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Does Therefore always have the same meaning as So in the beginning of a sentence?

Here is an example:

The trend in the present-day world is towards travelling by car rather than using public transport. Evidently, this results in higher rates of pollution. Therefore, what can the government do so as to curb the use of this means of transport?

Evidently, so would sound better there instead of therefore/consequently. However, is this change possible?

I researched this topic - How to Use 'Consequently' in Academic Writing - however, I believe the answers are not clear enough, therefore I provide a more specific example.

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    Does Therefore always have the same meaning as So in the beginning of a sentence? No. So that you can see this, try using "therefore" to start this sentence.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 12:13
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    This does make sense. However, is Therefore applicable in the sentence I provided? "So that" is a grammatical structure whose meaning is completely different, while in the case I've given I'm looking for the meaning of "Therefore/Keeping this in mind".
    – Alister
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 12:16
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    Only if you drop 'so as'.
    – Trevor Christopher Butcher
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 12:17
  • Yeah Trevor is right on the money. "So" quite literally does not sound better here, because you already have another "so" shortly thereafter. On a general note, no two words are interchangeable. That's why they are two words, and not one word. It's a very silly question, really.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 12:48
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    @AaronF one is confusing and the other is not. One you can make stupid jokes about, and the other you can't. One is an iamb or a dactyl, the other a choree. Do I need to go on? A difference does not have to be a difference in meaning. It can be a difference in register, dialect. Two different words are always two different words. You can always, always, find situations in which they are not interchangeable. Like, even in this question, where the two words do mean the same thing, they are still not interchangeable. The prosody and register are different. Every change you make is a change.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 18:54

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Ah, academic writing. Generally it's best to take a prescriptivist approach when writing in academia for non-creative writing tasks.

Therefore doesn't work well here because it implies either a solution to an issue or a following statement. Therefore doesn't lend itself to questions unless given in the form of a statement. For instance:

Therefore, I'd be interested to know what you think the government can do so as to curb the use of this means of transportation.

It works better than so when written that way because you are requesting feedback rather than asking a question. Of course, in academic papers, avoiding I-clauses is generally a good plan. In other words, don't use that sentence.

In this case, so definitely works much better, but it's often the case that when you have trouble with a single word in a sentence that it may be better to rewrite the sentence entirely.

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