Gasoline addiction. The good news is there’s a cure if we would just utilize it.
The bad news is the addiction already induced permanent brain damage that makes people refuse the cure.
Sadly, it is not just a simple switch we can filp, it takes decades to replace existing cars, even to make a small dent in demand.
The UK is in a pretty decent situation to make a fairly large dent relatively quickly, if it chooses to do so. As in most of the country lives in cities, which generally speaking are dense and walkable enough. The big quick fix would be to take away a bunch of car lanes and hand them over to cyclists. Then add some good urban rail like trams and light metros to the cities, especially to northern England. Also the UK has a lot of abandoned railways. Reactivating some of them is certainly possible. This is not to mention London, which can easily just ban cars in large parts of the city.
Also there are EVs, which can do a lot of the rest.
Yes, it is that simple. What isn’t cured quickly enough is terminal car brain.
