While I certainly don’t want to defend the kind of asshats that insist on doing something as stupid and obnoxious as “rolling coal” I do need to point out that large swaths of the US are currently not setup in such a way that you can realistically get around without a vehicle of some kind. Massive work on public transit plus a fundamental urban planning design change needs to take place before walking, biking, or public transit is a viable way to get from point A to point B.

So until those changes are made, yes most Americans will need a electric or ICE vehicle. It doesn’t need to be an inefficient pollution spewing behemoth, but it does need to be something. Really though aside from people intentionally modifying their vehicles to be less efficient and more polluting modern cars are pretty efficient and clean.

The primary vehicle contributor to both global warming and pollution isn’t even cars though, it’s ships by a landslide. It isn’t even remotely close. Cruise ships and particularly the giant container ships used to move goods intentionally are hugely inefficient and polluting with just one ship putting out in a single day the equivalent of multiple cars worth of pollution for an entire year.