But if we have to drastically reduce ground freight and shipping emissions to reduce co2 emissions enough, which we do, goods will be more expensive. And it's also not free to switch private cars to EVs. If goods in general are more expensive, then peoples' money goes less far.
To be clear, I am in favor of this. Maybe you can make the very wealthy eat the cost, but somebody has to pay for it, and I can't see how it doesn't result in lower mean quality of life.
Average age of a car in the US is 12 years. The fleet gets swapped out naturally pretty quickly, and slight incentives would accelerate that. It's faster than swapping out electric generating capacity.
If we are at 100% of new vehicles being electric in 2030, I'd be surprised but also ecstatic.
For the rest of the word, we are having that massive technological innovation right now that will increase quality of life globally. For electrifying the developing world, micro grids with renewables and storage will be immensely cheaper than building our massive transmission grids and large centralized production.
Industrial sectors have the least clear path to decarbonizations, as well as sea-freight and flight, but if we can solve electricity and transportation in the next decade we have a few years so solve these far smaller sources of emissions.
There is a lot of reason to be worried, but there's also a ton of reasons to be hopeful. GDP is already decoupling from emissions, and I think as we decouple it further, we will find a higher quality of life for the vast majority of people, both in developed or developing nations.