no drilling is the issue lol. Shale wells deplete crazy fast. The decline rate is 70% in the first 3 years. We are reaching peak production. If you reduce the number of operators through buyouts it's only going to make it impossible to crank out new production quickly.

That's okay. Make driving a little more painful will discourage it, as long as other options also become available and less painful.

There are ways to do this, but it requires adopting patterns that drivers tend to object to.

For example, you could block or reduce car traffic on arterial highways, replacing them with regular buses or trains. As someone living in a suburb, you can still get into the city, but you have to leave your car at the park & ride. There are no (private) cars in the city anymore. This looks a lot of the motivation for driving at all: the traffic will be brutal, and you still have to take transit from the periphery to your destination.

Your shitty suburb is still a shitty suburb, but the lion's share of car use is now gone.

Next you start designating areas of these towns car-free and requiring drivers (including residents!) to leave their cars at the periphery. Transit, cabs, bikes, e-mobility, delivery trucks, etc. are all permitted, but no private cars. Routes in and out of this zone should also prioritise transit.

As density improves, you scale out the car-free zones and close /repurpose the Walmarts.

Combine the above with high carbon taxes that you in turn use to subsidise transit/e-bikes and rebate poorer people, and you have a reasonable system for a transition.

If you're the kind of person who needs a car, you can always walk/transit out of the car-free zone and leave town, or even live on the outskirts. The key is that this should be appropriately priced and your car stops where the people start.

A big problem is now fixing our land use, zoning, and density to be serviceable by transit.

Of course, a well designed city has no need for transit. Everything is available in walking distance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, your friend lives an hour's drive clear the other side of the city and you don't have the personality to make new friends in your neighbourhood. That's fine, but that kind of activity alone would not bring enough ridership to support a transit system. Transit only works when a lot of people are all trying to get around, which wouldn't happen as 99% of life would take place within walking distance. A lot of people trying to get around is the outcome of poor land use, zoning, and density.

Fair that transit is a pretty nice bandaid if you don't want to fix the actual problems, though.