Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tons of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tire-derived chemicals in most human urine samples.
There is no alternative suggested. The purpose of this movement is to tax heavy EVs. I think that makes it distraction.
The smaller the EV the more range per kwh, and so smaller batteries are needed which makes them more affordable. It is not unreasonable to tax heavy vehicles, but the punch line that motivates this piece is “EV’s bad”. They could have recommended micromobility for example.
It would be funny though if some environmentalist managed to make the tax properly technology agnostic though. Mostly if you can keep them from being exempted anything that hurts EVs goes double for pickups.
Of course we both know gas cars get exempted whenever this sort of thing passes because it’s never actually about vehicle weight and road wear so much as how can we slow the decline in gasoline demand for a few years, but it’s nice to imagine that silver lining.