The most expedient way of "getting people out of their CO2 producing cars" is to focus on the "CO2 producing" part, i.e.
1. Get people into electric cars, which even on the current grid cuts your CO2 emissions by over half due to better efficiency, and
2. Convert the electric grid to 100% clean energy.
And it turns out there's a lot of money to be made in doing this too.
You aren't going to motivate people to be better for the environment (by, say, buying a more expensive 40MPG vehicle instead of a 35MPG one), when it can so easily be wiped away by a guy just leaving a tool on for a few minutes more. Same situation with banning straws - nobody cares about the 1.6 billion masks in the ocean now (literally).
Air Quality, yes; but I will admit CO2 is not compared.
A leaf-blower running for one hour will burn roughly 1/2 gal. of fuel. A 40mpg car going from LA to Denver will burn about 25 gallons of fuel.
That car trip will generate around 50 times as much CO2 as the blower
Maybe in terms of particulate pollution, but in terms of CO2 that's absolutely unimaginable.
Compression ratio isn't great on these things since half the time the gas is terrible -> no pressure, no NOx
But they are two stroke so a little but of gas and oil leak out on every stroke.
That sounds like nonsense.
(FWIW I support banning gas-powered leaf blowers. But your claim is still bogus.)
Where leaf blowers' emission fall apart is volatile organics.
Why do you support banning gas powered landscaping equipment? In cities like LA, sure. But how are utilities going to maintain brush around remote power lines without gas powered equipment?
That cannot possibly be true. That's a 16 hour drive through 1000 miles of mountainous terrain, requiring multiple tanks of gas, vs an hour of a small two-stroke engine spinning a little turbine.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/fact-sheets/sore-small-engi...
@roarcher: They still emit lots of CO2 due to decreased efficiency, but the numbers aren't compared (so I'm not sure what they are), which I apologize for as I got CO2 confused with the other several gases being compared.
Considering this entire thread is only about CO2, not air quality, perhaps that would have been worth mentioning in your original comment.
A car produces about a pound per mile. Let’s say that is +- 30% depending on variables of trip.
[1] https://www.quietcleanpdx.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Gas...
Its worse in volatile organics, particulates and NOx. Mostly volatile organics due to the two stroke cycle.
But not because a chainsaw is particularly bad, but because a Camry is exceptionally good.
Why is the Camry good? Because it has a four stroke, fuel injected, computer controlled engine and $300 of catalysts breaking everything down. The smoke of the Camry's emissions is water condensing out.
Not just water. A lot of CO, CO2, particulates and NOx are also emitted, especially at lower engine temperatures.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...
> 1. Get people into electric cars, which even on the current grid cuts your CO2 emissions by over half due to better efficiency, then
> 2. Convert the electric grid to 100% clean energy.
These both need to happen, yes. Cars existing is fine, just need to reduce usage for daily activities by 90% or so and also convert most of the grid to clean energy.
I disagree with this sentiment. I hate cars, and what they have done to society. They are demonstrably and objectively not “fine”. They are the primary destructive force in society, and can and should die. Quickly.
But we probably can get many people on board with something like, own only one car and stop wasting money on new highways and items like that.
I think people can understand a world where they are walking to the grocery store and their car is for some random trip to the lake (one that ideally takes a bit longer with just two lane road and such). I'm not sure they'll be able to understand a world where cars don't even exist.
The real problem with cars is that we use them for everything. It makes zero sense for us to use cars in dense in cities, or between popular locales, or for short distances. We could probably eliminate more than 90% of car usage. But trying to eliminate cars period is too far.
Aka "my opinions are the objective viewpoint".
>They are the primary destructive force in society
Hyperbolic nonsense.
Today's mobile society with cars is better than anything else that has ever existed.
so.... dont? :)
You can be a purist if you want, but you'll never convince anybody if you can't meet them where they're at.
What a deranged belief to hold. Rationalizing that cars of all things are the root cause of all of society's ills is reductionist and lazy, equally so as to believe that simply removing them would cure those ills.
1. People are not really able to live in rural areas without owning a car.
2. I can’t think of a viable way of last mile transport for goods. Supermarkets can’t really exist without Lorries.
3. Emergency services.
I think the main issue is personal transport by car, Especially in (semi) densely populated areas.
Then after that factor in parking lots! Sometimes I think more solutions need to involve "reforest parking lots". In some areas that alone would do far more for walkability than adding sidewalks. Parking lots build heat deserts that radiate heat back up to pedestrians (sometimes alarmingly so), but trees add pleasant shades and cool and hydrate the air around them. Add a bunch more trees and other foliage to existing parking lots and a lot of currently inhospitable suburbs would become a lot more hospitable to pedestrian travel.
This may seem counter to the goal of reducing emissions, but if it means there's less low-density development at the fringes (which involves a lot more roadway, etc per person) then it's really not.
Of course, it's not either/or - there's plenty of underutilized land devoted to parking, we can do both!
The plan exists now. Downsize your lifestyle drastically and move closer to the downtown of a major-ish city.
But you suggest that to anyone and it's a litany of excuses for why this just won't work for them. The truth is that either they can't or they won't. And for the vast majority of people it's just that they won't.
Even in walkable cities, the local government are idiots, see the San Francisco zoning map, all the good stuff exists for historical reasons, not because of masterful planning: https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/resources/2019-02...
This is untrue, because
> The plan exists now. Downsize your lifestyle drastically and move closer to the downtown of a major-ish city.
this is untrue.
The problem isn't a lack of alternatives, the problem is the auto industry lobbying to make alternatives illegal and spending billions to make people believe alternatives don't exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
Unfortunately people equate good urban planning with this weird dystopian view of a 400sqft apartment and clothes hung out to dry and getting stabbed to death on the street instead of how Americans built in the late 1800s and early 1900s with small businesses, restaurants nearby, parks for everyone to enjoy getting out and gettin some sunshine, and other amenities.
"But it's expensive" - yes because we are market-locked into building nothing like this so scarcity drives up the prices.
This is only dystopian if this is how you view it. I live in a 600 square foot apartment and hang my clothes out to dry. The sun is free!
A 2500’ square foot house is much more dystopian to me personally.
I didn’t mean to suggest one is bad (though I think skyscrapers are an anti-pattern as well just less harmful) - just that some Americans will paint any attempts at meaningful urbanization as Hong Kong as opposed to their current size home when the reality is there isn’t a size trade off that needs to be made you just need to do more with how the suburban neighborhood is built/zoned out.
But the plan to live a walkable lifestyle exists. It’s just that people don’t want a walkable lifestyle as much as they say they do or they’d find a way to make it happen.
My dude, it is illegal in almost all of the USA.
Besides that, you missed the point about how most people don't know it's an option because they've never seen anything else. I also think you're a bit confused about the power that individuals have to determine the makeup of their neighborhood. Walkable neighborhoods are expensive because they are highly desirable and rare.
It’s just that people won’t spend a bit more to get the thing they claim they want. So it’s hard for me to believe that they really want walkable neighborhoods that badly. They want big cars, big houses, and suburbs.
For example, I’m in Portland, OR and rent a 600 square foot apartment for $1,200 a month. I can bike downtown in 20 minutes. I walk or bike everywhere and have no transportation expenses beyond bike maintenance and the occasional bus pass.
It’s just that people like to ignore that so they can avoid changing their lifestyle and put the blame on the system rather than themselves. “This would never work for me… I need… I have to… It’s too expensive…”
Or just actually pay what it costs instead of having it subsidised by uncle sam.
And why can’t we use other forms of energy to power these machines w electricity?
Can we stop with "we don't need solutions like THIS, we need this other solution." We're going head first into a climate crisis. We need all solutions here.
No, we don't. Right now we need to cut the 90% of the problem that is caused by the same 3 things.
If you have some solution for a small part of the remaining 10% that is profitable or neutral, go for it.If you are arguing for research, so we can do it later, also, great. But if you want to divert attention from 90% of the problem just so you can improve your favorite 0.01%, just go sit in a corner somewhere until you get reasonable.
In other words, the problem is solved. Any gargantuan efforts that we apply now are just about trying to get there a decade or two faster. Given the history of worldwide coordination attempts, it's not clear that it is possible or worth it.
Alarmism is a good way of moving people to action but it isn't accurate.
1. Every nation with a declining birth rate is shitting their pants about it and trying to raise the birth rate. It is seen as an existential crisis to not grow in population.
2. Birth rates have already been dropping for decades and carbon emissions are continuing to climb because we keep finding new ways to spend money on creating carbon emissions.
"One country that has seen a steep rise in its fertility rate is the Czech Republic."
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/07/improve-u...
EPA press release said emissions were decreasing under Trump.
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/greenhouse-gas-emissions-co...
Except population is exploding in Asia and Africa and western nations are intent on importing as many of those people as possible.
What’s baffling to me is how much overlap there is between the “we need to reduce CO2 emissions”, “having children is selfish”, and “we need more immigration” crowds. One of these things is not like the other.
Who is this "we" [1]?