This is how you get the electrified (or whatever else) economy.

Without the pain of higher fossil fuel prices, there is little incentive to change.

I’ve taken to calling gas “conflict fuel” to remind myself to avoid using it as much as possible in my daily life. Helps more than just a desire to not impact the climate.

I don't really care, I will use whatever energy source is the cheapest. Subsidise green energy or tax dirty energy so that's true, and people like me will naturally switch.

Or else why would you reply, right?

The nickel wars are coming to fuel the battery factories.

Batteries have a lot more flexibility outside of lithium. LFP batteries don't have nickel and work well enough for cars.

European countries have managed to set national goals and work systematically towards them, putting them far ahead of the US's non-strategy of "the market will fix it" FUD that we've been fed from Miltonites for decades.

The biggest thing European countries have done is make fossil fuels prices higher by increasing taxes. A solution that is not politically palatable to the vast majority of the US, due to the sacrifices in quality of life it would entail.

> make fossil fuels prices higher by increasing taxes

Biggest thing? No.

In Germany, where I lived for 7 years, this is only one component of a much broader strategy that includes investing in electrified infrastructure, including subways, trams, busses, long-haul trains, higher fuel efficiency standards, direct subsidies for renewables, direct investment in renewables, including projects to build them, higher efficiency standards for appliances, lightbulbs, timer-based circuits to turn off lights, broad public awareness of the role of conservation, and not tolerating as much climate change denial bullshit coming out of fossil fuel companies and political parties.

It's almost like they decided to mobilize and actually do something, treating this like a problem that can be decomposed and solved by thinking about it and doing stuff instead of tinkering with taxes, which have a tendency to be immediately undone upon the next economic downturn. Hope, they say, is not a strategy.

> It's almost like they decided to mobilize and actually do something, treating this like a problem that can be decomposed and solved by thinking about it and doing stuff instead of tinkering with taxes

The incentive to do something comes from making gas prices higher, or “tinkering with taxes”.

The US has cheap fuel at the pump, incentivizing people to continue buying SUVs and pickup trucks with 5+ liter engines that get 10 to 20 miles per gallon. It incentivizes people to live on quarter acre lots in far flung suburbs that require individual cars to get around. The people living this lifestyle do not want to spend money on public transport, or dense living. They have the life they want, in big houses on big plots of land, getting around in the luxury of their personal vehicles.

They will vote for the politician who continues to enable and make this life easier, they will vote to make roads wider, and prioritize car transportation over walking and bicycling and public transport.

Why would I want my taxes to increase to build a rail network when I have my own large, luxurious vehicle with which I can get to anywhere I want, anytime I want, without having to share the space with random others for 20 cents per mile worth of fossil fuel?

I can retype my reply if you like, or you could reread it. Government leaders at every level invested real money, time, and effort in building actual infrastructure. They did actual work, you know, planning, studying, proposing, designing, discussing, approving plans and projects, funding actual projects, building actual projects, deploying actual projects. They didn't just adjust a few numbers on paper. They are doing the logistics to accomplish the goals they set out. Funnily enough, things happen when you do them instead of hoping others will.

Government leaders were elected to do that work because the voters wanted the government leaders to invest real money, time, and effort in building actual infrastructure.

People in the US are going to vote for a 16 lane highway so their individual cars can go faster, they are not going to vote for a train to replace some of the demand for the 16 lane highway.

> Funnily enough, things happen when you do them instead of hoping others will.

That is not how allocating tens of billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars works in the US. You have to have the sufficient votes in the legislature to “do things”.

Well I'm gonna stop responding because you keep editing your comments to significantly expand and make different points, so everything is a moving target. (I tinker with comments too sometimes but I am trying to keep it to just minor clarifications).

> That is not how allocating tens of billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars works in the US

Of course this is oversimplified FUD, but I was under the impression that we were talking about the relative merits and effectiveness of policies designed to result in "electrified infrastructure" and it is absolutely clear that your original assertion of tinkering with taxes does not and never has worked except as part of an actual plan.

>Government leaders at every level invested real money, time, and effort in building actual infrastructure.

These are the same leaders who, when Trump at the UN warned four years ago that Germany is endangering itself by increasing dependence on Russia, laughed on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe>).

Germany is now facing the consequences of the greatest mistake its leaders have made in 80 years, an existential threat to the German (and thus European) economy and even nation-state. You know this. Yet you instead lecture the USA—home of Tesla—on how ACKSHUALLY it need to build more e-infrastructure. The mind boggles.