Ask Lemmy

Oh absolutely not realistic as a whole (at least not currently, maybe after another decade or two of increasingly destructive hurricanes, wildfires and floods there will be the political appetite), but I do think some of the individual pieces of legislation have a chance.

The remote work one would be the easiest single piece of legislation on my list since the only people hurt by it are commercial property investors

The railroad nationalization almost happened once already following the second largest bankruptcy in US history and the railroad industry is far more consolidated now than it was in the Penn Central and Conrail days (there's literally 5 major railroads: Canadian National, CPKC, Union Pacific, BNSF and Norfolk Southern. And to top it off UP and NS have announced their merger which is pending government approval) so if one of these major railroads goes bankrupt we could very well be looking at nationalization again

Carbon taxes have been tossed around as an idea for quite a while, and it's been partially implemented in some areas (usually in conjunction with a carbon credit marketplace so polluting industries and buy carbon credits from negative carbon industries, similar to how automakers currently buy CAFE credits from Tesla to avoid paying extra penalties for their gas guzzling trucks and SUVs)

Easier ADU permits and easier multifamily zoning have been passing piecemeal city by city and state by state across the country, so that's already a thing in many places

Right to repair legislation has been gaining steam and several states have already passed right to repair legislation

Many cities have been creating ebike rebates because the more people who bike the less the city has to spend repairing roads (road wear grows exponentially based on the weight and number of wheels on a vehicle. A single small car making a trip down a road does a much wear as thousands of bicycle trips, and a single semi truck trip does a much wear as thousands of large SUV trips, so there's real maintenance cost savings for cities in decreasing car trips, not to mention how reducing car trips reduces traffic thereby saving the city on costly road reconfiguration)

The EPA was created under Nixon because air quality had gotten so bad that whoever was in power at that point would've done something. It's honestly foreseeable that the state of the climate will get bad enough to force even the most reluctant government to change. China for example created huge subsidies for electric vehicle and solar panel production because the air quality in Bejing and other major cities became so terrible

The current Amtrak Connects Us plan is a much smaller but still ambitious expansion plan, and the subsidies that were created for it give it a solid chance of surviving Republican legislature (it's dolled out as grants to meet specific milestones, so by the time any government starts trying to claw back money they already have studies into the viability of the given rail line so it's already known just how much demand exists) additionally the first couple of services are already in place and have been greatly exceeding ridership projections so there's absolutely appetite for more passenger rail options

So in short, yeah my policy vision isn't likely as a single unified vision, but many of the policies are already showing promise and being implemented on a smaller scale, so there's a solid chance of some of these policies becoming reality for more of the country