Isn't that exactly what we want though? You draw the clean power to the extent practical and then burn the junk fuels only in extremis. That allows for greater uptake of EVs on the whole while minimizing impact. What's the alternative being proposed? Sell fewer EVs or limit how much they can drive over holiday weekends? Who is that helping?
Everyone just has to move into transit accessible cities. Of course that would require building massive amounts of urban housing that these same people would protest because it would “destroy the character of the neighborhood.”
There’s a certain mentality that thinks everything is wrong and horrible and any proposed solution is suspect unless it demands onerous sacrifice or doesn’t work. On the left it’s the degrowth people. On the right it’s the trads. God help us when those two groups figure out they’re actually on the same side.
(PS I think trains are great and we should build more of them. Same with urban housing. But trains can’t solve the entire problem. EVs are absolutely required to decarbonize as not everyone wants or is able to live in a dense city.)
That would leave the other 50-70% of the country.
People act like cars created a new paradigm, and they didn't - they extended and improved an old one.
It's not the same people. The bikes-and-trains people understand and accept that America's suburbs are not fit for purpose and would require radical redevelopment to be even remotely green[0]. They want to vaporize the zoning code to allow this to happen. The NIMBYs who are shouting about neighborhood character specifically want to keep their cars and lawns, and think all the environmental problems America has are someone else's fault.
People are suspect of quick-fix solutions because we've had decades of being sold quick-fix solutions (plastic recycling, clean coal, electric vehicles) when climate change and environmental damage are complicated, multivariate problems.
TBH I have been skeptical of degrowth's left-wing credentials. I'm not entirely sure how we retain democracy without unbounded economic growth when...
a) Human society has an unlimited capacity for elite propagation[1]
b) Elites will absolutely cannibalize the rest of us if further growth is not possible
[0] No, having a green lawn does not make your house green.
[1] Gestures vaguely at The Tyranny of Structurelessness
Oh The Urbanity! has a good (7m) video, 'The Problem of “Neighborhood Character”':
The suburbs probably can’t be as efficient as dense cities but they can be improved. The gap is also not as huge as you might think. A lot of a person’s footprint is in the food they eat and the stuff they buy not their house. People in cities still eat and buy things.
I agree that degrowth won’t work out well in any currently understood political system for numerous reasons. The “continued growth is impossible” argument is built on the fallacy that growth must equal increased resource use when in advanced economies these have been decoupling for a while.
The real limits to growth probably relate to the physical limits on the information density of mass-energy. How much value can exist per unit of “stuff?” Then there are things like space flight but I’m not even sure you have to go there.