Not just emergency services - more mundane things like, getting food and care to the elderly, getting workers and tools where they need to be to maintain infrastructure, produce food, and much more.
Yes, many city-dwellers can live without a car. But not everyone lives in a city, or has any desire to live in a city (especially during a time of decline and perpetual crisis of one form or another)
Those who wage such vitriolic war on the car rarely consider small towns and rural areas, where public transport isn't efficient/practical, where no car often means no job.
But while we're on the topic of rural areas having terrible public transportation, I think that's a really important one. Switzerland has a smaller rural-urban divide (which is really where this whole "war on cars" thing comes in), in part because it is actually practical to move between rural and urban spaces on a regular basis. That isn't because the cities are more driveable, or because they build a highway through Bern: it's because they invested in public transit that actually works. This kind of talk benefits everyone.
Making things worse for car owners isn't the right strategy.
And BTW, public transport is not good enough, not even in places like NY, you need something better.
I'd guess you've lived in NY for a long time and have forgotten (or never had to suffer through) how bad public transit is in most US cities.
Walking is also nice for shorter distances. Or bikes.
It's called walking, biking, transit. These things all work. If you don't wanna walk a couple blocks to your car, sorry but that's not worth killing the planet and your neighbors. Cars have SO many externalities: air pollution that affects climate change, pollution that makes the air less breathable, noise, danger to others, takes up far more space leaving less room for other modes, etc.