There’s this thing called “Alert Distance”, it’s the distance at which animals perceive and begin to react to a threat.

I’ll use it as an analogue for humans’ perceptions of threat.

Say a squirrel knows a cat is a threat, and may react to it when the cat is 15 feet away, whether that reaction is turning to face the threat, making a warning call, or running away.

Now put 50 cats hiding in the bushes and surrounding area around the squirrel. Can’t see ‘em, so it isn’t a problem, even though the squirrel knows cats are a bad thing. The alert distance hasn't been triggered. The squirrels in the surrounding neighborhood are disappearing, eaten by cats, but our squirrel isn’t thinking too hard about this. More acorns for me!

Put a car in the garage and you can smell the exhaust. Your eyes probably water from the fumes. You know this is potentially lethal, so you do something about it. Shut off the car, leave the garage, open the garage door, whatever. Your alert distance has been triggered. The threat is right in front of you.

Now, as you say, drive that car outside with millions of other vehicles and systems consuming fossil fuels. No real smell or issues for most of us. The alert is only being triggered by what we read (if we bother to read anything that accurately portrays the threat) and maybe a rare bad storm or cluster of hot days that won’t negatively affect the vast majority of people. Negatively = inconvenience.

I don’t know if squirrels lie to themselves about how close a cat threat might be, but humans excel at lying to each other and to themselves for a crapload of reasons. So the fact is that the threat is invisible to many, ignored by most, and actively and willfully obfuscated by a shitload more. So the figurative alert distance doesn’t even exist at all for the vast majority of humans. It’s not going to kill you now, next week, or even next year.

Even when the world has crumbled, plenty will still lie about what’s to blame.

Just start sabotaging the ~~manufactorums~~ factories.

it's not that people think cars aren't contributing, it's that things like factories are so much of a bigger deal that the cars won't make a difference.

im gonna hazard a really basic proposition.

The volume of the earths atmosphere is perhaps, just a little bit bigger than the volume of approximately 1 billion garages.

If you're going to shitpost about science, at least be accurate about it. Nobody thinks they "aren't bad" that's literally a fallacious argument to even propose. Sure, toxic chemicals are bad for you, but there are FDA defined limits for how much of them is considered to be safe on an annual basis.

also, "banning" larger heavier vehicles is based.

Look, I hate ICE cars too.

But this is whack. Putting a running car into a garage is dangerous because the free oxygen becomes depleted and it starts producing carbon monoxide as a result. This isn't a problem when you're driving around outdoors.

The reason the a running ICE car in a garage is dangerous is completely different than why ICE cars are bad for the environment.

Like, shit on ICE cars all you want, I'll support it. But this is embarrassingly bad science. This is the kind of shit I'd have made up in grade 7 trying to an edgy eco-aware statement.