There’s a conspiratorial tone to this which is not surprising when you check the author’s history: Federalist Society, Claremont institute, Trump DOJ, a source cited for criticisms of various environmental policies, and current partner of a law firm founded by an RJ Reynolds heir which represents energy companies.
That provides an easy explanation for why he’s acting like he just discovered a deeply held secret everyone’s been talking about for years, because the alternative is admitting that the problem is vehicle weight and that means acknowledging that the big SUVs and trucks companies have found vastly profitable are also a problem.
A more honest position would be recognizing that all forms of driving have a significant impact which the laws of physics make unavoidable and we should be incentivizing smaller vehicles across the board and reducing the number of solo trips. Unfortunately, I doubt that would be compatible with continued paychecks so we should probably find a different author.
