This is what frustrates me so much about American politics. Fear is the primary driver and prevents so much from happening. If it causes problems we can, gasp, undo the changes. If the tolls actually cause more harm there is a dead simple solution of: stop charging them. Instead NYC wasted hundreds of millions of dollars for literally nothing because of fear.
Not just the US. Look at how Germany took a generation to fulfill its promise to end nuclear power, waffled so many times, and came across as not taking its climate change and security commitments seriously in the end.
It is not so much that I think they should have banned or not banned nuclear energy but that the process they went through to do it was damaging to legitimacy.
