That's like asking "why is the train still moving even though the brakes are on"?

Not very long ago not only was consumption increasing every year, it was increasing at an increasing rate every year. And that increasing rate was itself increasing not so much time before that. We've reversed the 3rd derivate, and we've reversed the 2nd derivative. If the 2nd derivative is negative for sufficient time, the 1st derivative will itself go negative. Looks like it'll happen this year, but the year's not over yet.

The first derivative is consumption. The 0th derivative is amount of carbon in the air. For that to go down would require a carbon negative economy which I don't have much hope for.

In several countries their freight trains are electric today. Trucks can be electric too, and a lot of shipping needn't run on fossil fuels although we're further off widespread commercial offerings than we are for trains or trucks which you can just buy today.

The main obstacle is aeroplanes, so that's Jet-A aka Kerosene as fuel, but even then if the numbers get nasty the airlines will kill a lot of services rather than try to pass on unaffordable prices and eat the fuel cost when there aren't enough buyers.

India has effectively electrified almost all of its rail transit. USA or other countries do not need to electrify all lines and the long tail is too long but even the major ones can bring in big benefits. No need to even get China in this equation.

Whether we need them will be a function if they are financially sustainable. No profit, and they will close (as is the case with the Valero Benicia refinery in Northern California, shuttering April 2026). That is the linchpin to push fossil fuels to failure faster, find economically vulnerable and/or unsustainable fossil infrastructure and push it to failure (fossil supply chain death spiral). Because if no one will pay for it, it will not continue to exist, and the demand base to spread fixed costs across will only shrink into the future, pushing prices to unaffordability compared to non fossil alternatives.

(think in systems)

Maritime shipping is targeting synfuels or ammonia. Hydrogen is not dense enough for ocean crossing voyages, too much cargo space is lost. They see the writing on the wall.

The US currently spends $1B/year on climate change related weather disasters. Waiting is not affordable nor sustainable. Gas cars already get a free ride by not paying for their externalities, the true price of gas, if externalities were to be priced in, would be closer to ~$8/gallon (some estimates are as high as $12/gallon, but I have specified the lower bound to be conservative in this context). The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be to remediate harm incurred by not getting off of fossil fuels sooner. It is, simply put, stealing from the future.

> Or we could just let electric cars slowly/naturally replace gas cars without artificially increasing inflation.

We could subsidize electric car purchases and manufacturing, both vehicles and batteries. We could allow excellent, affordable Chinese EVs into the US to force US domestic legacy auto to compete on quality and prices (instead of protecting their profits). We could remove fossil fuel subsidies (~$760B/annually in the US) and direct those resources to speed electrification, low carbon generation, storage, and transmission (as China is doing, and becoming the world's first electrostate). But we don't, and those who are upset about inflation should take it up with those squeezing them for profits. The US could've made better policy, it was a choice to regress towards supporting combustion vehicles to prioritize those profits. Elections have consequences. If one doesn't believe in climate change or using policy to encourage electrification while reducing the immense subsidies provided to fossil fuels, certainly, one might disagree with this. That's a mental model issue, not a data and facts issue.