I think that misses the overall point: OP is saying the personal emission reductions themselves don't matter AND providing this as absolution kills off the available attention spans that should go towards real solutions.

It is akin to saying 'I recycle my meagre household waste, I am doing my best!' while that's addressing probably 1% of the actual problem (most recycling ends up in garbage and corporations are bigger polluters than individual consumers).

If I am to put words into OPs mouth, we should be pushing for real changes at a society level. This would mean a bigger and more intrusive governance which will come in the form of things like no meat, 2 children per family, all electric cars, no 2 day shipping and so on. I am sure there one in there that will hurt everyone, which is where people should be willing to put their energy into.

FWIW at a macro level, I do see the point. I can put money on the fact that people won't elect or push for societal changes that actually affects them though. These are the reasons why giant systems pretty much never completely overhaul themselves: They might course correct a little, but unless aliens invade or a giant conflict happens - we are kinda set. (Do you see my cynical side yet :)

>Planning for any rail line, then constructing, takes over a decade. Even in the environmentalist San Francisco Bay Area. Try a google of “Van Ness BRT” to get a sense for how slow infrastructure projects work.

That's a uniquely American problem. Maybe America should fix itself so it doesn't take so long to build infrastructure.

Well unfortunately, fixing America will take far more time and effort than even outright abolishing ICEs and transitioning every automobile-driving American to electric vehicles (let alone let the market do its thing, given that the advantages of ICE relative to electric are rapidly evaporating).

So, you know, why not push for the latter in the meantime while we work toward the former?

I'm not even talking about abolishing ICEs or anything like that. I'm just talking about fixing whatever political problems cause America to take literally decades to build a single bridge or other infrastructure, when other industrialized nations get it done in a small fraction of the time and cost.

That's not a 'uniquely American problem' at all. e.g. Berlin's Brandenburg airport, UK's HS2, third Heathrow runway, etc. Infrasturcture projects lag in almost all developed countries for various political reasons.

You're cherry-picking counter-examples. No developed country, overall, has the infrastructural problems that America has. America just canceled its high-speed rail in California, yet Japan is already working on a maglev train scheduled for completion in 2027, and China already has one between Beijing and Shanghai. Japan's Shinkansen has been operating since the 1960s, has had zero accidents in all that time, and has an average delay of less than a minute. Germany and France also have very impressive high-speed train systems. Meanwhile, all the US has is the Acela, which is a joke.

You only mentioned airports in your examples. America can't even build rail lines that go to airports!

I did mention UK's HS2, so not all airports.

Speaking of cherry picking, I think that referring to high-speed passenger train alone is an example thereof, especially as it ignores the large and successful American fright train infrastructure. California made the mistake of being too ambitious, a more modest plan from the start would have worked.

Freight trains are useless for passengers, and worse, Amtrak actually leases tracks from the freight companies and their trains are lower priority than the freight trains, which is why Amtrak schedules are so bad. Only a really screwed-up country would have a system like that.

As for California, it's just CA, it's the whole country. Where's the high-speed rail in the northeast, where they have the highest density of people who would use such a system? It doesn't exist (and again, no, the Acela doesn't count). What about between Seattle and Portland? Why isn't the federal government involved, since this should be an interstate issue? This whole country is just a fucking disaster when it comes to public infrastructure.

Yes, you are in agreement with the author — do both.

Anyone who has been to Tokyo knows that you can survive without a car.