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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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| GURGLETROUSERS wrote: | I completely agree C.B.
As it happens I take delivery of a new 'super mini' next week. I keep them for 40.000 miles (i.e. 2 years at 20.000 miles per year. Yes i know - ruining the planet and all that, but we only have one life, and must maximize our life choices!
The new one is, again, a Suzuki small petrol engine which will give an all in average of around 55 m.p.g. (As have all my previous small Suzuki minis.) As you say, there is no viable or practical AFFORDABLE alternative for folk of modest means, which could meet my requirements. (Suzuki minis are class leaders in low pollution engines.)
Oh, to have been a millionaire, though I think it would have ruined that feeling of contentment at getting the most you can out of life, with finite means!
P.S. If we were not such a 'well watered land', and the sun shone a liitle more, I would certainly think about solar cells on the roof. (But NO bloody windmill!!!!) |
GT--thanks for making the point that I have consistently stressed--the most cost-effective way to create new energy resources is conservation. Your supporting point, the primary mechanism to achieve this is the high price of fuel. Indeed, that has been happening around the world, the increasing price of fuels--primarily fossil--has caused a decarbonization of a given unit of economic activity. This has happened more rapidly, and more efficiently, than regulation.
But the debate does not stop there. We have been engaged in California in a long term struggle with the oil companies and car companies over the health impacts of their products. While I would agree that the fossil fuel industry has done more good than bad to the human condition, it could readily do less bad. And it has consistently resisted doing what is necessary to protect human health and the environment, and has adopted the tricks (and some of the "scientists") of the tobacco and sugar industries to make dishonest arguments that imply that global warming is not occurring, that carbon has nothing to do with what warming is occurring, that shifting to less carbon intensive energy sources will cause us all to walk around wearing sackcloth, or that emission controls will destroy the economy. Electric car technology has never been thought of as the holy grail, the hope for that was the fuel cell.
California has a vastly greater population, and far cleaner air, than it had in the 1960's when we started working on emission controls. Electric cars are a piece, albeit a relatively small piece of that improvement. Even if electric cars use as much carbon as gasoline cars, there can be health benefits if those emissions occur in places that are less populated and where emissions do not result in violation of standards that protect public health. For heavy transport, Harris Ranch has transitioned much of its truck fleet to natural gas, without a loss of transport capacity and efficiency. If fracking had been carefully regulated to control methane emissions, we would know that this transition was one that reduced overall greenhouse gas emissions.
There are many legitimate ways to criticize electric cars, and Tesla in particular. Tesla's entire marketing model depends on the assumption that we have to make electric cars sporty and powerful. Maybe for the 1%. The more effective programs of the Obama administration have been intended to develop the technology and efficiency of alternatives. Some will succeed, and some will not, and some will be more cost-effective. I would never complain about critiques that pointed out things that aren't working and where subsidies should be phased out. But the solar generation subsidies seem to have pushed the technology and cost-effectiveness forward pretty rapidly. I don't think that Moore's law applies to continued advances https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-moores-law-doesnt-apply-to-clean-technologies, but there are benefits to what has been done so far.
At the urging of the petroleum industry, the Trump administration will try to roll back fuel efficiency and public health regulations that go well beyond the global warming question. The industry either ignores the climate and health externalities of their products, or actively lies about them. They have burned up what credibility they have in California. |
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