People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So yeah, pretty much all on the consumer choices.
For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options.
Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse.
So no, it’s not all consumer choices, not even “pretty much”.
The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument.
The other flip of the coin is this: people can consume in ecologically smart and sustainable ways, and often given the choice they do but lack of choice exists across most sectors that don’t allow them to or are knowingly priced higher than the alternative options due to poor regulation or lack of proper subsidy on the scale of the dirty alternative.
And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal, let alone other industrial polluting industries.
"For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options."
Oftentimes that comes from road taxes, so it's really car use subsidizing the car-centric projects. If states and municipalities (and the voters) really want it, then why aren't they subsidizing the public transport options... choices - there arent that many who want it bad enough to pay for it.
"Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse."
Not really. Consumer polling shows people want things like bigger, fancier single family homes over basic small apartments. Of course they only want them in "good" neighborhoods too. These preferences are choices.
"The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument."
Dichotomy implies there are only two choices. I'm simply following the logic and data. As soon as you give people the resources for "better" housing/transport/etc they take it, regardless of the externalities. Check the size and quality of new homes, the requirements and accessories for new cars, etc. The standards and options for things only goes up as the affordability does. If you can show this is not true, then I'd love to see real world examples of the majority of people choosing smaller homes, simplier cars, etc when affordability is not a factor.
"And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal,"
Do you have examples? Most of the recent subsidies in the past decade and tax credits I've seen have been around solar, more efficient appliances, etc.
No it's not on consumer choice. The US government is SUBSIDIZING gasoline when it should be taxing it at a higher rate because of the environmental side-effects. This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up.
Can you give me some examples of gas being subsidized?
"This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up."
Again, that's a choice for which the population's opinions differ. You have some people who would tax people for existing because of their carbon dioxide output, body heat, space they take up, etc.
Gasoline is heavily taxed as well, far in excess of the subsidies it receives compared to typical consumer goods. Jet fuel itself has almost no tax net of its subsidies, however passenger aviation is also heavily taxed compared to most consumer goods. It is for sure incorrect in both cases to say that these goods are “heavily subsidized” as a way to absolve consumers of any responsibility for their ecological choices.
If there was enough demand for high speed rail, couldn't a company form a profitable business model to provide that service? Many people don't take trains because the service is abysmal in the US. People who visit Europe tend to use the trains and prefer it over flying. It seems we're in a chicken and egg situation in the US. Even subsidies to Amtrak don't seem to fix the issue.
