17B life years could be saved if air pollution was reduced to WHO standards
tribunemag.co.uk
tribunemag.co.uk
If I had a vote whether to ban combustion engines from my city (cars, trucks, mopeds, leaf blowers - everything), with a relatively short transition period (say 5 years), I'd be in favor.
It would probably initially drive up prices of goods due to a shortage of electric delivery vehicles or the need to repack everything onto smaller local trucks outside the city, but I think it'd be worth it.
If you've ever ridden BART, you know what I mean.
Used EVs will be relatively affordable soon and the total cost of ownership is significantly lower.
We're very far away from crossing under 30K, much less 10K
In that context, the Volt (and other hybrids, plug-in or not) would either be banned or be required to disable their ICE engines in the city.
But EVs are really not perfect anyway.
People say why have two powerplants. The reason is to get rid of the (environmental impact of) 300 mile batteries.
90% of the time, 10% of the battery is enough.
From the page above:
"If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport."
I feel that the obsession with pure electric has crippled the fight against pollution and CO2 emissions. Every car with 20 miles of battery range is probably a lot more impactful in the fight against climate change than 10% of cars with 200 miles of battery range, and has fewer major tradeoffs (cheaper, limited range/recharging is not an issue, much less need to build an entirely new charging infrastructure).
Used LEAFs (and Smart ED/EQs) are readily available in the $5K to $10K range.
Long decades of poor planing in the US (and in general the low population density) make it a place ill-suited to public transportation. EVs affordable enough for the poor will definitely be required here, so here’s hoping you’re right and we’ll reach that point soon.
Here in SW Ontario there are countless people riding those electric scooters or ebikes in the summertime. I’ve even seen old barflies hop on after drinking a pitcher and head on to the next spot. I’m sure the Bay Area has more clement weather year-round than here.
The low population density is arguably caused by the bad planning.
>make it a place ill-suited to public transportation.
I'm quite convinced that you will not be able to drive yourselves out of the issue you have in the U.S - you'll need to retrofit what you have to make it amenable to proper public transportation. EVs help a bit, but only really with the carbon dioxide-issue - everything else bad about cars is still bad with EVs.
Maybe Caltrain did marginally better? They added express services not that long ago.
It seems like you're in SF. The bad experiences you have had there do not generalize to all other cities. I've lived in several US and foreign cities that have safe public transit without security checkpoints. Omnipresent security forces shouldn't be necessary if other city and state services are functional.
East Coast city 1: no light rail, buses come every 45min
East Coast city 2: no light rail, buses come every 30-45min, but at least they were free
West Coast city 1: no light rail, buses come every 45min and cost $$$ if you want to take an express route
SF Bay Area: BART is a disaster, CalTrain only works well during peak hours and only if you live in the Peninsula. I literally watched a group of 2 teenagers hop the fare gates, get on, then get off the station before the fare checkers got on. Every station smells like piss and most of the ones in SF proper have shit in them too. BART East Bay -> Fremont/SJ is easily a 2 hour ride because the train moves at sub-30mph in residential areas.
Chicago: Trains still move pretty slowly but don't have piss and shit all over them at least. From what I can tell, buses are also not viable for reasonable transportation. Boston: Decent trains in most of the downtown/Cambridge area, but suburbs were pretty much a non-starter.
In comparison:
Shanghai/Beijing: security checkpoints at subway entrances, getting on/off trains is orderly and trains are clean. Trains run fast because authorities don't care about making too much noise, so you aren't better off driving because the train was running at 25mph. Trains come every 5mins or more often. You can get across the city in under an hour.
For the US cities that had light rail, the issues were clearly not due to lack of funding but due to NIMBYism limiting speeds and a refusal to enforce any level of security (in the case of SF). I bet you can get BART to come every 5 mins instead of every 20mins with the same number of trains if you 4x'd the speed to 80-100 mph. BART already does over that speed in long stretches like the Bay tunnel or the long stretches in Fremont so it's not like this requires any sort of re-engineering.
Wow… what a dystopia!
More seriously, is this really a huge issue? You can see that all day long in Paris, it doesn’t stop the transport system from being OK
[1]: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-5...
When there’s a homeless man shooting up with some drugs on the narrow platform at Bleecker St while a crowd of people try to get off the train and get out of there without tripping or provoking a confrontation, and that’s “normal” for the city subway, the people may decide the system is no longer fit for transit. Fortunately that’s still “slightly extraordinary” for NYC and not quite “normal” (I only saw him once) but it’s all very unfortunate.
Aside from your complaints about the BART, everything you've catalogued here either reflects a lack of investment, or the old age of US subway systems as compared to the newer transit systems in Asia. Chicago and Boston's subway systems are among the very oldest subway systems in the world. They both began operation in the 1890s. Shanghai's subway system opened in the 1990s. It's also convenient that NYC, home to one of the world's very largest subway systems, didn't make your list, but Shanghai and Beijing did. Finally, it's not necessarily a good thing that authorities in China "don't care about making too much noise." NIMBYism may be a problem, but so is a government that is unresponsive to the petitions of its people.
The US needs more investment in public transit. There's no arguing that. But your suggestion that "security checkpoints" are necessary to have good transit just isn't true.
EDIT: The Boston suburbs are served by an extensive rail system. You may have missed it because it runs as a separate line from the main subway. Here's a map: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2020-07/2020-02-com...
> clean and efficient systems in Europe that don't even have turnstiles
Europe also doesn't have a rampant property crime and homelessness issue on the scale of the Bay Area. We can argue about whether this is because of the lack of safety net, but SF spends over $50k per homeless person on aid and is _the_ worst in the nation in homelessness so clearly there are multiple factors at work here.
> NIMBYism may be a problem, but so is a government that is unresponsive to the petitions of its people
At some point the needs of millions of commuters outweigh the desires of the few thousand residents living along a train route. A high speed electric light rail is no louder than a freeway and we already have lots of those. The issue with the current American system is that local citizens have _too_ much power in comparison to slightly less local people who may live a 20min drive away. For example, constructing new housing is obviously going to lower the price of rent, which would benefit everyone currently renting or in the market for a house. But it would screw over existing homeowners, so it's blocked even though it causes rampant inequality and homelessness.
You know commuters who don't live next to you are also part of the people that live in your city? Just because they vote in a different district doesn't mean their lives aren't hugely impacted by your NIMBYism.
But the lines to get on can be a PITA. Eg. waiting in line for 45 minutes to get on the subway in Beijing at Liangmaqiao is a horrible experience. I'll take the piss smell in the USA to that. Actually, the security check waits in Beijing subway was the main reason I transitioned quickly to taking a taxi to and from work. (see https://www.thatsmags.com/beijing/post/20938/photos-increase..., not my personal experience, but I've experienced similar in the interchange at Dongzhimen).
Yes, American public transport and city design does indeed suck — I am not an American, but I have visited for a total of 4 months, used public transport in NYC, Boston, Bay Area, and the SanFran-Davis-Sacremento line — but here in Berlin there aren’t even ticket barriers, and nothing particularly exciting happens here even from the homeless person[0] who begged on my pre-COVID commute. Some fairly fancy busking from time to time, but that’s the peak of excitement.
[0] I assume. Just one person, recognised their practiced speech. Might have been selling German equivalent to the Big Issue for all I know, as they didn’t really get in the way of anyone.
I realize everyone has a different threshold for what they consider dirty, and people voluntarily living in Berlin seem to have a much higher threshold than me, but yeah, I'd prefer some checks in exchange for clean & undamaged public transport.
Sounds like you live in a "war zone". I don't know any place in Europe with that kind of security.
We don't have a totalitarian state here like China. That's a good thing.
Forcing criminals to move to the streets makes public transportation more appealing, I think that's obvious enough.
Why would you like transportation staff to treat you like a criminal?
>> Forcing criminals to move to the streets
Maybe a better approach would be to have less criminals rather than to move them around?
Because I accept that a slight inconvenience will lead to a much better riding experience. For example, Amtrak has aggressive fare checkers onboard (full pass of the train every few minutes) who will remove a lot of the type of people that cause disruptions. If you've already been checked, you have a ticket stub above your seat. Is it a coincidence that Amtrak trains are also very clean and have basically no crime? I feel comfortable using my phone on Amtrak without gripping it with two hands and constantly looking around me to prevent theft - I can't say the same about BART.
> Maybe a better approach would be to have less criminals rather than to move them around?
SFBA cities' budgets are quantified in the billions. We can afford to work towards having less while simultaneously reducing the locations they have access to for committing crime.
So just for some security theatre I have to give up a lot of privacy, add to my travel time by waiting in a queue, pay a higher fare to pay for all these guys? I'm really glad we don't do this here.
I don't like people demanding to look in my bag, trying to frisk me or metal scanning (of course I have metal on me). It will make me feel less safe.
> Forcing criminals to move to the streets makes public transportation more appealing, I think that's obvious enough.
So then you have to deal with them when you come out of the metro :) It's only moving the problem. Better to make sure they don't have to steal by having a decent welfare system.
I'm always amazed at how people think their little part of the world is an accurate representation of reality.
I’m not living in a city where this is a problem, so maybe my viewpoint is naive here. I want my tax to be spent on helping the homeless, even if that means that I have to pay more, and I also don’t want to sit next to someone on the bus who had no opportunity to wash in the last weeks. I don’t feel that these thoughts are in conflict.
“Free rein to abuse the subway system and its riders” is however a policy with very limited utility when it comes to helping people, and the costs are very high. Transit systems should keep them out insofar as they are not engaging in transit.
The problem that San Francisco is facing, and that you should attempt to solve instead of spending energy on excluding already poor people from public transportation, is homelessness.
There was a decade where we often ate plain white rice exclusively, as it was all we could afford. Even a small jump in prices would have increased the number of days where we couldn't afford any food at all.
Many, many folks are in similar situations. I feel we should factor them into these equations.
Further, it's just unpleasant to be trying to enjoy a walk around the city; or being anywhere near a road and then having the jarring experience of being surrounded by a plume of fumes. They stink & they're terribly unhealthy to inhale. And even when you're not noticing them acutely, they're probably wading into your lungs at some degree as long as you're within X distance from a road. I think cities would be much more pleasant without them.
The smell of diesel exhaust still makes me think of London, Paris... etc. Somehow that imprinted on me. They're actually good memories, but just an unusual spell to associate them with.
Now, Whenever we go to the city, I notice how much it stinks.
It's so weird because I never noticed that before. My nose for used to "clean" hair now. And I don't even live away from the road.
I'd like to move even more into the woods.
But hey, people want cars. Lots of dirty but cheap cars. Almost nobody seems to care. It's just the nature of living in a poor country I guess.
I think cars generally contribute to bad smells, and poor waste management infrastructure can also contribute to bad smells (think garbage bins out on streets instead of enclosed, for example)
Stockholm has tolls to reduce road congestion though. The place was definitely smellier back in the 90's.
I feel this quite strongly since I get around by motorcycle, so I don't have the benefit of filters and whatnot that cars have.
Whenever I do this, I keep wondering what the lungs of people commuting every day look like, since I get a dry cough even when traffic isn't all that dense.
Are there no helmets with integrated filters? Perhaps something like the Stormtrooper’s helmets? If not, wonder if someone should come up with those..
Milan, albeit much smaller, is times worse than Rome.
Paris and London are another example of big offenders, while Barcelona is not.
Total run time and emitted particulate matters, do you actually have reason to believe the total output of lawn equipment is comparable to vehicle output?
Same with the ICE snowblower that I bought back when I was young and dumb seeing all my neighbors with one, so I bought one - what a maintenance nightmare. I use snow shovels now which are way better for the environment and my health.
If you are going to ban one thing, why not just ban lawns ;-p
Although to support your point, “Quantification of the environmental and economic benefits of the electrification of lawn mowers on the US residential market”[1] abstract says “Gasoline-powered lawn mowers and garden equipment [in the USA are] accounting for a quarter of all non-road gasoline emissions.”.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-01917-x
I inherited a large lawn mower which I use for the overgrown uneven driveway. I could replace the mower with a weed whacker, however that would then take many hours longer (for a chore I really hate doing and do as little as possible!) I hate the noise but it works. An equivalent electric mower would be completely unaffordable for me.
I thought the majority of PM2.5 emissions was due to two-stroke engines?
The only two-stroke device I own is a chainsaw. I wanted to get a battery powered chainsaw, but they are at least 3 times the price. I also own a mains powered electric chainsaw, but an extension cord is frustrating, and only reasonable to use within tens of metres from a house.
Stones can be difficult if they're tall enough and everywhere. Otherwise you'd just make sure to keep the blade higher than the stones.
Just asking because I want to understand how prevealent this form of polution is where you live.
We tend to favor things that are more efficient, and it's hard to go back, because the citizenry won't be happy if you tell them your plans of quadrupling the work force and raising taxes accordingly.
They love the stuff in Ireland. I have no idea why people use it. It doesn't do much better of a job than a rake would. It's completely stupid
That's disingenuous. Raking the yard is a half-day chore for me, that's fairly physically strenuous. Using a leafblower takes like an hour and is really easy- you can stand and point. A leafblower is a non-zero QoL improvement if you have to deal with leaves
https://readingasawriterhome.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/rus...
I've recently moved to an area with single family or attached homes on small lots, and inexplicably, everyone has a leaf blower. Most houses have a driveway and parking area, and about 10 square feet of lawn, but for some reason all the guys are out blowing leaves around... I'm supposing there must be pockets where culturally that's what people do, I certainly don't get it
I basically never see them used on private property, only by the BSR (~berlin cleansing department) and even then it's not something I see often??
Time to google.
- You are not allowed to use them on Sunday or holidays.
- On other days only between 9:00-13:00 and 15:00-17:00, with exceptions for official street cleaning, industrial only areas etc. (Which I guess explain why I normally not seeing them and if then when used by the BSR ;=) )
You also need to multiply that effect by how many cars are active versus how many leaf blowers are active. On a per-household basis, you might be racking up 1.5 car-hours per day:
(2 commuters × 30 minute average commute × 2 commutes per day × (5 working days in each 7 day week) + some arbitrary amount to account for weekend/non-commuting trips
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-...
And your article is only talking about local particulate pollution, let’s not forget the bigger issue of CO2
Electric (and hybrid) vehicles normally use regenerative brakes, and friction brakes only as a backup system.
That is 5.8kg per 1000km!!! An article that makes such ridiculous claims can be dismissed as trash. A small car tire weighs about 7kg[1], so absolutely no tyres or brakes left after less than 10000km.
Also note the the vast majority of tyre particles are larger than 50um.
By weight, I would guess less than 1% of wear by weight was < PM10 - see graph[2] from the first paper I found that measured tyre wear[3].
Edit: I'm not saying tyre and brake particulate doesn't matter, but I am saying that link looks to be solidly in the stupid camp.
[1] https://www.oponeo.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-tyre-weigh
[2] https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301679X203019...
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03016...
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat09/1...
If your asthma is seasonal, then try and find out the source(s)?
However, on certain days, various tree pollens make the air almost unbreathable, even to someone without allergies or asthma.
Banning sales of internal combustion engine vehicles and products on a short timeline might be reasonable, but banning the operation of ICE vehicles is financially a very regressive policy.
Buying a new electric car to get to work might not seem like a big deal to professionals in six-figure jobs, but it would be a crushing blow to someone making $15/hr who plans to drive their Honda Civic until the wheels fall off.
Any actual policy decisions will need to focus on new car sales while also incentivizing people to upgrade to EVs. Maybe a cash-for-clunkers style program that takes ICE vehicles off the road and subsidizes the purchase of a new EV.
Outright banning ICE transportation is a no-go unless we have a plan to alleviate the financial burden a sudden change puts on the lower class vehicle owners. It can be done, but it would be expensive.
EDIT: It makes me think why there is not much push for electric motorcycles. Whenever EV is mentioned, it's always been a car.
> It makes me think why there is not much push for electric motorcycles. Whenever EV is mentioned, it's always been a car.
That simply isn’t accurate. Chinese electric scooters were common even back in 2008, they are pretty ubiquitous by now. Electric motorcycles aren’t common, but neither are gas powered motorcycles in that country. These aren’t the fancy “for play” motorcycles replacements or electric bikes that the west want, but are definitely work horses in developing countries.
A lot of off the grid solutions for electricity, getting regular gasoline shipments to those locations is much more of a challenge.
“Developing countries” is a broad category, but it’s certainly not the case that they’re free of vehicles except for rich people driving around in expensive cars.
Here is another article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperd..., quote:
> The second reason is that two-wheelers are going electric faster than any other segment of road transport. BNEF’s latest estimates put 2020 electric two-wheeler sales at over 25 million. That’s about 35% of sales globally, far ahead of passenger cars where EVs are still only around 5% of sales.
Although the issue with that statistic is probably because China has banned gas powered scooters (other developing countries are still catching up).
I predict that Electric scooters will long replace gas powered ones in developing countries before EV cars replace ICE cars. It’s kind of an economic no brainer given how cheap they are.
And I bet that the countries with cheap, polluting vehicles are those with lower life expectancy.
The EVs will be small motorcycles, e-bikes, scooters, etc. You get the EV with a 100 mile range, you already have a (used) panel. The small EVs can be quickly recharged because they are small (or battery swaps, which are far more feasible on e-bike/e-scooters).
Starlink or cell towers provide the internet.
As stated in the article, air quality will increase substantially.
Unfortunately global warming will disrupt everyone's fundamentals: water and food.
Public transport, dedicated cycling infrastructure, and planning policies aiming for the "15 minute neighbourhood" are what you're looking for.
I could certainly see cities like London banning ICE cars within their centres within 5 years, without much impact on poorer individuals. It’s already financially prohibitive to drive into the centre due to the congestion charge, and most people would consider it insane to drive due to traffic, and the fact that public transport is about twice a quick.
In the US, we are so far away from "forcing" people to get rid of ICE cars that the very concept is ludicrous. What we instead force is ownership of ICE cars, and it's nearly impossible to live without one because we have banned, via law, the land use that would allow a person even the option of living without a car.
As somebody who advocates for the mere legalization of car-free land use, I am frequently accused of forcing others to get rid of their car, or of being exclusionary, for merely proposing the possibility.
People in the US are somewhat sick in the head when it comes to cars, and need to at least let the huge population of people who don't want to be subjected to the violence and pollution from cars to live that way. The contrast between Paris, which great expanded non-car options during the pandemic, and a car-addicted city like San Francisco which can't even convert a lightly used beach highway into a bike and walkway, is massive.
The US must change drastically, but the drastic change is to allow people to ditch their cars, not force them.
Even many neighborhoods designed to be 100% walkable and pedestrian-first make affordances for delivery vehicles and similar. Those vehicles can and should be electric, but cycling and transit still aren't at all complete substitutes.
Billions of people seem to have worked out how to do this on bicycles and public transport.
By comparison, my residential building here in Berlin has a restaurant and a café on the ground floor, a business office on the first floor, and the rest is residential, and even the parts of the city with houses rather than apartment blocks do similar things horizontally rather than vertically: house, house, kebabs, five houses, small supermarket, three houses, office.
Similarly in the UK, you’ll have domestic resistances above or next to shops and pubs and offices. Or next to (I’ve never seen them above) industrial buildings: workshops, factories, etc.
Commutes can also be faster by public transit than by car, especially if start and destination are in the same city.
Delivery vehicles and trucks are probably the most difficult, but they're also major contributors to the noise and stink.
More to the point, people in rural areas pollute far more per person than people living in cities. We need to end rural subsidies to stop encouraging people to live in rural areas.
I'm all for aggressive policies to encourage the change, but like you, I don't think outright bans are going to be doable in the short term.
I see this thinking as a main problem. Cities are being built around cars, workplaces are being built around cars and etc. Banning ICE vehicles could be a step into transforming cities to be more people friendly, more kid friendly, more community friendly.
There are places in the world were cities were not built around cars. You take a train (or any other kind of public transport) to go to work, or you take a bike. Or you walk.
You’d probably have much faster results mandating them and retrofitting cars.
Changeover to EV will take decades.
Ya, this is why I expect China to follow through with their EV plans much more thoroughly than the USA. Global warming is abstract, but bad dirty air is a very concrete motivator. For that reason, urban in the states with bad air pollution like LA or Salt Lake City should be big into this also (though bad in the USA is 100+ 2.5 PPM, whereas in China it is 300+ 2.5 PPM).
Hybrids with 50 mile electric range and ICE after are much better options. Minimizes pollution at source and point of use. All while being monetarily affordable.
This is all due to American cities passing the bill down and never building proper robust public transportation. Now you can't because thousands of business's are in the way, and the wealthy like being in their private little car.
Replacing flights below a thousand kms with trains and limit road transport to a bare minimum and switch what's left to EVs (or hybrids) would have a big impact already, while also being economically sustainable.
After all companies in the GDO are among the largest and most profitable in the World.
Most cabs are already hybrid even here in Italy that historically resist to changes. The TCO is already lower than ICEs.
An immediate ban on ICE vehicles would only affect the pockets of the low income segment of the population.
The big chunk of pollution comes from vehicles running continuously, commuters use their cars to go to work and go back home.
Nobody operates that way though. Too much discussion of public policy seems to be oriented around "if only 'we' could just..." rather than "How can policy align selfish motivations with positive outcomes?"
Example: despite the rhetoric you'll find on Twitter, practically everyone who got the COVID vaccine did so because they didn't want to get seriously ill from COVID themselves, not because they really care that much about people they don't know.
Similarly, "we" will not be adopting more train travel any time soon unless there's a very compelling reason for individuals to do so. Train travel in North America mostly sucks.
slightly off topic, but I'll tell you that my main drive to get a vaccine was because if I got covid it would mean be stuck home in quarantine and avoid contacts.
Of course I would have done it anyways because I believe in vaccines and all that, but incentives are an angle that should be explored by rule makers.
GDO is a big polluter, let's tackle that issue before flooding the city centers with electric scooters that solve nothing and will be abandoned when they are not a novelty anymore and the cold season will knock on the door.
p.s. I live in Europe, Italy, and trains are quite good for long distances, unless you live south of Naples, and I've stopped flying from Rone to Milan 10 years ago. Unfortunately high speed trains are not exactly cheap, but not more expensive than flying.
Are you just sharing your opinion? What country?
I know that in New Zealand plenty of people are getting the vaccine because they care about their parents or grandparents. Or they care about others, such as children under 12 that can’t get vaccinated. I also care about my 40 year old friend with diabetes. I care about my friend with a baby that needed hospitalisation for RSV, which teaches the right fear to us all. Anyone in their social circle that doesn’t get vaccinated is a loaded gun. Anecdote: one friend who I expected to be deeply anti-vax due to reading mostly US sourced crap, is getting the vaccine to protect her step-mum: in a more antivax social environment I might expect her to have said no.
We don’t have as much fear-mongering in NZ, and there are fewer people acting selfishly from what I can tell. Ones risk of catching COVID in NZ is extremely low at present, so selfishly one could decline vaccination without much difference to ones risk.
Currently we have 66% of eligible population vaccinated, and the rate of vaccination doesn’t seem to be slowing down yet due to hesitancy. The limitation on vaccinations in NZ here is getting access to doses, which is clear from the graph here: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
“For example, one study using data collected between June-July 2020 found that the most common reasons New Zealanders would be vaccinated were to protect themselves (62%) and their family (62%), to avoid getting seriously ill (52%), and to feel safe around other people (51%). People were less likely to report they would get the vaccine because their doctor recommended it (23%).”
From https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...
It’s a awful idea to replace all cars with electric cars.
Said by someone who has never been poor.
covid hysteria is just getting started. years from now, decent people will lament that covid hysteria continues to suck all of the oxygen out of the room...and when they do, they will be cancelled
fifty years from now, no one will admit to having been part of the covid mobs...but for now, they rule the world
Years from now, people will look back at 1M people in the US that unnecessarily died and marvel at just how inhuman people can be when subjected to political forces.
I only wish that current day leaders in the US will look at today's traitors to humanity with the same disdain that future generations will. Only then could we quash the sick disregard for human life that drives us apart.
- Map of all coal power plants: https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
- Cumulative emissions by country: https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
> the United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions
> this is twice more than China – the world’s second largest national contributor
This is not to downplay the serious and growing impact of China on global GHG emissions, just that casting coal as only a China problem is inaccurate and does not move us toward a solution.
"The plant releases each year more carbon dioxide than the entire country of Switzerland."
One of the four main comorbidities contributing to covid death are cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, and chronic respiratory disease.
Although I consider fighting obesity more of a long term effort.
See? It’s a hard problem. Humans are inherently chaotic.
Here’s a link about wet deposition.
https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/focus-areas/environmen...
Here’s a recent example of misty rain at work in the Bay Area.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/pj12nx/a_labo...
*Total* urban area in the world was around ~3.5M km^2 in 2010[0], or 1% of total ocean area. Daily evaporation dwarves anything a couple thousands of drones can do in the morning.
But I also think the overlap of those who can afford a Jaguar and absolutely don't give a shit about the poor, or the environment or anything else is also great.
And the latter is the problem.
My theory about this is based on economic and societal differences between countries.
In high developed countries, with functioning or semi-functioning social security systems, people can afford to think more liberally even in socialistic views.
For underdeveloped countries, especially Eastern Europe this way of thinking is form of luxury.
We have lived trough transformation from communistic regimes towards capitalism and payed the high price. Some of us emigrated and created something out of nothing. We are hardworking and ambitious and with this fight comes realistic and conservative view of the world.
Here in the United States, EVs start around $24k. That's not nothing but it's half the price of the trucks and SUVs millions of people buy mostly for aesthetic reasons and, more importantly, it's about what the average car owner spends over a 2-3 year period when you include all of the costs: not just the vehicle but fuel, insurance, maintenance, parking — and those are just the direct costs, not including taxes, medical costs, and the higher prices everyone pays for housing and shopping in order to subsidize car users.
If that's a significant burden for anyone, it's far more cost effective to invest in transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure since those options are much cheaper and also healthier.
"The most important fact in the history of the 21st century is that China and India, with about half of the world's population, are getting rich. To get rich in the next 50 years, they must burn prodigious quantities of coal and add big quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. China and India have a simple choice to make. Either they get rich and cause a major increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Or they stay poor. I hope they choose to get rich. The choice is theirs and not ours. Whatever we may choose to do will not make much difference. The discussions in Paris will not make much difference. The good news is that the main effect of carbon dioxide on the ecology of the planet has nothing to do with climate. The main effect of carbon dioxide is to make the planet greener, feeding the growth of green plants of all kinds, increasing the fertility of farms and fields and forests."
Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/12/03/freeman-dyson...
Also, I really recommend this Web of Stories interview (actually all of them in the playlist) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=848X64FXGp0&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...
I'd rather live a comfortable and happy life for fewer years than many more years of misery.
quote: "associated with chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, and controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization"
Billions of people are only alive today because of that.
Things aren't entirely good or entirely bad. It can both be true that fossil fuels have created great wealth in a variety of different ways, and is also systematically dooming our future in a variety of different ways. In fact, that is what the truth is.
Fortunately the fact they can be made in the first place means we almost certainly can substitute something else, even if we have to make that something ourselves.
And we can also extract CO2 from the air, pass it through the Sabatier process to get methane, then do more chemistry to get long chain hydrocarbons. Musk is planning to do this for his rockets.
What’s being done to address the 100 corporations that cause 70% of the world’s emissions?
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/just-100-firms-attributable-...
Never an argument about the merits of the proposal, just some trite hand-wringing that somewhere somehow someone might be able to use it to their political advantage. Never even an explanation of why this one thing would be so dangerous when governments already by nature have vast authority to control pretty much anything they want.
Worst of all you can't reason against it, since it's not a position of reason. Regardless of what point you make they'll just dig in and ignore them. :(
So let’s tax petrol, that way we reduce consumption
I see that number floating around a lot, it's oversimplified and lacking context.
«71% of those emissions originated from 100 fossil fuel producers. This includes the emissions from producing fossil fuels (like oil, coal and gas), and the _subsequent use of the fossil fuels they sell to other companies_.»
https://fullfact.org/news/are-100-companies-causing-71-carbo...
Consider what «subsequent use of the fossil fuels they sell to other companies» entails. We're talking energy, transport, manufacturing, etc.
The car you lease every 3 years, your new iPhone every 2 years, new clothes every season, etc.
Will corporations make products that last 20+ years or is planned obsolescence the only way to ensure YoY revenue growth
But to use your own example of iPhones: Apple itself is carbon neutral, and recently announced a goal of making all its suppliers carbon neutral by 2030.
the longer a person is alive, the bigger their carbon footprint
We live in a world that will protect car and gas usage, no matter what… all of our cities are shaped around cars and roads, young people are excluded from homeownership, but old assholes have access to luxurious parking spaces..
But yeah, apparently electric scooters are the worst hate crime since hitler.
The users here are interested in these things. Are some of them “things the users want to hear”? Definitely. But there are great articles from time to time. Flag the bad ones and move along.
> The concept of overpopulation is controversial. A 2015 article in Nature listed overpopulation as a pervasive science myth. Demographic projections suggest that population growth will stabilise in the 21st century, and many experts believe that global resources can meet this increased demand, suggesting a global overpopulation scenario is unlikely.
The world is already overpopulated. We just haven’t completely destroyed it yet.
The way we currently run the world is not sustainable long term for even the current population.
It is not currently run in a sustainable way. It can be, and people are trying change it so it is sustainable. This is hard, but does not appear to be impossible.
which creates something of a tautology. Ability to maintain a population in the long run implies 'sustainable'. I guess that given nutrient vats and fusion power we could have a sustainable population of one trillion.
It's worth considering what the point of having so many people is....
What's the point of having people at all, right?
Once you answer those questions, is there a number of people you'd like to propose as optimal?
That's a good question. I'll take a shot at it even though you're not really asking a question but making a point.
Let's say that the one thing that people bring to the table is intelligence and the ability to design complex systems, it's something of an end-run on evolution.
How large a population do you need to build modern semiconductors, discover exoplanets, solve physics problems, do a passable version of the arts?
I would guess something on the order of 500M-1B which is roughly the number in 1800. You get most of the good and lose most of the bad if you're even slightly careful. The edge conditions of atomic war or a truly large nuclear incident still exist but the rest of our sins cover up well over time with that population.
Can it? That remains to be seen. So in the meantime I would say we are already overpopulated.
To be fair, your statement probably means that we have the resources and technology to run the world in a sustainable way, and I would agree with that. But then we also likely have the resources to end hunger, poverty and war, yet those have never been the world’s priorities.
When will it be a priority for humans to run the world sustainably? Who knows. But right now it’s definitely not sustainable.
And yet, all of those things declined; in the case of poverty the decline is in both absolute and relative terms.
Certainly more needs to be done in all of these things: we only succeed when we reach the destination, not just when we walk the path. Conversely, every step on that path brings us closer to success and is a reason for optimism.
"Population Control" is certainly controversial, though, as it should be. And, though controversial, it should be considered seriously. Many environmentalists lose their credibility by speaking of "sustainability" on the one hand, but then disputing overpopulation on the other. We need to impact the earth much less, and keeping our numbers down is a very effective way of doing so. That, plus using energy and resources more cleanly and efficiently.
In the grand scheme of things, we - humanity - know mostly how to create a sustainable technological system that can support 10B population. Whether our politics will allow us to get to such a system is a entirely different problem, and THAT might be our undoing, but I'd argue that's not really an overpopulation problem.
Also, the population growth is largely a side-effect of demographic transition - https://populationeducation.org/what-demographic-transition-.... i.e. it's a transitional side-effect of reducing the human suffering. The only humane and equitable way to move forward is to accelerate the demographic transition (i.e. improve the economic, health, education, etc, systems of all countries in the world to get them to stage4 at least). And, thus, "keep our numbers down" is not only inhumane or inequitable, that's ineffective - the developed countries already mostly stopped growing - e.g. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251591/population-growt... - and it's mostly the poor countries that are growing - i.e. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264687/countries-with-th... . There's no other humane way to stop poor countries' population growth - the most effective way is to improve their economy, improve their health and healthcare systems, and improve education.
So only human overpopulation is impossible, you're saying. I think you're wrong on that. We're special relative to other species -- but not that special, and not immune to it.
"In the grand scheme of things, we - humanity - know mostly how to create a sustainable technological system that can support 10B population. Whether our politics will allow us to get to such a system is a entirely different problem, and THAT might be our undoing, but I'd argue that's not really an overpopulation problem."
Is the goal to pack as many humans onto this planet as is possible?? That certainly isn't my goal, at all. With our technology, we don't need vast numbers with which to build pyramids or plant fields.
No. That is not what I said. I'm saying whether human overpopulation is theoretically possible/impossible is not the question - as the answer is very clearly yes, if the number is too large it will qualify as overpopulation. I'm saying the relevant question is whether the current population and the projected future population would qualify as overpopulation, and I'm saying that absolutely is debatable.
> Is the goal to pack as many humans onto this planet as is possible?
No. The goal is to find the humane and equitable way to reach sustainability. I'm claiming sustainability (with current or projected peak human population of ~10B) is entirely technologically possible, and "overpopulation" talk is mostly ungrounded, not backed by any real evidence. At the same time, it's also clear the current state of things is NOT sustainable, and that we'd need to change our technological systems in order to reach sustainability, and I do admit that it's entirely possible and somewhat plausible that our politics will keep us from reaching the sustainability.
Population carrying capacity is difficult. We know that given a particular level of technology we can support a particular number of people with global resources in the short term. Intuitively it seems like we’re wrecking the environment and we’re in for a nasty fall when we exhaust those resources. However, Malthusian predictions like that - so far - have a bad track record, because with more people comes more innovation, and so far that innovation has been increasing carrying capacity faster than population growth.
Ultimately it looks like the world population is going to stabilize as most people seem to prefer smaller family units once they achieve “western level” of child survival expectations and material wealth. Strangely enough it may be harder to maintain a stable population with our consumption habits if it means that technological advance slows down.
That said, for most people all the above is unimportant compared to caring for the living. Preserving and extending life and quality of life is fundamentally good, and shortening human lives to “save the planet” is not. So while you can have the macro level discussion along the lines of “do we really want the population to increase,” for most people if you venture into “should we just let the people who are already alive die sooner than they must” is pretty offensive.
I'd genuinely like to see that model applied to sub Saharan Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria#/media...
I don't doubt that wealth can be a factor, but those systems are a whole lot more complicated than that. Money+Low Gini = Low birthrate is a meme as much as it is a primary driver.
The early death of a person who would prefer continue living is, to reasonable people, a tragedy.
If overpopulation is really such a problem, I'd think incentivizing the choice to have fewer kids is a reasonable one.
They're asking, in good faith, if the effects of pollution-related deaths would have a net benefit to the world due to overpopulation concerns.
Your response is a strawman.
Back of the envelope, it's odd that air pollution is around 100x as bad as cigarettes (which admittedly not everyone smokes).
No. Population growth slows down as nations rise in economic prosperity, and is projected to cap out at around 11 billion.
I'm not suggesting we start killing people, but we will seriously need to think about how we manage the finite resources of the planet with >1.5x the number of people.
Edit: I assume the downvotes are suggesting my logic is wrong. It would be helpful to hear why.
Granny dying does not make me broody.