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B.C. introduces law to require cars, trucks sold by 2040 be zero emission
- mistrial9 8y agothe USA was pointed to do this under the Obama Administration; only speculation here, but perhaps the Volkswagon emissions scandal was influenced by this insider fight, as well getting quick downvotes on this -- maybe mistaken for a partisan statement. This comment is not taking sides, only pointing out that a massive "sea change" in auto regulations was in the making, for years, but never in the public view, and perhaps it was substantial enough to change the course of the Presidential Election ok! I provide factual evidence (below) and still get downvotes ! the mere mention of 'sea-change' auto regulations, makes the messenger the target..? curiously non-sensical amongst such a tech crowd
- wishinghand 8y agoI think the downvotes are due to the lack of sources and weird conspiratorial tone that car emission standards helped Trump win and not white nationalism and fear mongering.
- tareqak 8y agoCould you please point me to the massive “sea change” in auto regulations?
- mistrial9 8y agotry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_emission_standards#Phase_3A:_2010%E2%80%932016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_emission_standar...
- sctb 8y ago> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- grawprog 8y agoSo I guess anyone out anywhere beyond the lower mainland is screwed after 2040? There's a lot of BC that's far away from sources of power. But then again, the BC government might as well be the Metro Vancouver government. They really give such a small amount of shits about anybody living outside the lower mainland.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIf the IPCC is right, we're all screwed unless we cut global CO2 emissions in half by 2030. So...yes?
- ed_balls 8y agoPoliticians like to create laws and make promises about the distant future which they cannot be held accountable for. If they would really care they would tax all vehicles except electric and hybrids starting from 2025 and increase the tax every year, so be 2030 no one would buy pure ICE car unless they absolutely have to.
- switchbak 8y agoI think the market will take care of that soon enough. At least this legislation makes the long term infrastructure investment a no-brainer. There's also car industry Jobs to think about, no politician wants to put that at undue risk.
- maxsilver 8y ago> There's a lot of BC that's far away from sources of power. How do they get power now? Anywhere that has electricity today could be charging electric cars today. And fuel cells exist, for the limited use cases where electricity isn't ideal
- grawprog 8y agoIt's more the hundreds of kilometers of wilderness between many communities in BC.
- jammygit 8y agoZero emission sounds nice, but Alberta next door gets its power largely from coal. Just because it isn't coming out of a car doesn't mean its zero emissions
- wetpaws 8y agoIt's just one of many bottlenecks. You can't fix them all at the same time, unfortunately, gotta at least start somewhere.
- bagacrap 8y agoYes, "zero" may be misleading, but displacing the emissions away from human settlement is a good thing for human health. And I assume that coal is on its way out, certainly in the 2040 timescale at least?
- Gpetrium 8y agoCoal may be out in places like Canada by 2040 assuming great advances in technology, cost & major climate disruptions. However, it is very unlikely to be out for countries in Africa and Asia that are seeing tremendous increases in energy consumption that cannot be covered by other means of energy capture due to a variety of reasons.
- krisrm 8y ago"Alberta next door gets its power largely from coal" If the government is to be believed, not by 2030 they won't: https://www.alberta.ca/climate-coal-electricity.aspx https://www.alberta.ca/climate-coal-electricity.aspx
- jgon 8y agoWe'll see what happens after the election, but the current government literally paid billions of dollars in order to EOL those coal plants by 2030, ahead of schedule. So the previous commenter isn't giving the whole story.
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- mikerg87 8y agoThis is an empty promise. BC, Ontario and many other provinces made emission reduction promises for 2020 back is the early 2000’s. It’s already clear these won’t be met, so I am dubious of the province to meet something this far off
- sb057 8y agoAfter all, the politicians passing this will be dead by then, or at the very least out of office, so why bother passing legislation that will actually fix stuff when you can just pass the problem to the next generation while still reaping the political benefits?
- esaym 8y agoAnd I think in the 1970's it was Jimmy Carter that demanded all cars get 40mpg by 1990 so...
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoCompact cars (Tercel, Escort, Civic, etc) were getting 40mpg in 1990. If it weren't for the perpetual safety arms race making vehicles fat we'd likely have crossovers that get a real world 40-50mpg by now.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoWhen you spin it like that, that sounds like a good thing. Though more efficient cars AND increasingly fewer people on the roads may have helped carbon emissions.
- SECProto 8y ago> BC, Ontario and many other provinces made emission reduction promises for 2020 back is the early 2000’s. It’s already clear these won’t be met, so I am dubious of the province to meet something this far off What promises did BC make? I wasn't able to find the specific promises, so I can't tell what you mean. BC is currently sitting at about -30% per capita CO2 emissions relative to 2000 [1]. Total emissions reduction isn't quite as impressive, but they have still reduced CO2 while increasing population and GDP.[2] Hard to say more without knowing what you're referencing, but it's still significantly better than most jurisdictions! Ontario is not really the scope of these comments, but I took a look out of curiousity. Back in 2006, they set goals for 2014, 2020, 2030, and 2050. They met the 2014 goal [3], mostly through reduction of co2 emissions in the electricity sector. To meet the 2020 goals, they needed a bigger reduction, and had a strong plan[4] to meet it - subsidize electric cars, cap and trade industrial emissions, etc - but they elected a populist idiot who scrapped all that. So I agree that Ontario won't meet their 2020 goal. [1] http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/sustainability/images/ghg_pop_plot.svg http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/sustainability/image... [2] http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/sustainability/ghg-emissions.html http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicators/sustainability/ghg-e... [3] https://media.assets.eco.on.ca/web/2016/11/2016-Annual-GHG-Report_Chapter-2.pdf https://media.assets.eco.on.ca/web/2016/11/2016-Annual-GHG-R... [4] https://media.assets.eco.on.ca/web/2016/11/2016-Annual-GHG-Report_Chapter-4.pdf https://media.assets.eco.on.ca/web/2016/11/2016-Annual-GHG-R...
- whytaka 8y agoI'm sorry the non-sustainability of your lifestyle puts the world at risk.
- lainga 8y agoWhat are you suggesting, that everyone north of Prince George move to Surrey?
- jedmeyers 8y agoNow, they should just stop existing. Because “the world” is apparently at risk. As philosopher Carlin once said: “the planet is fine...”
- rglover 8y agoFor the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
- pilsetnieks 8y agoEven if you're fine with human civilization dying, this reasoning isn't right. It is possible that some processes could be started that cause positive feedback loops that eventually do hurt the planet as a whole, and Earth could eventually look like Mars. If you include the biosphere in your definition of the planet, it is already very much hurting. Think of overfishing, the species we've led to extinction, places where people have caused desertification, and so on. Yes, the rocks will still be here. I don't think that means the planet is fine.
- soupbowl 8y agoHuman civilization will not being dieing if the small province of BC does not quit using gas for a few more years. BC is doing well with our greenhouse gas emissions. We can and will do better but we are a very small part of the problem, quit being dramatic.
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoIn BC today you can still run out of GAS very easily. I've done so in Alberta. At 2am. In February. I almost died.
- TheRealPomax 8y ago...what? How is running out of gas in Alberta, a different province, related to running out of gas in BC?
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoYou can't find a similarity between Alberta and BC?
- TheRealPomax 8y agoHow is that related to asking someone what they mean by "it's easy to run out of gas in BC" and then giving an anecdote about running out of gas in AB instead? Without further details, it says nothing about BC (it also says nothing about AB, but that's not the province the news article is about).
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoLook at a map, bro. Do you know anything at all about Canada? Seriously.
- gowld 8y agoIs there a BC election soon? Does Canadian provincial government have any power to bind future governments and citizens? Most jurisdictions do not. This is exaggerated symbolic gesture. Future legislatures will adjust the deadline or reduce the requirements if they see a demand for positive-emission vehicles.
- elchief 8y agoThere is not an election soon The BC government is a coalition between the NDP and Green Party. This is the NDP throwing the Greens a bone for supporting them on other legislation
- bjt2n3904 8y agoA province (or state) has no business making legislation like this. It allows them to aggressively pat each other on the back and assert that they're finally "doing something about _______", while standing atop some defeated straw man of "big oil" or other nonsense. As others have asserted, that energy has to come from somewhere. I'm more than willing to bet that the losses from conversion and transportation add up to make it less efficient, and more polluting. Wankery.
- dawnerd 8y agoMost of BC's energy is renewable... https://www.neb-one.gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/lctrct/rprt/2016cndrnwblpwr/prvnc/bc-eng.html https://www.neb-one.gc.ca/nrg/sttstc/lctrct/rprt/2016cndrnwb...
- yeuxverte 8y agoEven if it were less efficient currently, I think energy production will quickly snap over to renewables quickly once it becomes economically advantageous. Cars and trucks will have to be gradually phased out over a 10-20+ year period so getting a head start on this would probably pay out in the long term
- gowld 8y agoAn analogy: Server farms are far more efficient than doing the same workload on laptops scattered around the countryside. Centralized energy production and pollution control is likewise more efficient.
- Proven 8y agoMorons. It's nothing but another tax.
- jkaljundi 8y agoWay too late :(
- natch 8y ago2030 should be totally doable. 2040 is so lax it's almost a joke. And there are ten years in between those two numbers. Hard to see why they pushed it out so far.
- Zenbit_UX 8y agoTo be fair they had milestones in between now and 2040.
- rdiddly 8y agoEver notice how seemingly all the predictions and new regulations deal in a timeframe always conveniently 10 or more years into the future? Everybody embraces denial so eagerly, even the ones claiming to be confronting the problem. Coastal flooding, unprecedented storms & droughts, crop damage, streams of refugees... these are happening NOW, and even if you stopped driving TODAY, like leave the car right where it's parked, forever (which we all literally need to do) it wouldn't be enough to "stop" climate change, since the climate has changed, for one thing, and since driving isn't the only cause. Though it's an important one, and if you never drove again, it would help. Minimally. And most people, a.k.a. "you," are probably not even willing to do that. This law, like most of the others, is well intentioned but still too weak; it's "provisional living" just like how a junky's plan to kick always starts tomorrow. Quitting an addiction is a pain in the ass, but hey, now that we have this great plan for 2040, we can continue business as usual today. And even this would be, politically, something of a miracle to get passed. You wouldn't even be able to get it out of committee in, say Texas.
- rayiner 8y agoWe don't just need to ditch our cars: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.h... > But the "floor" below which nobody in the U.S. can reach, no matter a person's energy choices, turned out to be 8.5 tons, the class found. That was the emissions calculated for a homeless person who ate in soup kitchens and slept in homeless shelters.
- standardUser 8y agoEnergy isn't the problem, our dominant energy sources are the problem, as we all know. Telling people they have to live like a homeless person isn't realistic, helpful, informative or true.
- rfugger 8y agoIt's helpful to the extent it demonstrates just how much our energy infrastructure needs to change.
- youeseh 8y agoSounds like the BC wants to have their cake and eat it too. By 2040, most cars and trucks will be zero emissions. So, this law doesn't so much speed up good behavior but just pushes out the stragglers.
- sunkenvicar 8y agoBritish Columbia is a million square kilometres for 5 million people. 3 million of whom live in urban areas along the 49th parallel. This is to say that BC is a vast, rugged, rural land. Running out of gas is easy to do and quite deadly. The political parties in charge want to give well-off urbanites $5000+ each for premium vehicles. Vehicles incapable of functioning in the majority of the province. Somehow a few rich Canadians no longer filling up at the pump will halt climate change for the world.
- seanalltogether 8y agoGovernments have tremendous purchasing power that they can use to push for better technology. Why write empty laws like this when they can instead hand down a directive that all BC government fleet purchases starting in 2020 be zero emission.
- ttul 8y agoThere is a lot of criticism of this legislation. Here it is: https://www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentary-business/legislation-debates-proceedings/41st-parliament/4th-session/bills/progress-of-bills https://www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentary-business/legislation-deb... Paragraph 9 is what everyone's talking about, but the general approach of the bill is to implement a gradual increase in the fraction of ZEVs sold each year until the final cut-off in 2040. Specifically: 7 The following targets are established for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia: (a) in 2025 and in each subsequent year, at least 10% of all new light-duty motor vehicles sold or leased in British Columbia must be zero-emission vehicles; (b) in 2030 and in each subsequent year, at least 30% of all new light-duty motor vehicles sold or leased in British Columbia must be zero-emission vehicles; (c) in 2040 and in each subsequent year, 100% of all new light-duty motor vehicles sold or leased in British Columbia must be zero-emission vehicles. In addition to these hard targets, BC has a carbon tax and the ability to increase the carbon tax rate over time to provide a more efficient incentive for residents to make use of ZEVs - credits notwithstanding. I prefer to crank up the carbon tax and allow people to make their own choices on how to reduce carbon production. However, I am not everyone. Many people hate the concept of a "tax" and it is politically more palatable to regulate auto dealers. Combining a moderate carbon tax (BC has one of the highest in the world) with targeted interventions like the ZEV vehicle target seems like a good approach.
- mike_ivanov 8y agoI'm wondering where the province is going to get electricity to charge all those cars. Solar? -- In BC?? Wind? Hey look at that thing on the Grouse Mountain. Surely they are not building a nuclear plant, are they?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoAnd just like Canada abandoned the Montreal (IIRC) goals just before they were due to take effect and destroy the economy, this law has no force or power until it actually goes into effect, starting 6 years from now. Tldr : it's meaningless virtue signaling. You want to clean up the planet? Start with the ten most polluted rivers, all in India or China, and the lead smelting industry which was forced to close in the US and then, predictably, moved to China...