> To use your car less is OFTEN an available choice.

Only to wealthy privileged people who can discuss their first-world problems on forums like this. As folks get poorer on the scale the more a car becomes an unavoidable necessity for many.

I applaud to your personal choices and sacrifices, but please don't make it sound like everybody can and should make the same/similar ones.

Most of us here have/want kids. I say something very opposite to what you say - folks here, please have kids! Not many, but take your time and raise them properly. It basically means sacrificing large portion of your life to them, without a guarantee they will even appreciate it. Which is fine, that shouldn't be the motivation for it anyway.

You who are reading this, are a part of smart elite in this world, whenever you are, and can raise next generation of elite with disproportionally large amount of decisive powers in their hands.

Why, you may ask? Raise them well so they are balanced happy individual with clear drive to help make this world a better place, and they may very well become next leaders, business captains, politicians, or just good citizens helping those around them, environment, mankind.

Now imagine what kind of world would that kind of attitude bring. Don't just minimize your 'bad' footprint on this existence, try creating more of the positive one.

I live in a small non wealthy town in the UK, it's five miles across and everything is accessible without cars.

My neighbor has five to seven cars on their driveway. To let others out they start them all and play musical cars. Two of them drive to jobs less than two miles away. They use them for practically every trip over 200 metres. Their extended family visit every weekend, in separate cars and all live within five miles.

My other neighbors have three cars for two people, including a pickup truck. Again, they drive literally everywhere. Even walking distance.

Many of the young people here drive terrible modded cars up and down all day for no actual purpose than vanity.

If you tried to have to have a conversation with these people about their car use, they would claim it's their right and that they "pay for it". Yet what they pay is < 10% of the damage they cause.

Obviously, if you are remote, or have a disability or need to carry a heavy load you should probably use a car.

But many people think it's literally their God given right to drive a dangerous metal box, badly, burning irreplaceable oil, spraying pollution, noise pollution and brake dust literally straight into your home.

Every single car journal under 10 miles should be excessively taxed, with extreme taxes for trips under three miles. You should literally be forced to think twice, then twice again.

All of these people are literally saying: "Fuck other people's health, their sanity, their happiness, their time, their environment, the environment as a whole. Me drive metal box"

The entitlement of drivers is literally staggering.

I’ve got no problem with taxing carbon-emitting fuel much higher than today.

If you tax three mile trips extremely enough, you turn a 4 mile roundtrip into around 15 miles of driving in a lot of cases. Need to go A to B to A which are 2 miles apart? Drive A to C (3.5 miles) to B (4 miles) to C (4 miles) to A (3.5 miles). Does that policy make sense in light of the obvious workaround?

Tax the fuel and you align the incentives much more closely and much more difficult to workaround in ways that work against your intention.

>Only to wealthy privileged people who can discuss their first-world problems on forums like this. As folks get poorer on the scale the more a car becomes an unavoidable necessity for many.

I'm living on countryside in Eastern Europe and by no metrics I'm anywhere near to being wealthly

You don't have to be wealthly to have privilege of not having to own car, it's often about job.

Majority of people I know needs their cars due to their jobs. Of course part of people I know actually enjoys driving and stuff.

WFH helps with it significantly, but even before I've been commuting by train due to it being cheap and allowing me to e.g read a book, sleep and generally have time for me

For things that are within e.g 10km radius like shops, services, then I tend to use bike (unless its winter ofc)

but I think it's hard to do it pernamently, at some point I think I may need to get one just in case.

In cities it may be easier cuz you can always call Uber/Taxi

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> As folks get poorer on the scale the more a car becomes an unavoidable necessity for many.

Sometimes I believe that car is what actually keeps people poor

When I look at friends they spend significant amount of their salary on car - insurance, fuel, maintenance - it ranges between like 3k PLN to 10k PLN where minimal wage is around 2K

So if you have to pay 4K per year for your car when your year salary is 24K

then shit's no cheap and I think we're optimistic here, but often it allows you to have job, so it's terrible situation.