they also provide an experience with far larger externalities (e.g. a massive fleet of vans wandering around and polluting all day) that the customer isn't paying for. i wonder why they're so popular

Is the fleet of polluting vans worse than every single delivery target hopping in their polluting cars and driving to the store (the model that amazon displaced?)

I don't think so. I think delivery has been demonstrated to be significantly "greener" than everyone individually driving to each store one by one.

Exactly this. One of the best things governments could do to help lower greenhouse gasses is incentivize people to get their goods delivered instead of going to the store. So much fuel is wasted moving a ~2 ton vehicle and a >100 lbs person to the store so they can pick up, often, <100 lbs of goods. That's <5% fuel efficiency.

you're both acting like people drive less when they get things delivered to their home. this is not true and i'm pretty sure you know it.

Just from my side once we switched more to delivery we are driving a TON less.

We used to go a few cities over for some thing, whole foods for example not in our city so we'd go over to it to grab some stuff, then to target for a few things etc etc. All that driving has evaporated - we are cooking at home more too.

"i'm pretty sure you know it."

Please cite something rather than ascribing a (false) view to someone else. I don't know your "fact" because it seems like you are lying based on my direct experience.

it is literally true

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/what-if-more-people-bought...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-05/americans...

I'm sure you can find a thousand articles/discussions online about the math behind how driving cars to stores is significantly more polluting than "salesman problem"ing a single delivery truck.

Bonus: it's far easier to electrify or improve 1 delivery truck than it is the 100 cars it's displacing.