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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
And I have yet to hear a convincing argument that taking my perfectly working vehicle off the road to buy another manufactured product is still more environmentally friendly than… not buying anything at all.
That’s because nobody is making that argument. The only statement I’ve ever heard from environmentalists/scientists is that the most beneficial thing to do is keep your old ICE car and maintain it well.
I certainly know of some “get rid of your car and bike everywhere” environmentalists, but most of them realize that isn’t actually an option in, for example, rural Montana in February.
Yeah, at least they’re sticking to their ideals and their suggestion would help the environment. But as you pointed out, it just won’t/can’t happen in much of the US.
In fact, I just recently went on a road trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee that took me through parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. I can’t think of any places I saw where public transportation would be feasible. Maybe long-distance trains to augment air travel as an option, but nothing last-mile.
I saw more signs about reasons god might send me to hell, or how Trump is awesome, than any form of public transit. Even buses. Because I saw zero of any of it.
Not sure if this was a thing anywhere else but in some UK cities like London there were “scrappage schemes” that incentivised scrapping your car to replace it with something more efficient, which I always thought was missing the point
We had that in the US too, commonly called “cash for clunkers.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
But I think it was really more about the economic stimulus than the environmental impact. But I’m sure the environmental side helped justify it.