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.