quick survey : how many readers actually ride to work?
I did lose an entire month once--February a few years ago, when the snow never melted for the entire month, and I had low ridership last summer when I had to drop the kids off at camp every day in August and it just didn't make sense to drive back home to hop on the bike. I probably lose just as many days to stupid stuff like that as I do to the weather. Still, I'm happier on days when I get to bike. I only occasionally get stuck in traffic on the bike--when pedestrians decide to fill up the bike lane and walk very slowly in a huge clump.
Snow tires make winter way more feasible. Also fwiw, the kids never complained about the weather bothering them, only that we didn't stop at the playground (crying, sometimes tantrums).
The spring/summer weather hovers between 25-33 Celsius with 80%+ humidity. I like arriving at my destinations not covered in sweat. When it's not brutally hot and sunny....it's raining (this island gets twice as much rainfall as Seattle). And we are regularly hit by typhoons. You can drive a car in a weak typhoon. Good luck riding a bike during one.
The terrain is very hilly here, with many roads cutting across the island having elevation changes of ~70m. Attacking hills like that might be a great workout but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do it after a trip to my favorite ramen shop or tempura restaurant (both of which are at sea level, down the hill from me).
Finally....I'm a speed freak and a gearhead, and the experience of operating a powerful car, daily, is its own reward. I wouldn't be caught dead on a bicycle, but I also wouldn't be caught dead driving a low-powered commuter vehicle shitbox.
Climate and geography are major factors which I think many Americans ignore because most tech workers either live somewhere with mild weather, or live somewhere with flat, bland geography (most of the country, really).
Why you would actively choose to contribute more to climate change for what are essentially aesthetic/identity choices is beyond me, but many people do, so I'm obviously missing something.
Secondly....I don't fear climate change. Humans are adaptable apex predators. It might stymie our progress up the Kardashev scale, but I guess that's the question:
Which is a more difficult resource problem to solve: having 10 billion marginally-productive mouths to feed while maintaining a high-tech economy, or having only 1 billion mouths to feed but being forced to recreate a shattered tech base from scratch with almost-no easily accessible energy deposits left?