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Cities Are Scolding Countries at UN Climate Conference To Cut Emissions (vice.com)
A reader shares a report: An alliance of major cities including New York, Toronto, and London challenged nation states attending the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany this week "to kick dirty carbon to the curb" and immediately "commit and work straightaway towards carbon neutrality, 100 percent renewable energy, zero-waste and zero-carbon." The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance is a new collaboration of 20 international cities (other members include Washington DC, San Francisco, Oslo, and Sydney). All are striving for carbon neutrality and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050. "Dirty fuels and climate disruption are killing and displacing millions of citizens around the world," the Alliance stated in a strongly-worded letter sent to every country's delegation at climate talks, known as COP 23. "Cities are on the frontline of climate impacts. We see the urgency of climate action and need nation-states to be as committed as we are," Johanna Partin, the director of the Alliance and former advisor to the mayor of San Francisco, told Motherboard by phone.
With coal plants being discontinued, I prefer solar and wind to charge electric cars without heavy rare earth batteries (not fully rare earth free but going the right direction): http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/...
The burden is only going to get higher and higher as the world gets more and more polluted, until it reaches a point where no amount of resources can fix it. Better to address it now, whatever the cost.
A recent study shows that they're still better than typical vehicles. https://electrek.co/2017/11/01/electric-cars-dirty-electricicty-coal-emission-cleaner-study/
Coal plants are being discontinued. As grids become more efficient, switching to electric cars becomes even better. As for rare earth batteries, rare earths despite their name are not that rare https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-earth-elements-not-rare-just-playing-hard-to-get-38812856/ and the technology to extract them has been getting massively better in the last few years. We've also just barely started recycling rare earth components- until recently there wasn't any economic incentive to do so. If components with them become more common, the amount of recycling will go up. As is usually the case with environmental problems, the solution will not be simply changes in personal behavior, or government regulation, or market incentives but a natural combination of all three. And, with the notable exception of the current US Presidential administration, most of the world is behind it.
An interesting thing about using solar power to charge electric cars is that electric cars inherently include storage. You can, in principle, choose to charge cars when the sun is shining.
This would require somewhat of a change in the timing of when you charge. Instead of going home and charging your car overnight, parking spaces would have solar panel roofs-- you'd charge your car in the daytime (which, for most of us, would mean: at work.)
But that's doable.
http://news.energysage.com/solar-canopy-installations-bring-shade-clean-energy-parking-lot/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/28/the-best-idea-in-a-long-time-covering-parking-lots-with-solar-panels/
http://solarbuildermag.com/news/costs-decline-solar-carports-will-spread-across-country/
https://www.borregosolar.com/news/the-design-basics-for-solar-parking-lots-you-need-to-know-2
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Then those cities should be paying "whatever the cost" instead of smugly telling others to pay for it.
If you read the article, instead of just the summary, you would see: they are.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm not going to get in to another debate weather Trump was right or wrong about that. All I'm saying is I have more faith in people and local governments than I do in big government to do the right thing.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Wait. I see what you did there. Very nicely done.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I'm not sure a scooter could make it to the end of my road in its current condition, much less work. And then contend with both New England weather and New England drivers on a scooter? That's basically suicide.
The article listed switching to LED lights as an example of some of the things these cities have done, that they consider “no brainers." Note the word "some".
The article also said
'“We’ve proven that cutting emissions is good for the economies of cities.' San Francisco has enjoyed a 78 percent economic gain while reducing greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent since 1990, she said. All of the 20 cities in the Alliance have seen similar results."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
Yeah there are. Some of them are lots better. Did you know pound per pound your scooter probably pollutes more than my car does? You only get better gas mileage because of the weight, not because its necessary a more efficient vehicle. What your scooter lacks is the emission controls that modern cars have. So based on the efficiency for per gallon of gas burned my car has less emissions than you scooter does.
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
That's like saying when a freeway gets congested, cities along that freeway should step up and widen their portion of it and hope the other cities do the same, instead of depending on the state or federal government to do it for them.
But that's how we get bottlenecks.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
Yeah there are. Some of them are lots better. Did you know pound per pound your scooter probably pollutes more than my car does?
But "pound per pound" is not the criterion. The appropriate criterion would be "pound of pollution per commuter mile".
You only get better gas mileage because of the weight
So? Does it matter why it gets better gas mileage? What matters is that it does get better gas mileage.
...
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
Indeed, there are other forms of pollution. If you get better miles per gallon but worse particulates and carbon monoxide per mile, it's not a desireable trade-off.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So based on the efficiency for per gallon of gas burned my car has less emissions than you scooter does.
Emissions per gallon is a pointless metric. What's important is emissions per person per mile. If you define efficiency according to how much mass gets moved per gallon, your car might outscore his scooter. But who cares? If you define efficiency according to the emissions from transporting the same number of people (1) the same distance (an obviously more useful metric), his scooter will outscore your car handily.
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
In most situations, yes it does.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The poor counties are not the problem. Its countries like the US and Australia that are causing the major problems.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
One of the interesting things is that modern appliances designed to reduce emissions use less energy, which drives down utility bills.
New buildings typically use 20-30 percent as much energy as the old buildings they replace. Running factories in the dark and using LED lighting and modern equipment cuts heat buildup, so you spend far far less on heating and cooling buildings. Building modern factories with solar roofs allows you to run ceiling fans, cuts maintenance, and makes you much more competitive than the slackers with old inefficient outmoded equipment and facilities.
Capitalism cares nothing for your failed energy intensive ideologies. Renewables and modern equipment and DC green data centers just plain outcompete your heavily tax-subsidized fossil fuel heat wasting methods.
Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most of the West runs on renewables. If you drive across the Western States, you'll see solar panels and wind farms everywhere, in addition to abundant hydroelectric power.
Coal is more expensive. Renewables are cheaper.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I thought Sharknado held that distinction.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Yeah. I see your point. I actually see the flaws in my own post. What looks good on paper doesn't actually translate to the real world.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Only due to edicts from environmentalists, especially those that are indifferent or hostile to those responsible for mining it.
Most environmentalists aren't hostile to such people, and whether they are hostile to miners or not has nothing to do with whether the environmentalists are correct.
most of the world is behind it.
Well, most of the world is behind jumping off a cliff. The US is not.
This is wrong at multiple levels. First, the rest of the world is trying to prevent us from going over the cliff of catastrophic global warming. Second, the only part of the US that is right now vocally against dealing with global warming are certain parts of the Republican Party (but certainly not even all of it), and the Trump administration. Most Americans are concerned about global warming http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx. Facts matter.
But "pound per pound" is not the criterion. The appropriate criterion would be "pound of pollution per commuter mile".
You'll be happy to know the GP was wrong. Scooters are far worse than cars per commuter mile too.
The one exception would be when the roads are iced over. But then again, cars don't drive then either.
You might be surprised to learn that in a significant portion of the U.S. the roads tend to be iced over for several months every winter—and people still need to travel despite the conditions. In warmer climates that rarely see snow and ice people may just stay home for a few days and wait it out, but that isn't practical everywhere.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
If it takes three or four trips to the store to carry a week's worth of groceries with the scooter, which the car could have carried in one trip, then that means several times the emissions.
In that one example of which there are literally thousands you haven't mentioned.
Not every trip will be like that, of course, but it's common enough
The most common journey is commuting to and from work. If every person driving to work rode a modern scooter CO2 would be halved overnight and congestion would disappear.
Not claiming this is practical, just making the point.
and later discover that you need the car, any gains you might have otherwise made are more than offset by the extra trip to switch vehicles.
What? I have a car and a bike. 99% of my journeys are on the bike, the small time I need to take more than one passenger, or pickup big things then I take the car. There is no going back to get the car, I know what I'm doing before I leave home.
That isn't even considering the safety factor, or the risk of inclement weather. Better, IMHO, to have a single reasonably efficient (30+ MPG) enclosed passenger+cargo vehicle that can handle 99% of all trips.
And contributes to most pollution, congestion and accidents. Again I'm not claiming scooters are for everyone, but most of the traffic/pollution/parking issues would disappear overnight if people could get past the FUD.