This is a common carbrain argument
“I already pay the gas tax”
The problem is that it’s false.
In a recent study, researchers Stefan Gössling, Jessica Kees, and Todd Litman calculated the social costs of driving. They found that the social cost is about 30-40% higher than what car owners are actually paying
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943?via=ihub
That cost is paid by non-drivers.
Is there a study that shows the full environmental cost over the decades it takes for the cars pollution to be handled by the world?
Including fine particles that mostly stem from car tires as far as I know.
Only because they’ve drastically cleaned up engine emissions and oil/grease leaks. Not to mention removing lead, and then MTBE from gasoline. It’s interesting watching old movies and seeing how black the middle of concrete roads used to be from oil and exhaust soot.
Not to say that tire microplastics aren’t bad, just that it was so much worse before, that they weren’t worth focusing on.
Possibly also the average weight of cars nearly doubling isn’t helping.
Plus there are always new and fun chemicals added to tires
To add to your comment : car pollution may be Less Worst™️ by car unit, but if the following graph is true, then having more than doubled the amount of cars on the road since the 1970s means that there is even more pollution now than when we said “hey, seems bad”. (unless the weighted pollution measure has been reduced by more than 66%, which is 🤔)
source : https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/chapter3.cfm
When talking tires particles, I wonder what the changes were when we started using much lighter alloys / metals in the body, and how it rebounded back now that most car sold in North America is Suburban-sized.
Politicians keep passing gas tax holidays too, to keep people happy.
The cited article is correct but the summary of the meme is bad.
“I paid for the roads with taxes.” Is the text in the meme.
The text claims the meme says, “I paid for everything bad about cars with gas taxes.”
Thing is, you haven’t paid it with your taxes either. A lot of the costs haven not been paid yet at all, much of it is financed by debt, and also those who don’t use the road in the region pay for it nonetheless.
That’s splitting hairs - usually the debt is financed by defining a revenue stream to pay it
Umh, with public debt its not so simplistic, at least if you look at the bigger picture. Budget deficits (that also can have rising financing costs further down the road) can hide exploding and unsupported infrastructure costs for decades and then there are local budgets and bankruptcies of municipalities etc and last but not least there is also simply insufficient road infrastructure maintenance because not even debt can stem the weight anymore.
Also, if you don’t need those roads but have to pay a lot for them, that is certainly not splitting hairs either. Hard to imagine for some but even in the US there are places were substantial number of citizens don’t use cars very much or might not even own one (even though they could afford one). In better developed countries than the US that number can be even very substantial in urban environments.
It has been 23 years since the United States last raised its excise tax on gasoline.
Is that a common argument made in Germany? I’m not German so I’m just wondering. I know I’ve heard that here in the States. I my area we don’t only have the tax on gas though, we also have registration, wheel tax, and I think alcohol and tobacco taxes are often slated for roads, though I’m not positive on that (tax dollars often feel like a shell game to me anyway and I’m not able to follow my local politics as closely as I know I should).
This month, I bought tires and my insurance renewing: still pretty expensive after being subsidized by 35% by everyone.
You’re not actually subsidized, the companies are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I’ve never heard anyone make this argument myself, I guess someone has at least once.
Fuck cars all you want, but you’re an idiot if you think you don’t need roads as a distribution network for your way of living. Be glad some of the maintenance is supplemented by a fuel tax for now.
