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.
And yep, in places like BC where most of the population lives in cities, you tend to get laws much more oriented towards what city dwellers want.
Today, a single rechargeable AA battery can hold twice the power as that '80's hot-dog battery. That's a big improvement, over 10x more dense, with more improvements in the pipeline.
They were typically 6x sub-C cells, with a capacity of 1000mAh. (I remember paying extra for a 1300mAh pack!). You can get 5000mAh cells today, so it's a 5x improvement.
I know what you're talking about - but if you're talking about things like the Tamiya Grasshopper or similar - those RC vehicles were not "kids toys" but rather hobbyist-grade RC. At the time, a full setup would cost a few hundred dollars; even today, to purchase a new Tamiya RC kit vehicle, it will set you back a couple hundred when you factor in everything.
I know this because I recently did it; the car was a little over $100.00 off Amazon, then I had to pick up the electronics (which I didn't go cheap on), plus I added some "hop ups" (better motor, ball bearing upgrade, tires, etc). Then the battery and charger.
So - even today - I wouldn't classify it as a "kids toy" (teenage and older hobbyists don't qualify as "kids" in this sense, but that's just my opinion of course); there's too much money involved. If you or someone you knew had one of these plus all the other stuff, they were a lucky person indeed (a friend of mine in middle school had one, back when the ESC was resistance-based - I went in a different direction, and had a bunch of computer crap - so I guess we were both lucky in different ways).
I consider kid's RC toys to be anything costing under $100.00 and "ready-to-run" (RTR), usually without any kind of real servo or speed controls (that said, even that level has changed greatly; what you can get today for around $50.00 beats the pants off of anything you could get for that amount in the 80s - even in 80s dollars).
You'll be lucky if it's mere millions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/21/devastat...
Obviously, newer and improved tech would be even better, and if we have it, that's great. But I'm not convinced we need it.
Even if we were just stuck with today's 2019-era technology, we could still meet this mandate by 2040, just by widely deploying the green technology we already have on-hand today.
Rural and suburban communities don't need any reduction in quality of life to meet this mandate, we just need to deploy today's tech reliably out there.
Lots of mountains, but sparsely populated so they don't need to find all that many locations.
Solar can work in the interior, but isn't much use on the coast.
Hydro is the main renewable source of energy out here. It has it's issues of course, but it does provide a lot of cheap, reasonably-green energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitimat#Kemano_hydroelectric_p...
So there will be more than 21 years to discover an alternative.
With a decade or two more of cost scaling, we may be able to very effectively deploy solar in a lot of places we wouldn't consider today due to economics.
Solar power actually works better to the north where there is less cloud cover, eg see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Alaska and https://energyhub.org/yukon-territory/.
Most towns/cities aren't nearly as space constrained outside the lower mainland, so larger non-rooftop solar would be an option (along with the wind/hydro/etc that others have mentioned)
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
More and more people are losing farms that have been in their families for generations. The average farmer is a grandfather/grandmother and trends show no sign of shifting towards a younger demographic. Younger people see working on the farm as an economic risk. Increasing taxes on rural folks would be a massive mistake. Mark my words, by 2040 farmers will be rare if nothing changes and the price of food will sky rocket not from climate change but from lack of a labor force.
Or are you saying that the added emissions from living outside of a city are not worth undertaking because we just don't need those resources? That's nonsensical.
Food is cheap right now in part because of exploitation of labor. We probably should be paying more for our food.
This isn't remotely true. The overwhelming bulk of people living outside of major cities simply live outside of major cities. In the United States some 4 million people own or work on farms. 60 million people live in rural locations. I highly doubt the other 56 million are in forestry and mining.
Some people live in rural places for no particular reason than that's where they like to live. I live in a rural location, and I certainly don't gnash and gnaw about how everyone is going to starve unless I have a black-soot belching F350. I can actually imagine a world where I can live sustainably as well.
Rural communities are being hit because the amount of labor in key resource industries keeps going down. So kids move to the city where they can find a future, and so on. It’s been like that for a couple of hundred years.
Cities will continue to subsidize rural areas with their taxes as a result. Less density means infrastructure is used less efficiently, and so need significant transfers of wealth from the cities to keep being viable. That is probably unavoidable, but the cities can also subsidize rural areas in leveraging EVs as well.
Yes, but if the children of farmers have left and aren't going to take on their parents' industry, what happens when they truly can't do it anymore? The machines don't run the farm, yet, they only make running it more efficient and easy. You still have to know what to do, and go out and get it done, and this isn't something that people can just pick up in a day.
If the natural apprenticeship mechanism that used to provide for this has been broken, what's going to replace it?
I would strongly urge you to be careful with this language. Don't be so quick to assume folks living rural/suburban lifestyles are living any less sustainably.
These folks are what make city living possible in the first place. And city folk have plenty of huge-CO2-footprint problems of their own that everyone conveniently forgets, because it isn't literally dumping gasoline into an automobile.
I wasn't thinking only of carbon footprint, but also of things like electricity and water hookups. The cost to provide basic utilities in rural areas has to be a lot higher per capita than in the city.
If they aren't, they don't have anything to worry about when very unsustainable practices are abolished.
> These folks are what make city living possible in the first place.
A minority are, and they'll have to charge more for those services.
> And city folk have plenty of huge-CO2-footprint problems of their own that everyone conveniently forgets, because it isn't literally dumping gasoline into an automobile.
What are some examples of those city-specific CO2 problems?
And Hydrogen Fuel supposedly works much better than EVs in the extreme cold. https://www.greencarreports.com/pictures/1090078_toyota-tout... (They tested at -22F in Yellowknife, Canada)
--
Slightly off-topic, but I hate that most climate change issues get framed in discussions as "everyone needs to move into cities, where they will instantly be dirt poor and have terrible lives".
There's no reason we can't keep rural/suburban communities quality of life high and still take the tech we already have, and just use it to help our suburban/rural communities reduce their CO2 usage. We have a lot of technology to do this already, but we need to more aggressively deploy it.
...you mean, more aggressively market it in a way that people won't mind paying out the --- for it, right?
I mean - someone is going to have to pay for it, either now, or later. But people don't want their bills rising crazy high, and they really won't want to pay for their neighbor's solar panels or whatnot (I'm talking the United States right now, where we can't even agree on proper health care coverage - it might be a different case in BC).
I'm not sure how it will be solved. Probably like everything else - in a panic.
So, today in 2019, I can buy 100% clean renewable electricity, from the local heavily-regulated electrical utility. The "market rate" price of this is exactly 1 cent extra, per kilowatt hour. - https://www.consumersenergy.com/-/media/CE/Documents/renewab...
According to the US EIA, the average household uses about 867kwh per month. Most Michigan households could switch to 100% renewable electricity, for a real-world price of $8.67 extra per month. That's it. No fees, no installation, no new equipment. Literally check one box, get 100% renewable energy.
---
I know Michigan is not British Columbia. I am aware these costs vary by region. I know not everyone can afford this, and that it is a position of privilege to be able to spend an extra $9/month on fancier electricity. But the cost here is literally cheaper than Netflix, and it prevents about 1.2 tons of CO2 from hitting the atmosphere (per household, per month).
I don't think I'm exaggerating at all, when I say we really have all the tech we need, and we really just need to deploy it everywhere. Yes, it costs more. But only a little bit more, for such a huge benefit, it seems like an obvious thing we should be doing.
But even then, that truck you dismiss has an 11,000 lb towing capacity, some 800ft lbs of torque, etc. Sure sounds like a "soccer mom" vehicle...
I predict the term "quad" will have a completely different meaning for off-road enthusiasts in 2040.
"Muh torque" sure is nice but really isn't all that big a deal for rural use cases. Your average HNer's landscaper that drags 10k of truck and trailer through city traffic all day needs torque and power far more.
That said, there's really only so many main highways in BC, and most of them have pretty decent charging infrastructure (in the Southern and Central bits anyway). The main exception is the route North of Whistler to Kamloops - charge stations in Lillooet would be a nice addition.
In actual fact I've met many farmers, loggers, and even a friend in the petroleum industry that all take climate change very seriously.
Once you move away from partisanship, I think you'll find there's a lot of support for this even in places you wouldn't expect it.
That said, I prefer a carbon tax which allows each individual to make their own choices of how to spend their carbon budget. Perhaps you'd like to spend your carbon budget on driving all over BC, while I'd like to spend mine on eating beef or whatever.
We need to be treating that as a hard limit. And yes, that means sacrifices, behavioral changes, and - probably - a drop in standard of living. Or at the very least, life that looks pretty different than it does now.
But the alternative is the natural world collapsing out from under us and society coming apart at the seams as a result.
The way a word means its opposite in different countries is literally a pain in the neck.
I try to avoid it; it's even more ambiguous than most Canadian compromises between British and American English.
Side note, why do articles about legislation rarely include a link to the actual legislation?
Here it is: https://www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentary-business/legislation-deb...
Price George, BC? Yeah, no.
But given how popular the Teslas are in Norway, I think there's probably hope. Even if we're just talking about the little cars at first.
Once the batteries have sufficient capacity, you can just devote some of the spare capacity to heating during a trip.
In theory you could also have a dedicated heater than ran on LNG or similar. Might be a "less bad" compromise to enable EVs in such situations until the technology evolves to go full electric.
Besides, it's only about new ones. You'll still have 10 good years of second hand cars, probably 20 since anticipation will make people stock on models they think they'll sell well. And of course you'll have the obvious delay that is exceptionally given at the end of every single of those big shifts.
So 2040-60 seems a reasonable target given how important it is for humanity. And a deadline will give incentive to find solutions.
I mean, come on: if even Terrace already has three charge point, I'm pretty sure the rest of our province isn't some lame duck unable to build what is needed to meet the needs of the people who live where they live.
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.
There's also car industry Jobs to think about, no politician wants to put that at undue risk.