“Green” vehicles aren’t doing to do it, though. They solve the problem of tailpipe emissions, yes, but not the resources needed to manufacture, operate, and dispose of them. I saw an infographic recently that pointed out than an electric car uses (generously speaking) only about 2/3 of the energy of an ICE car over its whole lifecycle. That’s… good, but not enough. It also doesn’t account for the direct CO2 emissions from the chemical process of curing concrete. EVs still need concrete to run on.

Also, CO2 emissions are not the whole story on how cars fuck the planet. There are the lifecycle resources, all of the plastic, glass, and metal, which still take fossil fuels to produce, either as a raw material, or as energy. There’s ecological destruction to get those resources, to get the resources to build the roads, to clear the space for the roads, for the sprawl that they facilitate, in the fragmentation of habitat, and the heavy toll taken on wildlife directly by roadkill. There’s also the pollution, like PM2.5 from tires, which causes asthma and heart disease in humans, and runs off into waterways and destroys zooplankton. There’s groundwater, lakes and streams becoming saline from widespread use of road salt.

I mean, we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event on Earth, and it’s only fractionally driven by climate change. Automobiles, even the “green” variety, contribute greatly to the problem.

In 2021, transportation accounted for 28% of U.S. CO2 emissions, the largest source by economic sector. Absolutely, we need to address cars to reduce emissions; they’re not getting that much better. Getting rid of them won’t fix the problem, but conversely, fixing the problem requires getting rid of most of them. But why does it have to be rails? What if it was a café near your house? A doctor’s practice? A bookstore? It’s not foreordained that everything has to be so far apart that you need motorized transport (car or train) to get to it. The large majority of car trips Americans take are short distances, not cross-country journeys for which we need high-speed rail or airliners. Do away with single-use zoning, put the places people go every day close to where they live, and we eliminate the need for a huge number of daily car trips. No rails through your front yard needed.

We need net zero by 2030. We need to turn that 100% of CO2 into 0%. Cars are 12.1%. Cars are our second priory behind manufacturing and construction, and we need to eliminate ALL of the priorities. No half measures.