You’ve nailed the problem. The kind of thinking you’ve described also explains the jaw dropping idiocy of “transitioning everyone electric vehicles” because we refuse to invest in low emissions mass transit or allow remote work. We prefer slurping up resources and tolerating the pollution of building millions of new electric cars so that the billionaire class can become zillionaires, apparently. “I know! Let’s find a slightly less—we hope—polluting way for workers to sit in traffic for four hours a day!”