Speaking as someone who grew up in Houston and then moved to France - a society that depends on cars as the only method of transportation is, at least in my opinion, much more miserable than one that can be lived in car-free.

You're right that a sustainable future doesn't have to miserable.

The US has painted itself into a corner here. When you put yourself in a few trillion dollars of infrastructure debt building around 'cars are king'. What is going to be miserable is attempting to service that debt while moving to a more manageable society.

Sustainable food production is key. Fresh water availability is key. Electric cars are a necessity for no one. EVs and renewable energy sources are being sold to us as a comprehensive solution when they are just a small part of any realistic approach to the ecological challenges we face.

I think EVs can have beneficial second order effects. I’ll take some progress over no progress.

(But currently we aren’t even slowing down the coming “train crash”, we are merely decreasing the acceleration into the wall of food shortages and other horrors.)

Agreed. The problem is it's too easy to look at electrification efforts, pat ourselves on the back, and stop there.

This is so naive, I don’t know where to start.

Fresh water is not that big of a deal, it’s plentiful and cheap in most places. Desalination works really well, look at Israel.

Cars are required for most people to live their lives and make a living. I don’t know how you expect we’ll just magically do without.

This is so naive I don't know where to start.

> Fresh water is not that big of a deal, it’s plentiful and cheap in most places. Desalination works really well, look at Israel.

Half of the United States is in a more or less permanent water crisis which will get worse every passing year if we don't dramatically change use patterns. Not to mention the rest of the world. Desalination works, but it's energy- and materials-hungry. Energy is not getting any more abundant unless we have a breakthrough massively raising the sinking cap on civilizational EROI, e.g. fusion.

> Cars are required for most people to live their lives and make a living. I don’t know how you expect we’ll just magically do without.

Cars have been around for a little over a century. Somehow we managed before that. Even now, there are only 1.5 billion cars on the planet. Most human beings alive today do not have access to a car. I wonder how they do it?