LOL! This is what I suspect. It dropped to the lowest just after Covid restrictions. The gas and food one dropped close to maybe .2%. Then about a year later when people were being vaccinated and getting back out in public supply chain disruption and increasing demand for goods started driving up inflation. Then the high inflation depressing demand and the supply chain getting back to more normal started bring inflation back down. Now perhaps the inflation reduction act had an influence as well as any number of things like releasing the national oil reserves to offset OPEC production cuts. As you say the Act didn’t drive up inflation. Yet it could easily be used to prove that it did as its name suggested reduce inflation. It’s simple and straight forward and that’s all many would need to know. However, that would be leaving out the more complex nature of what has been an overriding economic disruption these last 3 years. That’s my thoughts on it.
If I owned a private jet like all the Green Gods and the business elite, I’d fly it any time I could. I worked in a shop that made and installed millwork in a home that had a monthly utiliy bill of around $2,400. I’ve had about the same monthly budget billing amount for about 16 years. I added a new room in 2015 and finished window, door, insulation upgrades througout the house. The bill then was $171 and it just went up to $204. In the meantime, they drive in limos and fly in private jets to figure out how to coral me into saving the planet, they shoot off rockets, and have beach front property. I don’t much pay attention anymore. I’m as bareboned as it’s gonna get. D U N, dun!
Some of these science professors are trying to figure out how to block sunlight . . . I think they got a go-fund-me page somewhere. Right next to the virus research page.
When I was in the sixth grade, the prediction was a new ice age. Apparently they got that wrong. I think that happened around 30 years ago.
Yes, that’s what would have happened, but they didn’t yet realize that the CO2 was increasing so fast. That didn’t happen until the 60s. It took a while for public awareness to the repercussions of what was happening.
“Charles Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography was the leading authority in establishing the global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) record. In 1958, Keeling began measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory”
There are other kinds of grass cutters besides gasoline lawnmowers. Human labor, a.k.a. exercise, can help with that 2% reduction.
I think the point behind the 2% (or whatever number is being circulated) is that literally everybody in first world settings CAN cut back on their individual negative impacts to the environment, AND that they can still choose how to do it.
You gave an example, that of either switching to a higher mpg car or driving fewer miles, or both combined. Another person who lives where cars are not needed so much might choose to walk, bike, or skateboard instead of driving for every errand.
There are infinite ways in which people can make small changes without giving up everything important to them. So do it voluntarily, and in ways that feel less “depriving” than the ways that government or manufacturers might choose.
That’s already happening. I don’t want to swap my reliable 18-yr-old truck for a subcompact car that gets 40 mpg but cannot do the tasks I need a vehicle for, or cannot travel in bad-traction conditions. What I do is…taDAH! reduce the number of miles driven, and drive smoothly (no leadfoot stuff). There’s no need to buy a new vehicle (talk about high impact, from the manufacturing of such a major, complex product!) when the old one, driven sanely and not so damned much, can be kept while also achieving that 2%—or more—reduction. ***
What it gets down to is, Do you care enough to add these small changes into your life, changes that YOU have the “freedom” to make? Or do you do nothing until an entity forces you to do what is deemed best for the aggregate US population? That means, among other things, that the big cities will ALWAYS be used as the standard of normality. During COVID, not every area had services such as grocery deliveries, or Internet good enough for Zooming, or (in the extreme case of the Navajo Nation) even tap water, toilets, or electricity.
I’m all for the “freedom” to choose what fits my life (within the options that exist), but really, enough people refuse to give up anything that the rest of us will be lumped in with them when the big hammers slam down.
*** My reduction in miles driven is closer to 10%, not including the few years we lived in an area where the reduction was about 30 to 40%. However, I would not be able to reduce by 10% per year, every year.
Some power boats use as much gas in one outing as I used in a week goung to work. Lets get a bureaucrat to tell us what we’re allowed to do.
Here’s an example of a previous clampdown that I fully supported and still do, but that many Americans kneejerkedly shout opposition to: Lower speed limits.
We had 55 mph limits for years, which reduced fatality rates from auto collisions and also improved mpg. Probably reduced roadkills of wild animals, too.
I’d like to see a similar reduction brought back, even if only down to 60 mph, which we all know would have drivers going 65 mph. But that’s still better than limits of 75 mph.
I’m not holding my breath on that simple change, even though it cuts across socioeconomic differences, requires no new technology or equipment, and can be understood by anybody.
As for elected officials, a certain rep in my region is a blithering idjit. Unplanned pregnancy in 15-year-old girls is a “rural value”??!! (Among other gems from her.)
They did even better than lowering speed limits., they doubled the price of gas.
That does make some people cut down on driving, but it doesn’t matter to those who have enough money to keep on with the SOSO and don’t care.
It is ironic that many of those who want to make things better for their grandkids etc don’t make the connection between reducing their own impacts and what the future will hold.
I have no grandkids to worry about, but there ARE other life forms that suffer the results of human choices.
My youngest once told me “Most people think the speed limit is just a suggestion”.
I have to wondered what would happen if we set and locked the computer chip to 55 mph in all gasoline powered cars and let the EV drive 75. I can see a new song lamenting “I can’t drive 75”. Actually, I think I can hear the outrage now.
Actually driving 55 is low hanging fruit that would have an immediate impact. I would be willing to drive below 60mph.
There would be a large new underground market for services to change it back to unlimited 
That could happen if our elected officials (I’ll not call them "leaders) can’t figure out how to get their heads out of their … um, I mean, out of the sand.
That’s the problem. I dont want them telling me anything.
enjoy I won’t
My point was more that the target is 2% per year. The problem isn’t going away in one year of improvements. They are talking targets like 2050-2100. Some of us wont be around then but our replacements will and they will be continuing the fight. So it is 2023 and if I were to start the battle to save humanity today by 2033 I will need to reduce my footprint 20% of what it is today. To do that we will need some serious help outside our control.
Things like wind, solar, with huge storage capacities would help. New forms of energy would help. I also hear rumblings of other things like 15 minute cities where we will live and work and do everything within 15 minutes of where we live. Other things like switching from money we control to digital money that will both know about us and track what we spend money on. You may have lots of money in your account but when you go to buy a hamburger say it will compare that purchase to your carbon footprint and tell you no you put gas in your truck last month so you just get a salad.
What will work or won’t work and what we are willing to change we will learn as we proceed. Yet working together to come up with solutions is the import part of that equation.
Cooperating and working together has always been the best way forward, as far as I am concerned.
But I do agree with Bud that this will need more than individual effort. To me that is where government has an important role to play, and we, as voters, have important decisions to make if we want an effective response that is matched to the world-wide nature of the problem.
I can’t think of too many times the government was the right place to turn to solve a problem though. 
Soil conservation after the Dust Bowl, electrification of the rural South, reforestation of the Ozarks and mid-South, preservation of the national parks, wild and scenic rivers, and wilderness areas.
The list is rather long and includes lots of things we enjoy as paddlers.
It reminds me a bit of this line from The Life of Brian: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Well, different perspectives or different issues. I would argue that without government, pollution would not have been corrected. Without government, endangered species would not have been saved. Without government, workers would not be safer from workplace risks. Without government, our roads would be a lot less safe. Without government, we would not have as good an infrastructure to support businesses.
Government may not be the best solution for everything, and it may not always work as well as it could, but for helping us in some areas where the common good is the point, government is an appropriate and effective tool. After all, fundamentally government is just a formalized way for us (as a society) to work together for the common good. That is my perspective.