When I were a lad, there was one bus an hour up till about 7pm to the nearest decent town..at the bottom of our road.
We had no car.
That journey - just 5 miles - to the town was a once a month, if that, expedition...and took MOST of the day..10 a.m bus, half an hour to get there, have lunch, and possibly tea, there, come back laden with parcels, get on the bus and be back by 6pm.
Of course there was a full set of shop within a mile and a quarter of where we lived for daily produce..it would have been unthinkable to go as far as 5 miles for a loaf of bread, cheese, bacon, meat..and milk came to the door daily, and the papers if you wanted them..Pubs? unthinkable if any house in Britain had a pub less more than a mile away, or a church..no need to drink and drive, drink and walk instead.
Frankly I can't remember going to a proper restaurant till 1964 or thereabouts..Lyons corner house was as good as it got..
I remember going on holiday by train,. Huge snorting coal fired locomotives. It would take a whole day to get to Devon..with three changes of train..these days its there an back in 3/4 of a day..
We probably need to get back to that sort of lifestyle. Supermarkets exist because cars exist and are cheap. Corner shops do not because since people go to the supermarket twice a week there is no need to have them.
What has changed? cars are cheap, fuel is cheap. So why not commute?
Wages are high, time is short..why not eat out?
All through my life my choice of home has been dictated by the transport available and the cost of it versus the job and what it paid..all one has to do is to tilt that playing field and everything will change..
Recently we have given up working..with a house paid off, our outgoings for two are really pretty low. Certainly sub 20k net per annum. For a very large house and comfortable lifestyle
we probably do no do more than 8k miles a year in the cars anymore between us, compared with over 50k when working.
We are both in our 50's, highly skilled, and ready to work from home..no one is offering though.
I do free work, mainly technical support to DIY'ers, and a couple of other areas..via the Internet. Why? cost its better than twiddling my thumbs, and I enjoy it. I like work, I just hate being an employer or an employee. Get rid of all the red tape around working - the taxes and the bloody forms, and I might consider it again..
Saving the planet isn't about taxing this or that randomly: Its about coming up with a viable lifestyle that is acceptable within the constraints of what people are politically prepared to accept.
By and large we don't have to tax roads, or cars or ban people from doing stuff. We just have to do LESS of it. The simple way to do ALL these things is to make travel expensive, not by taxing roads..but by taxing FUEL.
Make working from home tax advantageous - fuel tax does that anyway..
Make WORKING FOR MONEY advantageous..right now it isn't. > 50% of the GDP goes to the government, that is then used to fund an army of civil servants, most of whom are entirely superfluous.
Crime pays, because we have made things illegal and expensive, and because there is no tax on it, and because it suits a certain sort of unskilled entrepreneurial spirit..cut the taxes, legalise the drugs, and lets have those entrepreneurs dong something socially useful..