Germany and Italy blocks ICEV bans for 2035

[Linas.P]

Telegraph calls is disappointing, but for me it sounds common sense. I know auto manufacturers are having field day selling BEVs, but I think even they realise that if the ICEVs bans are to happen by 2030 (or more realistic 2035-40 days in EU/US respectively) then it would effectively mean 70% of motorists would be wiped out... and that means 70% of their sales. Sure BEVs are higher margin products and potentially will become even more expensive in the future, but still some manufacturers like VW needs volume to survive. Porsche, BMW or MB may be fine, but BEV still means a lot less sales. 

Most importantly I just want to emphasise how idiotic is this target. They want to reach net-zero CO2 by 2050 and part of achieving it is ban on ICEVs by 2030-40... how exactly cutting 2-10% of emissions by ~30% helps them to become "net-zero". What about the rest of like 97-99% of pollution?!

Industry are not as short sighted as governments are and industry does not care about politics and woke non-sense. They were happy to take short term profits from BEV craze, but they can see that with non-existent infrastructure and shortages of lithium they can't make as many cars at the price which would be affordable for as many clients as they currently doing.

My point is - industry can see trough this BS, the new rules has little to do with "net-zero" and everything to do with woke, communist idea of taking people cars and freedoms away.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/03/ftse-100-markets-live-news-jeremy-hunt-bill-support/#:~:text=5%3A22PM-,Germany and Italy block Brussels from banning petrol and diesel,mounted a last-minute revolt.

Obviously, this is not the end and they may still agree something, but if Germany/Italy refuses to sign-off, then I can see how UK can keep 2030 deadline either. 

[Mr Vlad]

Well done Germany and Italy 👏👏👏

[Bluemarlin]

50 minutes ago, Mr Vlad said:

Well done Germany and Italy 👏👏👏

Wouldn't have predicted that sentence 80 years ago :):):)

[Linas.P]

36 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

Wouldn't have predicted that sentence 80 years ago :):):)

And to be fair I don't like industry lobbying (a.k.a - fraud/corruption) which is clearly behind this. However, as it happens the alternative of communists taking our cars away for purely ideological reasons under guise of "climate crisis" is even worse. So here I rather take lesser evil... 

Sure in ideal world our politicians should be smart, work for the people and make right decisions and when necessary difficult decisions. Sad reality is that we have bunch of woke monkeys there who can only be controlled by industry lobby and as it happens for once industry goals aligns with democracy and personal freedom (which is very rare, but kind of expected - capitalists are evil, but capitalists are as well anti-communists).

This is only possible because BEVs are such a flawed option and because there is simply not enough lithium etc. Make no mistake - industry is happy to sell shaity cars and milk consumer for profit, however in this case even industry realised that "wait a second - have haven't subscribed to your stupid communist idea of taking cars away and along the way losing 70% of customers". You see political ideology is very dangerous, business may be evil, but they are rational, so one can predict what they will do... political ideology is not rational and it can act in a way of self-harm. BEV based on existing technology is exactly that - self-harm,  they make no sense and they would result in massive society change which thinking rationally isn't even good. Not only they would have no meaningful benefit for environment, but as well they would have massive negative impact to our freedoms. And any reasonable person would say - but all things considered why are we doing it?! Exactly! Because environment was never really the reason behind it, communists simply hate idea of anything personal, they hate idea of individual freedom and sabotaging us to choose bad technology would have resulted in this freedom being restricted. I know this is conspiracy theory, but simply looking at the stats it is hard to explain it in any other way - there is saying "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Sure that could be the case here, but clearly by now it would be about time to cancel the 2030 deadline... if it is not cancelled then I think it is malicious and not mere stupidity. 

Finally, I hope this doesn't come out as anti-environment message... No I am not for pollution and in my personal life I take several severe steps to limit my own carbon footprint, I would even argue that my carbon footprint despite driving petrol car is lower than 80% of people in developed world (I know it means little when I say so myself, but that is my guess), and lets be real - BEVs aren't that helpful! So whereas I am happy to sacrifice to help the environment, I am not happy to give my freedoms, passion and quality of life away for 1% reduction of pollution. If they say - sure we get fusion power which is clean and which will save 60% of pollution, but you will have to pay 3 times as much for electricity... I would say fair enough. But to be banned from owning personal transportation and having to use disgusting public transport and be controlled by schedules and routes that government allows me to travel on for 1% of reduction - no thank you! 

 

[Cotswold Pete]

IMHO policitians are attracted to  the people who devliver the best lobbying, whether that be they shout loudest, come up with the most convincing arguement or (for sure) slip enough cash into someone coffers.

Problem is politicians are not technocrats or even physcologists, they are vote collectors.  So they are not capable of 'checking' all the facts, so they have been swayed towards green arguments that are more than likely less green than promised, whatever the Battery mix in a car.

It is interesting that at least two countries are firing a shot across the bow of the sacred cow called EV, and like most people I am keen on having low pollution in my lungs, but have to balance that with a comfortable (and mobile) life creating (and always will create) pollution.

It would be nice in this country if we properly recognised what good public transport brings which is why many mainland European cities are so much nicer than most UK cities (including the ones allow many tourists coaches and buses bobbling about the middle of towns  -- Bath, Chester, Oxford to name a few).

However I believe the major supplier of pollution are the building indurstry (cement), so maybe we need to start thinking about living in our cars and cutting out all that building of houses. Mind you steel production is polluting as well. 

The dream of zero emmisions is and always will be a totally fallacy, zero tail-pipe emmissions sure, but not total zero emissions.

[Malc1]

52 minutes ago, Cotswold Pete said:

the major supplier of pollution are the building indurstry (cement), so maybe we need to start thinking about living in our cars and cutting out all that building of houses

Come come now  .......  We will now have little UK control over cement now that CRH ( Irish )  is going to register as a USA  (DOW regd ) company and in any event MY HOUSE is mainly timber construction, albeit 400 years young ( but who knows ! ) AND I'm sure someone's going to say that chopping down the trees to build my house was a heinous act of supporting pollution furtherance

 ............ by removing the trees to build my house  ........... 

Nope sorry Pete .  wherever one lives it's always gonna be wrong and polluting, let alone the sewage being let go somewhere not quite correct .......

 

Oh Dear ........  where's, how's my Lexus Ls700   V12 coming along  .  hydrogen or petrol will do for me   😇

Malc

[Mincey]

Well done to Germany and Italy too. 

[Linas.P]

And that is why I keep saying that BEV promotion has less to do with global warming and more to do with something else. Transportation is 10% of global pollution... let's say 15% in UK as we have little of industry left. Still that means we have 85-90% of other pollution sources and by the way BEVs don't cut pollution to 0, they just reduce pollution by ~30%. So what they are saying is that we have to give-up on living the life just to cut 3%?! What about 97%? 

And as you mentioned building industry is large polluter, energy production is another huge one... have you heard UK just restarted coal plant last week to avoid black-outs? How did we got to that point?! And they believe we can charge 20 million BEVs in 7 years time? How?

As for tourists - I have some time "staycating" in UK and it would be literally impossible. We wanted to go to Scotland with friends (4 people total) and after looking just at trains and transportation to basic points of interests it was something like £2500. Compare that to the car and £200 of fuel does it (£50 per person)... and my IS250 at the time wasn't even fuel efficient car. Ohhh and the time wasted on public transport is just unbelievable. With car we did "long" weekend and we seen most of the places... in public transport we would have spent at least 10 days, because you could only really visit single place a day when you consider all the schedules. In other countries you have something like "city pass", where you can use all public transport for a day or a week, and you buy that single pass for something like £70 (for a week) and that is all you need... it even includes some tickets to events and museums. I know in UK some cities have them as well, but I have never seen a deal that actually works... in London for example it does not include public transport, just attractions... in other cities price just doesn't make sense again. For example I remember in Edinburg we calculated the costs with day travel pass and it was something like £55 per day, so for 4 people that is £220... which means even if I need to spend £50 on parking, £25 on congestion charge and £50 on petrol, the car still comes at half of the cost. And even if I need to rent the car, that is still going to be cheaper with the car... I guess my point - British Public transport is not only insufficient for the need, but the cost is absurd as well and instead of making the public transport affordable, they instead try to price-out cars. The only reason public transport makes sense in London for example... is not because it is decent or good value, but only because they made it so that it will cost you £50+ to drive into the city, but making driving expensive doesn't make public transport better... 

And you are right on the last one - net-zero is fallacy. The only way I see it is possible could be carbon capture, but apart of that what they asking us to do is STOP LIVING... because any life from creates pollution, that is just inevitable and humans are in particular requires a lot of resources to live comfortably. So what are alternatives - dehumanise everyone and everyone goes back to live back in the stone age (arguably that would make more pollution not less), reduce population (how exactly?!). So basically - no net-zero will never happen outside of some BS spreadsheet and artificial carbon-credit trade. What is benefit of that to humanity? None... we will pollute as much as we do anyway, just somebody will collect fat pay check on our behalf. I am not even that old, but I remember like 20 years my parents joking about taxation "what is next they going to tax us for AIR"... and look what we have today - "clean AIR tax"!

[dutchie01]

Its becoming messy now. Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania now all want to delay the ICE 2035 ban. The ghost could well be out of the bottle.

[Bluemarlin]

4 hours ago, Linas.P said:

And you are right on the last one - net-zero is fallacy. The only way I see it is possible could be carbon capture, but apart of that what they asking us to do is STOP LIVING... because any life from creates pollution, that is just inevitable and humans are in particular requires a lot of resources to live comfortably. So what are alternatives - dehumanise everyone and everyone goes back to live back in the stone age (arguably that would make more pollution not less), reduce population (how exactly?!). So basically - no net-zero will never happen outside of some BS spreadsheet and artificial carbon-credit trade. What is benefit of that to humanity? None... we will pollute as much as we do anyway, just somebody will collect fat pay check on our behalf. I am not even that old, but I remember like 20 years my parents joking about taxation "what is next they going to tax us for AIR"... and look what we have today - "clean AIR tax"!

Fair comments Linas, but then what is the answer?

We may wish to continue to live the way we do, but we have no god given right to live comfortably, no matter how much we might want to. What if air pollution is causing 7 million premature deaths a year (as I recently read in New Scientist), and what if climate change results in environmental issues that ultimately cost more, both economically and in terms of lives lost. If that happens then we'll have no choice but to change how we live.

We may well pollute just as much anyway, but that doesn't mean it won't have harmful effects; so do we just accept that and worry about the cost of picking up the pieces later? Maybe the reality we have to face is that we do need to accept that our lifestyles have to change, who knows, not all realities are pleasant.

I agree that the way governments are addressing these this things might not be the best way forward but, beyond just drifting deeper into the problems of pollution and climate change, what are the most viable alternatives?

[Bluemarlin]

1 hour ago, dutchie01 said:

Its becoming messy now. Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania now all want to delay the ICE 2035 ban. The ghost could well be out of the bottle.

It would be funny if the EU did decide to delay it. I wonder how the Brexit vote would have gone if that happened and the UK remained wedded to 2030. How many would want to stuff that particular genie back in the bottle?

[Linas.P]

38 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

we have no god given right to live comfortably

What if air pollution is causing 7 million premature deaths a year

we just accept that and worry about the cost of picking up the pieces later?

beyond just drifting deeper into the problems of pollution and climate change, what are the most viable alternatives?

All 4 points debatable...

Let's say we don't have right to live comfortably? Why? And if that is the case then who has right to decide who will live comfortably and who don't? Let's face it - the people deciding to impose Paris Agreement and similar agreements are all flying private jets and have motorcade waiting for them with engines on, and they have police following them and making sure they can cut trough traffic by pushing other out of their way at our expense. Are they the ones who will decide that we should not live comfortably so that they can continue flying private? I would say that we have god given right to build our lives our selves and if we can afford the car and the petrol to put into it (and I mean just the cost of the petrol, not some stupid duties, "air taxes" etc.), then we should have right to enjoy the "fruits" of our hard work without being shamed, vilified and banned from doing it.

I don't want to be the guy saying "enough of the experts", but it is important to understand how they came up with "7 million premature deaths". That is not the number of people who literally die, the way it is calculated is based on theoretical age people could live to and then calculated in theory how much longer they could have lived if they haven't died. Link between pollution and deaths is really really weak, like who is exactly to say it was pollution, but it was not junk food, lack of exercising and so on? And by the way people today live longer than ever before in human history. So apply same methodology, then I think as result we will come to conclusion that pollution may be "killing 7 million people" a year, but medication and modern methods "saves 20 million lives" each year. And again because this is NOT literal deaths, then we can say - without using fossil fuels our lives would have been on average 55 years long, due to fossil fuels this is reduced to 52 years, but due to modern medicine is it increased to 65 years... End result - we living 10 years longer than we lived in the past... And to be fair it is questionable if anyone truly wants to live to be 100 years old? If I had a choice between getting my personal transportation at the age of 16, travel the world, travel every inch of my country with friend and good company and die at 65... compared to having to use public transport, losing all that freedom, loosing all the good moments with friends, lose all the good moments driving, but living up-to very sad 100 years old... then it is quite clear what I would choose. Point is - it is not so simple. 

I am not saying you wrong, but here is counter argument... why should we pick-up the bill and not generation later? For example I could argue that generation before me had comparably good time, they were able to drive from 17, they could insure cars from 17, fuel was cheap, there were no speed limits, no congestion charges, parking was relatively cheap, the housing was cheap, many got their homes before they turned 30... and now they telling me that I should be "generation rent", I should be "generation public transport" and I should pick-up the bill for future generations? It is kind of easy to speak from comfortable position in life, when one has home, when one has driven million miles and spent their life enjoying freedoms... but now it is the current generation which somebody decided will be the generation to answer for all of this?! And by the way I am talking 100% hypothetically, I am not attacking anyone in particular, but the point is - who has decided that it is this generation and now that we have to stop consuming? Why not generation before us or generation after us? Most importantly it seems that most people making decisions are those from the generation before us, who already have benefited from the freedoms... so why don't they start with themselves? Give away their juicy pension funds, give away their 5 bedroom houses, give away their 4 cars, go-live their remaining lives in seclusion and using only public means and only then lecturing current generation of what they can and can't do? In short this idea sounds little bit hypocritical coming from some people.

One viable alternative based on my limited knowledge and for all we know I may be stupid... is fusion energy, nearly free, endless and clean energy which just by itself would cut pollution by 60% and combined with carbon capture and other technologies could achieve not only net-zero, but net-negative. Whatever it may be - I think it is important to look at the pollution problem as a whole and globally... it does not matter than we can cut 3% here and 10% in this country, the pollution is 100% and it is global issue... so it should be tackled as such. There is something that contributes 40% of pollution, something else that contributes 20%, 16% etc. we need to find the way to reduce pollution across the board and by significant margin to make a difference. Hence something like fusion energy would cut across main pollution sources and it makes sense doing. Taking cars away from people achieves very little, even at the most optimistic outcome is few %, maybe 3%, maybe 5%... So the question here is - what about 95%? How exactly it helps the climate change if we not addressing 95%. If cars would be 80% of pollution, then I would understand and appreciate why we starting with the cars, but transportation is just 10%, private cars even less... so why we starting with something that is most minor contributor of pollution and we implementing solutions in such way that will hurt society the most? Again I don't want to go into conspiracies, but one needs to ask this question - why we starting here and not somewhere else? Surely starting from cars seems illogical if environment is what we traying to fix? 

[Malc1]

In all this have we discussed the Power of the Tide with our enormous coast and continuous everlasting tidal push and pull  .  and it really is free , well, subject to the infrastructure to capture it 24/7   . your thoughts  !

Malc

[RadicalCoupe-Fuji]

Toyota HQ has held off allocating a new model for the UK plant after the current gen Corolla due to the threat of the government bringing the ban on production of hybrid cars forward 5 years. 

The governments are too busy agreeing to crazy targets & statements with no idea if its even possible, just to look good. Be on the fantastic magical Eco train or shame on you!

It will all work itself out in the end because everyone driving EV's is impossible & stupid giving all the limitations of reality, but its putting many peoples jobs at risk & causing a lot of problems now.

[Linas.P]

As far as I was able to gather - tidal is similar to wind in terms of generating capacity, but much more complex and costly. So as usual it is not about whenever it would work, but whenever it is profitable... and it seems it is not profitable for the time being. The positives of tidal is that it is more consistent than wind, so it would be one of very few renewables which could somewhat be predictable. In either case I am not against tidal, I just I don't believe tidal would answer all our needs, we need like whole different level of power generation if we were to use energy to capture carbon. Tidal would provide maybe 15% boost, we need 1500% boost to stop/reverse the global warming. 

My thoughts - why bother with tidal if we can get fusion. Whenever we can or can't get fusion that is kind of unknown at the moment.

[dutchie01]

3 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

It would be funny if the EU did decide to delay it. I wonder how the Brexit vote would have gone if that happened and the UK remained wedded to 2030. How many would want to stuff that particular genie back in the bottle?

The irony is that various countries are trying to manouevre their way out or adjust or add exceptions to the 2035 agreement whilst the car manufacturers overwhelmingly are for it. Reason is simple, they have chosen for EV production and have invested billions in new factories and a complete overhaul of all models. Any change will bring uncertainty and that is deadly. And Brexit... well best not to go there i think?

[Mr Vlad]

Great to learn more countries against the 2035 ice car fiasco. Oh gidums car manufacturers have spent billions on changing to BEV production. Yeah they say they're going fully into BEV but personally they all have a contingency plan to change back quite easily. 

Too much BS regarding things like clean air charges. Absolute rollox. 

As for government Intervention in this that and the other. They're full of muppets.

Crikey WhatsApp are thinking of pulling out of England if the government get their way to stop their end to end encryption. Why do they want to stop it? For security reasons. Absolute rollox.

Postman Pat for priminister. 

[dutchie01]

So, where does transport stand? and cars in that segment? I know all figures are debatable so maybe some examples to put things in perspective.

CO2 emissions from steel production seem to be some 10% of something. 

The worldcup or any olympic games for that matter are horrendous in CO2 output

Coal power plants ( that also will generate electricity for the car batteries) are one of the biggest sources of CO2 output.

Pork production gives great food and lots of C02

Friday night question, what is worse for the environment, a belching cow or a farting one?

 

[Linas.P]

The last good quality and global figures I have seen Transport sector was 15% (2021), least figures outside of covid I have seen were 10% (2016). Personal/light vehicles varies between 25-35% within that. So would be ~2.5-5% total, globally. The most comprehensive long term study for BEVs conducted by European Council concluded that BEVs reduce pollution by 30%, EPC figure within US is 35%. So good guess would be that replacing personal/light vehicles with BEV equivalent would reduce global emissions by 0.75-2.25%. That is if we replace EVERY single vehicle worldwide with new BEV... and assuming that worldwide energy mix is something comparable to that of EU, which it isn't. Realistically all this farting and diarrheal coming from UK, EU and US about ICEV bans will have total effect of maybe 0.1%, because we neither replacing ALL vehicles, nor energy mix most of the globe is like in EU... so this whole hysteria is really for nothing as far as environment change is considered globally.

City air quality is different matter, different percentages, different impact and I think as Pete put it - zero-tailpipe emissions may be somewhat achievable, but net-zero is fallacy. We won't achieve by 2030s, nor 2050s, nor I reckon by 2100s... and if we do, then BEVs will not be the they way we do it, nor even major contributor. 

[Malc1]

13 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

what is worse for the environment, a belching cow or a farting one?

 

no worries on that score at all ..  the New Zealand Govt is bringing in cow number controls to quantify the quality of cow farting and belching .  restricting cow numbers on quality of fart output ....  not necessarily milk and meat quality etc

AND I'm being SERIOUS about this in New Zealand  .  it's not totally a figment of imagination 

Malc

[dutchie01]

So, there is something as a Cow Farting Inspector?? And i thought we had problems...

[DavidCM]

It all sounds like a load of hot air to me.

[Bluemarlin]

19 hours ago, Linas.P said:

All 4 points debatable...

Let's say we don't have right to live comfortably? Why? And if that is the case then who has right to decide who will live comfortably and who don't? Let's face it - the people deciding to impose Paris Agreement and similar agreements are all flying private jets and have motorcade waiting for them with engines on, and they have police following them and making sure they can cut trough traffic by pushing other out of their way at our expense. Are they the ones who will decide that we should not live comfortably so that they can continue flying private? I would say that we have god given right to build our lives our selves and if we can afford the car and the petrol to put into it (and I mean just the cost of the petrol, not some stupid duties, "air taxes" etc.), then we should have right to enjoy the "fruits" of our hard work without being shamed, vilified and banned from doing it.

I don't want to be the guy saying "enough of the experts", but it is important to understand how they came up with "7 million premature deaths". That is not the number of people who literally die, the way it is calculated is based on theoretical age people could live to and then calculated in theory how much longer they could have lived if they haven't died. Link between pollution and deaths is really really weak, like who is exactly to say it was pollution, but it was not junk food, lack of exercising and so on? And by the way people today live longer than ever before in human history. So apply same methodology, then I think as result we will come to conclusion that pollution may be "killing 7 million people" a year, but medication and modern methods "saves 20 million lives" each year. And again because this is NOT literal deaths, then we can say - without using fossil fuels our lives would have been on average 55 years long, due to fossil fuels this is reduced to 52 years, but due to modern medicine is it increased to 65 years... End result - we living 10 years longer than we lived in the past... And to be fair it is questionable if anyone truly wants to live to be 100 years old? If I had a choice between getting my personal transportation at the age of 16, travel the world, travel every inch of my country with friend and good company and die at 65... compared to having to use public transport, losing all that freedom, loosing all the good moments with friends, lose all the good moments driving, but living up-to very sad 100 years old... then it is quite clear what I would choose. Point is - it is not so simple. 

I am not saying you wrong, but here is counter argument... why should we pick-up the bill and not generation later? For example I could argue that generation before me had comparably good time, they were able to drive from 17, they could insure cars from 17, fuel was cheap, there were no speed limits, no congestion charges, parking was relatively cheap, the housing was cheap, many got their homes before they turned 30... and now they telling me that I should be "generation rent", I should be "generation public transport" and I should pick-up the bill for future generations? It is kind of easy to speak from comfortable position in life, when one has home, when one has driven million miles and spent their life enjoying freedoms... but now it is the current generation which somebody decided will be the generation to answer for all of this?! And by the way I am talking 100% hypothetically, I am not attacking anyone in particular, but the point is - who has decided that it is this generation and now that we have to stop consuming? Why not generation before us or generation after us? Most importantly it seems that most people making decisions are those from the generation before us, who already have benefited from the freedoms... so why don't they start with themselves? Give away their juicy pension funds, give away their 5 bedroom houses, give away their 4 cars, go-live their remaining lives in seclusion and using only public means and only then lecturing current generation of what they can and can't do? In short this idea sounds little bit hypocritical coming from some people.

One viable alternative based on my limited knowledge and for all we know I may be stupid... is fusion energy, nearly free, endless and clean energy which just by itself would cut pollution by 60% and combined with carbon capture and other technologies could achieve not only net-zero, but net-negative. Whatever it may be - I think it is important to look at the pollution problem as a whole and globally... it does not matter than we can cut 3% here and 10% in this country, the pollution is 100% and it is global issue... so it should be tackled as such. There is something that contributes 40% of pollution, something else that contributes 20%, 16% etc. we need to find the way to reduce pollution across the board and by significant margin to make a difference. Hence something like fusion energy would cut across main pollution sources and it makes sense doing. Taking cars away from people achieves very little, even at the most optimistic outcome is few %, maybe 3%, maybe 5%... So the question here is - what about 95%? How exactly it helps the climate change if we not addressing 95%. If cars would be 80% of pollution, then I would understand and appreciate why we starting with the cars, but transportation is just 10%, private cars even less... so why we starting with something that is most minor contributor of pollution and we implementing solutions in such way that will hurt society the most? Again I don't want to go into conspiracies, but one needs to ask this question - why we starting here and not somewhere else? Surely starting from cars seems illogical if environment is what we traying to fix? 

I don't disagree with you Linas, I was just trying to look at it outside the scope of politics and emotion. For example, you asked why should we be the generation that pays and not the next one? Fair question, but in reality we aren't, this (or at least my) generation have largely had it good in the West. That said, what if things are at the stage that we are that next generation? At some point someone has to say that now is when we start to address things, so pehaps that time is now.

Nor is just about saying why not defer it to a later generation. There comes a point where it's less cost efffective to defer, much like treating a bit of rust now is more cost effective than letting things rot and trying to repair the damage later. I don't know when that point is though.

So, my point was more about practical, rather than political alternatives. You might be right regarding fusion, I don't know enough about it to know how realsitic that is. Equally, given that we're surrounded by sunshine, wind and oceans, it might be that renewables are the answer. Who knows, countries with an endless supply of sunshine might one day become major energy suppliers to the world.

The political argument is in some ways a distraction, albeit an influential one, but the fact that opinions on that vary from goverrnments being well meaning but incompetent, all the way through to them being utterly corrupt, makes it a bit of a rabbit hole, and so serves little purpose, no matter what the truth of it is.

Either way, if we accept that man's activities are causing damage, both in terms of pollution and climate, that will one day make it hard, if not impossible to survive, let alone maintain our current lifestyles in the West, then we'd have to accept that something has to be done. If a patient was suffering from lung disease, a doctor would tell him to stop smoking, not just smoke a couple less a day, in the hope that a cure will come along before he dies. Politicians don't have the ability to be that harsh, and instead have to try and balance just how much sacrifice they think people will accept, against how much might make a difference, all the while hoping that a cure will come along in the meantime. Corrupt or not, it's not an enviable position.

[Linas.P]

3 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

I don't disagree with you Linas, I was just trying to look at it outside the scope of politics and emotion. For example, you asked why should we be the generation that pays and not the next one? Fair question, but in reality we aren't, this (or at least my) generation have largely had it good in the West. That said, what if things are at the stage that we are that next generation? At some point someone has to say that now is when we start to address things, so pehaps that time is now.

Nor is just about saying why not defer it to a later generation. There comes a point where it's less cost efffective to defer, much like treating a bit of rust now is more cost effective than letting things rot and trying to repair the damage later. I don't know when that point is though.

So, my point was more about practical, rather than political alternatives. You might be right regarding fusion, I don't know enough about it to know how realsitic that is. Equally, given that we're surrounded by sunshine, wind and oceans, it might be that renewables are the answer. Who knows, countries with an endless supply of sunshine might one day become major energy suppliers to the world.

The political argument is in some ways a distraction, albeit an influential one, but the fact that opinions on that vary from goverrnments being well meaning but incompetent, all the way through to them being utterly corrupt, makes it a bit of a rabbit hole, and so serves little purpose, no matter what the truth of it is.

Either way, if we accept that man's activities are causing damage, both in terms of pollution and climate, that will one day make it hard, if not impossible to survive, let alone maintain our current lifestyles in the West, then we'd have to accept that something has to be done. If a patient was suffering from lung disease, a doctor would tell him to stop smoking, not just smoke a couple less a day, in the hope that a cure will come along before he dies. Politicians don't have the ability to be that harsh, and instead have to try and balance just how much sacrifice they think people will accept, against how much might make a difference, all the while hoping that a cure will come along in the meantime. Corrupt or not, it's not an enviable position.

As you may know I always like good debate, so just to be clear was wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you eihter, but rather like yourself making an argument "from another perspective". And that is exactly what I mean by debatable - yes statements you made may be right, but they may be wrong and really it depends on perspective. Generational thing is as well very important, I am definitely in generation which didn't have very good for them... when I got my first car in UK I was already 25... I simply could not afford insurance before that (not the car, but just the insurance), I already from the start lived in environment where drivers are attacked from all sides, free parking becomes paid parking every day, free road becomes ULEZ or whatever other scheme and I think I just about managed to overtake "being priced out of owning the car" train by the time I was 25. However, entire generation growing-up now are completely priced out, this as well shows - because majority of teenagers now no longer looking to get driving license, simply because there is no realistic way for them to drive even if they had one. If not for insurance, then for simple reason of places which don't allow/welcome the cars. 

I guess my main questions is - who is to say that time is now, that this generation is the one to pay? As well let's get one thing straight - planet does not care either way, we simply can't ruin it even if we wanted to. CO2 levels are historically very low if we look at the perspective of "planet lifetime", yes we can observe the world is warming now, but to be honest much bigger issue would be if it would be cooling. The thing we traying to avoid is 2C increase, which would melt the ice, but realistically there would still be plenty of places to live on (sure not Florida and not Netherlands, and few islands would go under water etc.). In short - whenever global warming is actually and issue is a matter of perspective. If I not mistaken the estimate what would happen if all ice would melt was something like 4% of land mass would go under water. Well we will still have 96% left... So this whole thing about caring for next generation is little bit hyperbolic. Yes if we say that climate we living in is "good" and climate with 2C higher temp is "worse" then yes - they will live in worse environment. But it is not "catastrophe" like they would like to put it, just different environment - sort of equivalent to moving from UK to live in Spain. Yes clearly climate is different in Spain, but is it necessarily a bad thing? I would even argue that for more colder climates it could be a good thing, for already hot climates probably not so much... 

Likewise I am not political at all, I am just saying - if we want to do it, if we all agree we want to do it, then let's do it correctly, let's tackle major problems, let's leave cars alone, because they honestly make no difference either way. And when I say "we want to do it" I mean WE, not some retard identifying as soya been telling us what we have to do, currently all these decision are forced from "elites" down to "masses" and I just don't like that. Especially when elites are the ones flying in private jets, have 4 yachts each, have mansions and gold courses all over the world and then they tell us that we have to stop driving and use public transport instead. How about they start from themselves? Lead by example if they really want so great for everyone. You know it is easy to say - we need to do more about environment when looking down on everyone from crystal palace. At least that is my perspective - I don't see this fight as "fight of the people", or something that majority really cares about and want to see tackled. I personally want to do everything I can to help, but only as long as it doesn't hurt my living standards which I personally believe are mediocre at best. Furthermore - I will not be supporting it until everyone will have to sacrifice equally. Why should I sacrifice when other are clearly taking advantage of it?

I don't know that much about fusion reactors either, but I know enough to say that at least in theory they are suitable solution and as well in comparison of landing on moon and atomic bomb they should not be much more complicated to make, especially considering the technology we have nowadays. The renewables are not solution in my opinion... why? Solar only works when sun is shining, makes no sense because we need most electricity when it isn't shining (at least in most of central/northern Europe), wind only make electricity when wind is blowing... hydro only works on specific rivers which could be dammed, wave/tidal only works near shore and only when there are waves/ or tide is right... in short all renewables are either unreliable, or only available in specific limited locations... and biggest issue of them all - they simply do not make sufficient amount of energy, we would need to cover entire country with them to get the amount of electricity we need... remember 4% lost to all ice melting? How is it better to lose 80% of land to some for of renewables. And by the way even renewables are not carbon neutral, just low on carbon. My view - we should go for nuclear in short to mid term (~20-30) and try to develop fusion in the mean time. In either case we need A LOT clean energy and renewables simply can't deliver it, or they can't deliver it reliably, or we simply don't have anywhere to store energy to even out the supply. 

[Malc1]

20 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

if we accept that man's activities are causing damage, both in terms of pollution and climate,

Gentlemen .....  reality is that COWS are the main culprit globally of pollutant emissions  ........... this is FACT and that's why the NZ Govt is taking strict emission control action .  being a leader in this field

NOW  ...  the ban on  milk consumption excesses will shortly follow .  here in the UK at least I'm predicting .  and why not  ?

Maybe the price of milk will quadruple to restrict consumption to sensible manageable levels  ...  your doorstep delivery, should you have one, will be delivered not by a polluting EV carrier but by horse and milk wagon and there will be a competition to analyse the value of the horse shiiit .  good for the roses they used to suggest !

Malc

I am however being very very serious about the NZ Gove absolute restrictions on cow output