The big problem is that everything in the US has been designed around extreme car dependency, and more than that: extreme gas consumption. Because American cars are also much larger and heavier than they reasonably should be. Much about how American life seems to have been explicitly designed to maximise oil use and oil profits, even to the point where it stops making any kind of sense.
So if there's a reason this can't change, then it's because oil companies hold far too much power over American politics and over the way people think.
See also the recent conspiracy protests against "15 minute cities". The only meaningful reason I can think of why anyone would oppose that, is because it's going to hurt oil profits.
The tricky part is getting someone else to take the first step -- there's going to be a lot of changes if we really want to do this, and most people seems firmly convinced that someone else should take the lead.
But you're absolutely right there's no single silver bullet. The problem is big and complex, and so is the solution. Smaller cars, less cars, electric cars, more bike infrastructure, better public transport, better designed cities. All of those things are part of the solution.
Of course most of this is about urban areas; rural areas have very different requirements, and some of these solutions are irrelevant or infeasible there. Cities can do without cars, rural areas probably not, which is part of why electric cars are still important.
And how do groceries get to the vast network of local stores ?
Besides that the US is a MUCH larger country than the NL, distances in the US are also much greater than anything you can imagine in Europe. There's a reason our US friends measure travel in time taken, and not distance travelled. The number of shops needed to "locally supply" everybody would be gigantic.
The more stores that needs to be supplied, the more trucks needs to drive around supplying them, which leads to the question; what pollutes the most ?
If humanity wants to make an improvement, we need much more public transportation, and not like today where it's "once per hour unless you live downtown", but in a way that doesn't make a 30 minute trip take 90 minutes. If we manage that, it doesn't really matter how far away the grocery store is.
To give an impression of the size difference, the Netherlands covers an area of 16,160 sq mi (41,850 km2), and New York State alone covers 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2), and New York State is the 27th largest state in the US.
> My grocery store (in Amsterdam) is a 5 minute walk
And how many of those groceries are produced in Amsterdam ? Each an every one has been transported on one or more trucks to arrive in a convenient walking distance to you. I fully agree and understand that shops needs to be local, but they're not the most environmentally friendly solution.
> Besides that the US is a MUCH larger country than the NL, distances in the US are also much greater than anything you can imagine in Europe.
Of course, but how is that relevant? The fact that a country is larger doesn't mean that you have to make people travel all that distance. Imagine the EU merges into a single country at some point. That's not going to change the logistical situation around Amsterdam in any way. Logistics is already very international in the EU.
> what pollutes the most?
Yeah, what pollutes the most? Lots of trucks driving to a central big store, and then having people drive even more cars to that central store, or driving all those trucks to smaller local stores that people walk to? For the smaller shops, you probably don't need big trucks, but smaller ones, which does mean more of them, but still not remotely as many as the cars your saving. And some delivery trucks in Amsterdam are pretty light and electric already.
> it doesn't really matter how far away the grocery store is.
It still does. Mind you, more public transport is absolutely vital. I totally agree with that. And Amsterdam has pretty decent public transport (though biking is generally faster), but I still prefer local shops.
I lived in Russia for a while, in a city in the middle of Siberia, and there is a night and day difference between how people live.
Russia is even larger than the US, but living in single-family detached homes is just not very common. So, most things tend to be within walking distance. And public transport is much more effective.
To some extent, the larger vehicle size is a result of US vehicle safety standards.
One of the only things that makes SUVs safer is their greater mass, which largely serves to make the road less safe for collisions with non-SUV drivers. With regard to vehicle size, I observed back in the 1990s when the SUV craze began that America was in a war of size attrition with itself.
Even a Mini Cooper is quite survivable in a crash. Crumple zones and airbags are not just standard issue on gargantuan vehicles.
Trucks have different safety standards than cars, and car manufacturers find the car safety standards annoying, so they started marketing trucks to consumers. They don't have to obey the same regulations as cars, and yet because they're light trucks, they don't require a commercial driving license. That's the loophole through which the US car industry managed to drive their entire industry.
Would imply that Europe hadn’t quite figured it out yet. Sure large urban areas have decent mass transit. Many people still live in smaller towns, villages or suburbs and commute by car everyday. Especially in larger more decentralized countries like Germany.
in every country included 60-70% commute by car. Which is barely lower than it is in the US. I think it’s a myth that Western Europe is significantly ahead (and I think it applies, albeit to a lesser degree, to other areas like health and education). The grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean…
You say this as though we have any choice. It will happen; we can either do it ourselves, or we can wait until environmental collapse does it for us.
(I know which way I'd have preferred to go, but I seem to have been outvoted...)