demand, leading to further pumping out cars that, no matter how you look at it, are expensive to the environment to build. Let the adoption come as cars start dying, let the EV industry keep advancing, and get one as your next car whenever that is.
No it’s not wrong. Hell, I drive EV and lots of people ask me about it, And of course I’d love if more people did it, to cut down on fossils, but realistically it’s always a financial decision, so I honestly tell them “If you already have a car, and don’t need a new car, then it’s a bad financial decision to buy a new car.”
However, when you do need a new car, then it’s likely a good decision to buy an EV, but you need to run the numbers if you want to know for sure. There are a lot of factors in this, some of which are dependent on your own personal milage and finances and others on where you live and what is available.
If you do run all the numbers for the duration of ownership, it’s likely always a good decision to buy a new EV in comparison to ICE cars, and the thing that made my decision was that in my case, it wouldn’t even make sense to buy the cheapest beater car, because over the years that I expect to drive this car, it’s cheaper to buy a new EV than to exchange and/or repair older ICE cars. But I’m sure it varies. You gotta have some idea of how much you need to drive for the next 5 years, and most people probably don’t.
Atkinson is sort of right in advising people to hold out a while. The prices are dropping and in just a few years, it won’t even be a question. However I also understand the criticism, because as a public figure he should not be passing out blanket statements like that. There are likely people who will not buy an EV now because of his statement, even if it’s against their own self interest.
I drive an EV and I always tell people not to buy one for this or that reason. The truth is that I don’t want too many other EVs on the road because I bought it just to feel superior to others, and I can’t do that if everyone else also drives an EV.
Eh, keep your superiority by being proud to be a super early adopter. Then everyone wins. "Oh, you got an EV in 2024? I’ve had one for YEARS! "
Oh, that wouldn’t be the same! I’ll have to supplement my vehicle with incredibly smug bumper stickers.
(I don’t mind being downvoted, but I think I should point out for the sake of not making someone’s depressive mood worse that this and my previous comment in this thread were meant to be humorous and I’m not actually this insane. I don’t expect my Bolt EUV to seriously impress anyone. I do like driving it though!)
Fwiw I haven’t downvoted you, and I think both of these posts are completely fair, taken together. If someone wants to feel smug because they’re making the planet better, fuck yeah feel smug, you smug bastard. The actions matter more than the words.
It’s sky news, a far right media outfit with questionable factual credibility. Notice they didn’t say that this what they attacked him on, only that it was in the piece that they were criticizing. It’s intentionally misleading to make you think their position is ridiculous.
Don’t fall for this propaganda.
CONSUME!
No!
Oh alright
But I’m full, father! I can consume no more!
Yeah, i’m driving a 20+ year old car and while i feel guilty about the higher emissions older design have, it’s still run and in awesome shape. Got talked by my ex for still using an old car, but meh, if it still run it still run.
Definitely getting an electric car next though, if i ever have that budget. Even then the local electricity production is still not ready for clean energy.
I’m holding on the the car I bought in 2019 until I can do an electric conversion on it.
I don’t need a NEW car.
Me too, my car is 10 years old, all paid, I only have 83’000 miles on it, yeah I changed brakes/rotor and a couple of stuff mainly in suspension/linkage because of pothole… but that’s it.
A new Toyota Corolla makes roughly 100g of CO2 per km driven and a car produces on average 5.6T of CO2 when being manufactured. You’ve driven through the CO2 equivalent of manufacture in roughly 60000 kms. I chose the Corolla for this comparison because it’s pretty fuel efficient.
You might want to check your math there, champ.
Fixed. Thanks!
Assuming your numbers are correct, the Corolla emits 6000 x 100 = 600 000 grams of CO2. That is 600 Kilograms, not 6 tons.
Fixed.
The lifetime emissions of an EV are lower than an ICE car. Engineering explained has a good video breaking the math down. If you’re planning on keeping your car for more than 3 or 4 years and you’re able to, it makes sense to buy an EV
Seymour Skinner ‘Am I out of touch?’ meme:
- top panel caption: are EVs too expensive and not practical enough yet?
- bottom panel caption: No, it’s Mr Bean’s fault
On what the article touches, he is not wrong. Buying a new car, even if it’s an electric one, will have more impact than a lot of time using a gasoline one, especially if the country doesn’t produce electricity in a sustainable way.
Also, if you want to help the environment, you shouldn’t be replacing cars, but removing them, public transportation, and walkable cities are so much better in this regard.
Yes, thank you for mentioning the real solution - less cars of any kind. Public transport, cities where you can walk around, and bikes are pretty great too.
I want to see my town ban cars downtown in my lifetime please please please please 😩🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
My town blocked off an entire street!
Nice! My town does this for part of summer and everyone loves it! It would be so great if they kept it that way, and then just kept going 😳
Sadly, electric cars isn’t about saving the environment and the planet. Is is about saving the car industry
Except that no, he’s not right and if you’re going to drive, the sooner you switch the better
The rule of thumb is: if your ICE car is still in working order, it’s less damaging to the environment to just keep driving it. If you absolutely must buy a new car, get an electric. That being said, I don’t trust that Rowan won’t be “Mr. Car Guy” and promote his bias towards ICE cars due to his extreme wealth and love of exotic whips.
The thing is that cars have a huge secondhand market.
So if you buy a new car, you sell your old one to someone else, who sells their car to someone else, who sell their car to someone else, … all the way until one of the horrible gas guzzlers at the bottom gets finally replaced.
So in a way it is improving the environment if you look at the whole picture.
Yeah there is far more game theory than the other post implies. Supporting companies in producing EVs and are driving EV technology in a healthy way, and considering down pressure effects for the secondhand market are far more important than your individual emissions over a short period of time.
Also, not fully convinced by the rule of thumb. It works well when considering the sustainability of static things, but I think it falls apart when considering things that have active impact like cars.
Here is an article where Reuters found that you only need to drive 13500 miles before an EV is cleaner than an ICE in the US. At a certain point, it is better to push ICE cars into retirement and build EVs.
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle. In that order.
love of exotic whips
To be fair, Musk also had a McLaren F1 before he bought Tesla and paid people to shut their mouths about his not starting it himself
I forgot whip was slang for a car and was thinking he had a collection of the other kind of whip.
Three orange whips.
Not true. Watch this https://youtu.be/L2IKCdnzl5k?si=yVCXvZw00SQlwI7Y
There are a lot of issues with his calculations.
For people driving 12,000 miles a year their mpg will be higher, more highway miles.
The 10mpg difference in new car vs old for similarly sized cars is over 20 years. The 2001 impala I used to have got 25 mpg.
People that buy new cars typically have cars less than 10 years old that they are replacing. People typically don’t go from a clapped out 20 year old car to a brand new one. The “old” car most people are trading in is getting 30-35 mpg.
I’d put the number at 5-7 years for a car that’s less than 5 years old.
You can drive 6k miles a year and based on averages you’ll be carbon negative after about 8 or 9 years. The sooner people switch the better, even if it means “wasting” gas cars that are still road worthy.
Similar to the theory that The Simpsons made a generation not trust nuclear power.
I think 3 mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima and Sosnovy Bor and Ibaraki and Forsmark were probably more influential in terrifying the general public about nuclear power.
Yeah it’s also people using those incidents for fear mongering. Especially when coal and oil have killed way more people than every nuclear incident combined, including nuclear weapons.
The psychological impact of a meltdown versus slow poisoning is important. Similar to how fire bombings were more deadly and destructive than the nuclear bombs were, but the nukes have a bigger impact on us mentally
Familiarity also. People are more afraid of dying in a very rare plane crash than dying in a car accident. Same with terrorism vs regular crime.
Yeah we firebomed Tokyo to cinders. Hardly any of the original buildings remain and the ones that did are all landmarks.
And you’re proud of that? Because the way you phrase that sure sounds like you are
Maybe dont skim lemmy while drinking, youve misread this very very very hard
I uhh… I think they’re just making a statement of fact about how damaging the firebombing was. I don’t read any pride in that post, particularly given the context around it.
I’ve heard people say shit like “after Chernobyl, two fishermen were instantly vaporized and only boots left on the bank!” Like, no, that never happened since it wasn’t an atomic bomb.
The closest to that were the people on the bridge who were looking at the radiation that died a couple of days after.
Chernobyl showed that an accident could make an entire region unlivable indefinitely, Three Mile Island showed that an accident could happen in the US too
Nuclear accidents became real. People could no longer trust that all the safeguards and safety culture could prevent it. And the impact of how serious an accident could get outweighs the rarity.
Or a more objective and dispassionate way to look at it, is the seriousness of any potential accidents caused enough process safeguard to make nuclear power too expensive to be worthwhile
The cost of building them and waste storage issues were a major factor
Apparent waste storage issues… If people really knew about all the pollution from fossil fuels, they’d clamor for nuclear power.
It’s weird that the first one you listed didn’t have any injuries or deaths. I think you might be a victim of that fear mongering, friend
That was Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that did that. The Simpsons merely rode a wave that had already crested.
Well, Mr. Atkinsons stance is not really off. EVs are still in their infancies, and need to get out of puberty before they are really useful and affordable.
Charging infrastructure is another huge bottle neck. I don’t have a charging station anywhere near my home, so even if I had an EV, I wouldn’t be able to charge it anywhere.
Then there’s also the grid. If everyone were to plug in their EVs in the afternoon, that would overload the grid beyond its capacity.
In the US the grid can handle it just fine.
Texas has entered the chat.
Absolutely! The biggest threat to grids are data centers.
Source on that?
From what I’ve heard in the UK, the biggest threat to the grid is the move from older power stations around which the grid was built to newer, less geographically concentrated sources like wind and solar and the lack of transmission from the new sites.
Here’s Rowan’s original article since I couldn’t find a link in the actual article.
All of the points he makes are good ones, IMHO. The one about three year leases is especially good, and something the government could act on right now. There’s no reason to ditch a car after three years. Both of my cars are almost a decade old and will probably keep running for another decade with good maintenance.
And here’s the rebuttal about he’s mostly spouting FUD or down right lies.
I imagine most of us here read his article with a positive outlook saying “yes, yes, these are concerns we acknowledge and are being handled, so this is more of a cautionary price than a true argument against it” while the other side is saying “see? See? They don’t work at all!”.
I read the Guardian rebuttal before his actual article. Interesting that they had to make multiple amendments to address some of what the Guardian called out. Of course, nobody really sees the amendments because the majority of readers have already passed through. I definitely agree that the 3-year turnaround is a massive misdirection though. First off, people are going to buy new cars regardless. It’s required to create a sustainable used car market. Second off, selling/returning a 3-year lease car means there must be someone buying/accepting that return. It’s a lease return, not a scrap disposal. Obviously marketing and sales wants you to get a new car sooner, but it’s still necessary. Cars all eventually die.
This article was amended on 5 June 2023 to describe lithium-ion batteries as lasting “upwards of 10 years”, rather than “about 10 years”; and to clarify that the figures released by Volvo claimed that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are “nearly 70% higher”, not “70% higher”. It was further amended on 7 June 2023 to remove an incorrect reference to the production of lithium-ion batteries needing “many rare earth metals”; to clarify that a reference to “trucks” should instead have been to “heavy trucks for long distance haulage”; and to more accurately refer to the use of such batteries in these trucks as being a “concern”, due to weight issues, rather than a “non-starter”.
Call it a hunch, but I think it’s got less to do with the opinions of a celebrity and more to do with the fact that a large portion of the population can’t afford the high price of an electric car.
Just paid £650 out to get my 2007 Astra hatchback through an MOT.
It doesn’t get driven much so it makes zero sense to replace it. Even if I’m spending double that in a year to keep it on the road it’s still waaaaay cheaper than me paying for a “new” one. It’s got bodywork rust now though and it’s apparently really hard to find a place that’ll do repairs like that :(
The biggest reason to get a newer car is the safety features (back up cameras, audible warnings, brake assist, etc.). I had my previous car for over 15 years and the new features were a huge upgrade.
Going on ten years on my current one, and seeing how much safety and tech has improved since then gets me wanting a new one.
But yeah, if you don’t drive often, then it might not matter much.
Well they don’t make anything even remotely like my R55 Mini Clubman anymore so I’ll probably be keeping it forever. That’s my effort to save the environment!
Public figures should be held accountable for false statements.
No. Make political parties accountable for the rambling of their MPs.
You see what an absolute shit show that would be? Banning people for opinions the government decide are false historically doesn’t go well
I think in general we should hold people accountable for the things they say, but have you read what Atkinson wrote? He didn’t lie, he presented his opinion and recommendation. I disagree with some of what he said, but I understand where he’s coming from.
Not to mention he makes a point of putting his credentials at the top of the article. He’s got education and experience that are informing his opinions, and he made them in a reasonable way without attacking anyone else.
If the government listened to his feedback and took steps to mitigate it - like making leases be a minimum of five years rather than three - it would be one thing. But they’re just dismissing everything he says.
Yep, the clickbait here is terrible, he’s only being reasonable even if you can disagree with the minutiae of what he said.
I wish I had enough money to afford to buy a new car, I probably wouldn’t do it because affordable would still mean living paycheck to paycheck. Not sure why I would want a second mortgage on something that depreciates that quickly.
I don’t want a new car. They lose most of their value the first time you start them up, and then continue losing value quickly. And then there’s the emissions of manufacturing and transportation.
Plus there aren’t any new cars that don’t have features I actively don’t want, like sending my usage information back to the manufacturer.
Both cars I own are about 9 years old and I plan on keeping them until they’re more expensive to fix than another used car.
As far as preventing use data, you can usually unplug the cell modem, or you can put a faraday bag over it in order to prevent it from connecting.
I’m sure that there is also a software solution for these issues as well. I have a cable and software for my car that lets me enable and disable features.
But if I do that they can’t tell my car I paid my monthly fee for heated seats.
Just set the clock back a month.
Mr Bean made me buy a Morris Mini
It’s cute how they blame Rowan Atkinson, when we all know who’s fault this really is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrcxLgHn-w
I’m not one to side with a bigot, but this is just pathetic… He makes perfectly valid points, if EV manufacturers want to prove him wrong, maybe they should be doing a better job (or admitting that shifting from one type of car to another isn’t the solution to all of our problems, but simply a way for the auto industry to continue to make profits off of “solutions” to the destruction they’ve had a massive part in creating).
A bigot?
He wrote: “As a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to make jokes about religion, I do think that Boris Johnson’s joke about wearers of the burka resembling letterboxes is a pretty good one.”
Atkinson added: “All jokes about religion cause offence, so it’s pointless apologising for them. You should really only apologise for a bad joke. On that basis, no apology is required.”
That doesn’t sound like bigotry to me. He’s a comedian who’s been making fun of religions his entire career.
“It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential,” Atkinson said of cancel culture. “Every joke has a victim. That’s the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous.”
“I think you’ve got to be very, very careful about saying what you’re allowed to make jokes about. You’ve always got to kick up? Really? What if there’s someone extremely smug, arrogant, aggressive, self-satisfied, who happens to be below in society? They’re not all in houses of parliament or in monarchies.”
He added, “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
This is an entirely reasonable point. I disagree with his framing of the concept, which I think has affected his conclusion. Specifically, I disagree with his point that comedians are “cancelled” because of the subjects of their jokes. More important than the subject is the intent.
I think Boris Johnson is a bigot, but I don’t think Atkinson is one. But Atkinson is treating Boris like a comedian, when in fact he’s an elected official. Johnson represented British citizens of all faiths, and being deliberately disrespectful to their religious practices is inappropriate for an elected official. Johnson knows this, and said it anyway because it scored points with his bigoted supporters. The intent was not to make people laugh, but to make some people feel superior to others. For that, he deserves the backlash he rightfully received.
Atkinson, on the other hand, hasn’t said or done anything that would indicate or imply that he’s a bigot.
The Burka deserves to be made fun of.
As well as anyone who supports the treatment of women that it accompanies.
All religions deserve to be made fun of. Religious justification for oppression deserves prosecution.
This just in: famous rich white man who jumps, unprovoked, to the defence of another famous rich white man openly being Islamophobic, to defend said Islamophobia, and who, years later maintains the position that punching down at marginalised and oppressed people is perfectly acceptable (nice selective quoting there) - not a bigot!
Oh no, wait, looks like it’s actually bigots defending bigots all the way down… ¯\(ツ)/¯
(E: also, because apparently it still needs saying - being a comedian isn’t a magic bullet that somehow nullifies bigotry, just like saying “it’s just a joke!” after saying something vile isn’t)
I wasn’t selective in the quotes, I copied his entire statement. But I don’t really care if you think he’s a bigot, and I’m not trying to convince you he’s not. Maybe he is, I don’t know him personally.
All I’m saying is that you haven’t presented anything convincing to support he is. I disagree with him, but I don’t see anything bigoted about his statement.
Or, are you implying that I’m a bigot too because I disagree with you?
Not hard to prove him wrong…
