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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 alre
by conjectures 6y ago
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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- terryf 6y agoThe 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.
- conjectures 6y agoThey'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."
- davidhbolton 6y agoWhy does China get a free pass? It's the worlds largest miner of coal and is building many new coal fired power stations. For instance. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/riozim-seals-3-billion-zimbabwe-coal-plant-deal-with-china https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/riozim-se... and https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-will-china-build-hundreds-of-new-coal-plants-in-the-2020s https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-will-china-build-hundre...
- mavhc 6y agoWho 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.
- Gwypaas 6y agoChina 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. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=CHN~EU-27~FRA~DEU~GBR~USA~CAN~AUS~SWE®ion=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
- dschuler 6y agoUS CO2 emissions per capita have been declining significantly since 2011.
- Ekaros 6y agoI 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...
- Ma8ee 6y agoWhy 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.