spidermanchild

Unexpected to whom? If the study found out that the porous limestone foundation at the coast was truly stable in the face of rising sea levels, that would be unexpected.

Do you have to wear fleece? Cotton and wool flannels and shirts, and nylon down or synthetic puffies will shed dramatically fewer microplastics. Could do more of a canvas jacket instead of puffy but I live in Colorado so it's puffies all the way down. I don't own any fleece and don't miss it at all.

What? Of course you can base your political views on rationality. For example, climate change is literally an existential threat to life on this planet, so the rational thing to do would be to support policies that preserve the biosphere and therefore dramatically reduce carbon emissions. This is rooted in the core biological desire to reproduce and care for your offspring. Similar arguments can be made for all basic human and animal needs, like food, shelter, etc.

If your point is that everything is contrived and therefore irrational, then that precludes this entire conversation to the point of uselessness.

There's barely even a Toyota Corolla of ICE anymore. Everything is moving against right to repair and getting more techy. The Bolt is pretty close and is coming back, and there will be more cheaper cars. I don't care about Tesla, they aren't the whole market and they are awful for many reasons. And batteries absolutely are getting cheaper:

https://electrek.co/2024/12/10/ev-battery-prices-plummeting-great-news-for-buyers/

The viable alternative is electric vehicles, and they are already here. I hate cars and want rail/bikes/density too but nobody is naively banning cars here.

EVs are already close to price parity (and there are some screaming deals, new and used) and battery prices continue to plummet. Gas cars will be on the roads in CA until at least 2050. The poors will drive EVs because they will be cheaper than gas cars by then (probably long before then). Yes we need walkable communities and trains and bikes but this ban is not the big scam you think it is. Keeping gas cars doesn't magically fix the actual issues with the egregious use of personal vehicles. We need fewer cars, but the cars we do have need to be electric.

These are such egregious examples I can't take you seriously. Also this is factually incorrect:

Because it doesn’t remove the incentive to switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle or use more efficient modes of transportation.

Gas is not a perfectly inelastic good, so higher gas prices literally do result in people buying more efficient cars and using alternatives. It's just doesn't happen overnight.

You are advocating for an even more car dependent vision for society under the guise of progressivism by driving vehicle mileage costs down as much as possible. Just stop and go see how actual modern societies handle this, instead of how petrostates do.

What's special about Texas? It's one of the lowest latitude states in the US, meaning there is less difference between summer and winter daylight hours compared to most of the country. If that's a mindfuck to you, try Minnesota. Or Alaska. Or even Kansas.

I don't see how driving all consumer road usage fees and gas taxes to zero will do anything other than create more demand for roads, cars, and VMT. It's a very shortsighted policy. You've now made it even more difficult to get support for public transit and zoning reform while exacerbating maintenance shortfalls. Cheap fuel has created the problem, and even cheaper fuel wont solve it. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and all it does is create a very short term benefit.

Of course cars matter for road maintenance. They're the reason we have so many roads and so many lanes in the first place. We wouldn't need near the infrastructure to support just commercial vehicles. We would have massive amounts of prime real estate if we didn't waste it all on parking lots and lanes. Your 8 hour bus anecdote isn't really relevant here - nothing will change overnight, but over time long car trips (especially in oversized vehicles) should cost more. People can adapt by buying lighter more efficient vehicles, and switch to other options as they become available. You think it's expensive now, just wait until another decade or two of climate change impacts happens.

Fear of imposing any marginal costs on low income folks is a pro car argument. Taking your argument further, why not get rid of all gas taxes and road fees and just go 100% on making cars as cheap to operate, all in the name of equality? Surely you can see this is wrong direction.

I think all these policy nudges need to happen in tandem. We can update how we tax vehicle use while shifting that money to transit, and doing zoning reform. If we wait until there is a perfect bus route everywhere before charging something resembling market rate for clearly unsustainable vehicle use, nothing will ever change. We can use the funding to help low income folks specifically, sure. I'm approaching this more from a traffic violence and climate change angle though. The status quo isn't acceptable and already imposes tremendous burden on society.

I'd prefer a carbon fee and dividend as the main policy personally, but in the meantime I'll keep advocating for anything that incentivizes less driving. Maintenance to me has to be tied to use, and we can figure out how to do that fairly without making unlimited driving approach zero marginal costs. Things will get a whole lot worse for low income folks if we do nothing.

The problem is that long term, subsidizing driving makes everything worse and more expensive, especially for low income folks. So while considering effects of policy on low income folks is good, we should not look at this and conclude that eliminating marginal driving costs is a good thing.