In a properly urbanized environment owning a car would be both unnecessary and inconvenient. We should strive to properly urbanize our living areas.

Bringing back true suburbs would be good, too. People living a half hour train journey from the city by high speed rail would mean small walkable islands could form in small towns the way they used to.

To the bike tire point, let's face it, if we replaced every car with a bicycle we would probably reduce the amount of microplastics by a massive amount because a bike tire could never contain the amount of plastic a car tire does, cars have four and weigh a lot more. It's incomparable, but you compared it so I had to point that out.

The contribution from bicycle tires is peanuts by comparison. The weight of the vehicle is a fraction, the forces starting and braking are a fraction. It's not zero, but compared to that from a 2000kg EV: that from a +-28kg EV bicycle or <15kg non-electric bicycle is pretty dang close to zero, especially when adding to the equation a regular speed of 50-120kmh <> 10-25kmh...

The amount of tyre wear pollution from a bicycle is negligible, to the point where they are not even worth mentioning in these types of conversations.

I mean, it's an existential threat. It doesn't really matter what's required to make it stop -it's necessary.

Yes it does require a transformation of our infrastructure, of our culture, and that in turn means a transformation or our institutions, a big crackdown on lobbies and corruption, etc. It's the biggest challenge of our lives. Not trying to give the impression it's easy