Ship of Fools
&gt; Perhaps cyclists had tried, but they had all been run over.<p>I&#x27;m an American cyclist, and I&#x27;m trying to do my part commuting to work by bike.<p>But I got whacked in the elbow a few weeks ago by the mirror of a car who was offended by having to slow down briefly and go around me... I&#x27;d say that 75% of drivers are conscientious, crossing over when there&#x27;s a gap in the opposite lane to give me more than the 5 feet of space required by local laws (3 feet required by state law). Another 20% don&#x27;t have a clue what to do around a cyclist and either white-knuckle past me close by, with a shouted &quot;sorry&quot; with their wheel just on the centerline (and no one in the opposite lane) follow a car&#x27;s length behind my wheel for a mile (at 15-20 mph on 35, 45, or 55mph roads, building a traffic jam of frustrated other motorists who are far more likely to drive aggressively).<p>Some 5% are actively hostile. I&#x27;ve been whacked in the butt and shoulder by mirrors of people trying to run me off the road, had half-empty beer cans thrown at me, been enveloped many times in the black smoke off of one of many diesel mall-crawlers with the tuner kit that allows them to &quot;roll coal&quot; when they step on the throttle. Some shout &quot;get off the road&quot; as if my road bike would work in the ditch.<p>I think it&#x27;s what needs to be done, so I&#x27;m doing my part because I&#x27;m an able, healthy adult, but it&#x27;s definitely an activist&#x2F;enthusiast thing, not a reasonable solution for the vast majority of my state who use 5,000 lbs of steel to move 200 lbs of human to work and back.  I will say that I&#x27;m happy to see more e-bikes on the handful of trails in the area (yes, even when driven by people who don&#x27;t know proper etiquette and who are using throttle-only on trails that are supposed to be non-motorized), because it means you don&#x27;t have to have a VO2 max of 50+ mL&#x2F;kg&#x2F;min or an FTP of 3 W&#x2F;kg to get out of the car.<p>I&#x27;ve been reading &quot;The Ministry for the Future&quot; by Kim Stanley Robinson. It&#x27;s inspiring, but what strikes me the most is how unreasonable it is. Floridians and Americans and Europeans alike simply do not respond rationally to the reality of climate change.<p>PS:<p>&gt; Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population.<p>I think you&#x27;re missing a few nines there, multiplying by 8 billion suggests that 8,000 humans could reasonably live on Mars. I&#x27;d love to see a manned mission of 2-5 astronauts (supported by a nation-state or international effort) get some science done on Mars within my lifetime, but the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable.