Most parts of possible problems have political, social, legal, economic and technical parts. A big technical issue is around battery capabilities, but other issues are stuck with a lack of funding, political will, gaps in the legal system.
For example, installing places for people renting or living in flats to charge cars, or reducing car demand by increasing walking/cycling.
This is touted out so much but switching cars over to EVs would require the grid to be increased less than 50% as EVs use about 30% the energy of a combustion engine. Given that most cars will be charged over night the reality is that it would be less than this.
Currently all BEVs charge at their maximum rate the moment they are connected to the charger. Which almost always happens in late afternoon or early evening. I.e. the exact time when the energy usage is at a peak already. While there are many ideas regarding how this load can be pushed into the dead of night, nothing concrete has even been proposed, yet. So I wouldn't dismiss this issue that quickly, especially when we are talking about a (theoretical) rapid adoption of BEVs.
A simple timer isn't enough. You would want the chargers to be networked, so that the power company can optimize the load. That's not impossible, but it also doesn't exist, yet.
The UK power grid (which this article is talking about) is being converted to a smart grid. All new electric meters report their usage continuously which can be used to discover usage patterns. I imagine that chargers would also be connected to smart meters.
As it currently stands, most of the installed base of smart meters can't even communicate to electricity companies other than the one that originally installed them, so I'd say that's a long way off.
> Currently all BEVs charge at their maximum rate the moment they are connected to the charger.
This is not remotely close to true. Most BEVs have timed and/or location aware charging. My own Spark EV for example (a very low end BEV) can be scheduled to charge during certain hours each day of the week. I use this because our electric utility has lower rates from 11PM until 7AM. So no matter when I plug it, the car waits for the cheap electric rate period.
Well, mine both can and does because the utility makes it worth while. Your original claim was "all". Generally this problem is easily solved by adjusting pricing to encourage the desired charge times. Certainly there may be a few holdouts who don't take advantage, but a few is not a problem.
> Currently all BEVs charge at their maximum rate the moment they are connected to the charger. Which almost always happens in late afternoon or early evening. I.e. the exact time when the energy usage is at a peak already.
Citation needed.
What is actually true is that all BEV apart from (I think) the Renault Twizzy have charge timers built into the car.
There are already financial incentives to charge overnight with specific EV tariffs and some electricity suppliers will do the charger installation that talks directly to the provider via smart meter tech to charge at the best rate cost wise and grid wise.
Equally, people don't just come home every single day and recharge thair car. I know this directly as my last neighbour has a Nissan Leaf and charged it every 4 or 5 days and did so overnight.
The 50% increase is not required immediately. Only new cars would be required to be electric. Modern car longevity is about 10-20 years (Wikipedia suggests 200,000 miles in the USA) so full capacity might not be needed for 20-30 years.
Less than 3% each year. Also electricity consumption in the UK has fallen 18.5% since its peak in 2005, so a good part of the capacity is already there.
Given that has been consistently falling at a rate of 1.5%/yr there may not be any new capacity required at all.
You don't need to increase the capacity of the grid by 50% in 14 years. The legislation is to stop the sale of ICE cars, not get Harry Potter in to transmogrify all old ICE into BEV the millisecond the law is enacted.
You don't even need to increase the grid at all from it's current capacity if you charge the cars overnight or outside the peak daily duck curves, probably for the first 5 years of the legislation being enacted, as the numbers of BEV's around wouldn't exceed the generating capacity. So even if we didn't change the grid or increase generating capacity in any way whatsoever just some simple time management would be enough maintain BEV's and grid stability.
To be clear - you only have to make sure that the peak power draw on the grid doesn't increase. UK has about 55GW of generating capacity and uses about 25GW overnight and 35GW during the main part of the day at this time of year, a time of year that is higher use than the summer so we're talking worse case. That's 20-30GW of capacity to fit in some charging.
And that's without having any increases over the next 14 years which is obviously ridiculous!
I have a hard time imagining how somebody could be opposed to this and pretend they have anything but selfish motivations.
Emissions kill people. They kill the elderly. They kill people with asthma. They give people cancer. Your car is an instrument of death even if you don't hit anyone. Parts of the UK have appallingly bad air quality (by regional standards; obviously it's not Beijing).
People are dying en masse but because you can't see it and say "my car was the one that killed them" most people just. don't. care.
Also the majority of trips are short enough to be done via bike or ebike if you give people safe routes to do so, something the UK has been completely unwilling to do.
Fixing the climate change problem should have always involved systemic solutions - i.e. bans on diesel vehicles, high carbon prices, etc, not stuff like "use less water in your home."
But since most governments are corrupt/can get paid by those rich companies they are trying to regulate, the former has also been the most difficult to implement.
Oil companies are the biggest polluters and contributors to climate change. By severely reducing the amount of fossil fuel vehicles on the roads, we lessen the demand for fossil fuels, and reduce pollution.
Big cargo ships should also be targeted, they burn significantly worse grades of fuel, and pollute a lot more.
I don't like the idea of the government banning stuff.
I'm a lifelong cyclist, ex-bike courier. Cars don't offend me. Bad drivers do. I always loved the freedom of cycling. The lack of regulation and traffic stops is one of my favorite points. Never enjoyed 'cycling routes' or special bike lanes. They always seem to box me in. I feel less safe in these areas.
The government is banning stuff all the time. You are not allowed to do a plethora of things that harm other people or society (stealing? murder? destroying public property?). A ban on petrol/diesel car is nothing special.
Its more of a revocation of the privilege to use destructive vehicles on public land. I'm sure after the ban your cars will still be legal to use on private property.
Controlling violence is one of the primary justifications for government. You're comparing apples and oranges - Violent acts and prohibition of inanimate objects don't fit in the same scope.
Prohibition of alcohol would be a more apt comparison.
Books are also inanimate and have been banned throughout history. Cannabis is another interesting one. Lots of data and settled science about how terrible it was... Lately western nations have been walking that one back.
There is no way in hell I would let my kid cycle on the vast majority of "cycle lanes", and suggesting that I should let her wobble around until she builds competence or dies is ridiculous.
Vehicular cycling has set back actual progress in safe infrastructure by decades and is woefully ill-informed about the needs of anyone other than fit, adult, experienced cyclists with excellent vision, hearing, and reflexes.
If you wouldn't let your 8 or 80 year old relative use it, it's crap bike infrastructure.
Seems like we went everywhere from age 8 via bicycle. No supervision, just be back for dinner. Worked out fine and there were no designated bicycle lanes.
Without saying when and where you lived at age 8, this is a pretty useless comment.
Aged 8, I was in the UK in the 1990s.
- Most children went to the nearest school (no longer the case with increased choice from parents)
- The tabloid "paedo-fear" thing hadn't really set in, so more children were allowed outside unsupervised.
- There were fewer people, and fewer working people [1]
- The number of car trips has gone up (although not much), and the number of walking trips has gone down massively [1]
- The number of children being driven to school (on a parent's way to work) has increased massively [1]. That presumably adds traffic at the worst possible place and time for children who could otherwise walk or cycle to school.
So don't use them. They're not mandatory and the open road remains yours for the taking, aside from motorways.
But just as not all people are track runners, not all people are ex-bike-couriers, and it would be nice if they could ride a bike in something other than abject terror.
Also, I actually don't favour a total ban for the most part, just pricing in the externalities. Which would make petrol and diesel powered cars astonishingly expensive. Removing a liter's worth of CO2 from the air would have to be priced in to the cost of a liter of fuel. Paying for your dead neighbour's funeral would need to be covered too (though insurance is meant to cover this, drivers who kill people walking or cycling are rarely found at fault, because it's legal to kill people with your car if they're in the street). Meanwhile, you'd still let the odd hot rod or classic car enthusiast have a project car to wrench on during the weekends, and honestly, I think that's great. They're a key part of our cultural history and great fun.
But right now we still pay for all of those things! We just make _everyone else_ pay for them, which is very unfair. My taxes pay for the street where people drive too quickly to stop before killing my child if she slips from the pavement, and where they emit pollution that has rendered her less intelligent than she might be otherwise, though it's impossible to say by how much.
We might have some common ground here. I don't drive and I don't want to pay for it either.
For me the bigger negative externality is in foreign policy. I don't want any part of overseas adventures for oil. The financial costs alone are astronomical.
At the same time, I do benefit from transportation infrastructure in terms of shipping and purchasing goods which are transported. But if it were my decision I'd say just privatize the whole thing.
If a private road pollutes or otherwise harms anyone, then they should be liable. Problem solved. Lawyers have every incentive to claim damages.
About the abject terror, just build your way up. You can do it. Once you try it you'll see that it truly is as easy as riding a bike.
Back to your main point - it is not selfish to not want to ban petrol/diesel vehicles. I am ready to share the road with anyone.
I am a confident cyclist. I used to commute 4400 mi per year from Santa Monica to Marina Del Rey via Lincoln blvd on a recumbent, if that tells you anything. Check out street view - it's hell for the most part.
But most people are not me, and we definitely don't demand new drivers live in utter terror until they get numb to it.
Nevermind survival bias. Dead ex-bike-couriers aren't here to give their view.
As it currently stands, being forced to rely on public transport takes years off people's lives - not in one clear-cut chunk, but in hours stolen here and there.
That time spent on public transport can be used to get work done vs sitting in a car doing nothing else. Also having a decent public transport system is much much faster than sitting in traffic for hours. The american audience has probably never experienced a good public transport system so they assume its just slow by design.
Trains always seem to lack the capacity for people to sit down during typical commuting hours. Even when you can get a seat, there’s no space to use your laptop because people occupy the space where your elbows need to be.
I've definitely spent more time sitting in traffic (as a very infrequent driver) than I have waiting on public transport in my life. Try driving across london vs getting the tube.
London is the one place in the UK where public transport isn't terrible. It's also the place where the MPs who're proposing this live most of the time, which may explain a lot. Unfortunately, it's also overcrowded and too expensive for almost everyone.
Apologies I missed this a few days ago. Transport in Glasgow is also far more efficient than driving. Similarly Birmingham, hull, Manchester are all much easier handled by their transport systems.
If you live outside the cities though, you better own a car.
Living in a town or city takes years of people's lives, both gradually as an effect of air pollution, or suddenly through a collision.
Public transport causes far less of both problems, and where problems remain (e.g. a town with old buses) they are much more easily solved (buy 200 electric buses).
It doesn’t matter. Literally nobody can afford climate failure.
Once you’ve got a realistic threat of civilisational collapse on one side of the equation, things look different. Not everyone being able to afford a car, or having to eat veggie burgers... These aren’t real problems in comparison.
Quite apart from the fact that we shouldn’t all need cars in the first place. I live in Europe, with kids, and I’ve never felt the need to even get a license. Trains are far more convenient.
Cars being a luxury means public transport will need to improve everywhere. Which is great for everyone, and for the economy.
> It doesn’t matter. Literally nobody can afford climate failure.
That is a sweeping overgeneralisation and literally false. There are going to be large communities of people who will suffer more from giving up cars than from climate change.
Maybe you don't have an poor people living in your part of the world, but wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor because you don't want to engage with their problems is neither constructive nor pleasant.
What people can afford does matter, and it is worth considering how much the poor are being asked to give up versus how much we expect their sacrifice to help.
It’s fair to point out that I was being hyperbolic.
Depending on exactly where we fall in the range of bad to catastrophic possible futures ahead of us, it may be hard to find too many people who would be more affected by giving up cars than climate change.
I am clearly not wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor, that is a straw man. I am wishing working public transport on everyone.
Your final paragraph I absolutely agree with. I over-egged my comment for effect. The general lack of alarm and urgency surrounding climate change is frustrating.
Aside from emissions, if you drive a car you are making public spaces more dangerous even of you follow the rules perfectly. Our cities and public spaces are extremely hostile to pedestrians especially kids. Its drilled in to everyone that you have to have a constant grip of your child's hand when walking outside because they could be instantly killed for stepping in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
It also takes forever to walk anywhere because pedestrian crossings are programmed to be extremely slow as to not disrupt drivers as well as intersections often requiring 2 crossings to get to the desired location vs just one when driving.
The sheer amount of space that was forcefully taken from pedestrians and cyclists, in order to make room for cars is absolutely astounding once you take a critical look at it.
Those 4-lane boulevards though city centers could fit generously-proportioned sidewalks and bike paths and greenery, food stalls, cafés and dedicated bus lanes (or you could move public transit underground for better space utilization).
Instead they're full of gridlocked traffic, made up of countless ~1.5t lumps of steel and plastic, transporting a single occupant each.
When people complain about cyclists on footpaths, I agree wholeheartedly. Yet, when I point out that drivers did EXACTLY this and killed everyone in their way, it's like I'm speaking Martian. Streets are for people. At least they were for all of human history until ~100 years ago.
> Also the majority of trips are short enough to be done via bike or ebike if you give people safe routes to do so, something the UK has been completely unwilling to do.
Just because a trip is short enough doesn't necessarily mean it's actually practical to make via (e)bike. People often need to take more than a backpack's- or pannier's-worth of stuff with them.
I love my bike, and use it when appropriate, but it doesn't come close to replacing a car.
Which is about as relevant as saying "sometimes I have to cross a river so a car doesn't come close to replacing a boat". This strawman argument is trotted out every time someone suggests an alternative to cars for normal getting around.
I'm not suggesting a human-powered piano delivery service. I'm not proposing we replace logging trucks with cargo bikes.
I am saying that a large number of trips can be taken by modes other than car when doing so becomes a safe and pleasant option. We have proven examples of this (DK, NL) and they are really nice places to walk, cycle, and perhaps paradoxically, drive, as a result.
Often? I'm a developer like most people here and I have to carry less than a backpacks worth on almost all of my trips. On the times I do need to carry more it could fit on one of those bike trailers I see around.
Of course if you are are a tradie or something and you need to carry around ladders and pipes than a bike isn't ideal but for almost everyone it is for almost all of our trips.
Taking a car to work for most of us is using a sledge hammer to push in a thumb tack.
I wasn't thinking in terms of a developer getting to the office. Personally, I don't think I've driven my car to work for at least the past ten years. Many days it doesn't leave the driveway. But there aren't adequate alternatives that would allow me to get rid of it altogether.
>"The very computer you are typing on and throw away in a few years poisoned people in its production and operation."
Which is why we must Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
My main PC is from 2011, still going strong with only minor upgrades (RAM, SSD, new GPU). My laptop is of a similar age. I don't foresee replacing either anytime soon.
You can tax cars and fuel. You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...) This gives the economy time to adopt.
Because this disproportionally affects people who have no other alternative. Rich city people can switch to electric cars without changing habits that much, there are charging points everywhere and they're building lots more all the time.
Go to Cornwall though and it's a very different picture. You need to get all these more remote regions as wired up as central London _before_ introducing any taxation, or make exceptions while you're building the infra.
You could, but people would be pissed about being taxed to pay for something they don't have yet (and hence have no way to avoid the tax). While it might be a sensible strategy for raising the money it would be political suicide.
So how are they better of by banning cars in 10 or 20 years?
Communities can also take loans to build out infrastructure now and pay with the transition tax levied a bit later.
As too political suicide, there are three types of voters:
a) those that believe petrol cars should be banned
b) those that do not want to give up their cars ever
c) those that think cars should be banned but not for them now.
Therefore:
a) should be happy with an immediate tax ladder as it creates incentive to move now
b) will never be happy.
c) if that is the majority of your voters it’s still better to have a a gradual change now then a sudden change in the future. They could just overturn your decision in the future just before the planned sudden change.
If MPs urge for a change that is more than one election away they are hypocrites and shouldn’t be MPs.
Obviously some changes take a long time to bear fruits, but the change has to be immediate and gradual.
If we are aiming to increase air quality, then geographic taxes seem fine. And by that I mean hike London's congestion zone charge up x10 for all vehicles with emissions. And expand it back to cover a more sensible portion. And then have every city implement the same thing. And when the lobbying starts against it, how about someone holds their nerve for a change. Yes businesses need deliveries but they don't need to make them with polluting vehicles, that's a choice influenced by cost.
EDIT:
BY incredible coincidence I just received an email from TfL on exactly this!
ULEZ is coming to central London in the same area as the Congestion Charging zone from 8 April 2019. It will operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Vehicles will need to meet the new stricter emission standards, or you will need to pay the daily ULEZ charge. This is in addition to the weekday Congestion Charge.
£12.50 per day for cars, motorcycles and vans (under 3.5 tonnes)
£100.00 per day for heavier vehicles, including lorries (over 3.5 tonnes) and buses/coaches (over 5 tonnes)
From 25 October 2021, the ULEZ will be expanded to include the inner London area bounded by the North and South Circular roads.
I would prefer the government simply require all government fleet purchases be electric starting in 2020 or something. That would actually have a trickle down effect on the rest of the population.
Why not raise tax instead of banning? [...]
(i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...)
The 'Fuel Price Escalator' [1] was introduced by John Major, set at 3% above inflation every year; and later increased to 6% under the Blair government.
Then around 2000, when global oil prices rose and voters started to feel the pinch, Brown and Osborne repeatedly deferred, reduced or cancelled increases. Then Osborne kept fuel duty frozen for 6 years, even as oil prices dropped significantly.
Clearly, the policy did not eliminate petrol cars!
Of course, the likes of Tesla didn't exist for much of the time the escalator was in force, so you couldn't get an all-electric car even if you wanted one.
My preferred solution is to just start taxing sales of new gasoline and diesel powered cars based on expected lifetime CO2 emissions. Then use the revenue to subsidize retiring older cars and replacing them with new/used EV's.
You can combine that with restrictions on where gasoline and diesel cars can drive like some cities in Europe are doing.
I have a hard time imagining an electric car working for me. There are two charging points within a 2-mile radius and I cannot park within about 15 meters of my house so it is just impossible to charge one.
Hydrogen or something where I can still go to a "filling station" might work. Right now I view electric cars as a tax break for anyone lucky/rich enough to have a driveway.
This might all change in a few years but I doubt there will ever be enough charging points on local roads.
But you still can't put the cart before the horse. Tax people who don't switch to a viable, cleaner alternative from dinosaur-burning vehicles, but not before you've made that alternative viable in the first place. Much (most?) of the UK is not ready for full switchover yet.
2032 is still 14 years away which is a long time. And according to the article it’s even then just about banning the sale of new vehicles. This should be completely doable if the UK puts half a mind to it.
Unfortunately the UK does not have half a mind to spare, and won't for a few years at least. One of the less noticable side-effects of Brexit is that it totally dominates the entire political landscape, to the exclusion of other issues.
In a news magazine I read[1], they had an infographic where they measured the average number of comments below articles on a number of unrelated topics it took for Brexit to be mentioned. The figures were mostly below 10 (and look at me, bringing up Brexit in this unrelated issue!)
I agree that the government shouldn't be meddling with this, I just don't agree that the prospect of ever switching to an electric car is "unimaginable".
Is there a fuel station at your home or within two miles etc?
Why are you happy for the filling station to not be on a local road but the charging point must be? Because of time? 30 minutes will get you 80% charge on must current super chargers. Next gen ultra chargers will probably bring that down to 10 minutes.
80% is enough for maybe 200+ miles in the latest EV - so in 14 years I'm reasonably confident that'll still be available or better.
Also, why do you drive? To get to work? Petition for chargers at work perhaps? 14 years to get them onside. Charging doesn't have to happen at home.
Electric cars seems like such an obvious answer for so many issues, but still outside of US it is pretty much impossible to find a reliable and affordable options.
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[ 15.0 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadMrs T allegedly questioned the civil servants pushing the rush to Diesel 30 years ago.
For example, installing places for people renting or living in flats to charge cars, or reducing car demand by increasing walking/cycling.
This is not remotely close to true. Most BEVs have timed and/or location aware charging. My own Spark EV for example (a very low end BEV) can be scheduled to charge during certain hours each day of the week. I use this because our electric utility has lower rates from 11PM until 7AM. So no matter when I plug it, the car waits for the cheap electric rate period.
Citation needed.
What is actually true is that all BEV apart from (I think) the Renault Twizzy have charge timers built into the car.
There are already financial incentives to charge overnight with specific EV tariffs and some electricity suppliers will do the charger installation that talks directly to the provider via smart meter tech to charge at the best rate cost wise and grid wise.
Equally, people don't just come home every single day and recharge thair car. I know this directly as my last neighbour has a Nissan Leaf and charged it every 4 or 5 days and did so overnight.
50% is one hell of an increase!
Given that has been consistently falling at a rate of 1.5%/yr there may not be any new capacity required at all.
EDIT: year of "peak electricity"
You don't need to increase the capacity of the grid by 50% in 14 years. The legislation is to stop the sale of ICE cars, not get Harry Potter in to transmogrify all old ICE into BEV the millisecond the law is enacted.
You don't even need to increase the grid at all from it's current capacity if you charge the cars overnight or outside the peak daily duck curves, probably for the first 5 years of the legislation being enacted, as the numbers of BEV's around wouldn't exceed the generating capacity. So even if we didn't change the grid or increase generating capacity in any way whatsoever just some simple time management would be enough maintain BEV's and grid stability.
To be clear - you only have to make sure that the peak power draw on the grid doesn't increase. UK has about 55GW of generating capacity and uses about 25GW overnight and 35GW during the main part of the day at this time of year, a time of year that is higher use than the summer so we're talking worse case. That's 20-30GW of capacity to fit in some charging.
And that's without having any increases over the next 14 years which is obviously ridiculous!
Emissions kill people. They kill the elderly. They kill people with asthma. They give people cancer. Your car is an instrument of death even if you don't hit anyone. Parts of the UK have appallingly bad air quality (by regional standards; obviously it's not Beijing).
People are dying en masse but because you can't see it and say "my car was the one that killed them" most people just. don't. care.
Also the majority of trips are short enough to be done via bike or ebike if you give people safe routes to do so, something the UK has been completely unwilling to do.
But since most governments are corrupt/can get paid by those rich companies they are trying to regulate, the former has also been the most difficult to implement.
Big cargo ships should also be targeted, they burn significantly worse grades of fuel, and pollute a lot more.
I'm a lifelong cyclist, ex-bike courier. Cars don't offend me. Bad drivers do. I always loved the freedom of cycling. The lack of regulation and traffic stops is one of my favorite points. Never enjoyed 'cycling routes' or special bike lanes. They always seem to box me in. I feel less safe in these areas.
Prohibition of alcohol would be a more apt comparison.
Cars physically hurt people even when they aren't hitting people.
I think your rule about possession being different from action doesn't hold water at all.
If you're an ultra-libertarian I think you need to get your externality philosophy straightened out first in your model of utopia.
Seems like most of the safety complainers don't want to cycle and are looking for excuses.
Vehicular cycling has set back actual progress in safe infrastructure by decades and is woefully ill-informed about the needs of anyone other than fit, adult, experienced cyclists with excellent vision, hearing, and reflexes.
If you wouldn't let your 8 or 80 year old relative use it, it's crap bike infrastructure.
Aged 8, I was in the UK in the 1990s.
- Most children went to the nearest school (no longer the case with increased choice from parents)
- The tabloid "paedo-fear" thing hadn't really set in, so more children were allowed outside unsupervised.
- There were fewer people, and fewer working people [1]
- The number of car trips has gone up (although not much), and the number of walking trips has gone down massively [1]
- The number of children being driven to school (on a parent's way to work) has increased massively [1]. That presumably adds traffic at the worst possible place and time for children who could otherwise walk or cycle to school.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
But just as not all people are track runners, not all people are ex-bike-couriers, and it would be nice if they could ride a bike in something other than abject terror.
Also, I actually don't favour a total ban for the most part, just pricing in the externalities. Which would make petrol and diesel powered cars astonishingly expensive. Removing a liter's worth of CO2 from the air would have to be priced in to the cost of a liter of fuel. Paying for your dead neighbour's funeral would need to be covered too (though insurance is meant to cover this, drivers who kill people walking or cycling are rarely found at fault, because it's legal to kill people with your car if they're in the street). Meanwhile, you'd still let the odd hot rod or classic car enthusiast have a project car to wrench on during the weekends, and honestly, I think that's great. They're a key part of our cultural history and great fun.
But right now we still pay for all of those things! We just make _everyone else_ pay for them, which is very unfair. My taxes pay for the street where people drive too quickly to stop before killing my child if she slips from the pavement, and where they emit pollution that has rendered her less intelligent than she might be otherwise, though it's impossible to say by how much.
I don't even own a car. So that seems unjust.
For me the bigger negative externality is in foreign policy. I don't want any part of overseas adventures for oil. The financial costs alone are astronomical.
At the same time, I do benefit from transportation infrastructure in terms of shipping and purchasing goods which are transported. But if it were my decision I'd say just privatize the whole thing.
If a private road pollutes or otherwise harms anyone, then they should be liable. Problem solved. Lawyers have every incentive to claim damages.
About the abject terror, just build your way up. You can do it. Once you try it you'll see that it truly is as easy as riding a bike.
Back to your main point - it is not selfish to not want to ban petrol/diesel vehicles. I am ready to share the road with anyone.
But most people are not me, and we definitely don't demand new drivers live in utter terror until they get numb to it.
Nevermind survival bias. Dead ex-bike-couriers aren't here to give their view.
If you live outside the cities though, you better own a car.
Besides which, cars aren’t faster than trains.
Public transport causes far less of both problems, and where problems remain (e.g. a town with old buses) they are much more easily solved (buy 200 electric buses).
Once you’ve got a realistic threat of civilisational collapse on one side of the equation, things look different. Not everyone being able to afford a car, or having to eat veggie burgers... These aren’t real problems in comparison.
Quite apart from the fact that we shouldn’t all need cars in the first place. I live in Europe, with kids, and I’ve never felt the need to even get a license. Trains are far more convenient.
Cars being a luxury means public transport will need to improve everywhere. Which is great for everyone, and for the economy.
That is a sweeping overgeneralisation and literally false. There are going to be large communities of people who will suffer more from giving up cars than from climate change.
Maybe you don't have an poor people living in your part of the world, but wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor because you don't want to engage with their problems is neither constructive nor pleasant.
What people can afford does matter, and it is worth considering how much the poor are being asked to give up versus how much we expect their sacrifice to help.
Depending on exactly where we fall in the range of bad to catastrophic possible futures ahead of us, it may be hard to find too many people who would be more affected by giving up cars than climate change.
I am clearly not wishing a peasant lifestyle on the poor, that is a straw man. I am wishing working public transport on everyone.
Your final paragraph I absolutely agree with. I over-egged my comment for effect. The general lack of alarm and urgency surrounding climate change is frustrating.
It also takes forever to walk anywhere because pedestrian crossings are programmed to be extremely slow as to not disrupt drivers as well as intersections often requiring 2 crossings to get to the desired location vs just one when driving.
Those 4-lane boulevards though city centers could fit generously-proportioned sidewalks and bike paths and greenery, food stalls, cafés and dedicated bus lanes (or you could move public transit underground for better space utilization).
Instead they're full of gridlocked traffic, made up of countless ~1.5t lumps of steel and plastic, transporting a single occupant each.
Just because a trip is short enough doesn't necessarily mean it's actually practical to make via (e)bike. People often need to take more than a backpack's- or pannier's-worth of stuff with them.
I love my bike, and use it when appropriate, but it doesn't come close to replacing a car.
I'm not suggesting a human-powered piano delivery service. I'm not proposing we replace logging trucks with cargo bikes.
I am saying that a large number of trips can be taken by modes other than car when doing so becomes a safe and pleasant option. We have proven examples of this (DK, NL) and they are really nice places to walk, cycle, and perhaps paradoxically, drive, as a result.
Of course if you are are a tradie or something and you need to carry around ladders and pipes than a bike isn't ideal but for almost everyone it is for almost all of our trips.
Taking a car to work for most of us is using a sledge hammer to push in a thumb tack.
We are all alive for selfish reasons and compete for resources with others, including clean air.
An absolute standpoint does not help. We have to aim to improve and optimize.
CalRobert has made their proposal: the same, but also reduce the number of car trips by improving cycling infrastructure.
Neither proposal is absolute, though they exist: ban all [private] cars [from cities].
What's yours?
People are dying en masse, because people read forums like HN. His argument is poor.
Wheter building cycling lanes is a net improvement can be discussed. It will depend on the details.
Which is why we must Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
My main PC is from 2011, still going strong with only minor upgrades (RAM, SSD, new GPU). My laptop is of a similar age. I don't foresee replacing either anytime soon.
We need to stop the ridiculous gadget race.
You can tax cars and fuel. You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...) This gives the economy time to adopt.
But please no exceptions.
Go to Cornwall though and it's a very different picture. You need to get all these more remote regions as wired up as central London _before_ introducing any taxation, or make exceptions while you're building the infra.
Op said "You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...)"
So how about investing in Cornwall now, borrowing against the 20 year revenue stream from the tax.
Communities can also take loans to build out infrastructure now and pay with the transition tax levied a bit later.
As too political suicide, there are three types of voters:
a) those that believe petrol cars should be banned
b) those that do not want to give up their cars ever
c) those that think cars should be banned but not for them now.
Therefore:
a) should be happy with an immediate tax ladder as it creates incentive to move now
b) will never be happy.
c) if that is the majority of your voters it’s still better to have a a gradual change now then a sudden change in the future. They could just overturn your decision in the future just before the planned sudden change.
If MPs urge for a change that is more than one election away they are hypocrites and shouldn’t be MPs.
Obviously some changes take a long time to bear fruits, but the change has to be immediate and gradual.
EDIT: BY incredible coincidence I just received an email from TfL on exactly this!
Great news!Then around 2000, when global oil prices rose and voters started to feel the pinch, Brown and Osborne repeatedly deferred, reduced or cancelled increases. Then Osborne kept fuel duty frozen for 6 years, even as oil prices dropped significantly.
Clearly, the policy did not eliminate petrol cars!
Of course, the likes of Tesla didn't exist for much of the time the escalator was in force, so you couldn't get an all-electric car even if you wanted one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Price_Escalator
You can combine that with restrictions on where gasoline and diesel cars can drive like some cities in Europe are doing.
Hydrogen or something where I can still go to a "filling station" might work. Right now I view electric cars as a tax break for anyone lucky/rich enough to have a driveway.
This might all change in a few years but I doubt there will ever be enough charging points on local roads.
And yet here we are.
In a news magazine I read[1], they had an infographic where they measured the average number of comments below articles on a number of unrelated topics it took for Brexit to be mentioned. The figures were mostly below 10 (and look at me, bringing up Brexit in this unrelated issue!)
1: https://www.slow-journalism.com/infographics/culture/infogra...
Why are you happy for the filling station to not be on a local road but the charging point must be? Because of time? 30 minutes will get you 80% charge on must current super chargers. Next gen ultra chargers will probably bring that down to 10 minutes.
80% is enough for maybe 200+ miles in the latest EV - so in 14 years I'm reasonably confident that'll still be available or better.
Also, why do you drive? To get to work? Petition for chargers at work perhaps? 14 years to get them onside. Charging doesn't have to happen at home.
Ioniq, Kone, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW i3, e-up, e-golf etc etc.
You can even get iPace or the e-tron will also be out next year.
Some I've listed are more expensive than others, but you cannot possibly suggest the Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf aren't affordable or reliable.
The model 3 will be here soon too, who knows what will be here in 14 years!