A depressing reflection of why bottom-up or nudge or micro-level action or whatever the "small is beautiful" ideology proposes is not enough, if we don't want our collective mobility behavior to be the main cause of our very likely future climate pain.

The electricity production sector used to be the producer of the relative majority of climate change emissions until the last decade. That is not true anymore and there are encouraging signals that electricity generation is massively switching toward renewables.

This was achieved essentially with large top-down policies by governments and economic actors pushed by growing awareness among the voters and decisions makers. But that needed less change in collective behavior, just maybe a slightly costlier bill most were happy to pay.

But the transportation sector has gone in the opposite direction. Transit usage has stagnated or declined in many countries outside major cities. The growth in SUV sales has completely offset the little gains in engine efficiency. Miles traveled are constantly up

While we talk about a little transit project here or there in our urbanist bubble, the real world is going in another direction, with even Europeans buying more and more SUVs, cars getting larger, and governments that keep building roads at unchanged pace.

Changes in mobility behavior are showing to be way more complicate to foster, as they deal with individual choices, lifestyles and an automotive "industrial complex" that is stubbornly resistant to change and extremely powerful in setting the pace of public policies

I personally know many young urban professionals that, despite being committed to act against climate change and pollution, bought a bigger, more comfortable car just because that is what the market offer and after all, you know, everybody does the same and I need it.

Despite an increasing awareness among the public, the real collective choices continue to be shaped by a policy environment that is extremely favorable to "bad" mobility choices but we keep hoping that a bus lane here or a couple of miles of LRT there will change anything.

Year after year, I am more convinced that if a real change has to happen it will come from an imposed collective choice from above, as our individual behavior is lax, not because we are bad people, but because everyone is individually trapped in his inevitable shortsightedness

Hoping enough people will stop buying SUV, drive slower or take the bus just because they "feel" it is wishful thinking. Legislation banning larger cars, road redesign and large investment in transit to a scale unseen before are maybe the only solution for a "better" mobility

But for that we need to work more on national politics, legislative bodies, political parties and think tanks where the ideas that shape the direction of public policies (and money) are made. It might seem elitist, but the neighborhood level is not enough for a global problem.

It will sound unpopular, as we have been in a discourse of "little is better" glorifying grassrootness for decades, but the result is that our discourse is completely marginal where the big decisions are made. It's ok to keep distance from the power, but sometimes it is too much.