"If you’re any kind of a car enthusiast, or you just think the personal automobile is a terrific transportation device, this news has got to be chilling. The cross-party Science and Technology Select Committee of Parliament has issued a report that says that if the United Kingdom is to reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, private automobile and truck ownership must end.Look, I like living in a walkable neighborhood. I use a bicycle as an actual grocery-fetching vehicle (eight months out of the year or so). I take Uber to the airport, and am stoked about the new Red Line faux trolley service that is being put in just blocks from my house that will have busses rolling by every ten minutes to whisk me downtown and back.
Oh, and if you think your morally pure Tesla or some other EV is going to protect your privilege for personal transportation, no, the environmental Jacobins are coming for all privately operated motor vehicles."
But America in general, outside of a few dozen urban cores, is not set up like that. Further, I still need a car when I want to venture to the burbs to visit friends or drive to a class or go to the range or whatever. For better or worse, we are wedded to private vehicle ownership for the foreseeable future. And I like it that way, because private vehicles are freedom machines. That makes some people itch, though.
