"We the people" has been replaced by "We the lobbyists" or extending to "We the corporations".
Just look at how we're still embracing coal, and introducing mileage tax of EVs to repel their takeup.
There's a big network of old chummies and political donations from big fossil behind that.
Great point. We should raise gas taxes to subsidize electric vehicles for people with low incomes. If enough people switch to electric to the point that this revenue starts seriously dropping, great: keep turning up the heat with more gasoline taxes until polluting vehicles are completely gone.
The "it's not fair" trope about road maintenance for EVs isn't super compelling - the vast majority of road damage is from heavy vehicles like semis. Road damage increases with the cube of mass. Once we've put gasoline vehicles in the history books forever we can work on a mass*acceleration tax.
I think I actually support a KM usage tax, but it'd have to be for all kinds of cars - not just the green kind. CO2/PM25 emissions tax should be on top of that.
And: To buy an EV in Australia would be considerable stretch on my own budget, and I'd need every single dollar left after it. I'm actually needing a 2nd car now, and am loath to buy another ICEV.
https://www.caradvice.com.au/955801/victorias-ev-user-tax-is....
https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/victoria-passes-ev-tax-...
There's a $3k limited incentive that was used to distract from the fundamental issues behind taxing EV mileage. It doesn't cover long range cars as they're outside the price bracket.
The reasoning was that there's no fuel excise being collected, yet the fuel tax isn't being used to cover roads - normal tax payments are.
Also it doesn't care that ICEVs currently aren't paying for environmental emissions, when they should.
Actually having said all that I should just have pasted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLflYkgnNBY , which explains it all so much better. (Fair warning: Australian language).
I find it more than a tad ironic that the NSW Liberal (conservative) state government has the best EV incentives while the Victorian Labor ("progressive") has the worst, out of our two most populous states.
[0] https://thedriven.io/2021/04/29/perrottet-flags-holistic-app...
[1] https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/climate-change/net...
https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
(I _am_ paying on my ICEV, which I'm going to get carbon offsets for soon).
As activists, we can obtain substantial press coverage even without an advertising budget, by carrying out well-thought-out direct actions and acts of civil disobedience, and we can offer direct resistance (for instance, when we build tree houses to occupy forests which are on the clearing list of governments or the fossil fuel industry, like we successfully did with the Hambach Forest in Germany).