> technology to reduce CO2 emission, assuming the same level of electricity consumption -- is far from being available. They had talked about Nuclear, sun, geo, nuclear fusion.
Solar and wind power are picking up steam (pun intendend :p).
> incandescent light bulb converts only 5% to light If larger city (NY, Moscow, Bombay etc) switch to better light bulb, 1 million ton of C02 emissions every year, each.
Incadescent light bulbs are largely obsolete. I'm sure they haven't been replaced 100% but they definitely are on their way out.
> simply changing from coal to gas cuts carbon emission by 40%
This is also happening cause gas is very cheap right now.
Yes, we produce more solar and wind power, but the level of electricity consumption has also increased. Are we outputting less CO2 for electricity, or does all the solar and wind just come on top of what we already had?
I expect China's emissions to be through the roof compared to 1990, on the other hand they've noticed the problem and unlike Trump's head in the sand approach, the vast majority of their energy investments are in renewables.
So things are bad but they're looking up.
[0] https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.cfm?iso=CHN
Grandparent was talking about investments, though, not the status quo. Couldn't readily find figures relating to the distribution of investments, but it's easy to find articles about the large scope of their renewable ambitions, e.g. http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/01/china-leaving-us-behind-clea...
http://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-light-bul...
That's an interesting point, does someone have the calculation on what the net benefits of this process are?
This is known as Jevon's paradox.
Also I like the irony of showing Volkswagen cars when mentioning efforts from the E.U. to reduce car emissions :)
Cars, and houses, are to a degree used for status signalling. With products like that, heavy taxes increase total utility since you can still have a nicer car/house than your poorer neighbour, it's just that all cars/houses have been bumped up a rung of show-offiness. Compare Europe to the USA for example. Even the American electric cars are comically large by euro standards.
(Other co-benefits are improved safety, an analysis of CARB regulations suggested that they paid for themselves just by reducing death and injury by encouraging lighter cars, even if you ignore air quality issues)
We do that here in the UK. The difference between a small economical car and a giant SUV is a factor of 5 (£110 for a small car vs £515 for a huge car, plus a couple of lower bands for electric and 'green' cars). It really isn't enough make anyone who wants to drive a big car choose something else. It needs to be more like 50 times more for a big car rather than 5, but politicians are too scared to introduce that.
Of course politicians should be the one who decide the rules. That's how democracy works...
Keep in mind that the jet fuel that's used to transport all the world's hipsters to “experience the world” is not taxed at all – or does that hit too close to home even for a person who doesn't own a car? A life that's aimed at solely minimising emissions is a bleak one, which is why it's not the will of the majority.
What about the jet fuel that's used for the other 98% of people who fly on a regular basis? Is that less polluting, or are you just jealous of the people who travel internationally for leisure? You're not making any sense, unless you're deluded enough to think that those are the only people who fly. "does that hit too close to home even for a person who doesn't own a car?"
Again, that makes no sense. Why would car ownership affect the impact of jet fuel pollution? If it's the "hipsters" you're concerned about, wouldn't those be the people who are already offsetting the environmental cost of air travel by using public transport and/or unmotorised travel and thus polluting less than car owners?
In other words, you seem to be more interested at attacking a threadbare strawman than evaluate what's actually happening. It's pretty sad, when the actual reason for taxation is pretty clear (to encourage less polluting methods of transport where one reasonably exists, which may not be the case for many air routes).
The real kicker? Jet fuel is actually taxed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
I understand that some governments have penalized car ownership by way of license plate restrictions and other tax situations (I've heard that license plates in China get auctioned for $12k USD because they're so rare). This turns owning a car into a vanity symbol for the wealthy. It may not even be an intentional symbol, but I'm sure that's the way it's perceived by those who don't own a car.
My point being that for some, car ownership isn't so bad. No need to go shaming people.
* Higher fuel consumption = some categories could be exempt, for example vans used by ONGs, firms and independent contractors.
* * Bigger cars = smaller cars are easier to park, take less space in traffic and make it overall more fluid, etc. I think exemptions could be made here for the categories I mentioned previously and for families with children, for example.
Plus, taxing per gallon is exactly proportional to the burden on society.
An extra 50 cents per gallon is quite a bit, but it doesn't seem to discourage this behavior. 40% on the price of the car instead... could make a lot more people think twice about the purchase.
For shorter distances, great bicycling infrastructure helps a lot. Buses are nice but cycling is often as fast, with the benefit of being completely door to door and leaving exactly when you want to. But this benefit only works if people feel completely safe on the road, which means mostly seperate cycle paths, and removing cars from the busy city centers. Not having cars there makes shopping more attractive, because it's now easier to walk from store to the store across the road.
That same infrastructure then also helps make trains more attractive, because you can set up cheap bike hire at stations. This then means your journey can be bike-train-bike door to door, rather than walk-bus-train-bus-walk (or worse).
It's a complicated connected mesh of things.
If you're courageous, you could live in downtown Dallas without a car (can move around a bit with DART). Making it harder to own a car (combined with more "dense-city" developments) doesn't seem like the worst idea. Mainly because we could recover the huuuge parking lots.
And when you want to go to Austin for the weekend you can rent a car.
In any case, even if the entire state is still very much "car necessary", you can still try to incentivise pockets of the state to be less so.
I've commuted by bike and public transportation for a number of years and I'd never want to ban vehicle ownership. A more workable solution would be to make driving tests less of a joke or to make dense areas of city centers car free zones. American cities are just too large and often times people drive without a destination in mind, like my Sunday drives down the California Public Highway along the beach.
Let's focus on the selfish car guy, that's the big picture all right in “saving” the world.
The "selfish car guy" is why the American lifestyle consumes twice as much as the Japanese lifestyle. Everything gets built around it.
And of course there's the fact that the American lifestyle gets exported to other places as well.
Also, many professions require high levels of mobility.
Finally, unless you introduce some kind of permit system and create serious beaurocracy for enforcing it, people will just pretend to have their own companies and drive "company" cars anyway.
Nature will find a way :)
And I say this while taking 50% of my trips with public transit (the rest with Uber). I seriously hope we get rid of gas cars one way, but banning private ownership would be crazy.
In Belgium we have busses that only drive if you call them up first https://www.delijn.be/en/belbus/
Public transport underdeveloped -> more people use personal transport -> public transport develops even less, city develops around personal transport -> vicious circle.
Of course the individual it's a purely not victim, but in certain contexts, using the car is a necessity. In such cases, a strong collective effort should be made to reverse the situation.
here are my cliff notes:
> human energy consumption, by means of burning fossil fuels, is the reason for green house gases, that in turn trap more heat, then our environment can sustain.
> technology to reduce CO2 emission, assuming the same level of electricity consumption -- is far from being available. They had talked about Nuclear, sun, geo, nuclear fusion.
>more efficient means to convert to electricity:
>35% of coal energy is transformed to electricity
> incandescent light bulb converts only 5% to light If larger city (NY, Moscow, Bombay etc) switch to better light bulb, 1 million ton of C02 emissions every year, each.
> simply changing from coal to gas cuts carbon emission by 40%
>half of worlds oil is used by 500mln road vehicles. 400 mln of those are private cars. each producing 4 times its weight in CO2, each year. Internal com engine is only 20% efficient. Cars can improve by 3 times (not clear, if they assumed electric only or not).
> when gas is not available option, coal can be gasified
> >Taxation can work both ways, already there is a talk of carbon tax. But how to achieve compliance across national borders.
>Global warming calls for global response. but world is not a common market. Examples they used is Easter Europe, other developing regions.
>How could this countries advance, but leap-frog energy developments?
Future must be different, developing countries cannot take the same path as the developed countries in the past.