Diesel and petrol ban should come much faster, say MPs
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Emissions kill people. They kill the elderly. They kill people with asthma. They give people cancer. Your car is an instrument of death even if you don't hit anyone. Parts of the UK have appallingly bad air quality (by regional standards; obviously it's not Beijing).
People are dying en masse but because you can't see it and say "my car was the one that killed them" most people just. don't. care.
Also the majority of trips are short enough to be done via bike or ebike if you give people safe routes to do so, something the UK has been completely unwilling to do.
It also takes forever to walk anywhere because pedestrian crossings are programmed to be extremely slow as to not disrupt drivers as well as intersections often requiring 2 crossings to get to the desired location vs just one when driving.
Those 4-lane boulevards though city centers could fit generously-proportioned sidewalks and bike paths and greenery, food stalls, cafés and dedicated bus lanes (or you could move public transit underground for better space utilization).
Instead they're full of gridlocked traffic, made up of countless ~1.5t lumps of steel and plastic, transporting a single occupant each.
But since most governments are corrupt/can get paid by those rich companies they are trying to regulate, the former has also been the most difficult to implement.
Big cargo ships should also be targeted, they burn significantly worse grades of fuel, and pollute a lot more.
Just because a trip is short enough doesn't necessarily mean it's actually practical to make via (e)bike. People often need to take more than a backpack's- or pannier's-worth of stuff with them.
I love my bike, and use it when appropriate, but it doesn't come close to replacing a car.
Of course if you are are a tradie or something and you need to carry around ladders and pipes than a bike isn't ideal but for almost everyone it is for almost all of our trips.
Taking a car to work for most of us is using a sledge hammer to push in a thumb tack.
I'm not suggesting a human-powered piano delivery service. I'm not proposing we replace logging trucks with cargo bikes.
I am saying that a large number of trips can be taken by modes other than car when doing so becomes a safe and pleasant option. We have proven examples of this (DK, NL) and they are really nice places to walk, cycle, and perhaps paradoxically, drive, as a result.
We are all alive for selfish reasons and compete for resources with others, including clean air.
An absolute standpoint does not help. We have to aim to improve and optimize.
CalRobert has made their proposal: the same, but also reduce the number of car trips by improving cycling infrastructure.
Neither proposal is absolute, though they exist: ban all [private] cars [from cities].
What's yours?
People are dying en masse, because people read forums like HN. His argument is poor.
Wheter building cycling lanes is a net improvement can be discussed. It will depend on the details.
Which is why we must Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
My main PC is from 2011, still going strong with only minor upgrades (RAM, SSD, new GPU). My laptop is of a similar age. I don't foresee replacing either anytime soon.
We need to stop the ridiculous gadget race.
Once you’ve got a realistic threat of civilisational collapse on one side of the equation, things look different. Not everyone being able to afford a car, or having to eat veggie burgers... These aren’t real problems in comparison.
Quite apart from the fact that we shouldn’t all need cars in the first place. I live in Europe, with kids, and I’ve never felt the need to even get a license. Trains are far more convenient.
Cars being a luxury means public transport will need to improve everywhere. Which is great for everyone, and for the economy.
That is a sweeping overgeneralisation and literally false. There are going to be large communities of people who will suffer more from giving up cars than from climate change.
Maybe you don't have an poor people living in your part of the world, but wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor because you don't want to engage with their problems is neither constructive nor pleasant.
What people can afford does matter, and it is worth considering how much the poor are being asked to give up versus how much we expect their sacrifice to help.
Depending on exactly where we fall in the range of bad to catastrophic possible futures ahead of us, it may be hard to find too many people who would be more affected by giving up cars than climate change.
I am clearly not wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor, that is a straw man. I am wishing working public transport on everyone.
Your final paragraph I absolutely agree with. I over-egged my comment for effect. The general lack of alarm and urgency surrounding climate change is frustrating.
Public transport causes far less of both problems, and where problems remain (e.g. a town with old buses) they are much more easily solved (buy 200 electric buses).
If you live outside the cities though, you better own a car.
Besides which, cars aren’t faster than trains.
I'm a lifelong cyclist, ex-bike courier. Cars don't offend me. Bad drivers do. I always loved the freedom of cycling. The lack of regulation and traffic stops is one of my favorite points. Never enjoyed 'cycling routes' or special bike lanes. They always seem to box me in. I feel less safe in these areas.
But just as not all people are track runners, not all people are ex-bike-couriers, and it would be nice if they could ride a bike in something other than abject terror.
Also, I actually don't favour a total ban for the most part, just pricing in the externalities. Which would make petrol and diesel powered cars astonishingly expensive. Removing a liter's worth of CO2 from the air would have to be priced in to the cost of a liter of fuel. Paying for your dead neighbour's funeral would need to be covered too (though insurance is meant to cover this, drivers who kill people walking or cycling are rarely found at fault, because it's legal to kill people with your car if they're in the street). Meanwhile, you'd still let the odd hot rod or classic car enthusiast have a project car to wrench on during the weekends, and honestly, I think that's great. They're a key part of our cultural history and great fun.
But right now we still pay for all of those things! We just make _everyone else_ pay for them, which is very unfair. My taxes pay for the street where people drive too quickly to stop before killing my child if she slips from the pavement, and where they emit pollution that has rendered her less intelligent than she might be otherwise, though it's impossible to say by how much.
I don't even own a car. So that seems unjust.
For me the bigger negative externality is in foreign policy. I don't want any part of overseas adventures for oil. The financial costs alone are astronomical.
At the same time, I do benefit from transportation infrastructure in terms of shipping and purchasing goods which are transported. But if it were my decision I'd say just privatize the whole thing.
If a private road pollutes or otherwise harms anyone, then they should be liable. Problem solved. Lawyers have every incentive to claim damages.
About the abject terror, just build your way up. You can do it. Once you try it you'll see that it truly is as easy as riding a bike.
Back to your main point - it is not selfish to not want to ban petrol/diesel vehicles. I am ready to share the road with anyone.
But most people are not me, and we definitely don't demand new drivers live in utter terror until they get numb to it.
Nevermind survival bias. Dead ex-bike-couriers aren't here to give their view.
Prohibition of alcohol would be a more apt comparison.
Cars physically hurt people even when they aren't hitting people.
I think your rule about possession being different from action doesn't hold water at all.
If you're an ultra-libertarian I think you need to get your externality philosophy straightened out first in your model of utopia.
Seems like most of the safety complainers don't want to cycle and are looking for excuses.
Vehicular cycling has set back actual progress in safe infrastructure by decades and is woefully ill-informed about the needs of anyone other than fit, adult, experienced cyclists with excellent vision, hearing, and reflexes.
If you wouldn't let your 8 or 80 year old relative use it, it's crap bike infrastructure.
Aged 8, I was in the UK in the 1990s.
- Most children went to the nearest school (no longer the case with increased choice from parents)
- The tabloid "paedo-fear" thing hadn't really set in, so more children were allowed outside unsupervised.
- There were fewer people, and fewer working people [1]
- The number of car trips has gone up (although not much), and the number of walking trips has gone down massively [1]
- The number of children being driven to school (on a parent's way to work) has increased massively [1]. That presumably adds traffic at the worst possible place and time for children who could otherwise walk or cycle to school.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Hydrogen or something where I can still go to a "filling station" might work. Right now I view electric cars as a tax break for anyone lucky/rich enough to have a driveway.
This might all change in a few years but I doubt there will ever be enough charging points on local roads.
And yet here we are.
In a news magazine I read[1], they had an infographic where they measured the average number of comments below articles on a number of unrelated topics it took for Brexit to be mentioned. The figures were mostly below 10 (and look at me, bringing up Brexit in this unrelated issue!)
1: https://www.slow-journalism.com/infographics/culture/infogra...
Why are you happy for the filling station to not be on a local road but the charging point must be? Because of time? 30 minutes will get you 80% charge on must current super chargers. Next gen ultra chargers will probably bring that down to 10 minutes.
80% is enough for maybe 200+ miles in the latest EV - so in 14 years I'm reasonably confident that'll still be available or better.
Also, why do you drive? To get to work? Petition for chargers at work perhaps? 14 years to get them onside. Charging doesn't have to happen at home.
You can tax cars and fuel. You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...) This gives the economy time to adopt.
But please no exceptions.
Go to Cornwall though and it's a very different picture. You need to get all these more remote regions as wired up as central London _before_ introducing any taxation, or make exceptions while you're building the infra.
EDIT: BY incredible coincidence I just received an email from TfL on exactly this!
ULEZ is coming to central London in the same area as the Congestion Charging zone from 8 April 2019. It will operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Vehicles will need to meet the new stricter emission standards, or you will need to pay the daily ULEZ charge. This is in addition to the weekday Congestion Charge.
£12.50 per day for cars, motorcycles and vans (under 3.5 tonnes)
£100.00 per day for heavier vehicles, including lorries (over 3.5 tonnes) and buses/coaches (over 5 tonnes)
From 25 October 2021, the ULEZ will be expanded to include the inner London area bounded by the North and South Circular roads.
Communities can also take loans to build out infrastructure now and pay with the transition tax levied a bit later.
As too political suicide, there are three types of voters:
a) those that believe petrol cars should be banned
b) those that do not want to give up their cars ever
c) those that think cars should be banned but not for them now.
Therefore:
a) should be happy with an immediate tax ladder as it creates incentive to move now
b) will never be happy.
c) if that is the majority of your voters it’s still better to have a a gradual change now then a sudden change in the future. They could just overturn your decision in the future just before the planned sudden change.
If MPs urge for a change that is more than one election away they are hypocrites and shouldn’t be MPs.
Obviously some changes take a long time to bear fruits, but the change has to be immediate and gradual.
Op said "You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...)"
So how about investing in Cornwall now, borrowing against the 20 year revenue stream from the tax.
Why not raise tax instead of banning? [...]
(i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...)
Then around 2000, when global oil prices rose and voters started to feel the pinch, Brown and Osborne repeatedly deferred, reduced or cancelled increases. Then Osborne kept fuel duty frozen for 6 years, even as oil prices dropped significantly.
Clearly, the policy did not eliminate petrol cars!
Of course, the likes of Tesla didn't exist for much of the time the escalator was in force, so you couldn't get an all-electric car even if you wanted one.
You can combine that with restrictions on where gasoline and diesel cars can drive like some cities in Europe are doing.
Ioniq, Kone, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW i3, e-up, e-golf etc etc.
You can even get iPace or the e-tron will also be out next year.
Some I've listed are more expensive than others, but you cannot possibly suggest the Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf aren't affordable or reliable.
The model 3 will be here soon too, who knows what will be here in 14 years!
This is not remotely close to true. Most BEVs have timed and/or location aware charging. My own Spark EV for example (a very low end BEV) can be scheduled to charge during certain hours each day of the week. I use this because our electric utility has lower rates from 11PM until 7AM. So no matter when I plug it, the car waits for the cheap electric rate period.
Citation needed.
What is actually true is that all BEV apart from (I think) the Renault Twizzy have charge timers built into the car.
There are already financial incentives to charge overnight with specific EV tariffs and some electricity suppliers will do the charger installation that talks directly to the provider via smart meter tech to charge at the best rate cost wise and grid wise.
Equally, people don't just come home every single day and recharge thair car. I know this directly as my last neighbour has a Nissan Leaf and charged it every 4 or 5 days and did so overnight.
50% is one hell of an increase!
You don't need to increase the capacity of the grid by 50% in 14 years. The legislation is to stop the sale of ICE cars, not get Harry Potter in to transmogrify all old ICE into BEV the millisecond the law is enacted.
You don't even need to increase the grid at all from it's current capacity if you charge the cars overnight or outside the peak daily duck curves, probably for the first 5 years of the legislation being enacted, as the numbers of BEV's around wouldn't exceed the generating capacity. So even if we didn't change the grid or increase generating capacity in any way whatsoever just some simple time management would be enough maintain BEV's and grid stability.
To be clear - you only have to make sure that the peak power draw on the grid doesn't increase. UK has about 55GW of generating capacity and uses about 25GW overnight and 35GW during the main part of the day at this time of year, a time of year that is higher use than the summer so we're talking worse case. That's 20-30GW of capacity to fit in some charging.
And that's without having any increases over the next 14 years which is obviously ridiculous!
Given that has been consistently falling at a rate of 1.5%/yr there may not be any new capacity required at all.
EDIT: year of "peak electricity"
Mrs T allegedly questioned the civil servants pushing the rush to Diesel 30 years ago.
For example, installing places for people renting or living in flats to charge cars, or reducing car demand by increasing walking/cycling.