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Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050
thecarchik writes "Can you imagine a future — thirty-nine years from now — where there are no engines humming, no exhaust smells, no car sounds of any kind in the city except the presumably Jetsons-like beeping of EVs? The European Commission can, and it has a transportation proposal aiming to do just that by 2050. Paris was the first city to suggest a ban on gas guzzlers in their city core, but this ban takes it to whole different level by planning to phase out all petrol cars completely from the city streets. While Paris was motivated by reduced pollution, the EU has broader aims of reduced foreign oil dependence, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, increased jobs within the EU, and improved infrastructure for future economic growth."
If we are truly at peak oil petrol will probably be too expensive by then to use in the average vehicle by then anyway.
But what about all those v 12 "sexy" cars that also get trash mileage, will they be banned from city limits?
FTA:
vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
39 years away is a LONG time. Many politicians will have a chance to overturn this during that time.
Or if you're an optimist, perhaps the free market will have beat them to the punch by then. Or you might point out that there already is a modern city without petrol cars.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
In other news Europe has been recognized as irrelevant to the global market, right after the US.
You can't handle the truth.
Because some countries (the UK) will probably just be one huge city by 2050.
Might be worth nothing that the UK has already rejected this idea.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The Soviets had so much success with their five-year plans.
We're going to try and better them with our 40-year plans!
Petrol is already massively taxed, paying for public transportation and road upkeep. That's why prices for petrol are considerably higher than in the US even in a country like Norway that has its own oil resources.
The UK government has already said they don't like the plan. From the BBC UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars:
It's certainly an interesting idea. And it seems, using the example of London's congestion charge, that it wouldn't be a bad thing. I certainly encourage more people to use public transport, and ride bikes.
And for the Yanks who will complain they live in the suburbs, maybe lobby your local government for better public transport? And stop complaining, this is an article from Europe.
Appended to the end of comments you post. The maximum is 120 characters.
I hope Rossi "cold fusion" device will be used as energy source for cars:
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3126617.ece
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/17/nuclear-future-beyond-japan/
EU = compromised
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
In forty years, the world will be almost entirely identical to this one. In 1960, the world expected flying cars and jetpacks and bases on the moon and mars by 2000 and other than the internet, the world of 2000 was pretty much the world of 1960. The world of 2050 is going to pretty much be the world of 2011.
We already do tax petrol very heavily.
which is totally what she said
It's easier to replace 2 coal power plants than 100k privately owned cars.
I thought the world would run out of oil long before 2050?
Sig?
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
If people insist on polluting, then having the pollution in one place, away from large numbers of people, where it can be more easily managed (reduced), sounds good to me.
I wish the West End, City and East End of London would be pedestrianised.
I'm all for eco-everything, nature protection, responsible development. But the idea of the national (or, in the case of the EU, supra-national) government brutally interfering in the affairs of local administration is just horrible. Totalitarian to the bone.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Most car sounds do not come from the engine. The spikes on my winter tyres make plenty of noise. We could ban wheels and speed. Just ban everything at some distant point in the future, so distant that we don't have to take any action now, that seems pretty easy and safe.
I have to admit, I'm struggling to understand what exactly defies physics about banning petrol cars or even economics for that matter with the growing costs of oil and the decreasing volumes of it available on the planet.
"Europe should spend money on basic research, experimenting with new ideas and taxing petrol if different forms of transportation are desired."
Yeah, it does all that too.
It seemed that just 10 years ago the environmentalists were hippies playing love games, but now they seem to have got their act together. Australia's getting a carbon tax next year, and the Government have pegged car registration fees to it's environmental impact.
and too far in the north.
In other words, a rather bad place to live and do agriculture.
But then this permanent disadvantage has become our strength.
We have to do things right, because we don't have the space for "badlands".
We have to do things efficient, because we don't have resources to waste.
And while cultural diversity makes trade difficult, it also serves as a constant reminder that there is more than one way to do it.
In the long run the economy flourishes when it has to overcome challenges.
European cars are superior because fuel is expensive.
American cars are crap, because GM has no ambition.
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
Given that the oil peak has probably already passed us by, and given the brilliant level of foresight, planning and innovation we're putting into reducing our energy usage, I'm predicting that I'll be using my legs as my primary mode of transportation. If I'm lucky it might be some horse's legs.
Mind you, it's a bloody long way from Cape Town to Paris on foot...
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Why don't we just address the real problem, overpopulation. Ban procreation (but not the act, just the result).
We are the people our parents warned us about.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
It isn't China or the States. There is MUCH more green and nuclear energy in the Europe.
I don't think you appreciate the technological progress that has been made since 1960. You have new materials like Gore-Tex, new transportation options like high-speed rail and ferries in many countries, and semiconductor manufacture is incredibly cheap. And this:
Is a lot like saying that the world of the 1850s was just like the world of the 1700s except for the steam engine.
The EU area controls about 16% of the total world economy. That may sound small, but when an area like that takes a considered and coordinated stance like the one in the OP, and (knowing EU) is prepared to put significant legislative effort behind the decision, it would have a significant impact. 16% of the world market is too much to ignore, even discounting the manufacturers actually living in the EU area (for you foreign barbarians, about 500 million people lives here).
A decision like this would cause great market incitement for thinking up and selling new "green" products.
Why do people always want to slap more taxes on my daily commute? Seriously, do you have a fetish with me slaving away with little to show for it at the end of the month?
Or do you seriously believe that I drive my car from and to work because it's fun? In that case I have news for you: It's not. I do it because it's less not fun than taking public transportation. I could comfortably live with a car in my garage I take out once a week for the fun of it or even none at all if you seriously want me to... if, IF I didn't have to do pesky little things like be places on fricking time every day and go groceries shopping and stuff.
So either you make it so that I don't have to go to work that far away or you shut the fuck up about how I get there.
And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option. Changing my profession is not an option. Sacrificing what little comfort in life I have for your stupid ideas is NOT a FUCKING OPTION!
People should stop expecting everyone else to bend over backwards for their nutcase ideas. Make it so that my life gets comparatively BETTER from how it is now by adopting your way of thinking and we'll talk. What you are doing now is telling the nigger-slave to work harder or else he gets the whip. I would have thought we were beyond that way of thinking by now. (sorry for the harsh, non-pc stuff, but I didn't want to invoke Godwin's Law and I am watching Roots these days...)
here in holland petrol is significantly more expensive then germany/belgium, enough that people in border areas fuel up abroad.
and all that money doesnt even go into roads and such, like it should, most of the road network is very much low capacity, and we are only just starting to build extra roads
damn politicians
Also, i wouldnt care about having an electric car for the daily drives and such as long as the infrastructure is up to scratch (long enough range + near instant "refueling"), but hobby-wise, they will get my suck-squeeze-bang-blow mobile when they pry it out of my cold dead hands
People, what a bunch of bastards
You are short and narrow sighted. Europe doesn't make a decision like this just because of what they expect to change, but because of what they expect to have. By 2050 a lot of projects concerning green energy will have bore fruit and it won't be the same concern as it is today. You're only seeing 2050, while stuck in 2011, try to put it all together and form the big picture of 2050.
Outraged! Outraged, I say! Wait...Europe? 2050? I don't live there. Oh, and I'll be dead. Well then, carry on!
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
Our politicians are retarded but on top of that they don't give a shit what happens in 5 years. So hearing them talk about 2050 is a bad joke. They may as well say we'll all be rich by 2050...
In forty years we will probably have different methods of transportation (I'll be using a cool cane with a sword in it),(...)
cane+sword FTW!
Yeah, 2000 is pretty much 1960.
With microwave ovens. ...etc
And teflon kitchenware.
And mobile phones
And digital cameras
And the world wide web
And slashdot
With commonly distributed measles vaccine
And mass-produced insulin
And VCR's & DVR's
And The Pill (approved in 1960)
And barcodes
With some understanding of genetics & proteomics
Having found Cosmic microwave background radiation (aka confirming the big bang)
Really, 2000 is pretty much 1960 indeed!
I bet the changes in 40 years will be similarly... unimpressive.
So I think this kind of "bans" or regulations are empty posturing and waste of time and smug MEPs passing these should be laughed out of Brussels or told to do something productive.
Making decisions for the future that you won't live to implement is so easy...
There's a lot of this going on in Europe and to a lesser extent, N. America. Make a commitment, but put it so far off into the future that you can take credit for being "green" or visionary without having to actually do anything or make any hard choices. If the technology works out, you get to take credit for it. If the technology fails, then it's some other person who gets to repeal the law, but you'll be long gone by then.
Good stewardship of our natural resources is a good thing, but the problem with environmentalism is it has become a movement which can do no wrong and knows no self-criticism. Any inconvenience or failure is either a misunderstanding (stupid people), or poor implementation (the people are too stupid to to it right, so we have to make it simpler). So the EU will go on mandating Ethanol-based fuel additives which deplete the rain forests, energy-saving lightbulbs, which contain mercury and need to be properly disposed of, etc.
Here in Luxembourg, some gas stations have queues every damned weekend from non locals filling up. While I have a gas guzzler (~9l/100km to 7.5l/100km... it's a 11 year old car by now, which I bought new back in the day. It suits my needs and I see no reason replacing it with something new, even if it would be more economical... Breaking even would take years), I would applaud if they matched gas prices in neighbouring countries.
As a matter of fact, this is one of the places where the EU should step in and harmonize the prices and taxation over the whole EU.
And slower airliners.
I'd just like to point out, since you bring up Norway, that the fuel (and other car related) taxes are not meant to pay for public transportation and road upkeep, it's just another way to get money into the government coffers. Politically, cars are "bad" and should not be used, thus taxes to try to bring usage down. But, of course, since it's a necessity of life, the only result is that people suck up the cost and use it anyway since the taxes are intentionally kept at a level where that's financially possible for most. The actual income from those taxes are used on everything _except_ transit infrastructure. Whenever (somewhat exaggerated, but not by much) money for an actual road is needed, they build a toll booth to finance it.
If the government actually used all the car related taxes on transit infrastructure, this place would be the world's eight wonder.
Not to mention that while it may work in Madrid, Paris, London or Berlin, where public transport is OK, there are a lot of towns and smaller cities (150k-300k inhabitants) out there with shitty, insufficient, overpriced public transport (such as the one where I live), where if you want to go somewhere within the town it's 5-20 minutes away (on foot) and public transport is available (although not necessary unless you are ill, handicapped or in a rush and happen to catch the bus at the right time), but if your workplace is in the outskirts (which is the case for a lot of people) there is only one bus taking you there, you'll probably end up wasting 40 minutes waiting for it, and if you want to go on foot there are no sidewalks (neither on the way there nor in the industrial zone where it'll probably be) so you're walking there at your own risk.
In my town this is aggravated by the fact that it rains cats and dogs half the year (almost horizontally a lot of the time) and that the local government makes every effort to eliminate free parking spots (or any kind of parking spots, for that matter).
"We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas,"
Another politician outed himself as a retard who doesn't have any real arguments, so he resorts to stupid rants.
A lot of Tories are against the EU, his rant is snide dig at supposed EU regulations. Unfortunately the regulation on "straight bananas" wasn't quite what the Eurosceptics thought it was - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6481969.stm.
If petrol's going to get (more) heavily taxed - or banned altogether - that's a good incentive to make your next car one that doesn't use petrol. You may even find you prefer them.
You got 39 years to decide; no rush.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Why do the power plants need to be polluting? This proposal does come from the continent that leads the way on alternative energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
Is it really? The average lifespan of a coal power plant is certainly longer than the average lifespan of a car.
However, the ban on traditional combustion engines (Hybrid cars will still be allowed.) is certainly not a task performed in isolation. There will be great
shifts in power production as well by 2050, so the parent article's point is hardly relevant.
1. this is bigger issue than you.
2. what country do you live in? I've lived in Frankfurt and Stockholm and the public transport is extremely useful and almost always on time.
3. the EU is socialistic and if you don't like it, move to America where you don't have any social programs/systems ... that way you can drive everywhere you go ... even to the mailbox to receive your daily mail.
Except the UK said "No", basically.
But then, that's nothing new. Anyone who thinks that the UK is part of the EU in anything other than writing probably should visit here sometime.
In Finland we're working towards the impossible when price of gas consists of 100% tax. It's at about 70% at the moment if I remember correctly + VAT, which is 23%. We pay about 6.5€/Gallon or 1.6€/liter. I guess that is about $8-$10/Gallon. Guess what, people still drive cars and roads are congested. We also pay a lot of import tax on cars, but I won't go into that
So even with heavy taxation driving is more desirable that taking the Bus or Train and public transportation system here in the Helsinki area is actually quite comprehensive. To kill this method of transportation Finnish government would need to give up lucrative taxes, prop up electric vehicles or what ever we invent in next forty years and their questionable environmental impact, and private sector should take a gamble and build the infrastructure. Maybe that will happen, but it will be much more intricate play of policies, transfer of money from one sector to another than just simple ban on petrol vehicles in the city centers.
Alright ;) have to get back to work. I'm telecommuting today and should not spend my time posting to /.
> go groceries shopping and stuff.
Order them online and a man in a van brings them to you as part of an efficient delivery run.
> And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option.
Of course it is. You just choose not to. You choose to live far from your workplace and off the track of public transportation.
When I moved house, the two essential criteria were public transportation and good broadband. What were yours?
The situation you are in is entirely of your making and now you are having to pay the price for that choice.
Yeah right. We don't have flying cars or jetpacks. But in other areas, the world has changed a lot -more- than anyone imagined.
Probably the biggest thing since 1960 is the rise of computers and networks. Today, the average person uses computers and networks all the fucking time, and it was basically not even on the radar in 1960. Infact a modern cellphone kicks the shit out of a StarTrek "communicator", and StarTrek started in 1966. (and portrays a future much more than 50 years out.)
And we may not have flying cars - but we *do* live in a world where I can fly across the atlantic and pay aproximately one days wages for the priviledge. That's a mindboggling change from what a trans-atlantic flight cost for an average person in 1960.
. I do it because it's less not fun than taking public transportation.
Well, then we'll change that, one way or the other.
So either you make it so that I don't have to go to work that far away or you shut the fuck up about how I get there.
Fine, I'll pick option 1, and I'll do it by making it impossible for people to commute that far. Then the free market will sort it out - companies will move to where there are people living, or affordable housing will be built closer to where there is work, or whatever.
And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option. Changing my profession is not an option. Sacrificing what little comfort in life I have for your stupid ideas is NOT a FUCKING OPTION!
Pfft. Typical whiney driver. If you're actually so close to the poverty line that you can't afford the taxes, maybe you'd be better off on welfare. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
People should stop expecting everyone else to bend over backwards for their nutcase ideas.
Exactly backwards; you're making the world worse for everyone else for the sake of your own personal comfort.
What you are doing now is telling the nigger-slave to work harder or else he gets the whip.
Actually it's very much like telling the overseer to stop using slave labour. If you look at what slaveowners were writing you'll find very similar complaints to your own - "I can't afford machines or paid labour. Changing the way I farm is not an option, changing professions is not an option. Either make it so I don't have to harvest or shut the fuck up about how I do it."
I am trolling
Queue Americans stating that this is a bad idea.
It's a lot easier to control the pollution at one large power plant than tens of millions of tiny ones.
Additionally, electricity acts as an abstraction layer. If there were a breakthrough in fusion generation, the EV fleet wouldn't have to change, in fact nothing would have to change, merely by putting the new fusion station on the grid, the entire fleet becomes a lot less polluting.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Did they ban smoking yet?
You're not a typical Helsinki resident and I and many other inhabitants of the city would call you a lazy fool.
"Where do all these electric cars get their power from?" From Nuclear power and renewable (+storage). Which put your "not polluting within city limit" to rest.
We actually have people protesting because they would have to change some bloody lightbulbs or use a more efficient toilet.
On the plus side, just the suggestion that we might adopt a similar plan could trigger multiple simultaneous aneurysms in even the lowliest peon at Fox News. We could cut emissions and BS at the same time.
Seriously, how is it a stretch to imagine a future where the primary source of energy is not derived from burning dead dinosaurs and plants?
Dont get me wrong, I love my Jeep! It is a hobby for me, but I certainly do not expect it will be my primary mode of transport in 20+ year. At least I hope to god we would have progressed a bit faster than that.
The move off fossil fuels is just like anything else that's hard; if you don't start at some point, you will never get there.
Is it really? The average lifespan of a coal power plant is certainly longer than the average lifespan of a car.
Something from this could be done within the plant's lifespan.
Serious flashback to Demolition Man!
"Pedestrianised" - where will the bikes and buses go then? Walking is not a replacement for either of these, for distances over a mile.
The problem is, that no one gives a shit about you...
Please dont make laugh of other people disaster. We distoyed communism just to fall into this shit.
This is tip of the iceberg of extremly inteligent and important things EU is attempting to solve and in the meantime muslim hordes are readying to flood us.
The European weenie media, particularly the German media, is using this disaster to stoke fears of Nuclear Power and they won't even distinguish from the different type of reactors and mention the newer, safer designs.
So yeah, I'd like to see where they'll get the energy from. My friends would say "the outlet."
You seem to have forgot the "the" in "the China".
Petrol is the UK is now LESS heavily taxed, "driven by high oil prices." Apparently it's better for us to line the pockets of countries IN A CARTEL than it is to spend tax money on public services.
We don't seem to be able to get past the oil price issue by going around it and removing oil from the cycle. Can't blame central government entirely; it's the electorate that seems to think spending money on oil is better than having "ugly" windfarms.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
smoking is being phased out... it's a dying habit
So which part was it that defied physics, again?
There's a big difference. In 1960 HIV wasn't as widespread.
:).
Go figure the difference it makes in certain lifestyles
Walk 20 minutes, lardass. Your gran walked 2 miles with shopping for the entire family, but YOU are too pussy to walk a mile.
"Pedestrianised" - where will the bikes and buses go then? Walking is not a replacement for either of these, for distances over a mile.
I mean to change [almost] all the white roads on this map: restrict them to pedestrian and cyclists (and similarly for the City and the East End). Or, just change them so there are no through routes for car-sized vehicles, i.e. by blocking roads with bollards wide enough to let a bicycle pass (but I think signs and a little enforcement should be sufficient).
It would be a much nicer place to be at all times of the day.
Yes. Obviously.
I am pretty sure Venice should be counted as "modern" and it is not just "petrol car" free but totally car free :-)
No, no, NO. That's not an incentive. It's punishment and all the choice I have is to fall to my knees, hang my head in shame and accept your 'alternative' or get the shit kicked out of me (non-literally).
If you exchange my car for something that better suits your tastes and still does what I need it to, then THAT, right there, is an alternative. If you went and talked my employer into letting me work from home permanently, THAT would be an alternative. 'Give me your money or I'm gonna kill you' is NOT a choice.
Having ME do the work to get where YOU want to be just doesn't fly.
If you don't get paid well enough for your contributions to the economy, that's a different story and should be addressed. But not by cheap fuel with all the side-effects, but just plain higher, more fair wages. Indirect solutions only get you screwed over.
This here is really just about petrol cars and their emissions. Emissions which have effects that provably accumulate a lot of varied damage all over society. The health costs alone are quite insane, but not the only cost.
It is damage which so far people would ignore, because doing anything individually does mainly just dents their own budget with no visible personal gain. Well, now you eventually might have to, and it makes sense for (almost) everyone if everyone drastically reduces or stops their emissions.
I dunno what prices you're comparing, but I can tell you for sure that I (from Aachen - Germany) buy my petrol all the time from Vaals in the Netherlands, and its not because I enjoy paying higher petrol prices.
It's entirely possible to ban petrol cars from cities.
Thousands of towns and cities in Europe have car-free areas in their centre, sometimes just a couple of streets, sometimes the whole city centre. A few charge cars to drive in/near the centre. Some ban highly-polluting vehicles (LEZs, e.g. for Greater London).
Not saying I agree with the taxes, but you could always live closer to work.
Also, you write as if automobile commuting would be the perfect driving experience if only it weren't for those "darn taxes". Obviously this isn't case, urban commuting is without doubt the worst kind of driving experience, and lowering driving costs inevitably means longer traffic jams (as I found out living in CA). Roads can be widened and infrastructure improved, but it's an expensive game of diminishing returns (i.e. adding more lanes to a highway generates progressively less capacity increase whilst often exponentially increasing the build cost per lane in built-up areas).
It's the fact that paying a lot more now for shitty electric cars make no sense. Why would government directed research suddenly lead to new discoveries? Will the government direct the research into the right areas? It's not like companies haven't noticed, and as prices for new tech go down, and prices for oil go up, there will be a point where we switch over.
You want to force that switch on us earlier. Do you really wanna be paying 2-4x for a slower less practical vehicle? Will collapsing the economy be worth switching to electric cars a decade sooner?
So how are goods to be delivered to the stores for sale - I thought about the asian rickshaw but even these have limits
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
1. Says who? And even if so, I say this solution is not the best one. Prove to me first that this solution is the best one you can come up with. (my money's on you're too fucking lazy to think of a better one. My money's also on this idea not bothering you much, as you prove in point 2 very nicely, so you don't GIVE A SHIT whether it bothers other people. Give me an option that inconveniences you and me equally and then we'll talk)
2. Switzerland. Sorry to disappoint, but we don't even have a city as large as Frankfurt (if you're talking Frankfurt am Main) or Stockholm. So your experience does not apply. Besides, that's ONE city. A lot of jobs aren't located in Zurich.
3. You just disqualified yourself.
Belgium here: if I can't go to your excuse of a country to fill up my tank, it has no purpose anymore.
And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option. Changing my profession is not an option. Sacrificing what little comfort in life I have for your stupid ideas is NOT a FUCKING OPTION!
Not to be a troll, but why are ideas that conflict with yours "stupid?" I'd say many, many things are changeable options in your life you just don't have the will or means to overcome the obstacles. I think way up top I saw a good analysis of the situation. Come 2050 gas will be so expensive that you will be BEGGING your government to solve your problems for you. "Get me to work! Changing my job is not an option! Changing where I live is not an option! CHANGING POLITICIANS that don't give me what I NEED now now now IS an option!! GIVE ME for I DEMAND you fix my cost of travel." - Kokuyo circa 2047
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
thank god i'll be dead by then :)
Exactly backwards; you're making the world worse for everyone else for the sake of your own personal comfort.
You have a very simplistic view of the world. I envy you, to a point. With so many easy solutions just around the corner, you probably don't ever feel the burden of your existence. I truly wish I could be like that, sometimes.
Sure, investing your black money... since we know all Belgians are tax dodgers with illegal incomes.
As a result of our high prices, we drive more efficient vehicles. Very roughly, we use half as much fuel per km as North Americans. In fact, we do not pay an awful lot more per passenger km than they do, and I would argue that our vehicles are generally safer and better engineered - in the US, safety often means just adding mass and padding.
Thus we have a double insulation against fuel cost uncertainty; there is capacity for the Government to reduce taxation in a fuel price shock to maintain economic stability, and we use less of it anyway and so are less exposed. The policy has succeeded; Europe doesn't have exurbs with collapsed property values, and we have a much smaller park of uneconomic passenger trucks which represent a future drain on the US economy.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
We're talking of a ban occurring 40 years into the future. Most vehicles are 10 years old or less. I expect it's going to happen that hybrids and eventually electric vehicles replace combustion engines anyway. Of course moving to electric vehicles is one thing, but people shouldn't be driving them into cities without extraordinarily good reasons either, e.g. they live there, they're disabled or whatever. So impose congestion charges, pay & ride schemes and provide decent public transportation that lets people leave their cars at home or on the outskirts and travel the remainder of the way. It's not rocket science but it does need a coordinated and determined timeline to see it through.
The real air pollution in Paris is not petrol driven. The biggest pollutant in Paris is the smell of urine. It's everywhere.
1. no, it's a big issue that's misrepresented by virtually every political group on the planet.
2. two cities = relative monocultures compared to the world. cities are also well known for all manner of social maladies. two many people in too small a volume. have you been to the united states? most of it is open country. good luck getting reliable, cheap public transit all over.
3. we do have social programs.. they're badly run and yet overfunded. care is mediocre at best.
At first I thought that doing this by 2050 sounded way too long. Then I realised, the technology to make it possible will take 20 years, but the rest of the time will be to get enough people to actually realise that banging a metal block up and down inside a closed space by exploding a volatile chemical is really a very poor idea for obtaining motive power indeed. This methodology has had its day, time to move on.
Paris is not the first city to implement such a ban on "gas guzzlers", many German cities already do this.
Today's news has it that there won't be any gasoline left for Europe then anyway so banning it is unnecessary.
[...] and all that money doesnt even go into roads and such, like it should, most of the road network is very much low capacity, and we are only just starting to build extra roads [...]
Road network is low capacity??? In the Netherlands???
You have your facts wrong. The main problem is that the Dutch are in the EU's top-3 of the people who commute the most. The roads are fine, but the Dutch travel too far to work!
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3085647.stm
On topic again: a plan to ban something in 39 years is of course ridiculous. A whole new generation of politicians will have taken over by then, and assuming that we have the same system, they will make their own plans to impress the people for the upcoming elections.
If we have a different system, then the current plans are irrelevant anyway.
Exceptions for delivery, I assume.
Perhaps there can be an incentive to make commercial deliveries at low-traffic hours, like midnight-6am.
here in the usa they will say the free market decides. well of course, anyone who can understand supply and demand sees this coming, so its a matter of inevitability and prudent planning. but of course, the oil company propaganda machines will inflate the lowest common denominator, the easily angry, the easily outraged, the low of iq, and we'll be stuck with no plan whatsoever, and lots of pain
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So I guess those who don't have all your advantages can just take a flying leap?
So your going to wave your magic wand and fix public transportation, then prevent people from living where you deem they should not be allowed to live, then blame the free market for not doing it right (read : YOUR WAY) so you can probably come back with an end run and regulate housing, jobs, and transportation in one fell swoop. All this because its obvious these poor miscreants should just throw in the towel and live off the state because they don't measure up.
WOW. Let me give you a clue. There will always be many professions which require their own transportation. There will be many professions which provide services people want that will never pay enough for those who provide the services to live where the services are needed. There will always be people, hopefully a majority forever, who will resist those who seek to control their lives.
I tend to find people with opinions like yours to be hateful and arrogant. No one measures up to your ideals and therefor they must be FORCED to do so. Damn personal freedom because you will always find someway to claim that the expression of that freedom is dooming everyone else.
Your world was attempted more than once, in many cities this meant housing complexes for the poor which became centers of crime and filth which all the altruist turned their heads away because it obviously wasn't their fault these poor people didn't succeed after all, they were giving shelter, schools, and transportation, only if they would agree to live in a giant cement box reminiscent of a prison. Top it off with the fact they were usually located away from "civilized" people so that their sorrows could be easily ignored. Why it wasn't the benefactors fault and if Poor Joe could not show up at 8AM for his scheduled job cutting the grass it no one would go see why and try to fix the problem, no they would simply assert their belief that it was proof that Poor Joe could not live without being handed all these benefits - as long as he stayed over there and only came when called.
Yeah, sorry, but the story is always the same. Too many people want to tell others how to live and when those others dare not to obey those others are destroying the world for the perfect people. People usually well enough off not to suffer from any of the inconveniences they want to foist unto others
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Oil prices have a knock-on effect. Higher petrol and diesel prices means higher cost of shifting materials around, which raises the cost of all manufacturing industries. It also means fewer long-distance journeys, impacting tourism. Higher delivery costs impacting retail. The economy runs on cheap oil - it is the resource that enables every other industry to function. Unless it is used much more efficiently or a substitute becomes a viable replacement, it's still better to throw money to the greedy cartel than to trigger a new recession in order to spite them.
The reactors are much safer, but storage pools the world over basically have no backup plan in event of serious leaks and are outside of main containment ... I wonder if it will become cost effective to go to near 100% dry storage now.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/reducing-hazards-spent-fuel.html
Because they plan on dotting the countryside with coal fired power plants to produce electricity for their ecofriendly cars right?
Today's Dilbert is also along the same theme.
Amish?
So how are goods to be delivered to the stores for sale - I thought about the asian rickshaw but even these have limits
the muslims in europe are slowly conquering by outbreeding the local population. they will make fine rickshaw runners.
But...what about the blind people? They'll be constantly walking out into the street and getting run over by these magical super-quiet cars (that are only super-quiet at super-low speeds, by most accounts in excess of 20 MPH they aren't much quieter than their gas-burning counterparts).
It's normal for these areas to be open to delivery vehicles at a specific time (e.g. at night, before 9, whatever).
Westminster already has a policy for HGV loading times. Traffic congestion in London encourages deliveries at night at the moment anyway.
This really isn't anything new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_zone
London is one of very few cities I've been in (as a resident or visitor) without a significant car-free area, relative to its size.
In the meantime, where is all that oil money going? For King Abdullah to spend US$135 billion on lavish gifts for the people of Saudi Arabia in order to keep them from rebelling against a government that routinely imprisons protestors for years without charge or trial and has an open ambition of global domination. Private research may get us where we want to be eventually, but if throwing money at the problem can speed things up it seems like a good idea.
"Of course they do all that, but pretending that passage of regulation that takes effect in about four decades is just silly posturing."
Why? It's a long way off sure, but for good reason, it just gives Europe confirmation of where the leadership wants things to go. It makes the point that you wont be able to get away with just doing what you've always done forever.
It gives incentive for companies to start looking now at more efficient mass transport like trains, or even slower but cheaper and more environmentally friendly methods like canals for less time-sensitive stuff such as building materials for long haul transport rather than trucks.
It gives companies that are investing in green technology or improving their transport practices confirmation that they're on the right track and that their business model is protected whatever happens to oil prices.
You're right that most people and most companies will get a clue as petrol prices go up anyway, but if we found a way to artificially produce infinite amounts of petrol somehow, or just found massive new oil reserves and oil prices went down then it's still not long term acceptable due to emissions from this method of transport. This really just creates a legally binding basis that forces change that others may gladly put off indefinitely. In fact, as demand for oil drops as responsible companies switch to renewable and sustainable methods of transport then so will the prices of it, and when that happens you can be rest assured there will be die hards that will use this as more of an excuse than ever to stick with oil. This type of law gives them no choice.
As my neighbor wheezed out his last breaths several months ago, I can vouch for this fact.
the muslims in europe are slowly conquering by outbreeding the local population.
While completely offtopic, it is entirely true !
If you don't want to pay taxes, then you can always go an live in the woods somewhere. Just don't come crying back to us about the lack of paved roads. Better take a gun too and lay a few landmines around your house, you wouldn't want to have to rely on the evil tax-funded police to keep someone from robbing you.
There seems to be a misunderstanding in the summary title. EU is not synonymous with Europe. There are many European countries that are not a part of the EU.
No more privacy.
Blame Fraunhofer in the 18th Century, for effective long lenses, if you must blame technology. The privacy issue is nothing to do with the sensor.
Privacy, by the way, is a Victorian invention.
Promote asocial behaviour and/or obesity
Yes, those pesky exercise and yoga videos, making everybody fat!
Since trolling is such fun: You can also argue that what "causes cancer" the most is: having eliminated almost every other form of terminal disease, cancer gets a bigger slice.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
The USA has invested so little in public transit since the 1960s, that the average american doesn't see it. In fact, the existing infrastructure back then (street cars, rail) has mostly crumbled and gone to shit. The only public transit to have expanded are buses.
But what is so new about ferries? They existed a long time before the 60s.
Having all the pollution in one place doesn't work. It will move from high density areas to low density until it reaches equilibrium. Besides, the EUs purpose is to reduce CO2 emissions because of climate change. As such, having to produce additional electricity will release more CO2. Now, whether that will be less than the CO2 released by more fuel efficient vehicles has not been determined.
This is the point. Unless we apply some financial pressure there is no reason to use it more efficiently or to develop alternatives.
There is indeed a knock-on effect, and that cuts both ways. The supermarket that adopts a fleet of electric vehicles is the supermarket that has lowest prices - unless we hide the true cost of continuing to use oil by granting tax benefits. Not much point encouraging "green" with tax rebates if you then give the oil users a tax rebate too, is there?
Or we could do nothing for another 50 years and then have a 50-year recession sorting out the mess once we're well past crisis point. Sound good?
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
The term "petrol cars", as I understand it, generally excludes Diesel-engine vehicles. Being as in many places in the EU Diesel-powered vehicles make up half or more of the vehicles on the road - including vehicles owned by individuals - this isn't that huge of a shift.
Now, if they were to instead ban cars with internal combustion engines, that would be a huge shift.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That.
And yes, if you have to do it, it's better to pollute away from where people live if that's at all possible.
It's always the uppity Swiss complaining about everything.
I still can't believe you live in CH and compare yourself to a "slave getting the whip" ... you really need to travel (live somewhere else) much more often.
"Fine, I'll pick option 1, and I'll do it by making it impossible for people to commute that far. Then the free market will sort it out - companies will move to where there are people living, or affordable housing will be built closer to where there is work, or whatever."
Yeah, cos if village a has a doctor and village b has the doctor's surgery then let's just move the doctors surgery from village b to village a, and because village b wont be able to commute to the doctors, then well, tough shit, they can all just fucking die whilst the old surgery sits there unused right?
Sorry no, commuting is fundamental to the modern economy. I'm all for changing away from petrol cars but I am not for reducing the ability to commute, that will seriously hamper humanity as a whole as institutions will just not be able to get the staff they need be it doctors, teachers, scientists, builders, plumbers and so forth. The ability for people to move and work around has been one of the most important and fundamentally important changes in society that has allowed humanity to advance to the degree it has. Worse, even green technology companies themselves would be hit by such a backwards movement.
I agree that simply continuing to allow driving petrol based cars is not the solution, but you sound like you want to stop commuting altogether with your comments, which is probably fine if you're a redneck in central USA that's never stepped outside his home town, but similarly never really contributed anything to the world either, but here in the rest of the world it's kind of important. I disagree with the GP's point that he should be left alone driving a petrol car (note: I'm a petrol car driver myself, whilst I detest the amount fuel costs me personally in the UK, I can understand it's probably not a bad thing for the world overall), but I sympathise with his view of the increasing difficulty in commuting- he's right that we must'nt cause problems for commuters until we have acceptable working alternatives for them, whether it be more home working, better public transport, or simply cleaner more efficient personal transport.
Realistically, the only way to power electric cars that would replace most gasoline cars is nuclear. Additional coal would simply not pass CO2 emissions targets for most if not all EU countries.
edit: I also pay a premium for housing (that I could use toward a car) so that it doesn't bother me. you could do the same (by selling the car and living somewhere where it's more convenient with bus/tram/subway/bike/boat/skates), but instead you choose to complain ... ugh.
It's definitely not "cool" like it was about 10-15 years ago when I was in school, now almost 30 there is one person in our social group that smokes, and he does that rarely when we are out because he can't be arsed to stand outside on his own. I love the smoking ban so much.
My uncle has a country place That no one knows about He says it used to be a farm Before the Motor Law And on Sundays I elude the eyes And hop the Turbine Freight To far outside the Wire Where my white-haired uncle waits ...
I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
I fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime
I love that song. Maybe now even more so. I love the Earth, buy green, etc. but I don't want a government requirement -- at least not yet.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
The safest and most effective way to deal with nuclear waste in storage pools is to not have huge quantities of it to begin with - burn it! if it's so hot that it has to be cooled, it's hot enough to use as fuel. IFRs and other 'burner' technologies can reduce the waste's quantity by a factor of 100 and storage requirements by thousands of years.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Healthcare wise yes. It is better to pollute far from where most citizens live.
Also a power plant will be much more efficient than any car engine you can create, so the pollution will be much less. Also the grid can have (depending on which country you live) a big percentage of clean energy. You car probably not.
Maybe the sanity will finally descend and we'll start recycling fuel instead?
Nah, same "can't build breeders to recycle fuel, too much risk of proliferation" crowd will start screaming of evils of nuclear bombs even louder.
Laws like this are the only way to force car manufacturers to truly innovate with new technologies.
~Syberz
It's the old "you're just shifting emissions from tailpipe to powerplant" myth:
In the EU today:
France 85% from Nuclear
UK 25% from Nuclear/Renewables/Hydro
Germany 25% Nuclear and renewable combined
Austria 70% renewable
For the future the EU has a target of 20% renewable energy by 2020, and something like 80% or 90% by 2050. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_European_Union
This describes EVs running on the UK's current electricity generation mix in comparison with small, fuel efficient petrol cars:
"If we look only at the three smallest categories of conventional car, average exhaust pipe emissions from new cars in 2009 were about 130g CO2/km. Emissions from producing the fuel (extracting and refining the oil) typically adds another 10% to 18% on top, bringing the total for new small cars in 2009 to 145155g CO2/km. Based on these figures, electric cars currently emit about a third less carbon on average than small conventional cars."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/electric-vision/electricity-supply-fossil-fuels
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
smoking is being phased out... it's a dying habit
I see what you did there.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To add to sheer awesomeness of your post, I'll help you with insulin:
Antibiotics-resistant bacteria and antibiotics overuse in cattle.
Arizona has hundreds of square miles of suitable land (presuming the environmental wackos don't object to removing desert habitat) but where are you going to get the water to grow all that algae?
And I was thinking of penicilin while being too busy laughing at it :(
But if you want to go tongue-in-cheek, you could argue that stabbing yourself with a needle daily to treat diabetes makes you more likely to take up hard drugs! :D
Wait, someone from Luxembourg calling someone from another European country a tax dodger? I hate to break this to you but that defies certain stereotypes the rest of us have about Luxembourgers...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
From TFS and TFA it's just petrol cars that will be banned. Cool! I'll stick with my motorbike then (actually by 2050 I'll be 80s so a motorbike might be quite fun.)
So if you want to drive your 1927 Mercedes Limousine to fetch Grandma for her 75th wedding anniversary, this is not allowed? Or are antique vehicles exempt?
I agree that it'll be all but impossible to ban cars outright or even in large areas of cities. However car-free city centres are coming to Europe and it's not some pipe-dream for 40 years in the future.
London, capital of the car-loving UK, already has the congestion charge which makes it prohibitively expensive for most private car owners to drive into central London (a totally unnecessary activity with the excellent public transport in that area). It's official government policy to encourage cycle-commuting as much as possible. Many EU cities are looking at or have already implemented bans on trucks and other heavy vehicles in city centres.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
but hobby-wise, they will get my suck-squeeze-bang-blow mobile when they pry it out of my cold dead hands
Why the fuck should everyone make decisions based on your hobbies?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
From the US, the EU looks ever more like a benevolent tyranny - it's able to make the sorts of decisions that appear to be best to prevent the tragedy of the commons. On the other hand, these decisions utterly disregard choices or liberties of the individuals within the EU.
So on the one hand it's efficient, on the other it seems prone to trampling its citizens.
-Styopa
Now, they just have to build more nuclear and coal power plants to charge all those cars.
JAM
To get somewhere you have to start moving. If 39 year plan is "too far" for you, please tell us how much faster we could have achieved that.
Fuck me, an intra-Benelux flamewar is starting. The next thing you know France and Germany will be taking sides,and we all know where that ends up...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's way more efficient to generate power in a place where you can squeeze the efficiency out of it (reclaim and reuse any generated heat for instance), and your car won't like a 400 kg filtering installation while a power plant doesn't care about having one added to it.
Plus, you can get electricity from a much larger variety of sources; oil can be had by drilling, biofuels or thermal depolymerization. 2 out of those 3 depend heavily on location.
...the problem with environmentalism is it has become a movement which can do no wrong and knows no self-criticism. Any inconvenience or failure is either a misunderstanding (stupid people), or poor implementation (the people are too stupid to to it right, so we have to make it simpler)
And this is exclusive to environmentalism exactly how?
(you could say exactly the same things about pro-nuclear, or...)
2. Switzerland
Since when do EU regulations apply to Switzerland? AFAICS the treaties between EU and CH would not imply that Switzerland had to follow the prospected ban on combustion engines being discussed here
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Removable bollards. In fact one of the streets on that map, just around the corner from me, is pedestrianised after mid-morning. Somebody from the council comes by and sets up bollards at that point.
I'd like to see something done about the taxis around here too. They seem to be the some of the worst for pumping distasteful fumes in to the air when I'm cycling in to work, and there are a large number of them on the roads. Maybe stricter MOT rules should be applied to them.
Ugh... Oxford Circus is already bad enough at the best of times. The entrances are even closed or partially closed during peak times. Wouldn't your suggestion warrant an upgrade to it and the connecting lines? I bet that would cost more than the billion quid they're spending on Tottenham Court Road station for the Cross Rail project.
Yes, it does... Because the stereotype is that we don't pay any taxes. I can assure you that's not true: we provide safe haven for tax dodgers (and even that's waning), but citizens pay taxes. The initial income tax isn't high, but they come at the end of the year and when you earn enough you pay through the nose. As a matter of fact, combined income of me and my wife results in us paying my net salary every three months in "advances"... Knowing them, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the year they'll still be hungry for more. Do note that it makes extremely hard to budget things, if you don't really know what you earn per month, as you can't really foresee the "surprise" at the end of the year. I'd rather be taxed more heavily initially on my income.
Luxembourgish taxes: Good for foreigners and people with a mortgage and lots of kids...
I'm well aware the stereotype exists... If I'd get 1€ for every time someone told me I don't pay taxes, I'd.... well... pay even more taxes, I guess :-(
For the record: I was born Belgian and have a lot of friends and family over there. I took the Luxembourgish nationality around ten years ago. I know of first hand experience that the Belgian national sport is tax dodging, and "black money" is way too common. Belgians admit that openly, though... Well unless he's talking to a tax inspector of course :-p
'Give me your money or I'm gonna kill you' is NOT a choice.
It's good that no-one is giving you that choice then.
Having ME do the work to get where YOU want to be just doesn't fly.
There are many limits on your liberty imposed by the society you live in, in order to improve things for everyone. In this case you may not agree with this specific change, but it is in no way unusual to force compliance on people who would otherwise speed on the motorway, litter public land, steal, pollute their neighbours' land, etc etc. Those rules inconvenience many individuals who would prefer to do as they please. So your argument should really be that this particular change has no benefit for everyone or is not as good as some alternative, because frankly, arguing that it doesn't benefit you doesn't really interest the majority of society - why should it? Society is not obliged to structure itself so that you may continue living in exactly the same way forever, but you are obliged to adapt to the society you live in.
As it happens rising and volatile fuel prices will probably persuade you of the problems with your lifestyle long before your government imposes extra taxes or changes to your car. By 2050 the lifestyle you describe will not be sustainable using a car running on petrol.
Unless you're disabled. Then it would be a nightmare.
Or if you lived in a city where it rains a lot. Then it would completely suck at nearly all times of day.
I don't think it would be a nicer place to be, it would be a massive change for the worse. My enclosed, environmentally controlled transportation method is within 30 feet of both my doors (home and work.) Moving it farther away from me on any day that it's raining or snowing would just plain suck. Having to walk several blocks and then wait for a bus even if it's just cold would not make me happy at all. The traffic nightmare at the train stations outside the city would be worse than city traffic since it would concentrate the traffic spread throughout the city into several extremely dense points.
I like walking, I live in a neighborhood that I can walk to nearly everything and leave the car at home whenever it's nice out. But if it's raining or really cold, I drive the car. Take away that option, and you've just killed every store/bar/restaurant's business when it rains or if it's cold.
I also have a band. I'm not sure how I would get a few 100+ lb. speaker cabinets to the gig in that world. Or a shopping cart full of groceries all the way home, for that matter (including the 5 blocks to the bus station.)
If you need a car because you need or just like to travel to places without bus and train lines, then you would have to find parking outside city limits if you want to live there, or live outside city limits and commute, while still probably using the car to get to the bus/train stop.
I think the main effect of this will be to depopulate the cities of people in addition to cars. Companies will move to the suburbs or rural areas to avoid it, and the cities will wilt. So rather than make the cities better places to be, I believe it will lead to a mass exodus of jobs and people, which will kill the tax base and result in a reduction of all the city services, which means less busses and trains, which means it will take longer to get anywhere, so less people will want to move there and more people will want to leave, Goto 10.
This sentence no verb.
1. Says everyone who's not you. Why should we give a damn about you? Maybe we just want to make our lives easier. If it makes our lives easier why should we care about whether it makes your life easier. After all, it's all about what's easier for me, right? Who cares what other people (i.e. you) think?
That really is the issue: If you don't care about other people, I don't see why other people should care about you.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
How about, by 2020 and force the shit out of automakers to develop all-season EVs or else? Been letting them off the hook for sooooo long.
In forty years, the world will be almost entirely identical to this one. In 1960, the world expected flying cars and jetpacks and bases on the moon and mars by 2000 and other than the internet, the world of 2000 was pretty much the world of 1960. The world of 2050 is going to pretty much be the world of 2011.
What a miserable bucket of fuck you are..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Electricity's a very important abstraction layer. It's a form of energy that we can (not necessarily do, but can) use to run almost any device that needs energy, and there's already a distribution system and enormous demand. Any developments in producing electricity necessarily improve every device that uses electricity.
So who will enforce this? Check your gas vehicles at the Sheriff's office. We don't want no trouble. Say, what's that? I know you carry a can of petro on your leg, Crazy Pete. Wait. Now bend over- you and I both know about your 1980's Ford Fiesta you take everywhere....
On the flip side, why should everyone make decisions that affect my hobbies?
(If you claim anything resembling a society with liberty, you have to at least find a balance. Otherwise just be honest and say "Wes, we're limiting your liberty. Deal with it.")
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
A proposal is not a plan.
And the Eu Commission is not the Eu government - although they certainly act as though they are.
You have a point regarding a secure abstraction layer. But the idea of controlling pollution from one centralized station doesn't. From an overall assessment, you still to factor in energy loss from long distance power transmission and distribution. Also, each vehicle will incur losses during a recharge cycle. Those inefficiencies add up.
Life is not for the lazy.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Yeah, if you are worried about CO2 and global warming electric cars only make sense if you (a) live in a country with tonnes (sorry, joules) of hydro or geothermal power pr (b) go nuclear.
OTOH, there are other arguments for not burning stuff and making lots of noise at ground level in high population density areas.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Does the man in the van pick out the lean steak over the one that's half fat? Does he skip over the pepper with the brown spots and grab the normal one? Get the least bruised bananas? The carton of milk that expires in 2 weeks over the one that expires in 2 days? Tell you about anything new? Explain that the tomatoes on special look like crap and that you should just buy the regular price one? Advise you the sushi doesn't look too good today? Check your eggs and make sure none are cracked?
No?
Then it's not an acceptable substitute. You might be satisfied if everything you buy comes in a sealed box and you make a list for everything you buy, but not everyone shops that way.
You could also say you chose not to be a eunuch monk and that you're paying the price for it, but that doesn't make it a realistic choice. If the OP is married and has kids, then it is not just his choice. There are dozens of possible reasons why it's not a realistic option to move. Could he? Absolutely. Could he and keep the majority of his life intact? Probably not.
Besides, we're talking about a city changing and screwing up his life without him moving, not him moving somewhere and then bitching about it.
This sentence no verb.
Also, even if we have a clean source of electricity, what kind of strain does this put on the electrical system. I'm not too sure of the specifics, but I remember hearing that charging a chevy volt was equivalent to running your air conditioner. Many power systems across North America already have problems with people running air conditioners in the summer. Just image the extra load from 1or 2 extra cars for every household. And you can't just add more powerplants. the equipment in each neighbourhood also needs to be upgraded, as the small transformers aren't built to meet that kind of load.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Would be nice to have Canada follow in their footsteps
pretending that passage of regulation that takes effect in about four decades is just silly posturing
I doubt you'd use that argument against nuclear power. "Oh no, we can't have nuclear power stations, it will be forty or fifty years before they're decommissioned, who knows what will have happened in that time?"
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
increased jobs within the EU
How exactly? The people currently working jobs related to petrol distribution will switch to working the [probably fewer] jobs related to electricity distribution. Big deal.
I hate it when politicians sell something using the latest buzz word that everyone is looking for. The word "jobs" in 2011 is like the word "terrorism" in 2002.
It's worse than that. According to studies increasing road capacity directly causes additional traffic volume to the tune of 9% after 4 years for every 10% increase in capacity. So by increasing road capacity by 10% you get a 1% reduction in congestion on that road. Of course if you haven't also upgraded all the roads around the one you've upgrade you've increased their traffic loads by 9% without increasing their capacity at all.
There seem to be three basic ways to make commuting better:
1) Move the job
2) Move the commuter
3) Improve public transit
Building more roads is a temporary solution that has permanent costs (unless the road is destroyed).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Moving it farther away from me on any day that it's raining or snowing would just plain suck. "
Are you made of sugar or do you just hate coats?
I've driven distances over 1,000 miles at least 20 times in my life so far, and twice I've gone over 2,200 one way. The two 2,200 milers and one of the shorter ones were the only trips that took 2 days, the rest I drove in 1 day.
I'm 100% sure I will not prefer them.
This sentence no verb.
Only if you can afford the exemption stickers... Do you seriously think politicians wouldn't have been pushed for exemptions so that their rich friends can still drive their Ferraris to work? Of course, that's assuming they actually go to the office and "work"...
When I moved house, the two essential criteria were public transportation and good broadband. What were yours?
Easy availability of hookers and blackjack. But I compromised on the blackjack.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Can't we just store it somewhere further away? Where we don't have to look at it? Like the back side of the moon?
That's why The USA has offloaded much of our pollution to China.
I promise to stop all wars, terrorism, crime and dispose of all nuclear weaponry and all other WMD's by the year 4095!
Unless you're disabled. Then it would be a nightmare.
Physically disabled people are generally allocated a special parking area adjacent to (or within) the zone. They can then move around the zone without the problems caused by kerbs, congested pavements (sidewalks) and busy roads. This is not a new problem.
My enclosed, environmentally controlled transportation method is within 30 feet of both my doors (home and work.)
You're clearly not travelling to central London, so why are you arguing against my comment?
Companies will move to the suburbs or rural areas to avoid it, and the cities will wilt. So rather than make the cities better places to be, I believe it will lead to a mass exodus of jobs and people
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. Pedestrianising a city centre is done to encourage people not to leave the city, and evidence from thousands of settlements shows it works. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread, this is not a new idea -- it's 50+ years old!
I've been to China, and people do live there, so, no.
Perhaps you meant "away from *our* people" which wasn't what I said.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
yes it is! ... same as it is ok to shit in the bathroom but not in the kitchen .. got it now?
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a delicious food fight? Let's hope.
How many cars will China, India, and other developing countries add during this period? Far more than Europe will be taking off of the roads.
Only if you believe the twisted statistics of those with a hateful agenda similar to that shown towards black people in some parts 60 years ago.
I remember once hearing an interviewee on FOX News saying England was on the verge of having more muslims than non-muslims, then I checked on Wikipedia, and the muslim population of Britain was listed as a massive, huge, overwhelming: 3%
So, being 48% away from a majority is "on the verge" of a majority?!?
What is scary is how there are news channels out there, watched by tens of millions, which are so willing to deceive people with blatant untruths.
I know you are trolling, you stated as much but there are lots of people who misguidedly really think the things you wrote. I swear its like we are living
.
These people won't be happy until we are all living in Soviet Block style apartment buildings, working when there is work with no real incentive and no hope for bettering our own situation. All in warship of nature or something. If you are going to tell people they can't commute, can't ship goods or whatever you might as well just pass directive 10-289 now while you are at it.
These people are fixed on their desire to see progress stop they reject every solution to our problems except the one that has give up all the industrial progress we have made in the past 300 years. The ironic thing is they call themselves progressive. They don't care that their plan won't support our current population, they claim to be worried about the future but everything they do is about immediacy of today. Yea we can reduce pollution today and by spreading the wealth probably save millions more as well from starvation for while, at the price of everyone starving tomorrow.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's a joke, suggesting Americans don't consider the Chinese "people". Perhaps I was too subtle. I am quite aware that about 1.5b people live there.
Long live Diesel !
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about...
Really? Are you picturing some Snidely Whiplash type lightbulb baron, sitting in his leather chair in the CFL Bulb, Inc. boardroom, smoking an El Presidente as he celebrates the completion of his master plan to get rid of his competition through an "energy efficiency law." He cackles maniacally as the money starts pouring through the vents...
Or maybe your bit about patents is full of shit. A quick look on the CFL wiki article shows that the patent on the very common spiral CFL bulb expired already. This isn't about corporate profits, it's about pushing the public towards better lighting. It's the same reason we have minimum emissions standards for vehicles.
By 2050 we may have Fusion. Europe has a lot more Fission power plants than the US, and theres wind. Also coal fired plants will probably be forced to pollute less than they do now. (Of course they will still put out CO2 but petrol and diesel engines still put out more other crap per energy produced than (new) coal fired power stations.
The UK government has already said they don't like the plan. From the BBC UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars:
It's certainly an interesting idea. And it seems, using the example of London's congestion charge, that it wouldn't be a bad thing. I certainly encourage more people to use public transport, and ride bikes.
And for the Yanks who will complain they live in the suburbs, maybe lobby your local government for better public transport? And stop complaining, this is an article from Europe.
Well the UK government can always change their mind - they only need to hire some Japanese agricultural experts and they won't have even broken a promise: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=square+watermelon&tbm=isch
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
The larger scale you work on, the more efficient the power production is. An oil fire power station charging batteries will give you more miles per gallon than the equivalent in cars, and produce less pollution. Power stations don't need to have the same acceleration and handling in corners as cars do, so the engineers can concentrate on efficiency and emissions rather than weight and size.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I think an upgrade to Oxford Circus station is warranted anyway; I don't need to use it at peak times but a housemate does. Presumably when the escalators are renewed it will be better, was it as bad before they started work on them? (Maybe that is the upgrade?)
Crossrail should ease congestion on the Central Line, though perhaps not for long (there's probably latent demand).
I've heard theories like that before (conquering by outbreeding), but how can the [insert name of a particular group of people here] afford to do that? I can barely afford 2 kids let alone 8.
And all of this of course, should happen without building any additional nuclear plants to provide power for electric cars...
In forty years, the world will be almost entirely identical to this one. In 1960, the world expected flying cars and jetpacks and bases on the moon and mars by 2000 and other than the internet, the world of 2000 was pretty much the world of 1960. The world of 2050 is going to pretty much be the world of 2011.
Speak for yourself - in the (European, seaside) village where my mother was raised, mass electrical power distribution first appeared in 1961. I assure you that their world of 1960 was quite significantly different to their world of 2000.
This reminds me of the process of one of the main early plots of Foundation, where a small, poorly stocked with natural resource planet in the outer part of the galaxy in a few generations had mastered incredible technology and miniaturization, far beyond other more naturally rich planets had accomplished.
I always thought it was an allegory of Japan, although now looking back it the original story was published in '44, and my impression was tainted by having read it in the early '90s. What country at the time fits the description? Or may be everything that happens has happen before, and will happen again.
I really think that the entire thing was an excellent way of teaching history to children. I know I got interested in Roman and Greek history after reading the saga as a child.
What were we talking about again?
I find it fitting that your signature is (currently) "We mock what we don't understand."
It's easier to replace 2 coal power plants than 100k privately owned cars.
Replace them with what? Solar and wind don't cut it now. They certainly won't stand a chance once all of our cars are added to the grid. That leaves unicorn farts and pixie dust, both of which are in extremely short supply.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You can't seriously still believe that vaccines cause autism after all the articles on slashdot that have mentioned the fact that the originator committed a fraud that caused the deaths of thousands of children?
how is babby formed?
Increased jobs? Really? Sounds like unfounded rhetoric thrown in to drum up support for this scheme. Or maybe they envision a healthy market for rickshaw drivers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Why do the power plants need to be polluting? This proposal does come from the continent that leads the way on alternative energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
Didn't Merkel in Germany just decide to phase out nuclear power? I don't see wind and solar picking up the slack to meet current demands, much less the increased demands once all cars are electric.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In 2050 you're not going to want an ICE-powered car, electric will be better in every way by then, even cost.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
if we already have enough nukes to glass the entire earth then what difference does it make if we can make more anyway?
> That leaves unicorn farts and pixie dust
Or the 25 GWp of large hydro in Canada that's currently undeveloped because no one wants to buy it. That's enough to run all our cars, homes, industry, etc.
Dunno what you're going to do south of the border, but I'm guessing it will involve handing over even more of your hard earned cash.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
yes it is! ... same as it is ok to shit in the bathroom but not in the kitchen .. got it now?
Then why are they trying to have coal powered plants shut down, even if they are in the boonies?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I would never live in a city anyhow, but that certainly makes it sound even worse. Thank goodness the tree hugging socialists haven't forced this nonsense on us here in the States.
We will just call the fuel gasoline and be done with it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Nuclear waste is already reprocessed in Europe -- in France and the UK at least. Some even from Japan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8469249.stm
I'm not sure what the future plans are.
No, I cannot imagine cities without cars by 2050. I think it is very unlikely that will happen.
Much more likely is Europe without a European Commission by 2050. These bureaucrats make themselves so incredibly impossible that whatever is happening in the middle-East right now, will also happen to the Bureaucrats in Brussels. My prediction is 2025 at the latest..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I think the theory goes that it's easier/more efficient to trap harmful emissions in a few centralised power plants than in millions of cars and when/if we ever move to cleaner fuels on the power station side of things it won't make any difference to our vehicles which don't care about the source of their charged battery. Besides, even taking none of that into account, it's still probably better to shift the pollution out of cities where it's currently a factor in the health of the entire population (not that I'll be rushing out to buy an electric car until the prices are more roughly comparable to diesel and the availability of charge points is vastly improved).
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The regional power company is trying to run a high voltage line through my county. Every time they pick a route, people living along the route fight them in court. So they move it and the process starts again. The finalized route now zig-zags through the poorest parts of the county because those people couldn't afford the lawyers.
"Away from large numbers of people" should read "Away from people with money."
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
"Let's bomb those dirty eurotrash back to the stone age!"
Maybe.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future
Apparently it's better for us to line the pockets of countries IN A CARTEL than it is to spend tax money on public services
The prices are not set by the cartel, they are set by commodity speculators. A few years ago, the USA deregulated future trading on oil, and the price per barrel doubled in a few months. I'd mind somewhat less if the money was lining the pockets of the people actually producing the oil, but most of it is lining the pockets of people who are trading fictional products on a commodities exchange. Unfortunately, we can't fix this in the UK, we need to persuade the USA to stop fucking up commodity prices worldwide to make Goldman Sachs employees and customers rich.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
My VW Passatt from 1999, being a UK registered car is banned from many German cities becasue it doesn't meet regulations for emissions. Well it does, but they go by the UK system of recording those emissions which isn't as stringent as the German one. So I can fit a new soot capture device at a cost of 1000 pounds to drive into Berlin for one place.
But if the same car was German registered I would be ok. Thanks to the EU, this is being rolled out across Europe, so soon France, and even Eastern European countries (some of the cars there....)
But did I mention my diesel passat runs on recycled veg oil?
No matter.
Still, I'm ok.
As I can drive my highly modified petrol car which does 15MPG urban into the city no problem.
Just not the eco friendly 50MPG car running on waste products.
Classic own goal.
having the pollution in one place, away from large numbers of people, where it can be more easily managed (reduced), sounds good to me.
Wrong my friend, at least not for carbon and green house effect. Whether you use a car in the desert, or in downtown NY, it's the same effect on the atmosphere.
It's the same to have thousands of petrol cars in downtown New-York or a plant producing electricity from petrol in a desert and thousands of electric cars in NY.
Actually, it could well be worse to have electric cars in this scenario, I mean, since electric cars cost more, it means more pollution went into building it!
Doesn't mean we should not do research, but let's be logical
Incandescent bulbs powered by coal release way more mercury than CFLs
Err, that's what you meant...right?
The other benefit that people often overlook is that it's much easier to get energy to where it's needed in this form. Not only are you removing polluting cars from the roads (and enabling them to benefit from advances on the power production side), you're removing the polluting lorries that deliver the fuel - it all travels down a nice, convenient cable.
almost 70% of electricity is from hydro according to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Austria
Makes sense if you've ever visited the place - it really is that half the country is all mountains and valleys.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Point taken, but then ridiculously cheap air travel available to the masses (expect this to be one of the things that goes away in the future, I guess...)
Good enviromentalists want to improve the productivity of our agriculture AND dedicate larger area to nature, by reducing number of farms. Good enviromentalist want to ban ALL fossil fuels including burning renewables in relatively short period, and replace them with lots of nuclear power stations using spend nuclear fuel as its own fuel by shipping it to across the continent to recycling center and back. Its all about land use, the denser mankind means far more area for nature, and nuclear is about as dense power source as you can get, and sheer volume of waste in other methods of electric production is unbelievable.
Getting rid of fossil fuels means reduced inhaling problems. Good enviromentalists want to ban tobacco and alcohol and marihuana. Both cause both enviromental problems at production, and health problems and problems to bystanders. Good enviromentalists want to increase durability of products so that far less production is required for given living standards, oh and electrical efficiency is nice bonus. Good enviromentalist want to reduce commute and shopping distance by living in dense city centers, instead of on some god forsaken far away location.
The idiot enviromentalists only considers things by emotion, if it feels good it is good and if it feels bad it is bad, no matter what the numbers tell us.
Unfortunately idiot enviromentalists dominate the numbers and media.
©God
Indeed, in the 60's the "big idea" was making it easier to go to far flung places, in a way we managed that - no jetpacks or flying cars :( - but cheap air travel, safer road travel, more car ownership, etc. but the internet has also allowed us to take steps to bring "out there" to us. Internet shopping, businesses being able to cheaply buy and sell in different markets around the globe, home working, etc. these are the areas we'll see more fully developed in the next 40 years. If the average worker in 2050 still has to commute to work by car instead of logging in from home I'll be surprised and a little saddened. Even workers who produce physical goods might have some greater degree of flexibility with advancements in 3D printing technology.
You're assuming this one measure in isolation. More likely this one measure is a guideline to drive the other measures. We're already seeing other government-backed incentives to switch, such as a grant towards the cost of electric vehicles, being able to avoid congestion charges, etc. 2050 is just a marker for the worst case, absolute cut-off point. I'd be surprised if the vast majority of Europeans weren't already driving electric vehicles way before that date.
Solar and wind don't cut it now
Explain yourself.
What's stopping anyone from building a 10 billion dollar wind farm to replace their 10 billion dollar nuclear plant?
Is there a technological problem? Is it less efficient?
Just because no one bothered to spend 10-100 billion on the new system doesn't mean it's not possible.
Otherwise, wind & solar are perfectly fine replacements for all other power sources.
I wish there was more of a push for companies to accept home working. Here in the UK you can request home working as an option and, by law, the company has to "seriously consider" it. That just means if there is any single business reason to not allow it, no matter how spurious, they can refuse. I understand for a lot of people being in the office is productive, but for a lot of people in the IT/development sector it's just a massive distraction and a productivity drain. Our household is a two car household purely because I have to be in the office to do work I could more easily do from home (my commute is 7 miles, if I didn't have health difficulties I would cycle and then only my GF would need a car on a daily basis).
It would be more sensible to say a company should offer employees at least a trial period working from home, and if they demonstrate the ability to perform their usual job without hindrance, they should be allowed to continue to do so (monitored at regular intervals). I know for a fact my productivity is much higher when I'm not in the office (I do occasionally work from home once or twice a month and I did so for 15 months in my previous job), plus I'm more than happy to spend the time I would have been commuting getting some extra work done, so it's really in everyone's interests.
So the cities would just have diesel cars? Rather than electric. Don't diesel cars already outsell petrol cars in Europe? (Due to the tax environment).
Do it now! No need to wait any longer!
Visit my Forums?
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There is more to pollution than CO2. I don't care about breathing in CO2, but I do care about breathing in sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, partially-burned hydrocarbons (alcohols, aldehydes), etc.
Electric cars in NYC would mean less asthma and other diseases for people living in NYC. It could mean more diseases for people living near the power plant, so we should put that somewhere more remote and install systems to capture as much of the harmful to health emissions as possible. Even 150 years ago we figured out to put a great big chimney over the fire, which is still better than producing them at ground level.
What if one of your hobbies is to kill people?
Shit, that must be a bright bulb. You'd need to keep the glass at ~5C warmer than the air and silvered glass isn't well known for being a good absorber of IR radiation.
So that must be one fuck of a lightbulb you've got on your shaving mirror.
However, this:
http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-choose-the-best-fogless-shaving-mirrors-a179002
Seems to indicate that your fog free mirror isn't using the energy from the lightbulb to get it fog free.
You never know. In the UK, cars built before 1973 are exempt from road tax. I reckon the thinking behind it is that there are so few of them on the road that it doesn't make much difference either way.
It sounds like France is the primary country driving this proposal.
75% of their energy is nuclear, and they don't seem to have any plans to change it post-Fukushima.
It just means the French get to laugh at the Germans as they charge them an arm and a leg for French nuclear to replace the German nuclear that went away.
Germany is shutting down something on the order of 7 nuclear plants. That is basically the equivalent of their entire installed capacity of wind power once you take capacity factor into account. (Germany has about 27 GW of nameplate wind capacity, but has only been achieving around a 17% capacity factor, putting the actual output about equivalent to 5-6GW nameplate worth of nuclear, since nuke plants typically achieve a 90% capacity factor.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Perhaps they assume teleporting will be common...
It depends where you live, I guess. Some places will opt for nuclear in the absence of other options - it might be a tough sell right now but not everywhere is in a subduction zone. Iceland's got ample geothermal and hydro power, and doesn't use fossil fuels for much other than cars at the moment.
Here in Scotland, the geography lends itself to tidal power generation, which unlike wind (which we also have lots of) and solar (one of the cloudiest places on Earth) is regular and predictable. We're told that, if fully utilised, we could be 100% renewable and even a net exporter of energy, although I'm not sure if that takes into account heating (which is predominantly gas and oil based), or makes allowances for increased energy use.
There's no single answer to your question. It really depends on what's available in your part of the world.
However, by 2050, oil will perhaps have run out. Cars in city centres are fucking useless anyhow due to congestion, and europe actually has half-decent public transport.
Also, "by 2050" conveniently makes enforcement/delivery of this ban Somebody Else's Problem. If they want to do something with some sort of serious level of commitment, make it by 2020.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
disapproves.
Something witty.
They'll probably just import electricity from France, where nuclear reactors grow on trees.
The UK imports electricity from France every day at peak times, particularly when the credits roll on Eastenders and the entire working class puts the kettle on.
Do you want the job of attaching nuclear waste to a rocket that basically propels itself on top of a huge explosion?
I don't buy the safety claims for sodium cooled reactors ... MSR can burn low grade fuel as well, and those are more interesting ... but sodium cooled fast reactors NIMBY.
In Scotland we're building (or will soon be building) a large power line through the highlands, in order to link the north (where there is significant potential for wind and tidal power generation) with the major population centres in the Central Belt. The level of opposition has been huge, because it involves building huge pylons in amongst some of our most scenic landscape. Unfortunately, the costs involved in building the line underground are prohibitive.
Our capability to transport crude oil between the north-east (where our oil industry is based) and the refineries in the Central Belt and beyond is actually greater than our ability to transport electricity, because the pipelines are currently already in place.
And for the Yanks who will complain they live in the suburbs, maybe lobby your local government for better public transport? And stop complaining, this is an article from Europe.
Way to beat up a strawman!
Treat your wife like a baby-making slave.
Why would they need exceptions? Do you think Ferrari can't design an electric sports car until 2050?
Dilbert RSS feed
Of course. A coal power station in the sticks doesn't expose millions of people to a thick smog. Not only do they have better emission control, but the pollution disperses before anyone gets to breathe it.
No I'm not, infact I live in Espoo...
and it doesn't reflect well on the party. I worked for his company where he didn't pay us for 2 months constantly saying 'next week' without giving any substantial reason for why next week would be different. He would complain about taxes and government regulation of business.
When the company finally got finanial backing, he joked about how he pulled in that sucker. We got paychecks for a while, but he kept no records about where what was going. I believe he moved to Texas from New York to escape a hostile environment for himself.
From what I have seen of Tea Party, it is pulling in scumbags who favor lawlessness. Not people who favor small government and less regulation. Yes, I am sour.
I personally liked Ron Paul. He probably doesn't fall far outside of the Tea Party ideology. But at least he seems to have some values.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Same deal. When you see even the Westend bÃttre folk loyally using public transportation, someone choosing to drive really stands out.
And slower airliners.
The 747-8I is supposed to be the fastest airliner in the world, something like mach 0.91. Not that any airlines are likely to actually fly it that fast...
Well, for starters, a wind farm will generate fewer watts per dollar than a nuclear plant, and a nuclear plant provides stable base load power while a wind farm does not. You're going to need to solve that "stable base load" thing if you want wind and solar to catch on. That's not to say that all renewables are poor in that area: hydroelectric dams are generally excellent base load plants.
I plan to live to be 200 years old. What's their point?
Is it just me or is half that article blocked out by an enlarged version of the photograph? I'm on Safari 3.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The trick would be to create the waste on the moon, and transport the energy back (with EM waves)
I guess you're not a fan of Space: 1999 then.
And slashdot
I admit, I can't find anything wrong with that.
Then you haven't seen the new layout. ;)
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
this euro trash will pry my Mustang V8 from my cold dead hands. Fuck the fuel economy, hippies.
My uncle has a country place that no one knows about . . .
Except they have made the calculation, and the electric cars are generally more polluting than the gas cars.
And for europe, they are not even cheap because there are heavy taxes on electrical power to get people to cut down on power usage or be more efficient (as in changing to low usage bulbs etc)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Yes, speculators like transport, agriculture and chemical industry. Protecting themselves against price increases due to tight supply. Speculators like airlines doing oil price protection, farmers buying oil long to offset possible price increases. You know, the people who actually need oil or its refined products? They're speculating that the prices increase, so they buy contracts now rather than risk going belly up later. Greedy companies protecting themselves against a bankruptcy. How dare they!
And how about all those millions of speculators who buy their tanks full of gas thinking it could cost more next week.
Yeah. Damn speculators!
Newsflash: speculation is part of a healthy market. I know you're thinking of Wall St. paper-oil speculators, but they're not the culprit here.
what more could we expect from a continent of great history who has a tradition of sticking with their outdated methods and mannerisms?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Rid the cities of "gas guzzlers" and then what? How are you going to get goods into & out of a city? How are you going to get heavy things around? Once again, here is a knee-jerk reaction for something. Throw the baby out with the bath and then run around scratching your heads on how you aren't as mobile as you use to be, but, in the great socialist leaders (LOL) of the world...what's good for the collective, is good for the government! Baaaaahumbug! Bunch of limp wristed idiots who couldn't run a profitable business if they tried. Socialism stops working, when you run out of OTHER PEOPLES money to spend. The USSR ran out of money in the late 80's, and pretty much have taken down North Korea & Cuba. The USA is sadly heading down that road too, and will die off when it finally figures out that you can fund the lazy butts that won't work, on the backs of the ones that do. China is trying to run a socialistic-communist form of government, and allowing businesses to move there for the cheap labor, and buying all the other countries debt. If/when their people get a real taste of freedom, and once the USA is broke, and can no longer afford to buy anything from China, they will die off also. What are we worried about, isn't the world suppose to end in 2012? Then party like it is 2011!
Yeah, nothing better than a nanny state infantilizing restaurateurs...
LOL! For Germany you can replace that with alternative energy sources like oil (33,8%), coal (25,8%) and gas (22,7%) that supply 82,3% of our energy http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix.
If they are going to get rid of all the pollution, why stop with smog?
The most significant unsafety factor in nuclear power is the anti-nuclear lobby itself by preventing modernization of nuclear power plants.
EU is prounced Eeewww
I fail to see how this is a rant.
No I'm not, infact I live in Espoo...
Perkeleen jupit.
Ahem. My apologies, couldn't resist local stereotyping :-) I live in suburban Helsinki near a train station, and not being particularly car-crazy, I consider the car a more burdensome way to commute: you can't read and the roads downtown are often congested. The occasional drunks in transport are mostly harmless. On the other hand, my workplace is across the street from the nearest metro station.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Automobiles might still be powered by gasoline. However, it won't be pumped from the ground (where it would be too scarce to be economically viable) but manufactured at a plant that generates it using a different power supply (some form of nuclear power).
As an added bonus, the manufacturing process will suck the CO2 from the atmosphere, and thus the entire process will be carbon-neutral. (The CO2 released when the fuel burns in the car will be equal to the amount taken from the atmosphere in the manufacturing process.)
Of course in this scenario the ban will likely be lifted.
You comments are usually enlightened and I enjoy reading them (you are on my slashdot Firehose). I'd comment on this one because I also dwell on this topic, I strive to identify indicators of what drives the oil prices. One one hand that could be paper speculators on the other could be genuine supply and demand. It is not always clear which is prevailing. Could you please go into more details about your methodology. About the deregulation, do you mean the end of the 90s or some more recent legislature? (It is probably something more recent because at the end of the 90s there was no spike in oil prices).
The idea of Paris teeming with rickshaw operators on cold holiday nights warms my heart!
>>What's stopping anyone from building a 10 billion dollar wind farm to replace their 10 billion dollar nuclear plant?
>>Is there a technological problem? Is it less efficient?
Well... yeah. Energy costs different amounts to generate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)
It varies quite a bit by geographical location, and legal environment, and so forth, so take those estimates with a very large grain of salt, but in general we haven't moved to wind or solar because they're too expensive.
Futures trading is important in some markets, for example by allowing farmers to set the price of the crops before they are planted and guarantee that they can sell them. The USA used to have strong regulation. This regulation made a distinction between the two kinds of participants in the market: those speculating on the prices, and those who are actually producing or consuming the traded commodity. This was based on a 1936 (depression era law) and is still technically in effect. The idea was that the speculators should never outnumber the real consumers - they were there to provide some slack in the system, not to control it. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is in charge of regulating this.
In 1991, Goldman Sachs (or, rather, a subsidiary) managed to convince the CTFC that the oil speculators should be counted as real consumers, and therefore not part of this cap on the number of traders. After the property market crashed, Goldman Sachs moved their clients' money to the oil futures market. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed. Futures went from providing people with a way of providing insurance against unexpected crashes to a way for speculators to rake off a huge proportion of the total cost of the commodity. The best thing about this - from an investor's perspective - is that the more speculators there are, the higher the final price will be, so the people who get in early are guaranteed to make a profit.
The deregulation happened in the '90 (although you can't blame congress - they weren't even told about it until almost 20 years later, and the Goldman Sachs appointees in the CFTC tried to prevent them from finding out by - illegally - claiming that it was illegal to disclose the Goldman Sachs exemption to congress because it was commercially sensitive information), but until the tech bubble then the housing bubble had popped, Goldman Sachs didn't have much of an incentive to do anything with it.
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The congress in 1936 knew that some speculation was necessary, but they imposed strict limits on the proportion of speculation relative to the actual amount of the commodity. This is effectively gone now. There's a reason that the amount of money speculating on commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion between 2003 and 2008, and it wasn't that supply of these commodities grew by a factor of 24.
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Electrical transmission losses average over 6%, this is possibly lossier than trucking fuel around. Petroleum has many drawbacks, but shipping it by pipeline, ship, and rail are all very efficient. The last leg on a tank truck is the least efficient, and those get around 5-10mpg hauling ~10k gallons of fuel. You'd have to haul thousands of miles to approach 6%.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Electrical usage typically bottoms out overnight, the cars could be charged then. If/when electric cars become common, expect the utilities to offer incentives to put your charging station under their control so they can charge it when there is spare capacity, or a website where you select what price you are willing to pay at different times, etc.
Electric infrastructure needs to scale to handle peak loads, and cars don't have to increase the peak load. You could feasibly sell power back to the utility at a profit during peak usage and buy it back at 3AM if your car was idle.
Man, you really need that seminar!
You seem to be one of the few folk to grasp the fact that the European Commission is the de facto government of some 500 million people, despite never having been given such a mandate by those people. Some British Ministers do not seem to grasp it. I think Mr Baker ("We will not be banning cars from city centres ..,"), will do precisely what those who make the laws tell him to; and the laws of Britain are no longer made by the people's elected representatives in the British Parliament.
The unelected bosses of the EU - who do make the laws of Britain - have only one interest in life: to seat themselves at the international top table. The subjugation of 500 million people is integral to that ambition, and this ludicrous EU pontificating about an unknown world 40 years in the future is simply part of an ongoing, cynical campaign to grind firmly into the minds of the masses just who the boss is.
If the people do eventually rebel against this continent-wide deceit, we must hope they can evict the perpetrators before black-shirted Euro-Police clutching vague, Eurocratically-worded EU Arrest Warrants haul them before a politicised EU Court that interprets criticism of the EU as blasphemy.
It is hard to know who are the more deluded - those who think the EU is a sovereign state, or those who think it is not.
When it's 90+ degrees and raining, I hate coats. And If it's 15 degrees, snowing, I have a cold and I would have to walk 8 blocks to the bus stop and stand around for 20 minutes waiting for a bus, I'd not only hate but be pretty much ready to stab anybody that ever suggested a car-free city.
A coat isn't really a substitute for a mobile climate controlled enclosure.
This sentence no verb.
China/USA should ban petrol cars because they import 50% of their petrol.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Doubtless they'd have been just as certain in 1890 that city streets would always be full of horses.
Any power station is better maintained and more efficient than any common car, specially a modern conventional power station powered by coal, gas or oil. A small increase of 0.1 % in efficiency can mean millions in additional profit for the power company, so they try to keep them in perfect shape.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!