Asphalt used on road surfaces are byproducts from fossil fuel. With the ultimate goal of eliminating the use of fossil fuel to combat climate change, are there any good alternatives for road surfaces? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a viable replacement of asphalt in the works, or even a plan to replace it in any environmental discussions before. At least, not enough for me to notice.

Extented question would be: what are some products derived from fossil fuel that are used in everyday life, but still lack viable alternatives you don’t see enough discussions about?

  • PonyOfWar
    4•1 year ago

    I think you really overestimate the bumpiness of those kind of roads. They’re not like medieval cobbleroads.

    • ormr
      9•1 year ago

      We have all kinds in my city: Medieval cobblestone, brick roads and asphalt. As a cyclist I have to tell you that I hate all kinds of brick roads that I have encountered. Even when they’re not the horrible middle age version, they will often get deformed by roots or depression of the ground quite rapidly, making them even more bumpy. For this reason I think, I saw in Sweden in an otherwise bricky city center that they had a narrow asphalt lane on the side of the road for cyclists. I was just amazed that someone would spend that much thought into what’s great for cyclists. As a cyclist I really love asphalt :D

      • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
        2•1 year ago

        Let’s be real here. Asphalt is the result of tens of thousands of years of human decision making, all of it heavily invested in finding the best solution to each problem.

      • PonyOfWar
        2•1 year ago

        they will often get deformed by roots or depression of the ground quite rapidly

        That’s true, but more of a maintenance issue IMO. Brick roads do have the advantage that workers can just take some of the bricks out, fix whatever is wrong underneath and put the same bricks back on. Can’t really do that with asphalt, which will eventually deform as well.

    • Instigate
      1•1 year ago

      I think you underestimate how small differences have large results when we’re talking about nationwide or population-wide issues. If there are a million cars on the road and this change makes suspensions wear 5% faster, then every X years (however long it would usually take for them to wear) there are an extra 50,000 cars needing replacements. That’s not an insignificant amount. Scale that up to larger countries that have tens or hundreds of millions of cars and the result gets even larger.

      Small differences make large impacts. 1.5°C average global warming is having disastrous effects on the environment and our capacity to thrive. COVID-19 has a Case Fatality Rate of around 1% (depending on country) and it has caused nearly 7 million deaths - more than the amount of Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust and similar to the Holodomor.