there are two sides of this argument.
only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.
so maybe we must subsidize diesel fuel, to decrease grocery prices?
only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.
so maybe we must subsidize diesel fuel, to decrease grocery prices?
Diesel will get used excessively and you will get more road wear, as the user proposed. If you tax it, you will pay more directly for goods, but as costs rise people will be incentivized to find more efficient transport solutions.
It might still be worth it if road wear is cheap or the predictable misuse is predictable and that saves money somehow, but in all likelihood little harm would come from a fair treatment of diesel vs. gasoline etc. taking into account road wear of each vehicle class. It would be more natural to tax vehicle weight, hours driven etc. directly based on a sound model of societal cost though.
At the same time, I really do think that it could be beneficial to shrink trucks down, automate them, or create something which has so many bogies that the road wear is not greater than on a car, so I sort of argued for what I saw as theoretically fair without actually being sure that the outcome would be what I hoped for.
False, if poor people can't afford food, there are already food stamps and various programs in other countries.
This 'affordable' food is causing obesity, a combination of diesel subsidies, agricultural subsidies. Cheap food causes metabolic syndrome, and a range of chronic diseases, which we pay as healthcare, 20% of GDP and the fastest growing sector.
If its cheap food we want, stop ethanol subsidies. All that land (hundreds of millions of acres) can grow very very affordable food.
This foolishness is being repeated everywhere. India started E20 (Ethanol) mandate and price of eggs went up.
I would also add to that affordable food is being first produced by agricultural machinery running on diesel, which is then transported by trucks running on diesel on roads build by machinery running on diesel. There is a good youtube video about this from channel driving 4 answers.
And then both are dominated by the drive from the grocery store to your house. If you care about food carbon emissions, walk/bike to your grocery store. That'll have far more impact than food choice.
The switch from an ICE car to an EV (and assuming a standard US amount of driving) probably beats possible diet changes.
You can of course do all of these things.