Many, many houses do not have anything other than on-street parking here. Since 2012 I've lived in 5 houses, and three of them had no driveway. I'm currently buying a house which has no drive way, with no way of fitting one. Apparently 1/3 houses have only on street parking. Unless they also provide huge, huge grants to rapidly implement dense onstreet charging, and fast, this is a pipedream and will end up getting pushed back.
Edit: To evaluate the scale of how difficult it is to implement on street parking - go and have a look out of your own window in a built up area and count the number of lamp posts and the corresponding number of cars. Right now (9:35am), in a pretty built up area, I can see three lamp posts on my own street, and eighteen cars parked on the road. One of those lamp posts is located where it's illegal to park because of double yellow lines. I currently live in a rented flat at the moment, and that has another 25 car parking spaces. To get charging points located there would require a number of disparately located and willing landlords to agree to wire up the car park for electric charging too.
I recently got a Tesla while living in London with no off street parking. I had the same basic concerns, and only went ahead because I knew I'd be moving somewhere with off street parking within a few months.
But it actually turned out to be a complete non issue. My usage pattern (short occasional trips around town to shops etc and regular long trips to Bristol and back) could be handled entirely by stopping off for 15 mins at a supercharger when I went passed one. A bit more frequent than ordinary refuelling but not much more. It's reasonable to assume that 10 years from now fast charging will be at least somewhat more effective and a lot more ubiquitous.
I didn't have to touch any of the other charging infrastructure in London but there is a lot of it.
If we had been staying long term we would have used the 7kw chargers being built into lampposts all over the place[1]. The council will add one in if you have a car and ask for one, but there was already one within my usual parking area.
The lamppost thing seems to be London focused for now, but they're extremely straightforward installations and news like this is going to see them pop up everywhere.
For the monthly cost of your Tesla, you could probably take a taxi/uber everywhere you needed to go. You can afford 20 cab rides at $40/ride per month, totaling $800/month.
Do you take your car out more than 20 times a month?
Perhaps we should stop letting individuals appropriate public space for storage of their private property, and charge market rate for the land used by parking, thereby encouraging people who are not car dependent to buy houses such as yours instead of demanding a public handout for vehicle storage?
(The High Cost Of Free Parking explores this issue in depth)
What about houses which are not within walking distance of amenities, and do not have room for off-street parking? That's a large proportion of suburban (or even urban) housing in the UK.
Time to build some amenities and public transport. Suburban dead zones where you can't do anything without a car are terrible anyway. What about old people who can't drive anymore but can't afford to move? Or children?
Buy or rent a place to store your property, or sell the stuff you can't store on your land? I've been talking about getting a piano but my wife has reminded me we'll need to extend the house first, sadly.
I mean, I agree to some extent, but there's also no public transport service to the place I'm buying a house other than a single bus that runs twice a day for taking kids to school.
Then that would either create pressure to have more public transport, or affect the prices on the homes as people would prefer to live accessible. Changes don't happen in a vacuum, they bring other changes with them.
There are about 7 million houses in England without some form of off street housing. Changing that will take far more work that wiring up ~2M lamp posts.
Also, to ban all parking on public roads is also infeasible aside from the houses with parking issues. Most city centre businesses would vehemently oppose such a move without replacement parking which would cost far far more money from the public purse.
So although I'm quite happy for people to have opinions, the consequences of enacting this opinion would be a greater waste of public resources than just allowing people to park on the side of the road (in most cases).
Well in practice you have a right usually to park your car on the street but not your hot tub because that's how things were designed and worked for decades and it's not going to change in a hurry. The public streets are controlled via the government by the public and they are mostly ok with it.
I mean, with new teslas, their range is similar enough to gas cars that you only need to charge them about once a week, if that. And they charge fast enough that it's not terribly dissimilar from hitting the gas station, which currently is perhaps a 10 minute affair for gas. Bumping that to ~20min isn't a dealbreaker. It's feasible, if a little bit annoying, to have a refueling story for them that's similar to that of gas cars.
I think this idea of electrics desperately needing to charge every time they're parked - it's not wrong, but it's getting pretty close to being an anachronism, and I expect it actually will be on in 5ish years, certainly 10.
Imagine you turn up to a charging station behind 4 other cars, and there's 2 charging points. Your 20 minute wait is now an hour. If each car took 10 minutes then you'd only be waiting 20 minutes.
Increasing the average waiting time in a queue has a terrible impact on throughput.
In isolation yes. But holistically the "charging station instead of gas station" equation has more factors - you have to discount
- everyone who can charge at home (i.e. anyone with a garage or their own driveway),
- those who change in public places like shopping malls or at work, and
- any other infrastructure (like the "charging port in street light" thing)
so the new "gas station" is likely to get less busy - depending on home ownership in the area and how many shopping malls get charging ports, most cars might only ever visit "gas station" on a road trip.
I’d imagine that the number of charging points would increase somewhat to accommodate that. Presumably the number of pumps at a station is a function of required throughput.
I also think there will be a lot more roadside individual charging stations rather than specialised large locations that are convenient because of the centralised storage of a physical liquid.
I’d imagine that the number of charging points would increase somewhat to accommodate that.
Sure, but that's limited by land in cities and electrical infrastructure in more rural areas. Whether there'll ever be enough charging points to make charging your car not be a hassle is something only time will tell.
> which currently is perhaps a 10 minute affair for gas. Bumping that to ~20min isn't a dealbreaker
Here in the UK 10 minutes is already on the upper end of acceptable, I can't remember the last time it took me that long. 20 minutes would definitely be a dealbreaker for the vast majority of people.
How much is a Tesla? Many tens of thousands of pounds. They have to be a lot cheaper or I am just going to buy another second hand car and just use it as a donour car for my existing vehicle.
As of this year you can get an a lease on an electric company car with a benefit in kind tax rate of 0%. i.e You don't have to pay income tax on the lease[0].
That can make an enormous difference to their affordability, and should also inject a large pool of electric cars into the second hand market over the next few years.
I do not want to lease a car. I want to own a car. I don't want to be paying monthly for something unless I absolutely have to.
> That can make an enormous difference to their affordability, and should also inject a large pool of electric cars into the second hand market over the next few years.
Still too expensive. My current vehicle cost me £4000. It has been paid for (I got a bank loan, I didn't lease or hire purchase) for many years now. It cost me next to nothing to repair, run, tax and MOT. It has next to no fancy electronics and it just works. I can to take it to any garage in the UK and they can repair it, with Teslas, BMWs, Mercs etc you can't really do that.
There is no benefit to me in owning an electric vehicle.
It's not that hard to build curbside chargers. You don't need high current chargers when most parking spots have a charger. A kilowatt or two will be plenty. Cars spend 23h a day parked. EVs use 15-25kWh/100km. Most people drive less than 50km a day. Sprinkle some fast charging along highways for longer road trips and charging is no longer an issue.
As someone that works on software that includes functions to try to figure out where you can place electric car chargers - it absolutely is very hard. The grid just isn't ready for it.
It can be done, but will require massive investment in infrastructure.
There are also problems such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve and other things that can be mitigated with ADR to an extent, but it's absolutely not easy
Of course, unmitigated climate change will be catastrophic. No argument there.
I do however think that we would be better off funding and building massive amounts of solar that gives us enough energy surplus to do large-scale carbon capture, instead of forcing everyone to move to electric vehicles.
If you think about it, we right now have an open loop transportation system - dig stuff up from the ground, burn it and forget about it in the atmosphere. Basically, extracting easy to use energy that was captured over a long period.
But we now have the tech to extend that to a closed loop system - capture enough energy from solar to recycle the burned fuel back into burnable fuel.
This will also mitigate all the co2 created when producing electric cars btw.
Electric vehicles solve several problems at once though. They don't emit any of the other unpleasant gases, particularly NO2. And they massively reduce other particulates (no clutch, regenerative brakes).
Plus, having that much battery capacity plugged into the grid should be exploitable to help manage the vagaries of solar and wind power.
This is hilariously impractical. Have you seen curbside chargers? There's some up the road from me and by no means does it look simple to install them, not to mention that you'd have to do it along _every_ single residential street _everywhere_ and we don't have the electrical capacity to do it anyway!
If it really is so simple, why when I live in London do I not see entire streets filled with chargers? Surely you'd think that'd be in place by now given the time frames?
I think it's hand-wavey to say 'oh you can just charge at low current'. And if you've ever seen a petrol station near a motorway here you'll realise the idea of parking your car for x * 10 mins to charge would simply not work, there'd be multiple mile tailbacks.
Overall the govt treats this issue like it's a smaller problem than it really is.
You don't see streets filled with chargers because almost nobody has an EV yet. Just like you didn't see many gas stations providing unleaded fuel two years before catalytic converters became mandatory.
It's funny because I actually remember the unleaded/leaded transition and petrol stations were stocking it very early on. The equivalent simile here would be if unleaded was going to be made mandatory in a year and basically 3 petrol stations in the UK stocked it.
The govt are going to make these cars mandatory soon. London is the ideal place to do this due to infra + rich people with EVs (more than you might think, far from 'almost nobody'), yet I don't see any street that has charges along it.
My point is that it's not easy. Having to upgrade the grid and dig up tons of roads is simply not easy no matter how much people want it to be.
Why pay to own and store your own vehicle, which you might use 5% of the time, when you could hail an autonomous vehicle on demand, for less than the cost of current ride-hailing services?
Owning your own vehicle will become an unnecessary luxury, reserved for the kind of people who have the space to store them.
Except that autonomous cars vastly far away despite all the hype by silicon valley. They still cannot deal with edge case scenarios at all well and are far from being proven to be safe. Relying on this being in place by 2030 + lifetime of 2nd hand cars is a huge gamble.
I don’t disagree, but I wouldn’t describe it as a “huge gamble.”
People would just need to continue owning electric/second-hand ICE vehicles and, in the case of electric vehicles, find ways of charging them away from their homes.
When autonomous vehicles become widely available (2030, 2040, or whenever), I think many would decide owning an expensive, depreciating asset they only use sparingly is more hassle than it’s worth.
I agree that once it becomes feasible many would prefer autonomous (hell yeah, a cheap ride home when I'm drunk? Or a sleep on the way to work? Ideal) but given the timelines we should look elsewhere for the time being.
I think "find ways of charging them away from their homes" does not scale given how long a charge takes and the numbers involved. If you've ever seen a petrol station at peak time you tend to get an idea of just how impractical that is.
I don't see any way round a truly colossal investment in infrastructure in order to move to fully electric in the UK (or any country), which maybe is necessary - but govts need to openly say this and then start actually taking action on it, not haughtily act as if it's not the case.
My gut feel is that things will work themselves out.
A lot of people have driveways and can charge at home. Those that don’t are likely those in cities who typically make shorter journeys and will need to charge infrequently.
If you’re one of the strange people who commute long distances out of a major city, you’ll just need to make a personal decision whether it’s worth the hassle.
I’ve been quite impressed at the rollout of charging infrastructure so far. If my quick Googling is anything to go by, there are roughly 30k public charging points for approximately 160k all-electric vehicles in the UK. Both numbers are growing rapidly but that ratio feels high right now.
The tech is already there. The incentives are there for energy companies to charge for the electricity. The political will (i.e. to permit installation of charging points in public spaces) is there.
> owning an expensive, depreciating asset they only use sparingly is more hassle than it’s worth.
Appears though that electric cars are likely to be far more durable than gasoline powered cars and cheaper. In ten years a EV will probably cost 80% what a gasoline powered car would and will last 30 years not 15. Cost of ownership over the life of the car would then be 40% of a gasoline car is today. Less considering maintenance and fuel.
I disagree. Batteries are very expensive and ultimately consumable parts. I do not see them lasting 30 years.
Consider also it’s unusual for people to own cars for even 10+ years currently, for reasons that apply just as readily to electric or autonomous vehicles.
People want the latest and greatest. Many value the warranties they get with new vehicles. Over 30 years the odds of a vehicle being stolen or involved in an accident and being written off are also pretty high.
High mileage Tesla's show that the batteries last somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 miles. Which is 25 to 40 years based on the median number of miles people drive per year.
> People want the latest and greatest.
Lot of people just want an affordable way to get from point A to B with a minimum of hassle and expense. The game changer with electric is if the batteries and motors last 25 to 40 years then the rest of the car needs to match that.
I am not sure how you converted mileage to time here. Dividing a distance by speed would only works in assumption that the battery does not degrade over time by itself. Is there any working 25 years old Li-ion battery somewhere?
Having seen London lampposts being mentioned in this discussion repeatedly, I must wonder - to what overprovisioning levels was the London streetlamp network built?
A typical oldschool sodium lamp pulls approx. 400-500 W. If you replace it with an appropriate LED - and that's critical, there are so many "superb" LED installations recently: yes, it pulls less, yes, it's more whiteish, no, you can't see s... Take two steps away from the very narrow cone and you are standing in total darkness, somebody can mug you and the person looking from the window in the building right next to you would see nothing.
So, if you replace it with a proper LED, you save let's say 400 W per lamppost plus any extra the original design left for voltage losses, impedance loop, etc.
Now, this is all fancy schmancy when you install one charger per street and one car uses it occasionally, but when making bold claims like "all electric within few years", you take 4 lampposts x 400 W for 20 cars and you can charge each car with 0.08 kW. That may not be even enough for standby consumption (battery lifesupport - cooling/heating).
So, back to the original question - does London have some kind of special supernetwork running through streets with megawatts to spare, or is it just capitalising of having just few percent of cars charging from it. What's the plan to get to 100 % load within 10 years?
I agree. My previous flat had parking about 50 metres away. The previous, people just parked anywhere on the road. I bet they won't be installing charging points at every random location on a road that anyone could possible park on
I live in Edinburgh, one of the more car-unfriendly cities in the UK and recently bought a Model 3. I park on the street, the city has gone nowhere with its plans to provide on street chargers.
Yet it isn't a problem, despite a relative lack of public chargers compared to elsewhere in the country it is still perfectly feasible. I've tweaked my habits to go to the supermarket that has a charger in the car park, when planning what to do at the weekend I check nearby charging locations.
Business locations can acquire visitors by offering them, and there's all sorts of upsell benefits. A garden centre that has one might get me to stay and visit their cafe if I know I'm going to be there for an hour for instance.
Is this strategy still going to work if everyone is doing the same thing?
My local supermarket has a couple of electric car charging points, amongst perhaps 200+ car parking spaces. On a busy saturday most of those spaces are full.
Certainly it's possible to install a charging point at every parking space, but it requires both a large scale building project to lay all those wires (the existing charge points are right by the supermarket - where the power is already available), and also potentially an upgrade to the local power network.
If each of those cars is fast charging at 50 kW, the supermarket carpark will suddenly be consuming 10 MW. Assuming a constant cycle of people, that's equivalent to the average power usage of 20,000 houses.
Just in one supermarket car park.
Fortunately it's unlikely everyone will charge every time they pop in, but it's something that has to be considered carefully. The electric grid has to be sized for peak load - most of the time it's not near capacity. If we're going to slot electric cars into the existing grid we have to manage demand very carefully - which means only charging cars when electricity supply is high or demand is low. Everyone rapid charging whenever they feel like it (eg during the Saturday shop) will cause huge stability issues.
The most straightforward way to manage it is to try to get as many cars as possible charging overnight (or charging whenever they're idle) and then manage when they actually draw power centrally based on electricity supply. That means extensive kerb side charging points.
How do these public charging stations work in terms of payment? Do you have to activate it using a credit/debit card first and then just leave it plugged in?
The supermarket ones are free - though only 7kW, as they're for customer use. I park up and go for a walk round the local park then do my shopping.
For the rest I use Charge Place Scotland - it's a scheme where you pay £20 a year and get free unlimited charging at various locations around Scotland, they do have some separate locations you have to pay, usually for faster charging. Certainly amongst my friends with electric vehicles it's a point of pride to never pay for charging beyond that £20.
And places that do have driveways have often created them by paving over an existing garden, which is two steps back for the environment. In my lifetime I’ve seen proper front gardens all but disappear in my area.
I live in urban Japan and outside my window there are zero cars parked on the street because every car is required to have a registered parking space within 2km of its owners’ residence.
Yeah, but it was a policy enacted in 1962 when car usage worldwide was a fraction of what it is now. Can an elected government impose such a policy today? I don't see it as being politically realistic.
Not many houses come without petrol/gas stations on their drives. Yes its an issue at the moment with batteries and charging but tech will catch up with rapid charging points etc.
It's going to require a massive infrastructure investment. At the moment, the National Grid couldn't cope with millions of cars being charged. It's all perfectly possible with enough investment and political will but I'm not optimistic. Just look at the smart meter rollout [1] or broadband in rural areas [2] for examples of things which are technically possible but turn out to take huge amounts of money and time.
Some places here you get no street parking, and if you're building you need a minimum amount of spots for cars in the plans.
In some parts of Japan, when you buy a new car the dealership has to get confirmation from police that you have a designated parking spot. They come around and measure it, then get back to the dealership who then gets to sell you the car. I'm sure now they sometimes have records and stuff they can go off but the gist is the city won't be providing space for your car, it's up to you.
This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming:
* it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade
* it's not enough even if it does happen
* it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action)
* it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the current unwilling government
* people will eat it up with a spoon and act like this is a real thing and a sign of progress and a victory
This is the same as my committing to start my diet, by giving up one specific thing, but not for a decade, after my doctor told me I gave 6m to lose weight or die. And to celebrate I'll eat two pizzas and 4 litres of soda, for breakfast.
I think you’ve completely missed the point of what is a very reasonable and forward-thinking signalling exercise.
You cannot have sudden cliff-edges in policies (like banning the sale of new ICE vehicles) that would put thousands, if not millions of people out of jobs.
You need to send signals like this to the market well in advance so they can invest and plan ahead.
> - Start by implementing a odd/even rule for license plates in big cities, even full bans on weekends.
> - Tax and/or de-subsidize the meat industry.
And just like that, you've been voted straight out of office. Better luck next life connecting to the electorate.
You can't do those things. Humanity is a distributed consensus problem. Climate change presents an interesting change in the fitness landscape topology ahead.
Then humanity is clearly headed off a cliff in that landscape.
Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now. Just our political processes have not allowed those signals to reach "the economy" and we seem to be unable to act on anything that isn't felt by the economy. Which, I might add, is not a god-given fact, but rather a political choice.
Anyway, we will have a cliff. And it will have been announced. And people will suffer when our consensus finding process drives us all over this cliff.
> Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now.
That's part of the problem. The general public have been hearing it for decades now, and are probably just sick and tired of hearing about it. As far back as I can remember, it's been nothing but "Nuclear weapons are gonna kill us all" "Acid rain is gonna kill us all!" "Smog is gonna kill us all!" "Drugs and crime are gonna kill us all" "The ozone hole is gonna kill us all!" "Global warming is gonna kill us all!" "Terrorism is gonna kill us all" "Climate change is gonna kill us all!" Yet, here we are, still going on towards these various cliffs. I can at least put myself in the general public's shoes for a bit and empathize with their crisis fatigue. Economic crises are felt immediately--you lose your job. It's no surprise that it's politically easier to favor economics over other crises that are perpetually happening Real Soon Now.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the diagnosis of "crisis fatigue" but for the examples you give, here's a breakdown by my own very biased view. I'm leaving out Acid Rain because I never really was part of that discourse (too young) and didn't read about it after the fact either.
These four (IMHO) do actually pose clear and present dangers to human health & wellbeing at scale:
* Nuclear Weapons
* Smog
* Ozone
* Global Warming / Climate Change
They were identified as risks and (except for Ozone, which was actually tackled and is improving to my knowlege) continue to be shown as risks. Or rather, by now, as actually doing harm.
On the other hand, these two here were never the big catastrophes that they were made out to be, yet were (and are!) continually overblown.
* Drugs & Crime
* Terrorism
Neither of them ever had the existential threat potential that the other group had. Not-so-incidentally, the proposed "solutions" to these problems were always...
* highly profitable for certain industries
* useful for conservative re-elections
* based in little to no fact
* often (predictably) counter-productive.
Bottom line: if we had actually put time and money into existing, working solutions to measurable, actual problems, we would have been perfectly capable to do so. We did it for Ozone, we could have done it again. We didn't.
Instead, we put countless dollars and lives into "solving" problems that were pretty much caused by their "solutions", and mostly because that was in the best interest of very few people.
If people are tired of anything, I hope/suspect that they are tired of a political/economic system that predictably ended up producing this mess.
the market can and will correct itself. there are two problems however:
- actually getting rules implemented and enforced (political suicide by regulators - had an example of that in my own country just a couple months ago, made a mess in the government, the new rules didn't pass in parliament, governing party lost 10 pp in polls anyway)
- very irregular period of convergence from old rules to new (societal turmoil guaranteed, political consequences very likely) - see thatcher's closure of British coal mines for a good example
- the market as such will correct itself but is entirely unconcerned with the welfare of human beings in the meantime, and will continue to be unconcerned with it afterwards.
Of course you can't do them storming straight out of the gates. It just doesn't work like that. But sure, you can do them perfectly.
How?
- You provide incentives for attractive alternatives.
- You invest in those alternatives and you invest in contextual drivers that make the transition more appealing. For instance, you provide an integrated plans for urban planning that cover different concerns.
- You emphasize the benefits of those alternatives on an individual level.
- You make a compelling narrative why the status quo is holding the individual back.
- You diversify your narrative to to identify / appeal with as many different social groups as you have to.
That's just the content. Then there's also your political position. Whether your part of a power elite, or your not, you still need tactics to garner support, whether you like it or not. Alinsky's 12 rules for radicals, for instance, is a classic example in that regard.
The automative industry or the meat industry didn't just happen simply because individual consumers out of their own accord. They also happened because consumers where incentivized to buy in a 'modern' lifestyle with a heavy focus on cheap and convenience during the 20th century as opposed to more traditional, localized ways of living; and because those industries that supported this cultural shift were directly and indirectly subsidized. For instance, cities got covered in highway infrastructure in the 1950's and 1960's paid for through public funding and public policy making.
Public governance is about figuring out feedback loops in social, economical and political dynamics and finding ways to bend them towards your agenda.
Banning cars in city centers is already happening in European cities. The usual argument is to make living in the city more comfortable or make the city more attractive for commerce driven by regional or international tourism (both of which having their own drawbacks and tensions).
People used to eat little meat, not because of a "traditional" or "localized" way of living but because they were too poor to afford it.
As soon as they got richer they could do what they dreamed of.
It's like cars, really. People used to walk. Not because it was nice and healthy but because they had no choice. Then bikes and public transport werean improvement, but really people do prefer the comfort and freedom of driving their own cars and when that became possible and affordable they did not need much convincing to jump at the opportunity.
First, historic cuisines and diets evolved throughout history, and differed greatly depending by geographic location. Beware of generalizing particular historic contexts. You can't reliably extrapolate the dietary patterns of European serfs - as explained by their particular socio-economic context - and apply that the Mayan culture during the Classic period (same time frame 200-900 AD).
Second, the "they were too poor" argument only carries meaning in concrete socio-economic contexts. Even then, do note that the modern liberal conceptual framework of poor and rich didn't exist in earlier times. This even holds up today. It's tenuous claim to assume that, for instance, native cultures perceive themselves as "poor". If they do see themselves as "poor" today, that's always in reference to the dominant modern economic model based on western liberal enlightenment values and principles which has impacted their culture as an external factor.
> People used to walk. Not because it was nice and healthy but because they had no choice.
They didn't have a choice, but that doesn't say anything about how people perceived relying on muscle power across history, culture and geographical location.
Just 20 years ago, nobody considered the absence of social media and smartphones as a fundamental lacking in life. That's totally different today. For a short while, it was a choice, today, access to digital technology is a hard requirement in order to be able to participate in modern industrialized society. This is an example of how a feedback loop was created between availability and demand creating an artificial need. The same is true for most modern conveniences.
I'm deeply happy that I don't have to live a relatively short life working land, foraging or hunting game. But at the same time, I'm very much aware that's a hindsight bias and I'm very much aware that most modern conveniences aren't a prerequisite for the survival of humanity. As it stands, many of those modern conveniences have contributed to the existential threat which is Climate Change.
It's not. It's a general observation that holds true in many place, certainly Europe (and thus the West in general) and, say, China. The amount of meat eaten was constrained by the value of animals and most people simply could not afford to eat more meat than they did.
Likewise for cars. It seems to be an ideological take to claim that people do not prefer comfort and ease of transport...
exactly. our western standard of living is simply too cheap. too many costs are externalized and, even worse, people like to pretend these costs don't even exist.
Absolutely correct. And this is probably the "great filter". Unless we do something now we are headed down a very bad road. Our only option is going to be geo-engineering which is a risky business
Friendly reminder that measures like this unevenly affect people in different social classes, because those who are well-off can just buy two cars and be completely unaffected.
I'm not sure it's so easy to buy second car in Beijing. Anything is possible if you are very rich, but that doesn't matter if there's a 1% more cars instead of 50%.
What are leaders for if they can't lead ? Should their job not be to convince people of what needs to be done ? They do a very good job by the way when it comes to pushing for liberalism.
This is your own agenda and I am pretty sure implementing these solutions does not cost you much personally.
What cost have you chosen to bear ? Do you exclusively use public transport ? Have you banned planes from your life ? Home delivery (the last mile is the one that creates the more pollution) ? What share of your revenue do you give to plant trees ?
> You need to send signals like this to the market well in advance so they can invest and plan ahead.
We are talking about billion dollars of investment at stake. You need years to train engineers, develop new technologies, ...
The role of politics is not only to implement policies but also to signal where we are heading so that a decentralized solution can be achieved.
I gave some examples of things that come to mind to me, some of them cost very little. I am sure that the big impact does not come just from actions like the ones I mentioned but from small changes that accumulate.
One thing is for real, every one of us could be doing more. It is not enough to just delegate this problem to someone else, politician or otherwise.
I know that it is very hard to change habits, more so when you are not seeing the outcome. But in the end it is just about doing what you believe is fixing the problem, not delegating.
Somehow I see a finger pointed at me, telling me to do more. The finger should be pointed at each and one of us, telling us to do more, and vote better.
Because most people don't live in city centres where the "fun" actually is, so they have to get there somehow, sometimes from 10-20 miles away. They could all use public transit (in places where it's available), but that would increase the burden on that kind of transit. Especially for big cities, that was already quite busy - well, until the pandemic.
What I've seen happening here in the UK is that a lot of people leave their cars in a park & ride or close to a train station then shuttle in, which I guess is a step forward, but a lot are still driving all the way.
Because leisure time often coincides with outdoor activities and traveling to other places. The experience is much nicer when you're outside of your city. And even in Europe there're many places to visit which don't have train stations.
> Start by implementing a odd/even rule for license plates in big cities
Then rich people just buy two cars. This increases carbon emissions.
Also, people are pissed off, so the government loses the next election.
> Tax and/or de-subsidize the meat industry
The way to go would be to tax carbon emissions, and lay down a timetable where they taxes will get larger over time; then everyone has big incentives to change behaviour.
The first time a government announced they would take action but not for a decade, it signalled action would be taken. This is the 1000th time a government has said "no action today but maybe in a decade". That signals no action. That's the same signal markets have been given for several decades now.
I am happy to admit this is a complex issue, one that needs a global solution, an expensive one, maybe an unsolvable one.
But we also have to admit that so far no action has been taken. And this isn't action either.
That's what I'm asking for here: let's all be honest for this thread and admit this is worthless and we're running out of time and we either need to make hard choices OR admit we're not going to fix it...
1990: do you want to fix global warming, it'll take 1% of gdp. -- nah
2000: It's now 3% -- nah
2010: It's now 5% -- nah
2020: It's now 7% -- it's too expensive to fix now
We need to tax pollution the amount it costs to clean up that pollution, that's all. You can fly as much as you want if you pay the costs.
I suggest a £1 tax on non EV cars, that doubles each month
When it gets to £16 there will be protests, when it gets to £64 it will be repealed. This is what happened in France.
If new personal cars are EV only by 2030 then by 2025 most manufacturers will have changed most of their product line, by 2029 virtually all will have changed virtually all.
how bad will it get for the UK specifically? honest question, I'm not a climate scientist. Brief googling, floods, more extreme temps (like the rest of Europe now?), maybe they did the math and decided that simply shutting down the Thames Barrier and a few other measures would be cheaper than drastic hard ICE bans etc?
Not to cast any doubt on the horrible terrible disasters that the global warming will surely bring, but the UK is not Florida, so maybe they did some location-centric math and found that specifically for them it's not life or death?
No, it's not Florida, so it won't be that bad, but in my short time here (about 8 years) it does seem like winter storms are more frequent, I'm sure the Western (and Southern?) coasts have seen a lot of rain and flooding. Some recent summers have had some pretty intense heatwaves (35+ C around the county). It's definitely not a catastrophe, but there are changes
The signals that the ban is coming have been there for decades. Professor David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government, suggested a ban on petrol cars in 2002 (http://www.evuk.co.uk/hotwires/rawstuff/art33.html). That would have been a bit early for a ban in my opinion, but had the government heeded his advice and put in a legally binding ban to come in from, say, 2015, then the UK would be well ahead of the curve and would have created tens of thousands of jobs in the electric vehicle industry.
It's also worth pointing out that the 'ban' doesn't ban the sale of all ICE cars - hybrids are still going to be available for sale until at least 2035.
Companies don’t seem to respond to threats of threats. Only direct threats to their existence. I know it’s late and may get changed, but any car company now has to take it seriously or risk going out of business pretty soon
> Professor David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government, suggested a ban on petrol cars in 2002
from that article:
"Britain should follow the example of Lombardy, a heavily-industrialised region in northern Italy, which is to ban the sale of fossil-fuel powered cars from 1 January 2005"
Q: Did Lombardy really enact that ban in 2005? What happened as a result?
I've read that article a couple of times and am left with the impression that this "ban" may have been nothing more than a proposal by Mr Formigoni. Have I misunderstood?
This is a perfect example. Talked about by the forces that enacted it as early as 2010, the Brexit referendum happens in 2016, and leaving the EU has been gradually happening since then.
No, there’s 6 weeks to go and there’s still no trade agreement in place, nothing material has happened in the last 4 years. Any business that imports/exports has no clue what will happen on 1st Jan.
But yea I can get a blue passport now. What a great thing to waste years on.
Nothing did need to change, but since we've decided that we want no part of the single market or any regulatory alignment things will have to change unless we decide otherwise. Because of our own foolishness for 4 years, we have created a deadline for ourselves.
Maybe my point wasn’t clear. Very little will change (in the short term at least), the “deadline” is a misnomer, and whichever day finally becomes the real leaving day (as it’s been and no doubt will continue to be stretched out and kicked down the road) everyone will wake up and notice it’s much the same as any other, the histrionic cries coming from Twitter users notwithstanding.
As to “nothing did need to change” that quite clearly wasn’t the case or a winning vote for leaving wouldn’t be remotely possible. In any well supported political view there is some truth to be found in its suggestions and/or grievances, whether it’s ultimately misguided or not.
No- the UK enters a WTO agreement on the 1st jan, that means imports taxes, duties and restrictions on a whole bunch of things. It’s impossible to plan for because it can all change at the last minute.
It’s easy to say nothing will change if it doesn’t affect you. I don’t understand why a trade agreement with a few extra bits of international legislation was put to a general public referendum. It’s got nothing to do with the average joe on the street, the general public has no understanding of this.
> No- the UK enters a WTO agreement on the 1st jan, that means imports taxes, duties and restrictions on a whole bunch of things
The WTO's goal is to reduce trade friction, hence it puts ceilings on duties. The UK (now) sets its own taxes, duties and restrictions, being part of the WTO does not affect that. As a service dominated economy it's in the UK's interests to lower protective barriers - setting tariffs to zero would be of a net benefit to the UK. You'll note that the UK is a founding member of the WTO, its trade either side of the deadline will not violate any WTO protocol. Standards (ironically) will also be entirely in alignment with the EU. Processes will not change either as there already exist processes for handling non-EU trade.
The places where import taxes, duties and restrictions will change is exports into the EU, hence the desire for a trade agreement.
> It’s impossible to plan for because it can all change at the last minute.
No physical processes will change. Numbers on a spreadsheet may do.
> It’s easy to say nothing will change if it doesn’t affect you.
Yet you argue that people shouldn't have been allowed a say, and it will force you to argue that it doesn't affect most people while trying to maintain that an unimaginable doom will be brought on <checks notes> the entire UK population.
Pick one or the other but to maintain both is absurd.
> I don’t understand why a trade agreement with a few extra bits of international legislation
Those "few extra bits of international legislation" include massive changes to the UK constitution. The same lament could be said about entering into the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum (or, even better, a single issue general election), among many other changes that led to a vote where people got to show their frustration about not being consulted or even listened to previously.
> was put to a general public referendum
It was put to a referendum because those in power thought it would kill the thing dead, and the alternative was seeing a political party (UKIP) get seats in Westminster, if not usurp one of the major parties. It was only a combination of electoral fraud (in Farage's case) and the first past the post system (in the party's case) that kept them out of Westminster, that wouldn't have occured again, as the referendum result shows.
> It’s got nothing to do with the average joe on the street
Again, please, be serious.
> the general public has no understanding of this.
The choice is simple, give up sovereignty for access to a large trade bloc. That's not hard for anyone with an IQ above 85 to understand. The minutiae and ramifications are much harder but the UK is a representative democracy, not an Athenian democracy of the kind that might allow the kind of condescending sneer at the plebs you are partaking in.
> It was only a combination of electoral fraud (in Farage's case)
Reading this back, it reads like it was Farage that was the one engaging in fraud, but it was the Conservative party[0]. Barely a whisper in the media about it because it suited them, and nothing was done about it, which may be a timely lesson…
A fair point. But if they can't have a cliff today there isn't any reason to think they can have a cliff in 2030. If they were serious could put a quota in place today and start tightening it, or a quota and a timeline for tightening it. Maybe they are already doing that, I don't know.
Announcing radical change in a different government's term is standard political theatrics. All that matters is the actions they take now.
Millions of people die or they are out of Jobs? What a hard choice to make. The consideration shouldn't be "but what about the economy?". It should be what if we don't do it.
Problem is, it's not the same people doing the dieing. And the dieing doesn't happen right now.
Inverse situation for covid. Suddenly there is a lot of money we can borrow from our children, because 'a problem right not' VS 'à problem in 10 years'
Not sure how we can fix this 'bug' in our governance model..
I would say the opposite actually. We have chosen quite drastic measures in many countries for a relatively small number of deaths. Global warning is not 1% dies. It very well could be 90% and we return to pre-industrial levels of civilization.
I think you’re being a bit unfair here. The UK has made good progress in moving away from fossil fuels in recent years.
As of June this year, the UK was generating more power from renewables than from fossil fuels. A decade ago hardly any power was being generated from renewables. The UK has gone months without burning coal this year, and plans to decommission the last three coal power plants in the next five years.
One of the things in these proposals that isn't as eye-catching as "ban petrol cars" was investment and subsidies to get to 4x wind power generation.
Right now it's windy and the UK gets about 10GW of electricity from wind turbines (maybe a bit more) the past few days. But at 4x that would be 40GW of electricity, which would actually be enough to just power the whole country on a typical weekday evening (as the sun goes down, day time place of work usage isn't all stopped yet but home usage is picking up).
Now, obviously it isn't always windy, but on the other hand it also isn't always a weekday evening. At 3am on a Sunday in June the country is ticking over at 20GW, and the weather doesn't care so your wind turbines might be kicking out 40GW anyway. We need to store or export that. That's a key challenge for the next decade.
But on the other hand, this IS indeed a super drastic action and we can't expect any nation on Earth apart from possibly, a few city-states like Singapore, to do as much in the same time frame. Petrol cars will be mainstay of transportation for about 40-50 years and will dominate new car sales for at least 20-30 years depending on the country. Anything but classic petrol and diesel cars will still hold tiny market shares 10 years down the road almost everywhere.
I mean, the climate change situation is hopeless. Some measures may be taken in the name of it, and they are important, but they are mainly a side action: for example, they do a lot to suppress oil-funded dictatorships like Russia or Saudi Arabia - people won't support the measures if they were directed at that openly, but if it's about climate, they are a lot easier to sell. But, we have to just admit that the global warming will proceed and probably faster than even the worst estimates predict, and just plan accordingly out of this assumption. It is too profitable to mine and use fossil fuels, any large nation trying to stop doing so will be competed out of existence by those who don't (and they will have way lower energy efficiency so will displace your uncompetitive products with theirs, in the end INCREASING overall emissions), and largest polluters are nuclear powers so you can't even force them to stop by military action.
Just see where the climate will stand when 3x of the current extractable reserves of fossil fuels are burned (because technology will develop and a lot of new reserves will become available which are now not). And plan for that level of global temperatures, precipitation and sea levels. It will happen, and the nations that win are those who plan in advance.
You are way off. It took about 15 years to go from cities dominated by horse carriages to them being dominated by cars. It took longer in agriculture and rural areas. But the shift to electrical vehicles is trivial in comparison. Technically and economically we could easily prohibit new fossil fuelled cars by 2025.
Sun and wind power is already much cheaper to install than coal powered plants, and once sun and wind power is up the energy is almost free. Fossil fuel companies are currently struggling, just from this simple economy.
In the field of electricity generation, sure. Technology is there, apart from storage technology.
But, given still higher costs and range anxiety, it will be very difficult to convince most consumers to buy electric cars. It will be most probably only generational shift: people born before ~1990 will still buy petrol cars till they die out, and younger generations will progressively shift, having different habits. It will take whole century to fully switch to electric vehicles in developed countries - and lack of reliable electric grid will make it in places like Africa even slower.
An even harder, and even larger part of the story is industrial heat (needs to be very reliable and cheap), and residential heating (needs to be very, very cheap and available in large volumes). No good non-fossil solutions here exist.
In Norway more than 50% of all new cars are electric. They are heavily subsidised, but it proves that it is only an economic question. I was born in the seventies. My next car will be electric. The only reason I’m holding of is that there’s no model that fit our needs yet (except an very expensive Tesla), but I expect that to change within two years.
For industrial heat they will use hydrogen produced from renewable electricity. See for example [0] where it will be used for large scale steel production.
All the technical and economical components for the shift are already in place. The only thing lacking is political will (and apparently knowledge).
Yeah right, and those are simply older folks. Most of them will never switch. Those who will be only buying their first car in 2030 will probably buy electric, sure, but it will be another 20 years before these people will become the majority of buyers. These people are in the middle school now.
Your belief that older people won't buy electric is completely baseless and untrue.
I'm almost fifty and looking for buying an electric car. My parents just bought a plug in hybrid, but would have bought a fully electric if any suitable was available to a reasonable price.
There is a HN article about using iron for industrial heat. The only downside is that transportation is expensive. If it can be electrolyzed on site it's going to be a game changer.
Cities went from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles because the incentives made it attractive to do it. The same can be done for for electric vehicles, it’s just a matter of putting the horse in front of the cart.
Teslas are too expensive, and the other car manufacturers are behind on getting a full range of models out. I expect that to change the next two years or so.
It happened because Ford T cost 4x cheaper per mile than a horse-drawn carriage, in a city (less difference in the countryside). It was a no-brainer to switch. When your horse died, it would be stupid to buy another when you had an option to buy a Model T.
Same can't be said about electric cars. So far, it's almost at the contrary.
In Europe where the fuel is properly taxed for it CO2 emissions, the lifetime mile cost of an electric car is already lower than corresponding gasoline car.
> Petrol cars will be mainstay of transportation for about 40-50 years and will dominate new car sales for at least 20-30 years depending on the country.
I disagree. i think the timescale for the switchover to electric vehicles (and self-driving vehicles) will be shorter than that.
This comment perfectly epitomises the 'climate crisis' extinction rebellion Greta Thunberg school of response to climate issues.
Firstly - any response to climate change that does not include China and really India and other emerging economies too is more or less useless. Why should we deny such countries the benefits of full industrialisation?
Secondly - while in some respects you are correct, looking at CO2 numbers some kind of drastic action seems to be required, it also leaves unanswered the question of 'at what cost'. During the covid19 situation we've seen the impact of shutting down parts of the economy on GDP. That naturally always translates into deaths, and the kind of economic impact such drastic action would entail would likely run into millions of deaths, many of them far away in poorer nations receiving less govt aid (as with covid!)
I think the whole 'nothing is enough the world will end!!' mentality does nothing but put those who are inclined to care into a state of deep depression and anxiety and those who are inclined to deny climate change into a better position to argue that the other side are being ridiculous. It does NOT help.
The correct approach is a practical middle ground where we try to do what we can.
In any case this govt response does somewhat epitomise the 'climate hysterics' mentality in that it is hugely impractical, ignores many questions of trade-offs and impact as if there were none to be answered and is unilateral enough to be meaningless in the wider global context.
Keep in mind that if one country decides to take drastic action which tanks its economy, do you think other countries are likely to follow suit or rather elect govts that entirely unwind all and any climate action?
And of course this comment completely epitomises the hand-wringing, pearl-clutching “won’t somebody please think of the economy!!” liberal centrism that results in absolutely fuck-all happening.
A non-binding commitment that tells industry “in ten years you folks will need to be in a position to switch to a technology which is already reasonably viable so better get scaling” is a pretty milquetoast effort, and describing it as “climate hysterics” is obvious nonsense. This general plan of banning new sales by 2030 seems to be emerging as a bit of a consensus in different countries, and it looks like a pretty necessary step.
You should be much more worried about this problem than you are, and this worry should translate into pressure on all governments globally to build credible plans for decarbonisation. Those plans should include the use of global trade measures to influence countries who aren’t meeting decarbonisation targets. Continuing to put off essential measures achieves little other than making them vastly more economically damaging when they are implemented later.
Do you really think I advocate for no action to be taken? Taking your first sentence at face value it appears you believe in an all or nothing approach.
Also, and again I know this is a sensitive area so I understand why you are coming across this way, but comments like 'you should be much more worried about this problem than you are' are unnecessary and divisive.
I am extremely worried about climate change. That is why I am concerned by extreme 'all or nothing' impractical approaches that will simply achieve nothing. I prefer something to nothing.
>in ten years you folks will need to be in a position to switch to a technology which is already reasonably viable so better get scaling
Do you consider needing to upgrade 400,000 substations and installing charge points along ~200,000km of roads within 10-20 years reasonably viable?
My whole issue with this is not that we should take NO action, it's that for any action taken we should either:
a. Speak honestly about the actual efforts required to make it happen and then take that action (e.g. start the substation upgrade, start installing the chargers),
b. Take more practical action that requires less drastic work.
The option being touted is:
c. Ban non-electric cars by 2030 and hybrids by 2035, say absolutely nothing about the VAST £100's of billions required investment to make that feasible, feel good and move on.
Do you think option c is more or less likely to result in anything changing? I think this requirement is likely to just get rolled back and ignored.
"translate into pressure on all governments globally to build credible plans for decarbonisation"
I actually agree with this, but I don't think unrealistic plans that ignore actual costs are any kind of solution.
I absolutely do NOT advocate putting off addressing climate issues. I personally believe in taking as much of a global approach as possible (if China refuse to stop using dirty coal plants everywhere, economically divest from them for example), correctly counting the CO2 cost of e.g. electric cars/renewable energy from raw material to functional capacity, not just discounting all CO2/other nasty climate gases from production and taking as practical an approach as we can.
I am also a realist and realise that if a country was to go all in on what many deem necessary and suffers a colossal economic impact that'll likely discourage any other country from taking that or probably much action at all.
It's a hard problem that feels like it needs drastic immediate action but the problem is made harder from the fact that that is simply not possible, I'm sorry.
Those who truly are worried about this should be being as practical as possible in order to get as much change into the world as they can.
Do you really think I advocate for no action to be taken? Taking your first sentence at face value it appears you believe in an all or nothing approach.
I think you take a commonly-seen approach that tends to argue that any even moderate efforts to deal with the problem are too extreme. I do not think the phrase you have repeatedly used - “all or nothing” – has any value, since it tends to define even relatively modest steps as “all”.
Do you consider needing to upgrade 400,000 substations and installing charge points along ~200,000km of roads within 10-20 years reasonably viable?
Yes.
My whole issue with this is not that we should take NO action, it's that for any action taken we should either:
In other words, you are probably advocating for a more extreme approach - that is, perhaps make these commitments legally binding and provide the infrastructure and planning to follow through on them. I completely agree with this, and that’s the point - this decision itself is pretty weak, and cannot credibly be called a “climate hysteria” response.
RE: climate hysteria I was actually responding to the parent who was saying this was nowhere near enough.
RE: Viability, I mean perhaps I worded that poorly - I think it's _possible_ to do it, I just think it will be exceptionally difficult (there are many roads that are not so simple to just dig up, huge HUGE disruption caused, etc. etc.) and require probably £100's of billions.
My issue is more that the govt have absolutely not addressed or even mentioned that, and many engaged in this debate won't accept that this is a requirement.
>I think you take a commonly-seen approach that tends to argue that any even moderate efforts to deal with the problem are too extreme.
Not at all. I simply do not consider a multi-£100bn investment requiring basically every single residential street in Britain to be dug up and every single substation upgraded (not to mention other parts of the grid that will need upgrading) to be moderate and dislike when people talk about this govt action as if that isn't required.
Actually I would 100% advocate for only hybrids by 2030 (which the govt actually does advocate), but not a banning of hybrids by 2035 as it also advocates. Also more govt pressure to make hybrids considerably more efficient (they are already pretty impressive). Perhaps look at banning hybrids also by 2050? Or some reasonably practical timeframe.
I'd also want to start the program of increasing charging points and substation infrastructure but on a more reasonable timeframe, but be honest about it and get the ball rolling NOW, not in 2030. Something like 'every X streets must have at least Y charging points' could be a start. Practicality.
What I'd also want to look at is - more nuclear, more renewables, investigate means of reducing usage of flights, investment into public transport (outside of London it sucks big time, and more generally e.g. trains are the most expensive in Europe + also the least reliable), more advocacy for work from home, greater subsidies in decarbonisation, but more than anything using economic pressure in league with other countries to pressure (and also not only pressure but help via aid) highly polluting developing countries to reduce carbon output.
There is plenty that can be done, I just don't think hand waving + denial of costs will actually achieve anything. In fact I think it HARMS the climate change cause more than anything.
>> Firstly - any response to climate change that does not include China and really India
Are these not mostly proxy emissions for western countries? E.g. is it the case that people in these countries are emitting pollution due to their lifestyles, or is the pollution mostly from energy, transport and manufacturing in the pursuit of selling products to western countries?
>> During the covid19 situation we've seen the impact of shutting down parts of the economy on GDP. That naturally always translates into deaths
Is there any evidence of deaths attributable to shut downs so far? There’s over a million deaths worldwide due to covid, how many attributable to non-covid causes? E.g. suicide etc.
>During the covid19 situation we've seen the impact of shutting down parts of the economy on GDP
I believe we've also seen the impact of not locking down due to fretting over the economy, which is a longer lockdown further down the line because the health services got overwhelmed. Basically not locking down saved 4 months of economy at the expense of the next 2 years.
>Are these not mostly proxy emissions for western countries? E.g. is it the case that people in these countries are emitting pollution due to their lifestyles, or is the pollution mostly from energy, transport and manufacturing in the pursuit of selling products to western countries?
Good point but I think much of it could also be attributed to countries going through their own industrialisation processes and generating wealth (however that end product gets used). Are we to condemn them all to poverty? Much of China is still rather impoverished.
Also - are you suggesting we should shut down our economies in order that we don't produce anything in China for example? If not then _how_ they produce the power/do industry is in their hands not ours and it's an issue to address.
The big issue in China is the CCP have no reason to care or abide by any global rules on this (or follow the example of any goody 2-shoes western country). They have endless coal plants with very little CO2 mitigation and the corrupt/totalitarian nature of their govt makes it very difficult to have them improve on this.
>Is there any evidence of deaths attributable to shut downs so far? There’s over a million deaths worldwide due to covid, how many attributable to non-covid causes? E.g. suicide etc.
There's a strong correlation between economic strife and deaths. I'm not going to get into the missed medical appointments etc. as that is not relevant here but that's a covid factor too.
>> but I think much of it could also be attributed to countries going through their own industrialisation processes
Is that not just a misconception about how countries develop though?
See Andrew McAfee - More from Less.
E.g. we know that as a country’s manufacturing capability matures, it produces more product with less raw material and energy inputs. It’s somewhat counter intuitive though but the end result is the opposite of what you suggest - maturation of industry reduces emissions and reduces raw material consumption and it can be to such an extent that the amount of product produced increases- example, motor industry of America or Japan, example battery production industry of china. Raw material consumption and energy use went down, manufactured product went up. Andrew McAfee’s book has better examples than mine but these were the ones i looked into to try to disprove his argument.
>> The big issue in China is the CCP have no reason to care or abide by any global rules on this
Wait, the US emissions of co2 per capita is just over 16tonnes per year. Why is China who’s per capita emissions at just under 7tonnes per year the key to moving forward? The key is america but the political approach is always to use the metric of convenience- currently that is absolute volume since that paints china worse than the US, and yet it would be only fair that we adjust for population.
>> There's a strong correlation between economic strife and deaths
Sure, but can we quantify it? We need to figure out if we’re over-prioritising covid response. E.g. if there were 1mm excess deaths and only 25% were attributable to covid, that sounds like the cure is worse than the disease.
As it stands though, it appears almost 100% of excess deaths are attributable to covid, that suggests we need to keep focussing on preventing covid deaths rather than focussing on death ultimately caused by economic harm, correct?
RE: Chinese GDP
Chinese GDP is probably not a great measure as a large % of the population are still very poor and have therefore very low consumption. In order for a larger amount of people to transition into the middle class would start matching and likely exceeding other country's GDP CO2 emissions.
RE: economic impact
People have in fact quantified it but it's a big topic as you can imagine. I don't think it's hugely controversial to suggest that poverty results in poor health and the data is clear that poor countries tend to have significantly lower life expectancy and higher poor health outcomes.
I'm not going to digress into covid as that's a whole other conversation :)
>Are these not mostly proxy emissions for western countries?
Last time I checked exports were around 14% of Chinese emissions. Significant but domestic emissions are the majority. Repeating the proxy emission meme is quite disrespectful if you consider this context. i.e. you are saying that although the other 86% are domestic, their primary purpose is to support the export industry and therefore should be counted as export emissions as well. It's almost the same as saying Chinese citizens only exist for the sake of first world countries.
Just to be clear, you’re saying emissions originating in consumption exceed emissions originating in production? That’s true in in America but in China?
That is the opposite of what i’ve read so far but happy to be corrected. Is there any data you can point me to that supports your position?
Not dealing with global warming will also lead to "the kind of economic impact such drastic action would entail would likely run into millions of deaths, many of them far away in poorer nations"
Did I suggest not addressing it? It's entirely this dismissive attitude that harms the cause. This 'all or nothing' attitude that reminds me of the gun control issue in the US.
Since you've ignored most of what I said there, let me reduce the surface area of the discussion and ask 1 thing:
Let's assume the UK does everything the climate 'activists' request of them, and this results in an economic depression and unprecedented unemployment and poverty - do you think this increases or decreases the likelihood of other countries following suit?
I'm not convinced it's bad for economy. It'll just inspire innovation: new electric cars, alternative transportation modes, new ways of charging electric cars, better isolation for building, etc, etc.
The sooner countries start to embrace it, the more they'll be able to economically benefit from the required changes that we're all facing.
If the UK (unilaterally) sets an example and does everything the climate activists request of them, but this results in economic depression and unprecedented unemployment and poverty, then no.
Not only will no single country in the rest of the world use their example, plenty will seek to take advantage of an environment in which the UK is rendered deeply uncompetitive, as countries tend to.
And if the constant allegations of climate movements’ funding and influence being manipulated by foreign powers beforehand were strong, they will evolve straight into legitimacy following an event like this.
>> The correct approach is a practical middle ground where we try to do what we can
Then provided no examples of what we can do, in your opinion.
This isn’t a problem that can be solved by right leaning politics, this is the right’s blind spot. You’ll need some creative lefty types to sort this out and then you’ll need some efficient righty types to come in a clean up what they’ve designed.
The solution to this is not in the past, it is not doing something we already do in a better way (politics of the right), it is of a new paradigm (politics of the left).
You are correlating 'a practical middle ground' with 'not addressing it'. I am also really not sure why you are bringing politics into this. I get the analogy but that's such an easy way to turn this into a divisive discussion that I think we should leave that there.
You are also glossing over the consequences of an extreme response to climate change - an honest discussion talks about the cost as well as the benefits of any action taken.
The "all or nothing" approach is likely to get you nothing because in democratic countries when you take actions that result in severe economic consequences, people will just vote in a govt that reverses it. It also sends a signal to all other countries who were considering such action not to do it.
It's not an easy problem this, and I don't pretend to have all the answers, but to me doing SOMETHING that is likely to be acceptable to democratic countries is better than doing nothing and souring the whole thing for ordinary people.
> in democratic countries when you take actions that result in severe economic consequences, people will just vote in a govt that reverses it
If you're the type of person who believes they're saving humanity, you naturally don't fret over details like what do people want, or some rational cost/benefit analysis. You know better. The axioms are set and indisputable.
Barnacled, you're quite articulate and reasoned in this thread, but I doubt you're changing anybody's mind.
And FYI, the same type of personality also likes to compile "lists of ideological opponents". It's an old book played a hundred times before, so it's good to be aware of that.
Thanks. And no I'm probably not changing minds, unfortunately these issues seem to be quite naturally polarised. It reminds me of gun control somewhat - both sides having a highly emotive connection to their positions and feeling as if the opponent is somehow awful or evil to oppose them and thus making absolutely no forward progress.
I really regret the emergence of figures like Greta Thunberg, while heralded as a great advocate for action against climate change I feel she has actually been more harmful than good - she advocates an extreme alarmist position, often referencing highly debated timelines ('follow the science' doesn't take into account scientific dissent) which of course if/when they don't happen get ignored much like a doomsday cult.
It has resulted in this "if you're not perpetually panicking you're an anti-scientific climate denialist" mentality which I find really stymies actual practical discussion on the subject.
It's not helped by actual climate denialists pointing this out and thus tarring those like myself who absolutely believe in man-made climate change but who are pragmatists who realise the world is not quite so simplistic as good/evil and governments are not all-powerful gods who can magically change everything all at once.
I also think unfortunately there is a fair bit of anti-capitalism (the system that has lifted billions from poverty) that has snuck in, in the UK 'extinction rebellion' a very much Greta-esque protest group have openly advertised their views on this. Of course no comparison is made to other economic systems and their ecological track records...
It shouldn't be about ideals - 'we must cut carbon emissions to 0 no matter what', but rather 'what option is best in comparison to the consequences of another'.
Surely the “something” has to be impossible to achieve given your assertions (which i agree with) that there will be severe economic consequences.
The idea of some magical possibility where we all get to keep doing what we’re doing but climate change does away is impossible. There will be economic losers (and winners)
How is improving our energy supply so it's cheaper and cleaner going to harm the economy? Pretty sure there's a lot of jobs creating new power sources, and once everyone has cheap power they'll have more money left for the economy.
The cost to fix global warming only gets greater each year.
China buys more electric cars than all other countries.
If it's going to be cheaper, why does it need government support? Won't industry just do it to be more competitive on its own? Or perhaps there's some kind of first mover/network effect/chicken and egg problem that the free market can't surmount on its own?
Most things have government support, cars have roads, oil has militaries, and everyone who pollutes gets to do it for almost free with government support of not making it illegal.
But mostly it's long term vs short term.
I'd just make pollution illegal unless you paid to clean it up
Absolutely. It's too late? For what? Temperature has already risen a little so obviously you can't change the past. Too late for some vague "catastrophe" is the implication. But science already tells us it won't be extinction, and the best estimate they have (that I've seen) is as many deaths per year in 2100 due to warming as we currently have due to car crashes. So it might be no big deal or it might be something nobody knows. Just like the future always is.
You know, the middle ground is to cease all industrial CO2 emissions without investing into carbon capture. The extremes are to do absolutely nothing or to invest into enough carbon capture to undo all emissions since 1950.
Reducing emissions by 80% does help some but the problem is that global CO2 levels go down extremely slowly so that any human activity will always dwarf it. Given enough time you will still hit 4°C.
On this specific issue, what more could be done, really?
Bring the ban to 2025? 2022? One can't simply expect mass production to switch that fast.
UK has already tightened emissions rules on vehicles and VED taxes more polluting cars more heavily. They could, and probably will, ratchet things more.
The right response on this policy is to say: great thanks Boris, you can clearly see the potential in green tech, now could you do X, Y, and Z too?
Yes, the government expects people to lap this up. Which is a reason why they do it. If they see electric cars both piss off the Daily Mail camp and yet are still criticised as worthless by environmentalists then we're not giving them the right incentives to take further measures.
The only thing that has a chance of working is thinking about it a bit differently - governments should heavily subsidize building solar energy plants. On the scale of "much more than we need". Then they should also heavily subsidize carbon capture and possibly also tech to turn it into liquid fuels again.
Getting petrol cars off the road is just not going to happen on the time scale it's needed. If the 10 years until the ban would be spent building enough solar, carbon capture and fuel generation, we'd be in a much better state. We'd literally have a knob that controls the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
They're building one of the biggest solar farms in Europe just down the road from me. The local Green party campaigned against it, on environmental grounds. Really, it seems like it's impossible to please the environmental lobby. As much as I want this stuff to happen I can imagine a politician thinking, "screw them, they'll only whinge anyway."
China has levelled of since 2011 while still maintaining their incredible economic growth. Quite remarkable actually. On the other hand it's quite easy to spot the outliers.
Who mentioned China? USA is more of a problem, twice the CO2 emissions per capita as the average developed economy, China makes more EV busses every day than the rest of the world has in total.
I find it entirely reasonable that largest country by the population in the world is also largest miner of coal. That is exactly how it should be. Now the bigger issue is with countries that don't rank similarly to their population size...
Why do you think they does? I’m so tired of always hearing the deflection: “oh lock at China, they are much worse”. No, they aren’t. Their per capita emissions are still much lower than Europe and North America. I wish they did more, but the productive (and mature) thing to do is to focus on what we should do, not whine about what someone else should.
Agreed. If the government was serious about starting a program for reducing emissions from internal combustion engines, it could start by gradually increasing the gasoline tax until it became prohibitively expensive to buy an internal combustion engine car in 2030. In your analogy, the diet would start on day 1 with an objective reduction in sweets, even if not 100% quite yet.
BTW, I'm not saying that the government should increase the tax, I'm just saying that a concrete action in the present would go a long way towards building credibility.
This has the side effect of punishing those too poor to afford a petrol car, instead they can increase the cost of purchasing a petrol car, which directly taxes the more wealthy (new car buyers).
There is no "uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming".
There's s a small group of rogue countries like US trying to do their best to burn the planet while undermining climate agreements and not doing anything about climate change at 16+ tons of annual CO2 per capita, while some others are doing a whole lot, for example UK has pretty about halved their emissions from already a lot lower starting point, from 10.3 to 5.6 tons in the last 40 years.
Global warming here is just for cover up. IMHO The real reason they dont want petrol cars in the UK is because the North Sea Oil is just about all gone.
> This is the same as my committing to start my diet, by giving up one specific thing, but not for a decade, after my doctor told me I gave 6m to lose weight or die. And to celebrate I'll eat two pizzas and 4 litres of soda, for breakfast.
Great analogy. But to be honest politicians don't make drastic changes as they fear they will loose the next election.
But I do believe they under estimate people's interest in dealing with climate change.
Then again Brexit happened and people vote for Boris and Trump so what do I really know what the electorate wants.
I really wonder about the charging infrastrucuture. I guess it is doable and a necessary transmission, but I am a bit afraid it may be the next thing some countries are sleeping on.
As a German, there are serious subsidies for home owners to install one right now. However, I just moved into a new rental apparment and visiteted quite a few places that were all built in 2020. All of them had very nice parking spaces allocaed to the flat, but zero wallboxes for the entire appartment. I also looked into buying a flat and often it would have been difficult, sometimes even impossible to install one on my own behalf wihtout checking with all other buyers (and these kinds of changes often lead to tedious legal fights, afaik). The place I'm moving to doesn't have one either, but the ladlord will install one, once needed. At the moment I still have a car with a diesel engine and no plans to change soon(I go almost everywhere by bike, even have a different one for rainly days and to carry groceries, and do 0-2 longer trips per month and ~1 very long trip for vacation per year, bike + diesel seems to fit that quite well) soon, but the next car will be electric i guess
To make things worse: The overall power comsumption should not be too much of a problem, but if almost vehicle was electric and charged where people live, the power infrastructure could be in serious trouble. If improving it in remote areas goes anywhere as well as FTTC/FTTH internet, we're headed for disaster. There are a lot of interesting ideas, e.g. decentralized batteries within people's homes and renewables. But if all the focus is on changing the cars on the road, I have little hope that other transitions will be quick enough
I'm so surprised to read so many people complaining on HN.
I live in Oslo where electric cars are normal and everything is fine. It changes a few habits and these cars are not cheap brand new yet but I really don't see a problem.
If it's going to be a challenge in 10 years, because they are still too expensive or it's too complex to install power plugs for example, it will simply be delayed. UK is very good at delaying things.
Norway invested a lot on Tesla and to help their investment, they removed taxes and tolls on EVs.
Most of Norway's electricity comes from hydropower and they have been building wind farms lately.
Meanwhile, Norway's entire economy basically relies on selling crude oil. So, it has been "donating" a lot to anti-oil interests in the U.S. so that the oil prices remain high enough for them to justify more oil exploration. As a counter response, the U.S. has been supporting Greenpeace Norway to try to stop oil exploration in Norway.
The whole thing is a clown show.
The only one who is benefiting from this is China. It produces most of the rare earth minerals required for EVs, makes all of EV parts and makes all the wind turbines.
>I don't know about the funding's of anti-oil interests in the US, do you mean they are not funding competitors but companies that may benefit Norway ?
No, they fund politicians and lobbies. For example, they funded the Clinton Foundation to buy political favors... which they cut significantly after Clinton lost the 2016 election. The idea was to get the Democrats to push back on fracking, so that the Norwegian oil remains relevant for a longer time.
A lot of people might buy cheap used cars in 2029 that might be on the road till 2040-2050. If he is serious about it, which is rare when officials promise something 10 years into the future, he would suggest a plan to provide the needed infrastructure.
The median age of cars on the road is 10 years or so. While it's true that there is a long tail of very old cars, it's unlikely that many of them will be around by 2050, especially if fuel infrastructure becomes sparser due to lack of demand.
Joke's on them, because nowadays cars are made with a focus on the first owner's experience - some parts have become more expensive and integrated, so keeping an ICE vehicle running in 2050 is going to cost a fortune.
You forget that currently road maintenance and other expenses are taken from the petrol tax when share of EV increases there will have to be a tax on charging so total cost of ownership over all the years of owning EV will start to go up.
Didn't want to say it was a bad idea, just that EV have to become viable for the general population and that is currently not the case because of the higher price. Very high taxes on fuel would also incentivize people to buy EV.
I don't use a car much that is why I have a used one for ~2500$. I know a mechanic for cheap repairs, I need it occasionally to reach friends and family and public transport is not an option since time has become so valuable and it doesn't work for emergencies.
I would not want to spend 20,000$ on a car because it would just be parked most of the time. Especially among younger people I see this very often. It will be interesting to see EVs hit used markets. My company leases cars for 50,000$ without thinking twice and some people just love cars that much, but that isn't realistic for the vast majority of people.
Currently used EV can cost 25,000$. Not viable for the mass market.
Mandate a switch to e-fuels. Start with "all fossil-based fuels need to add 1% of synthetic e-fuels next year" and increase it to 100% over time.
You can still drive your ICE car, but it'll become expensive.
I’m not sure about the economics of it, but I’d rather drive a car powered by synthetic gasoline made from pulling carbon dioxide out of the air. No new CO2 combined with no restrictions on range & quick refueling times sounds like a win. I still don’t know where people will plug in all of these electric cars.
The economics are such that it probably won't work out. EVs are >85% efficient from wind turbine to movement. Making synthetic fuel is at best 40% efficient from electricity->fuel and the ICE only translates <30% of that to movement. We probably don't have enough room for turbines and solar panels to produce the necessary power.
Ehh...we get a stupid huge amount of sunlight from the sun daily, and the benefit of synthetic fuel is that it's a lot easier to store long term then electrical energy in batteries.
I think the main issue is that it's a lot easier to convert diesel's to run on alternative fuel oils then it is to get gasoline vehicles to do the same.
If you can devise a way of synthesizing gasoline from CO2 in the atmosphere that doesn't require a huge amount of solar energy and/or a few million years, you'll be a very popular person.
It's a matter of fighting against the laws of thermodynamics.
This seems like a relatively cheap promise to make. The auto industry is already moving towards this model (or full EV), likely by 2030 the production of pure petrol cars will be very limited. Including hybrids in what is allowed makes this at best unambitious.
Where the UK is really moving is with windpower, they were a bit slow to get started, when you consider that the UK is probably one of the prime locations for windpower, but they are now catching up: https://www.power-technology.com/projects/hornsea-project-on...
Of course, they are not first movers, and while the UK could have been a pioneers in green technology, they are now relying on foreigner partners (Danish Orsted for construction and German Siemens for the Turbines).
> the government will take action on the high prices of electric vehicles and on the charging infrastructure
Why spend money on access to more vehicles instead of improving public transport.
If we are serious about the environment and the whole 3x R's, we should treat vehicles as the luxury that they are.
If you have to commute between your remote farm and your nearest city sure maybe there should be a government incentive. But if you are within an urban setting incentivizing more vehicles (eletric or otherwise) is not a good government investment in my view.
I think a big issue with people that say that public transit doesn't work for their particular use-case, or their logistics, or their 5 kids, is because they never experienced high quality, high frequency, reliable public transit.
This is arguably a near impossible task in Automotive-centric North and South America but it is absolutely feasible in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
When it comes to rural populations in places like Europe, I can see bio-fuel and things like e-diesel being a decent alternative for the country-side in the short term. It would cover most of the use-cases that are commonly used as "what if" counter-arguments, and it doesn't stop the urban populace from using electric/public transport.
Besides, it's not like the entire farming industry is going to switch to electric just like that; where I live, it's not uncommon to see 40+ year-old farming machinery in active use. In other words, it's going to take a long time before we get rid of diesel engines.
The major challenge, as far as I see it, will be to implement different rules for different people, and getting the populace to go along with it. People generally dislike being told what to do, and any exceptions that can be considered unfair for anyone will be used as an argument against new legislation.
I know that decent electric cars will drop in price over time, but I don't know if they'll become in reach. I also am not convinced the secondhand market will be any good in the next decade, batteries have a limited lifespan and will need to be replaced eventually.
You can buy a beater for <1000 pounds which can still work just fine for a few years, I don't see that happening with electric cars.
I'm from the UK (England in particular) - I think most people from England would say they are British (sometimes depending on context / person / non-requirement for brevity: 'from the UK' instead).
Perhaps a higher proportion of non-English UK people would answer otherwise.
If I read that correctly, London seems to be the only place where a majority of people see themselves primarily as "British"?
It's nearly 10 years old, but I don't think things are going to have changed to make people feel substantially more "British", certainly not here in Scotland!
Both Scotland and England gave up their sovereign status when the Acts of Union were enacted, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Basically, Scotland, Wales, England, and Northern Ireland, are nations which comprise the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is the sovereign state.
> Are not Scotland, Wales and England each countries though?
Sure, but in a sense where UK “countries” are a thing somewhat like US “states” (but somewhat less, in that neither is independent, but US states are notionally sovereign nevertheless.)
The UK is the entity which is a sovereign and independent entity.
Countries which are no longer major automotive manufacturers can afford to accelerate the transition. Basically, they can just import different cars. The countries where automotive lobby is still influential, will have to adjust the transition period to keep their ICE industry happy.
As for the charging infrastructure, I think it's easier to solve. It's not much more complicated than laying optical fiber everywhere. A massive undertaking, without doubt, but the revenue potential of the public charging is enormous. It's like building a network of gas stations, but without having to move fuel ever again.
For years people will prefer non-electric cars. From a perspective of someone with his own driveway this is a nobrainer to have electric car but many people in EU live in apartment blocks and there is simply no infrastructure there to charge all necessary cars. I will be able to say that "no one should have a reason to drive petrol car" when 0-100 charge time will be around 15 minutes.
Or inexpensive (to install, not to use) and widespread charging becomes available in most locations.
A normal 13A socket will charge my Leaf in about 12 hours. The 8 hours of charge I’d get from plugging in at a parking bay during work hours would likely be enough for most people, but we have no current infrastructure for billing people at that scale (although I imagine it could easily be developed, still a massive undertaking to roll out widely in cities though).
We’d also need to be able to provide the massive increases in grid energy that would be required for that. Nuclear seems like it would be a good use case for this but that still seems like it would be a tough sell, even now.
For me I'd like the govt to address this and indicate how they intend to do so (most parking in the UK is on-street) - it's a huge infrastructure project.
This. Even while we can just say “all we need is NFC payments at the road side and then just plug in the car” the infrastructure required to make that happen is colossal.
I don't understand why you were downvoted. This is exactly it. I live in Germany, and bought a petrol gar this year. I'd love to have a battery EV. I simply cannot charge it anywhere, maybe at work (and since Corona started I have been to the office exactly once). There are like two public charging spots in the city of 320k people I live in (that I know of), and I'd say 70% or 80% of people here do not have a driveway or garage. As long as this infrastructure problem is not solved the government can make EV cars cheaper or not, as long as people cannot use them, petrol will go strong.
I also want to buy an EV, maybe a Tesla, but unfortunately, having long trips are nearly impossible, since the supercharger network is not adequate enough yet. I just can not afford having 2 hour breaks every 400 kilometers just to charge my car.
First, naturally, is skepticism at far off dates. OOH, these things do really need time to work. OOH, the zero-emissions date is 2050, post-singularity
Second is coordination. If the plan is "Once there are electric cars, we'll buy some." The industry's response will be "once it's cheap enough, we'll make some." That days seems to be coming anyway, but that really makes this a weak policy.
My third thought is "industrial policy." That is, a policy that actually affects the availability and price performance of electric cars. If the policy is agreed, but doesn't meaningfully change what engineers are doing now, then it's not really affecting much.
An actual industrial policy probably needs to act across a bigger market than UK only in order to actually affect timelines.
All that said, I like it. A ban bootstrapped by cross subsidies is a far better way to go than carbon consumption taxes.
I have so many issues with this, as it is just greenwashing at its worst.
For a start - the latest EURO emissions regulations already make it practically impossible to sell a new ICE-only car. At this rate, ICE-only new cars will already be a rarity by 2030.
The "net zero emissions" is only if the electricity used to power those EVs is generated from renewable sources (and I'm not sure how much further installation potential the UK has for those sources). Unless we return to nuclear power (which brings its own debate), the overall lifecycle CO2 benefit of EVs and hybrids as they stand is minimal.
I also really dislike the blinkered focus on CO2 as the only variable to optimise. Sourcing the lithium and other minerals necessary for EVs is extremely problematic, and lithium battery recycling has yet to be proven at all viable. Some initial research also suggests that heavy demands are going to be placed on lithium reserves.
The net result of this is that manufacturers will make hybrids that just about meet the legislated "green" requirements, meaning all new cars will bring the worst of both worlds to the road. In the "green" new future of Britain's transport, everyone will be driving bloated hybrid SUVs.
Finally - for the "EVs are great because they only have one moving part!" crowd - how many cars have you sold or scrapped due to electronics faults, compared to ICE faults?
The only remotely sustainable form of motorised transport is an ebike (or maybe a bike with a tiny petrol engine), if you really take this whole argument at face value.
Edit: Nearly forgot (which is odd, given the actual enormity of this point) - the UK grid in no way can handle any significant increase in pure EV usage. There would have to be significant investment, and new systems manufactured, for this to even be viable. As I said, I suspect that the solution that will actually be used is hybrid cars.
>The overall lifecycle CO2 benefit of EVs and hybrids as they stand is minimal.
That's simply not true.
>Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time
>..We show that already under current carbon intensities of electricity generation, electric cars and heat pumps are less emission intensive than fossil-fuel-based alternatives in 53 world regions, representing 95% of the global transport and heating demand. Even if future end-use electrification is not matched by rapid power-sector decarbonization, it will probably reduce emissions in almost all world regions.
Some simple back-of-the-envelope maths shows that, due to the massively increased amount of energy needed to manufacture an EV, it takes somwhere near half the life of the car (assuming 100k miles) to pay back that "CO2 debt". And even then, you are still limited by the net CO2 emissions of your electricity source.
This is why I claim that the CO2 benefits are minimal (not none, or negative). The abstract of the article you linked only claims that the net CO2 of EVs and heat pumps is less, but does not indicate by how much. I would also love to see the assumptions made, especially if manufacturing energy cost is considered. Do you have a non-paywalled version of the article body?
It has better back-of-the-envelope maths than you could do, it use peer reviewed lifecycle data, take into account real world tank-to-weel CO2 emission from cars where NEDC and WLTP underestimate them massively, well-to-tank emission to make and transport petrol, lifecycle batteries, glider, engine and also the future decarbonation of the electric grid. It shows way better estimates than you claim.
Great, thanks. I just compared my family car to a somewhat equivalent EV, and it takes 40,000km to break even in CO2 emissions. This is very much in line with my original point (and my "back of the envelope maths"). In the online calculator you linked, I assumed a car life of around 150,000km, as the longevity of mass-produced EVs is yet to be determined. It also addresses none of the additional points in my original comment, as we have so far talked entirely about CO2 emissions. If it is all about CO2, and the impending climate catastrophe, then the relatively small reduction in CO2/mile from an EV is just not even close to what is needed. In the calculator linked, it's a 40% reduction per mile. An EV is not the answer. Significantly fewer travelled miles is the answer.
Edit: Just for reference, the UN is calling for a 7.6% reduction in CO2 every year for the next 10 years. Either way you calculate it, an EV alone does not acheive that goal. And if you massively reduce your miles (say, 10x), it doesn't matter (relatively speaking) if you use an EV or an ICE car.
In my country, France, it is a 4.5 times reduction, grid will continue to decarbonate, electric car have less moving part and their engine is not a self destructing explosive one, batteries max cycle continuously extends, also batteries CO2e/kWh will continue to reduce as their is better industrial process and the electric grid is being decarboned and mining vehicles switch to electric, also we continue to use less minerals to store a kWh.
Also we can both buy less car, drive less km and switch to electric when a car is needed but use more the one car with car sharing infrastructure.
You have a 75% nuclear-powered grid in France, so yes, that probably does work out. It is also the only practical solution if we want EVs.
I really don't buy the whole "electric cars have less moving parts" argument. As I said in my original comment - how many cars get scrapped or sold due to electrical issues, compared to ICE issues? You should know, in France ;) Replacing mechanical moving parts with integrated circuits that have features on the nanometer scale that must not move, and putting them in the harsh automotive environment, is not a step forward in reliability.
I understand that technology and processes will improve, but that's not really a good argument to invest in the technology today. Maybe I should wait, and buy an EV in a few years or decades, when the environmental impact is a lot less.
Unless you have paid for the article and read it, we are only discussing an abstract. That isn't enough information to bring to a discussion, as we have absolutely no figures, initial assumptions, or methadologies to explore.
There's nothing wrong with back-of-the-envelope maths. It's not refutable that lithium battery packs take a lot of energy to manufacture (as well as all of the control electronics, which is also a very energy-intensive manufacturing process). Just the lithium cells take around 60kWh to manufacture per 1kWh of pack capacity. Where do you think the ~5.1MWh required to make your Tesla battery pack comes from?
Even if you had 100% renewable power to charge your car, it would take 24,000 miles just to pay back the manufacturing energy of the cells alone. Then you can start paying back the energy cost of the rest of the EV components, which are still considerable. Only after that, can you start saving the planet with your EV.
There is already dozens of studies about kgCO2e/kwh for batteries, thanks for linking to a studies where it is shown that electricity use is actually lower than older studies and in line with the most recent, and all the most recent studies agreed is that the kgCO2e/kwh is decreasing fast with industrialisation making EV better than fossil cars in about 16000 km.
At least this is only banning new cars at the moment. But electric cars don't have a guaranteed real-world range of over 350 miles, the same as a tank of fuel, cost the same as petrol models, and charge as quickly as you can fill it with petrol. If the latter was solved petrol stations could be converted to charging points in cities, reducing the need for on-street charging points.
And the charging requirements for all those cars, requires a massive investment in the national grid, practically doubling capacity if we ever get all 25 million registered vehicles electric. Twice as many power stations than we currently have, twice as many wind turbines and so on.
You don't need 350 miles of range, especially in England, which is 200 miles coast-to-coast. Average yearly mileage in UK is 9.2 k miles, which is 766 miles per month which is 2.1 full charges at 350 miles.
Current estimates are that electric cars will achieve cost parity with ICE cars by 2025. Possibly much sooner given than Tesla is planning $25k car in 2022. Model 3's Total Cost of Ownership is already at par with Honda Civic if you consider cost of gas vs. cost of electricity.
While charging is slower than pumping gas and deprives you the pleasure of inhaling oil fumes, most charging happens at home.
And finally the bogus "massive investment" argument.
Starbucks is truly heart broken every time they need to "massively invest" in opening new store.
Oil execs are driven to the brink of suicide every time oil demand spike and they have invest into drilling more holes in the ground.
Finally, solar energy producers and grid operators cry themselves to sleep in order to forget how much more money they'll make by selling more energy.
I drive south-coast to Northumberland, weekly. I don't want to spend 30 minutes plus waiting for the car to charge 2 or 3 times on during the journey, assuming there's even a free charger. Using an electric vehicle, with the current range, would make my 365(!) mile journey about 2 hours longer than it already is.
I'm not an outlier either. We have friends and family that do London to Edinburgh weekly, or fortnightly, and often further.
As for " bogus "massive investment" argument" that's a bogus-bogus statement. Sorry.
We need to double the energy generation in this country to go fully EV and replace all new, and old registered vehicles (there's 25 million registered with the DVLA). We need to additionally add charging points to homes, and on-street. On-street is the worst - can you imagine digging up every street in inner London that has residents with cars to satisfy 'all EV in new cars by 2030'?
I am not sure if that is good idea. With carbon-free energy and carbon-capture you can have the efficiency and energy density carbon fuels and net zero emissions at the same time.
Personally I can live with electric car in UK but electric VANs will be much bigger trouble because they are heavy and can't hold that much cargo. There is a lot of restrictions in law and infrastructure that limits usage of vehicles to under 3.5t
>The real life estimates of 75 miles in Summer and 50 miles in Winter also give an insight of how powerful these batteries are, reducing your need to be constantly charging your vehicle and allowing you to enjoy the ride!
>Originally Answered: how many miles per day does a FedEx or UPS driver drive on average? That answer varies from hub to hub, route to route. In my hub, there are several routes that average maybe 5 miles a day total, whereas the route I run averages 75-80 miles a day.
That is, well..., rather bad. I imagine if this trend prevails in the future, we will see your plumber asking you if he can charge his transporter and deducting their charging cost from your invoice.
Li-ion battery capacity has tripled in a decade[1]. If that continues at the same pace (big if of course) then by 2030 the same van could have 150-225 miles of range.
This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one.
The UK is small, cars are squeezed onto tiny roads and most people do on-street parking, i.e. you park where you can. When I last had a car I could only park around the corner from my flat (which was set far back from the road).
Having off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have, and even then if you have a block of flats it still makes charging from home more or less practically impossible.
Unless the govt intend to install charging points at every car parking spot on every residential road in the entire country in 9 years (!) or whatever the full timeline they have in their minds for everybody to have electric then this is not feasible.
That's not to mention the fact that charging electric cars requires very significant current to do so in a reasonable timeframe. Electrical substations in the UK simply could not cope with anything close to full electric car deployment without the entire electrical network being upgraded.
And this is before we get on to practicality issues around cars breaking down, longer trips or how petrol stations might be used given charge time.
I think there is some kind of shared delusion that this is some easy way of reducing CO2 emissions. It's not easy, and there are very big questions and trade-offs that nobody appears able to address.
Before people suggest 'well people need to use public transport then' - while the UK has better public transport than e.g. much of the US (I went to Austin without a car once, that was tough) - outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable (our trains for example are the most expensive and least reliable in all of Europe), slow and entirely impractical for many areas.
I am not anti-electric car, in fact I wouldn't mind using one (that acceleration, consistent torque, so much more reliable) - it's just there are huge practical issues that the govt seem never to address.
I personally think the appropriate compromise is to move forward with very efficient hybrid vehicles.
> This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one.
Oh boy. I just picture someone from the early 20th century riding a horse and complaining about not being able to tank a car for the lack of gas stations.
I think you've missed the point here. At none of those could I have charged from the house with a cable, as they either had off-street parking, or I was in an upper storey flat, or there was no parking available at all, etc.
I think that kind of dismissive comment is entirely the problem here. You do realise that the entire electrical substation infrastructure needs substantial upgrading for it to even be possible? And that's not an easy problem? And that every single residential street in all of the UK needs to be dug up and have chargers installed? In 9 years' time (or maybe 19 if we say 10 years lifetime of 2nd hand cars)?
The whole issue is the govt acts as if all they need to do is ban petrol cars + our CO2 issues are solved, and do not address these serious practical issues.
Also on a personal note - this comment came across as somewhat snide and ridiculing, I respectfully refer you to the HN guidelines:
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
By all means, disagree with me but you could have made this comment less unkindly.
But you don't have to charge the car from your house, just as you don't need to have your own personal petrol pump.
So rather than being utterly ridiculous, it just requires a different mindset and acceptance that many more charging points will be available in the next ten years than there are currently.
Apples and oranges really - the difference in time at pump vs time charging is orders of magnitude. In order for this to work you'd need vast numbers of charging points and the entire electrical grid to be upgraded. This is not something the govt or commentators appear to mention very often.
It'd truly be one of the biggest infrastructure projects the UK has ever seen and likely run into the £100's of bns. The disruption would be like nothing ever seen before (you can't just upgrade substations or dig up basically every residential street in the country without disruption).
I think many like to comment on this from the position of being one of the few who owns an electric car and has the luxury of finding places to charge. That does not scale without truly colossal infrastructure changes.
I don't own an electric car although I do have space for charging. My office is two miles from home so I could easily manage a week on one charge so a slight inconvenience measured against the 'convenience' of a petrol station would be no big deal for me.
I already despise having to fill up with petrol and always delay it until the last minute so that would be an added incentive for me.
Also, could not public car parks, workplaces, supermarkets, etc be used as public charging points?
In reality, we're talking about no new petrol/diesel cars in 9 years which means second-hand cars will be available for at least 10 years after that. It isn't as if you're being asked to make changes overnight?
> i.e. you park where you can
> off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have
That would indicate there's just too many cars and we should be prioritising public transport improvements.
> outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable
100% agree - it's always a shock when I go up north and have to use public transport - but that's why we need to divert money from the road and car subsidy schemes into massive public transport improvements.
There are many places where public transport simply isn't practical. I also do not see how investment is going to fix a lot of the issues - for example in my home town in the SW of England (rural area), the already highly subsidised + regulated bus service was consistently late and unreliable. Not to mention didn't actually go to many places in the local area.
Perhaps increased public transportation is part of the issue but if you consider the scale of the issue and the numbers involved not to mention the fact you're now entirely privileging rich people with off-street parking (class/economic issues there) who CAN get electric cars, and do all of this in 9 years (or maybe 19 let's say if people are buying 2nd hand) while bankrupting every single (non-electric) car-related industry shortly after one of the biggest economic shocks of the modern era AND you still need to provide considerably more infrastructure no matter how you slice the pie it's still equally as huge a logistical challenge.
Last weekend I spent a weekend on an island here in Turkey. This entire island did exactly this – they banned all cars and horses and went 100% electric. Before, most people got around via horses(!) I heard it was a smelly mess.
It's pretty neat actually. They have these little electric buses that go around the island. Everyone has electric little cars and scooter type vehicles. [1]
I laughed when I saw the solution to this problem you're talking about. Extension cords everywhere. That's right, almost every street you saw long extension cords going from the house to the street to charge all the vehicles. Is it perfect? No of course not but it's "good enough for now".
Yes, I realize a small island with a few thousand people is not the same a the UK. My point is, people will figure out how to make it work.
Two thirds of UK car-owners have off-street parking so it simply isn't true that "most people do on-street parking" on a national level. In London, sure it's much rarer. You point out that public transport is bad outside of London. Certainly true but it is also the case that we are then left only with the problem of places that have poor public transport and very little off-street parking as the most problematic areas. That's quite a step down from needing a charger at every parking spot.
The real meat of this is the additional £1.3bn of funding for on-street charging. That is enough for hundreds of thousands of simple Ubitricity style lamp-post chargers which will go a long way since private companies are also installing chargers on concession contracts with local authorities and at shopping centre car parks and other convenience charging location. I don't doubt that further charging funding will be required.
It is true that fast and rapid charger roll-out requires reinforcement of the electrical distribution infrastructure which makes them substantially more expensive to install but that is because they are both high current and "must run" - when you plug into one you want it to charge your vehicle immediately as fast as possible, not decide to wait until 2AM. Most on-street chargers on residential streets will be for slow, overnight charging which can be co-ordinated to do the bulk of their charging during the low-load overnight period.
Then there is the timing: this is a ban on new sales from 2030 which means that there will be substantial petrol and diesel cars on the road until late into the 2030s. New hybrids are not banned until 2035 in the current plan. So even properties that are still not near a charging point by 2035 will still have access to brand new hybrids and five year old ICE vehicles.
The current share of electric cars as part of new vehicle sales is 8% already and without this intervention probably would have reached more than two thirds anyway, the whole point is to signal that this is coming well ahead of time to accelerate that transition.
If charging is as much of a hassle as you claim then hybrids would be the worst of both worlds: you would get under-powered ICE car with a small and yet unnecessary batter that would never be charged because, as you just described, charging is not a hassle.
You have 10 years to enjoy your oil hungry, polluting ICE car and then you can buy ICE car in 2030 and have it for 10 more years since the ban only extends to new car sales.
And then let's hope that 20 years is enough time to put chargers everywhere. Somehow we manage to put several connectors to the grid in every house and apartment, connect street lamps and parking meters which suggests that it's a solved problem. We just need to do it and 20 years seems like enough time.
Doesn’t the power come from the street? Seems like adding metered street parking wouldn’t be a big deal and a great source of revenue for gov to replace fuel tax that is lost
There is a limited amount of current available from the electrical substations that serve any given area (and thus any given street), you can't just magic up enough current to be able to charge vastly more electric cars, it requires massive infrastructural change.
All the existing street chargers I've seen (there's a couple up the road from me) are like 1 or 2 here + there. Probably no more than 1 per thousand parking spot (might even be being generous there).
You'd have to install these chargers (which appear to require a fair bit of work to install) at every single parking spot in the UK to make it practical. Which is not really practical even if we had the money to do it...
Almost as if in the last 100 years we mastered the art of generating more electricity, laying out high voltage cables and constructing enough electrical substations to meet the demand, whatever that demand might be.
The problem is breadth not depth. In the case of a skyscraper that requires more power you then have only to upgrade a localised substation. In order for the entire country to consume considerably more _current_ that requires a global upgrade everywhere. There are 400,000 substations in the UK.
I'm also not saying it's impossible, it's just something that the govt has to do first for this to even be feasible. It also makes the timeframe very impractical. The govt doesn't appear to ever address this or even begin the work required.
Surely funding these upgrades can be funded from the future booked revenue from the charging. I am sure the private sector would be chomping at the bit to capture a monopoly for these services as well.
This reminds me of the place near me. Essentially office building near at least two if not three factories. Had 2 charging stations expanded to 8 now there is new substation... So even in location where you would expect there to be capacity it was still required to install more...
London has added a lot of free/cheap charging points but they're not necessarily in convenient places for where people live. I think you can get a subsidy for adding a fast charger to your house but for people in flats, that's probably not an option (and also doesn't help if you have to park 300m away because there's just no room any more.)
Climate change and coronavirus isn't some masterplan created just to incovenience you. You're a person out of 7 billion other people on this planet, our collective actions have consequences.
You can't see your cells, smell or see carbon monoxide, or touch the other planets - yet you trust that you have red blood cells, CO gas kills you in your sleep, and that mars is made from rock. You've been told this as well by scientists and experts, what's the difference?
Over years, PR companies employed by the big oil companies have sown doubt in climate science, this is not an accident. They did the same with cigarettes & the link to cancer - it took decades to correct the public health message that tobacco causes cancer.
Climate change and coronavirus are pretexts for the rollout of a technocratic system. They are geopolitical stories to get our buy in to all they have planned for us. This can be seen in the way all our governments are acting in tandem. We have a 'new normal', 'build back better', etc. Klaus Schwab lays out the plans in detail if you want to know what's coming up.
What happened to 3 weeks to flatten the curve? We're 8 months in, and it is clear this is going to continue perpetually, and we are going to be vaccinated twice annually for covid19/20/21 - there is no end to this. And climate change is the 'carrot' - we all want to save the earth! But what if that is a fake story to frame our situation in order for us to subscribe to the plans?
If you try to correlate climate change to personal experience, you will see just how much you are putting trust in organisations that are not there to serve you.
And you do realise that the BBC was created to be a propaganda delivery vehicle? That you couldn't get a job there unless you had been screened by MI5? That they gave out free TVs to ensure good take up of their propaganda?
You have 119 sources to choose from at the bottom of the page, but perhaps anything that doesn't align with your dogmas is a propaganda piece.
Social media and Murdoch's media conglomerates were probably the biggest and most succesful propaganda machines of modern society. You might want to check what are the information sources you do trust. I am not sure I can help any further
I've expressed my position. That this is a captured system, owned by large corporations. That education, science, government, media - all of it is captured and bent towards the will of those few who own the large corporations. If you can't see how the world is being co-ordinated now, I don't think you ever will.
If you are a top elite, and own almost everything, even banks, even the Federal Reserve (and it is privately owned btw), so you can print your own money, you have a totally different set of questions. You may well find yourself prepared to ditch an entire industry (oil) for the sake of the greater good. Its really not about the oil industry.
We are globally being transitioned away from cars, etc. We will not own cars in the future. We will have our freedom of movement severely constrained, on account of our 'citizen score' (see present day China). We will not be able to use electricity or water, once our allocated credits are used up. This sounds dystopian, right?
But you will be cheering this on, because you believe what you are told.
Thanks for those posting data from NASA and NOAA. I know you will think that I'm being outrageous not to trust the data from those organisations, but I don't. I see all - ALL - the organisations as acting in interests that are not mine. I do not want to get into an anarchy conversation, but I think it is self-evident that governmental structures are about control.
What is requested in posting this 'scientific' data, is that I deny the evidence of my own senses.
What I would really like anecdotal evidence, preferably supported by photos. Personally, all the beaches I went to in my youth have water at the same level. I appreciate there is erosion, as there is also the depositing of new material elsewhere.
What can you give personal testimony on?
PS Do you see and accept that when you take the science data on trust, your are actually taking a religious position? The position is that the science is right, even if it doesn't cohere with your own senses. That is faith!
You seem to expect that rising Carbon Dioxide means people will suffocate, and if they haven't, then "Gotcha! It's all made up", but it doesn't work like that.
You will never, ever see the water level rise in a way that is directly visible. The effect is more frequent flooding.
I personally, have noticed a change in the climate. When I was a child, the river used to freeze in the winter and there would be metres of snow. These day the city government still hires snow clearers every winter, but they never have anything to do. Meanwhile, the summers are hotter and drier than ever. A couple of years a ago I went sunbathing in October!
Probably the best way of demonstrating this is to see the former arctic permafrost with you own eyes. I know people who have done this and they came away amazed. However, if you will not accept any 3rd party data as evidence this becomes quite difficult as you would have had to go there a few years ago to see the 'before' state.
No I don't think it means people will suffocate. I'm saying that carbon dioxide should help trees grow. That we have a natural buffer against too much.
Did you know that some farms, pump carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to improve their crop. It seems self-evident that any extra would be mopped up by trees, bushes etc in the wild.
I hear what you are saying about snow and your experience. But you should also ask the older generation what their experience was of the winters there. There may have been times that there wasn't always snow. And unfortunately, I don't think our weather today is entirely natural - that weather modification has been around for a few years now.
> It seems self-evident that any extra would be mopped up by trees, bushes etc in the wild.
This is factually incorrect. Please stop spreading lies. [0]
You are absolutely failing to realise the rate at which we are pumping CO2, NO2 and SO2 and other gases into the atmosphere.
> Did you know that some farms, pump carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to improve their crop.
Did you know that humans are going to get cognitively impaired with the increasing CO2 concentrations? [1]
Even though it doesn't tally up with what you see.
I see a wonderful world. You see a world that you yourself are killing.
But even accepting the stories, science etc we are given, the top 100 corporations are responsible on their own for 70% of the emissions. Why don't we make this issue completely disappear in the easiest way possible, by banning those corporations only from any polluting? Job done.
> But even accepting the stories, science etc we are given, the top 100 corporations are responsible on their own for 70% of the emissions. Why don't we make this issue completely disappear in the easiest way possible, by banning those corporations only from any polluting? Job done.
Well on that we definitely have common ground, all you need now is a few spare million to form a political lobbying group. Bare in mind that much of that pollution is to make products/utilities that are then used by consumer. So it is still consumer driven pollution. But I absolutely agree on the principle that Government and Industry should be leading the Carbon emmisions reduction.
It's a chain of trust, as an individual you can decide where that trust begins and ends for you, but it's impossible for you to be at the forefront measuring every possible variable, and being an expert in every field, conducting analysis of the data.
At some point you need to defer to people who know (or at least, you believe they know) more than you.
It's like with our computers spying on us. Yes you can inspect the code, yes you can check the signatures of the code running on your machine match the code as listed, but then what of the OS, what of the drivers, what of the micro-code, firmware, hardware, etc etc.
It's an impossible position to reason you out of, because you are living in a completely zero trust world.
If I cannot know, I will not trust. To trust would weaken me, and empower those who hide information to hide even more. This is where we are.
I do live in a zero trust world. I trust government and corporations least of all. Individuals I have much more time for.
Although zero trust was disconcerting at first, I also find it liberating. I know that there is lots I do not know. I'm not pretending to myself - holding beliefs as if they were knowledge, because of misplaced trust.
Do you grow your own food ? Where does your zero trust end ?
Science is very difficult to cheat on such high visibility issues. There is a huge scientific consensus on climate change, from experts of all countries and diverse backgrounds. For it all to be a huge conspiracy seems like a pretty big leap of faith, that they are genuine is a simpler explanation.
I think you've misunderstood what is meant when people talk about rising sea levels or temperatures.
Yes, this is literally what is happenning. But the effects are not ones you would ever directly notice, i.e. people suffocate because there is no oxygen, or that the sea level rises by several meters and suddenly the beach you used to play on as a child is underwater. Small changes have a massive impact on weather patterns and ecosystems.
If things are good in the tiny corner of the planet that you live in, then great for you.
Have you not seen the videos of open sea which used to be permafrost?
Have you not seen all the news story about forest fires, more and more every year?
When I was a child there was snow every winter. Now, it's years since we had snow, but a couple of years back we had temperatures over 30 C every day for a month, when the average is 25.
Yes. I don't trust the television to present the truth. Perhaps you also know, but 'the science' also tells us there are more polar bears than ever. I don't really trust any of it. Science, media, government - all are long-captured areas that have been bent to manage us for the benefit of those that own the corporations.
On your point about climate - do you really think that the climate should be the same, year after year? I think there are fluctuations. (I also think the weather we have is not entirely natural, but that's a different story.)
On forest fires, these are in fact managed environments. If you don't let the fires burn naturally, and allow matter to build up, eventually you will have a massive conflagration. You can just de-fund the organisations that actively managed those environments, to prepare a fire event.
Additionally, it really doesn't take much to create a fire - just someone to start one - ie this doesn't need to be a natural event. In fact, there were lots of people that were arrested for starting fires on purpose. Bizarrely, lots of them were released! (At least that was the case in Aus.)
You might say 'why would they do that?' Well, my view is that those who govern us want to usher in a technocratic control system, and they need us to accept this. If they say they are going to save us from climate change and killing the world, the psychology is such that most people would willingly sign up. They teach us about climate change in schools, so everyone is on board.
> I am a skeptic and I'm very far from trusting experts.
As you've said this I hardly think anything I'm going to show you will change your mind. However you have asked for some evidence so here is some.
> Sea levels
From about 3,000 years ago to about 100 years ago, sea levels naturally rose and declined slightly, with little change in the overall trend. Over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F), with sea level response to that warming totaling about 160 to 210 mm (with about half of that amount occurring since 1993)
From the IPCC 2014:
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have
warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.
If you really want to learn I cannot recommend the IPCC's reports enough, whether you 'trust experts' or not, they lay out the problems we face as a species. The scientific consensus is that the Earth's climate has warmed significantly since the late 1800s, caused in large part by human activity.
> From about 3,000 years ago to about 100 years ago, sea levels naturally rose and declined slightly, with little change in the overall trend. Over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F), with sea level response to that warming totaling about 160 to 210 mm (with about half of that amount occurring since 1993)
This is hearsay. You were not there 3000 years ago, or even 100 years. You have been told a story and are re-telling it to me. Why should I believe it? I know how people can mislead into lying with statistics, for their work, etc to prepare information that is not accurate. I just don't have any faith in science. (I love the scientific method, but that's a different story, that pales into insignificance when funding is involved.)
> In 2018, the all-species index in the UK, based on the aggregated population trends of 130 breeding species, was 11% below its 1970 value.
We have had industrial farming methods take off at that time, and we do throw some awful stuff on the soil - I'm prepared to believe that this is probably fair data. However, how can I know this is really true?
i don't follow the space closely, but from my brief research it seems that 10 years ago there were almost no alternatives to petrol cars. On what premise do you think it would've been reasonable to ban petrol cars in that situation?
well, electric cars were invented in the late 1800, so it's a matter of market more than technology. If we had this policy launched 10 years ago the market would have been way different now.
Even considering the same market offers as we have had without the policy: hybrid cars exist since late 90s and the first fully electric cars were already available 10 years ago. It could have been done.
#/media/File:UK_Historical_Net_Electricity_supplied.PNG){kind=link}
Edit: To evaluate the scale of how difficult it is to implement on street parking - go and have a look out of your own window in a built up area and count the number of lamp posts and the corresponding number of cars. Right now (9:35am), in a pretty built up area, I can see three lamp posts on my own street, and eighteen cars parked on the road. One of those lamp posts is located where it's illegal to park because of double yellow lines. I currently live in a rented flat at the moment, and that has another 25 car parking spaces. To get charging points located there would require a number of disparately located and willing landlords to agree to wire up the car park for electric charging too.