How to save the planet with one simple rule

I think we can solve all our environmental problems if every human undertaking from this moment on follows one simple rule: everything must be made easier for people using less-polluting modes of transit than for people using more-polluting modes of transit.

Whether you are building a building or opening a business or planning an event, it must be easier for pedestrians than cyclists, easier for cyclists than transit users, and easier for transit users than for drivers. All other rules intended to directly or indirectly promote or discourage use of any particular mode of transit are void. You can do whatever the fuck you want, it just has to be easiest for pedestrians (always using the skirt/heels/handbag standard)and hardest for drivers.

So go ahead and build a drive-thru on a busy, high-density thoroughfare. However, you must arrange things so that the cars in the drive-thru don't get in the way of pedestrians, and so that it's faster to walk in than go through the drive thru.

Go ahead and build a Walmart in the middle of a giant parking lot right on the waterfront. But arrange things so that people don't have to dodge cars to get to the door from the sidewalk or the bus stop (but it's fine for cars to have to wait for buses to get out of the way).

Go ahead and move your office from an expensive urban transit hub to a cheap industrial park in the middle of nowhere. But you must do something to make the commute easier for non-drivers than for drivers, for exampe provide a free shuttle from the old, convenient location for transit-using employees (or multiple shuttles to accommodate people's flextime) and pay for the service by charging employees for parking Or if employees decide to move closer to the new office so they can bike to work, you must compensate them for their moving trouble and expenses.

Shout-out to the plastic bag wars: make a rule that you can have your purchases bagged or you can have your parking validated, but not both.

This approach doesn't stop anyone from driving, it doesn't impinge on real or perceived rights or freedoms or entitlements, it doesn't impinge on free market economics (if the market dictates that cars should be accomodated you can accomodate them all you want, you just have to accomodate pedestrians a tinch more.)

If everything from now on was made more convenient for pedestrians than for cars, more and more people would reach the "not worth driving" tipping point as time goes on. With any luck, that will happen before the oil runs out.