I wonder if there is anything we can do to affect those who do have a choice. I know a lot of people who drive and are perfectly able to take public transport or live closer but they chose to live a far way away and drive because they can afford it.

The only solution IMO is urban planning. If cities and towns are designed for cars, then people will drive. If they are designed for feet or bikes they will use those. If you look at the layout of popular North American towns built prior to the 1800s you'll see very few cars even venturing into town.

Cars are also one of the few greenhouse emissions sources which we have a plausible market driven path to eliminate over the next 2 decades via battery electric vehicles.

The problem is people who have the ability to move closer to work or who have a working PT system still choose to drive because they can afford to because they value not sitting next to a stranger above protecting the environment.

We need good planning but then we also need to factor in the environmental costs of driving to eliminate it.

I own a car, but live on an inner city rail line. I drove 9000 miles in 2 years, which was exclusively done for nature trips on weekends.

In my case driving would increase my commute time by about 20 minutes due to traffic. My city has no appetite for improving driving options or reducing congestion through the addition of new roads.

I don't think that's the right approach. Removing choice is a great way to motivate people to resist your mandates.

Why do so many people want to play dictator these days?

Because driving is unsustainable and destroying the planet. It can not be allowed to continue in its current form so the easiest option would be to push people away from it when they are able to.

Less pushing, more enticing please. If you give people a better option, they will take it.

Better options need money, unfortunately. And barring a complete change in how the US works [1], that money isn’t there at a federal level. That leaves cities with no other option than to pay for a better option on their own — by raising taxes (e.g. congestion pricing, gas taxes, tolled roads), which also has the side effect of disincentivizing driving

[1] the infrastructure bill that’s looking to pass, while it gives much needed funding to public transit, still centers car-centric planning, and nothing paradigm-shifting (e.g. a comprehensive regional high speed rail network, a dedicated bus line on every street, a protected bike lane on every arterial) will likely come from it.

Agreed. The issue was that in the thread so far it seemed to have a "punish the unbelievers who drive" feel to it.

Happy to tax one option to support a better option.

In a social practice sense I'd prefer transparency to see the tax money actually making a better future. But this is often lost or not communicated.

These are both the same thing.

If I say "I will give you $20 to not drive" or "I will take $20 from you if you drive", the only thing that really matters is that there is a $20 price differential between two actions so you will be at a $20 disadvantage to do the current thing regardless of how you word it.

Money and wealth is relative so the actual final amount doesn't matter as much as how much you have compared to the average person.

And if we were all emotionless machines, you'd be right. But we're not, so you're not right.

You've obviously never trained a dog. You use treats, not threats and violence.

7.5% or so of total greenhouse gases isn't destroying the planet, but it's not helping either. EV's going to take this to about 1% this in about 10 years.

The US has ~280 million cars on the road.

The number of electric cars sold in 2020 was ~250k.

The average age of a car in the US is 12 years.

If electric car sales quadruple each year until they reach the total number of cars sold in the US (around 16 million cars per year), it will take at least 18 years to replace all the combustion engine cars on the road.

And this is wildly optimistic, electric cars are too few and too expensive, even as second hard cars, for the general population. I estimate that they'll reach a sort of break-even point with combustion engine cars around 2025 or so. So you can probably add 3-4 more years to those 18 I counted. So at least 20 years to have a mass replacement of existing cars on the road.

And in the rest of the world it's even worse. The rest of the world is poorer, has lower disposable income, cars are around for longer, and electric car sales are ramping up even slower.

The average vehicle on the road is 12 years old. It's going to take a lot longer than 10 years to shift most of the fleet to EVs.

7.5% is significant. And this doesn't even touch the particulate pollution which ruins health, or the ground poisoning which combustion engines cause.

A tax/higher prices on fuel would push people to more efficient methods faster and will put more money in to investments on new technology.

I'd argue installing more solar panels is way more important than EV's. It's way cheaper, offers way better ROI (EV TCO are just barely cheaper than gas, especially without gov incentives) and helps with main problem - power generation. Sure it's boring af, regulated, politicised (Uighur solar) and inconvenienced in every possible matter...

I think both are needed. Nothing on its own will work and we need to be doing everything that we can at the same time right now. The current models are showing if we make every improvement we can right now we are only just barely scraping by. There is no time to do everything sequentially.

Is that 7.5% including all the knock on effects of non dense living? Does it include the effects of flying to Tahiti or Maldives for honeymoons?