I think it’s more troubling to view owning a car as a base right that everyone should have. It’s better as a luxury. We want fewer cars and for people to live in walkable areas where cars are not needed.
The end-point I want is for people to live in dense walkable areas by default. But people don’t live there and the few places that exist like that are disgustingly expensive because they are (surprise surprise) desirable patterns of building cities. So we need to build more of it. It will be a very big very energy intensive build-out program that will take decades. So the question is: Is it better or worse for the environment to move people to ICE so they can live in their existing buildings or is it better to build entirely new infrastructure so they can walk.
Maybe my thinking is too black and white. I want the latter but I’m not sure the costs to the environment in the short term are justified. Maybe the long term benefit justifies it. I don’t know.
If they want EV adoption, they also have to Provide housing.
Here, it's a great aspirational position to have, but wholly impractical in the short or medium term.
Perhaps, if the Republican Party genuinely collapses within the next couple of years, it might become possible to pass the kinds of massive infrastructure overhauls required to make owning a car anything but a necessity in the vast majority of this country. Until and unless something that drastic happens, their adamant resistance to that kind of measure makes it very clearly impossible.