Slashdot Mirror
Paris To Test Banning SUVs In the City
thecarchik writes "Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer — the measure of a car's contribution to greenhouse gases. An official within the Parisian mayor's office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined cars and sport-utility vehicles as specific targets of the emissions limit. Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz — despite major safety concerns with the vehicle."
No, they could get most of their energy from nuclear power if all their listed reactors (including a couple of dismantled ones) were all operating at their maximum design capacity.
Reality is slightly different.
Even when everything is running perfectly smoothly they are running at less than the theoretical maximum emergency capacity, there are units offline for scheduled maintainance and there are the experimental plants that run sporadicly, then of course the dismantled plants that some pretend are still adding to the grid. Many of the plants are getting old, and many of the parts they share with most other thermal plants have unexpected downtime just like any other type of thermal plant of the same age and size.
The reality is not a nuclear fairy tale, but it is interesting and nuclear advocates with their head in the clouds should find out about it. If they do that discussions with them on nuclear power can get past the stupidity of 1970s nuclear propaganda writen by advertising men that couldn't tell the difference between science and magic.
Yeah but if you drive a G-WIZ like the article suggested and get in a accident you will spill the contents of the batteries on to the road way because it is a death trap that falls apart on impact. So all that saved "upstream" will be lost in whatever battery chemicals are spilled in accidents, which in a city like Paris I would think would be many per day.
This conversation reminds me of church:
- Thou shalt not lie.
- Thou shalt not look at nude women.
- Thou shalt not own a car if you work or live in Paris, you heathen.
I prefer Mark Twain's viewpoint: "Stop trying to take away all my vices. It's boring." It seems we've replaced the moral tyranny of the Catholic church with a new moral tyranny of the Green church. I can certainly understand banning cars that emit poisons (carbon monoxide, soot, ozone) which damage human lungs, but not CO2. First off CO2 is not a poison, and second it's a necessary ingredient in life (makes the food grow).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall