An exception for the rich people to be able to ignore what's best for humanity while we ask all the regular people to make sacrifices. How surprising. Never seen that one before.
What is the purpose of life without joy?
If we pass a working planet onto future generations, then those of the future who want the thrill of a finely tuned ICE engine should have an opportunity to experience it. After all, we did.
The greatest tragedy of the environmental movement is it has allowed its well-funded adversaries to cast it as a a dour, sacrificial dogma. We can and should leave room for joy.
Because, in the broader calculus, occasional joy + usual responsibility >> no joy + all responsibility.
And we destroyed much of the planet doing it. Maybe it was a bad idea when we did it too. When joy becomes an argument for leniency you imply there is really no urgency. That is probably why the environmental movement is not very joyful. They want change now.
Leniency is distinct from tolerance.
The former allows rules to be broken; the latter formulates flexible rules that still accomplish the overall goal.
Perhaps a tiny minority are more interested in exhaust notes than accelerating out of a corner, and I suppose they will remain petrol heads, but with classic cars, since ICE technology is a dead end now.
What is this based on? Really isn’t the case in any auto enthusiast group I know of except ones that are extremely casual/Tesla-fanboys. If it were, all the people I know wouldn’t be buying GT3s, Huracans, R8s, etc. I know 0 who bought electric. I’m in the market myself for another car but I’m not looking at an electric car - gonna buy another ICE sports car because they have a lot more emotion and character. Not like any electric sports cars even really exist at this point anyway… or are still in production I guess.
For a start, most people have not experienced the thrill of a highly tuned internal combustion engine. A few rich people have. Second, do you really want to define what people should be able to do by what people have done in the past? Really? You might want to think that through a bit more. There are plenty of things people did in the past that people are still apologising for today, generations later.
I want non polluting transport. Far more than you do, I'm pretty sure. I lived for years in Bucharest, the most polluted and congested city in Europe, with two air purifiers working non stop in my apartment. But I don't see anything productive in your comment. Mostly pettiness.
If it's not pettiness, it's short-sightedness and black-and-white thinking.
asking for the same rules for the rich and the poor is "eat the rich"?
As for why it's harmful - it's hijacking the conversation. Like somebody else said below, we're fighting over 0.1 percent pollution, while ignoring hugely more advantageous moves.
Want examples? Let's talk about taking all combustion cars, old or new, out of the cities. Bam, 10-40% reduction in damage to health. Let's encourage and build infrastructure for bikes and other small e-vehicles. Ocean commercial traffic. Waste burning in unsafe incinerators. Construction-related pollution. Each of those is a double digit share of either health impact or global pollution. But no, let's stop the rich from playing with toys instead.
How/When did wanting equality of outcome become "pettiness"?
Also, how did this get projected and extrapolated to I'm not only petty but now I'm also against effective action like fighting urban sprawl (which is the real reason we need cars in first place).
Also, my fundamental issue is that the rich will dodge all that other stuff you want as well; the way they are already getting the bulk of green incentives and abusing carbon offsets (see, for example [1] and [2])
This is going to be a long and difficult journey with many, many steps. And at each step of the way, people who claim to be allies will be saying "don't be petty" and "this is but a distraction, the real solution is over here"
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/06/wind-energy-subsidies...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-nature-conservancy-c...
It's ok, I know what you mean :) you're talking about non-corruption, equality in the face of the law/rules and so on. I pretty much agree with it. I also mean what I said about hijacking the conversation - I happen to care very deeply about health-related pollution (less so about carbon), and I really really don't want the discourse led astray.
I think carbon offsets are a fundamentally good idea that probably works. I see this kind of news you linked as proof that it does - in a working system I'd expect occasional abuse. I'd expect to see no abuse only if the system was so inefficient as to not be worse gaming. Is it efficient overall? For this you'd need statistical analysis and lots of data. But I like a framework where everybody can decide how much emiting carbon is worth to them - this way you can easily reach all the low hanging fruits, while still keeping those industries with high value per emission. For example I'd never want a blanket ban or quota to interfere with medical equipament manufacturers or high tech. Having the occasional rich guy buy a ferrari is a very small price. Plus, performance e-cars are already much faster.
Any calculations to demonstrate that this is indeed the case?
Should Italy prefer to reduce their carbon emissions by 0.1% while destroying one of the last few industries they're the best known for, with associated loss of jobs and livelihood for thousand of families? Of course they don't.
Allowing the 0.1% richest people to be above the law, because in the grand scale of things it's insignificant, seems outrageous for the average abiding citizen who have no choice. The rich would then always have an exception for all the sacrifices and cuts society has to do to preserve new generations.
If a law is needed to save humankind, don't make exceptions to it purely based on capital of people, unless it's to help those in disadvantage.
I'd be kind of on board with the exemption if there was a (high) cost paid for it, and that the cost was used to fund some sort of environmental project, but is that what Italy is actually asking for, or are they simply asking for an exemption, no strings attached?
if your uncle can keep driving old, low efficient, highly polluting vehicles why can't a rich person buy a ICE ferrari?
Makes much more sense to charge on "pollution/gas usage"
Kind of wealthy tax but without intervening in the market and picking winners or the "right solution"
I'd compare it to old houses which are often designated as landmarks. We don't demolish them just because they are not energy efficient by modern standards.
Why are you trying to position high end sports car owners as oppressed?
That will continue to be the case for old cheap and expensive cars, and we justify it to preserve industrial history. There's no reason to introduce a similar exemption for certain new cars.
Which is realistically a reason fairly poor folks can have an old car.
But.. common... everybody knows oldtimers cars aren't really on the road. Most collectible cars belong to people who own several cars and they very rarely hit the road.
That is precisely why the insurance is so cheap. I've got both an old Porsche and an old Ferrari and I pay 160 EUR a year to insure them both (100 for the first one, and 60 for the second one, as I've got a "fleet": two is a fleet, that's kinda funny).
People not only never drive these cars, they're also ultra cautious with them when they take them out. It's because they do so little kilometers/miles yearly and because people are so cautious that the insurance costs next to nothing.
They're more art pieces / garage queens than cars: remnants of a less civilized era.
Also... My insurance is ultra cheap but there's a gotcha: I need to have an insured daily less than 15 years old, otherwise I need to pay the regular insurance price for my two oldtimers. So it's not really true that people pay less: they pay less but only because they need to have a "real" car to benefit from the cheaper insurance.
These old cars are also typically huge gaz guzzlers, doing easily 3x to 4x the fuel consumption of a modern car: so using it on a daily basis would, in the end, cost you much much more than using a modern car.
I hope these exceptions for oldtimers will stay and that, at least once in a while, they'll be authorized on the road: say maybe allowed on the roads one saturday every month or something like that.
P.S: btw it's not just the insurance that is cheaper: oldtimers are typically exempt from the yearly road tax (in the countries where such a tax exists).
That's true. And I actually think that maybe the issue isn't that we drive around in ICE cars, but rather that we drive around.
Sure, there are people with mobility issues, delivery, etc. I'm not talking about those, since I think they're not the majority of traffic, so likely not a huge problem. I'm talking about "regular people". I think the issue is that the vast majority of traffic is people commuting to work, so instead of trying to build a faster horse (use cars that pollute less) there should be more emphasis on actually driving less.
By that I mean encouraging companies to allow working from home and developing public transportation.
The issue with laws like this is that they don't take into account the various situations.
In my case, I own a motorcycle that won't be allowed in Paris and other major French cities starting in 2024. I rarely use it during the week since I actually commute by transit. But I sometimes go on long trips and stay overnight in big cities. I wouldn't be allowed to.
Would buying a new motorcycle, which I don't need since my current one works perfectly, be actually good for the environment? Sure, it would probably pollute somewhat less per km ridden, but it would have to be produced in the first place and then shipped halfway around the world.
No, that's because of the type of car, not because of the age, a Ferrari or a Porsche made today will still consume a lot of fuel compared to a more normal car made today. They've always been gas guzzlers simply because an engine that can make that kind of power isn't going to be made for fuel economy and the drivers don't care because typically money for gas isn't very high on their priority list.
I'm curious what type Ferrari and what type Porsche you've got, are you willing to disclose?
lol. It's funny to think of them as a 'priceless exotic' as those cars are basically mass produced items with an engine option.
Let's consider the cost. A decent Boss 429 is probably around $250k-$300k. The sales tax in California is around 10 percent, about $2k/year for the license, $4-$5/gallon for gas at around 8 mpg, collector car insurance at roughly 1% of stated value.
The number of spots should be truly limited though, you don't want to create a class of people who pollute and pay for thanks to inheritance or luck like the way society is divided into people with large homes and people who share rooms.
The carbon footprint of the super rich's personal consumption is negligible. 1000 Ferrari cars don't pollute as much as 3000 economy cars.
Banning Ferrari is like saving the planet by using paper straws. It makes sense to take 290,000,000 ICE cars off the street of Europe and leave a spot for a few thousand exotic ICE cars as a cultural artefact. The emission difference that would do is at a rounding error scale.
Actually, using paper straws probably has larger impact. People don't actually ride these cars that much, they move them around with trucks to keep the milage down.
[0] https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/cars/Car-CO2-and-fuel-economy-mp...
(edit) Using that money to finance switching to battery/hydrogen/whatever powered cars for people with less resources could even offset it fairly. Let them help the rest improve the situation for everyone and they can keep their toys.
The same holds for the carbon footprint of any minority group. And everybody belongs to some minority group in some way. Does that mean everybody is exempt from the law? (No).
It’s like not demolishing the Parthenon and some other old buildings even if they don’t meet the modern construction requirements.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28652958
Putting some Ferrari's in a museum or on some restricted racing track is ok. But forcing everybody to follow the law and letting some rich people on TV ignore all the rules seems like a bad way to fight climate change.
I guess it comes down to what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to cut down the emissions dramatically or are you after some kind of engine equality ideal?
The EU is just out of touch with car manufacturing. They are to blame for the SUV-epidemic in Europe. Basically they are making laws that sound good on paper but unrealistic in real world scenarios. Consumption and emission levels are skewed by the hybrid motors in the SUV. The laws are written so the mini cars like the Volkswagen Up are just not financially worth to produce. So in conclusion, the laws that were supposed to reduce the CO2 emissions actually made everything worse.
More on this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/08/04/just-ho...
I do wonder if they went too far too fast with some of the regulations. If it is beyond the edge of what is possible, the incentive becomes seeking loopholes, juicing numbers. However, the gains have been incredible the last 10-20 years in just raw efficiency.
Beyond the regulations, society and virtue signaling appears to have had a strong impact, on all side of the political spectrum. Capitalism does sometimes work, and the current 'desire' is to have either an electic clean car or to roll coal and shoot your m50 at commies in their liberal prius.
Tesla has nothing to do with it.
So at the moment it is the regular people are driving around in electic cars and the rich in the gas cars ... no and if there is a class war at work it is the other way round.
At this moment the ev revolution is being driven by the rich, this will trickle down over time naturally, but the choice to go electric means paying more. Tesla dont have a comparable product but VW do, pretty consistntly $10,000 more for electric. If 'regular' people are making sacrifices as the previous person suggested it is by spending so much more on a car (or lease) and not eating or being broke, because it is the only way they are participating at the moment.
Also a ban on new petrol cars I think might not really be necessary if petrol is properly taxed with carbon pricing.
They're fixing to stick it to general aviation - mass market plane travel.
Perhaps only after private jets are outlawed - what, no?