Power generation and power use need to be synchronous. Renewables generate power at rates outside of our control. In order to smooth out that generation and bring a level of control back to power distribution we would need a place to store all the energy. Our current methods are not dense enough and are extremely disruptive/damaging to the environment. Nuclear gives us a steady and predictable base level of generation that we can control. Which would make it so we don’t need to pump vast quantities of water into massive manmade reservoirs or build obnoxiously large batteries.

For sure, I’m not saying we have to entirely ban cars. And small cars are much better than large cars. But neither should be everyone’s first thought for “how do I get around town?”

That is barely even the start of what we need. It would do us better to embrace public transit and densification. If we all just switched to small cars instead it wouldn’t solve the underlying issues with car dependent infrastructure. We’d still have wide swaths of useful land buried under miles of concrete and asphalt. We’d still have urban spaces that are hostile to anyone not in a automobile (admittedly somewhat less so). My commute time is nearly doubled simply because all of the parking lots I have to walk through. There’s no need (outside of accommodating drivers) for everything to be separated by so much empty space.