Changing times

Then I would be able to purchase one of those ICE vehicles and the taxes would not be that high either.

Originally posted by StephenH Then I would be able to purchase one of those ICE vehicles and the taxes would not be that high either.

We are all readily able to come up with justifications for either continuing to do what we are doing or for changing. Humans are very very good at that.

So as always it boils down to what motivates one personally. These motivations are either helped or hindered by policy/incentives. Having worked in renewable energy for my whole career energy generation, transmission, and use is an area I both understand well and am passionate about. Others are indifferent or actively oppose changes. I'm not passing judgement on what's right or wrong here.

In the case of EVs however as I said before that particular ship appears to have sailed. There is a whole global economy in the midst of changing and the US is not leadng the charge. Asia and Europe are.

Sadly we as a country no longer appear to be able to align ourselves in the same direction (whatever that direction may be) as we used to be able to do. What might change that I don't know.

As for park congestion and deferred maintenance, that is the inevitable result of global population growth combined with a massive increase in affluence.

It is the same with pretty much all of our environmental resources, CO2 buildup, fresh water, fertile land, forests, fisheries, you name it.

In most of these areas humans are now depleting resources 3 or more times faster that they are getting regenerated. Obviously that is not sustainable, but, being humans, we are not well equipped to make the needed changes (some combination of more efficient use, reduced affluence, an/or reduced population) to try to solve these problems. So it will be solved for us at some point. Simple as that.

In the meantime expect parks to become yet more crowded and degraded. Placing more emphasis on visits to the less popular destinations helps spread out the demand. Leave the high season visits to the Yosemites, Yellowstones, and Smokies to others it's still possible to have a great experience at less popular destinations, many of them National Forest, state or local.

While you are right LA about human nature, I for one am not going to use that as an excuse to give up. We can do what we can do, and our choices as consumers do matter in terms of the industries that thrive and the ones that disappear.

As for the relationship between park funding and access it is inevitable that development be restricted in the most popular parks. All that would be accomplished by funding further development is more environmental degradation of these special places. Yosemite visitors for example experience as much as 3 or 4 hours of traffic delays in summer, nor is any parking available after around 9AM. The trails are jammed. And that's just day use, nothing to do with camping. So I don't really see a viable alternative to restricting access in those cases and in our dedicated wilderness areas.

As for providing more camping opportunities in less desirable areas that would be fine with me, but would be fought by the commercial park operators under the argument that it places public parks in competition with private enterprise.

Most people are unaware that the GAOA passed last year adding $9.5B in National Park infrastructure funding. Fully bipartisan so it rarely made the news in 2020, yet many of the projects are underway and/or continuing into 2022 and beyond. I put together a visualization of the spend and projects by state if anyone is interested: http://johnmarucci.com/great-american-outdoor-act-budget-map-and-data/