Committing to sustainability takes work, just like relationships or a job. If you want to do your part against the climate crisis, you have to actually engage with it — it doesn't happen on its own.
Take e-cars and e-bikes as an example. They shift environmental damage around rather than reducing it. E-bikes are only more sustainable when they replace cars, not when they replace regular bicycles. And e-cars certainly don't solve any fundamental problems — they just move them elsewhere, mostly from the so-called developed countries to the Global South.
The supposed luxury, progress and development we enjoy is often built on postcolonial exploitation. Raw materials keep getting extracted from these countries, leaving poisoned waterways, child labor and destroyed nature in their wake.
At the same time, we feed our appetite for supposed sustainability without seeing the real costs. E-cars aren't a solution — they're clearly part of the problem. We need to stop believing the world gets better just because we bought an e-car.
A real future is only possible if we look at sustainability as a whole: social, fair, environmentally sound, and global.
Courier El Niño #02 belongs to CROW Courier, which replaces cars with cargo bikes and, in doing so, helps improve quality of life in the city.