Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050 695
thecarchik writes "Can you imagine a future — thirty-nine years from now — where there are no engines humming, no exhaust smells, no car sounds of any kind in the city except the presumably Jetsons-like beeping of EVs? The European Commission can, and it has a transportation proposal aiming to do just that by 2050. Paris was the first city to suggest a ban on gas guzzlers in their city core, but this ban takes it to whole different level by planning to phase out all petrol cars completely from the city streets. While Paris was motivated by reduced pollution, the EU has broader aims of reduced foreign oil dependence, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, increased jobs within the EU, and improved infrastructure for future economic growth."
To expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
If we are truly at peak oil petrol will probably be too expensive by then to use in the average vehicle by then anyway.
Re:That all makes sense for SUVs . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Re:That all makes sense for SUVs . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That all makes sense for SUVs . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
If people insist on polluting, then having the pollution in one place, away from large numbers of people, where it can be more easily managed (reduced), sounds good to me.
I wish the West End, City and East End of London would be pedestrianised.
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, I'm struggling to understand what exactly defies physics about banning petrol cars or even economics for that matter with the growing costs of oil and the decreasing volumes of it available on the planet.
"Europe should spend money on basic research, experimenting with new ideas and taxing petrol if different forms of transportation are desired."
Yeah, it does all that too.
Re:UK govt blocked it. (Score:4, Insightful)
"We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas,"
Another politician outed himself as a retard who doesn't have any real arguments, so he resorts to stupid rants.
The real problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:2, Insightful)
here in holland petrol is significantly more expensive then germany/belgium, enough that people in border areas fuel up abroad.
and all that money doesnt even go into roads and such, like it should, most of the road network is very much low capacity, and we are only just starting to build extra roads
damn politicians
Also, i wouldnt care about having an electric car for the daily drives and such as long as the infrastructure is up to scratch (long enough range + near instant "refueling"), but hobby-wise, they will get my suck-squeeze-bang-blow mobile when they pry it out of my cold dead hands
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:3, Insightful)
You are short and narrow sighted. Europe doesn't make a decision like this just because of what they expect to change, but because of what they expect to have. By 2050 a lot of projects concerning green energy will have bore fruit and it won't be the same concern as it is today. You're only seeing 2050, while stuck in 2011, try to put it all together and form the big picture of 2050.
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, 2000 is pretty much 1960.
With microwave ovens. ...etc
And teflon kitchenware.
And mobile phones
And digital cameras
And the world wide web
And slashdot
With commonly distributed measles vaccine
And mass-produced insulin
And VCR's & DVR's
And The Pill (approved in 1960)
And barcodes
With some understanding of genetics & proteomics
Having found Cosmic microwave background radiation (aka confirming the big bang)
Really, 2000 is pretty much 1960 indeed!
I bet the changes in 40 years will be similarly... unimpressive.
Fake Environmentalism (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of this going on in Europe and to a lesser extent, N. America. Make a commitment, but put it so far off into the future that you can take credit for being "green" or visionary without having to actually do anything or make any hard choices. If the technology works out, you get to take credit for it. If the technology fails, then it's some other person who gets to repeal the law, but you'll be long gone by then.
Good stewardship of our natural resources is a good thing, but the problem with environmentalism is it has become a movement which can do no wrong and knows no self-criticism. Any inconvenience or failure is either a misunderstanding (stupid people), or poor implementation (the people are too stupid to to it right, so we have to make it simpler). So the EU will go on mandating Ethanol-based fuel additives which deplete the rain forests, energy-saving lightbulbs, which contain mercury and need to be properly disposed of, etc.
Re:The real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Forced abortions? Forced vasectomy for all men? (Maybe forced castration, that would probably also reduce the number of wars, and definitely reduce the number of rapes.)Or maybe just don't provide government support to anyone with a child, enabling only the rich to reproduce, and producing more property "crime" as the poor have to steal to support their families.
Consider all the other option, Voluntary [vhemt.org] measures.
Personally, I think simply raising the living standard of everyone will be far better. Demonstrated fact that countries with higher living standards have lower birthrates.
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:4, Insightful)
. I do it because it's less not fun than taking public transportation.
Well, then we'll change that, one way or the other.
So either you make it so that I don't have to go to work that far away or you shut the fuck up about how I get there.
Fine, I'll pick option 1, and I'll do it by making it impossible for people to commute that far. Then the free market will sort it out - companies will move to where there are people living, or affordable housing will be built closer to where there is work, or whatever.
And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option. Changing my profession is not an option. Sacrificing what little comfort in life I have for your stupid ideas is NOT a FUCKING OPTION!
Pfft. Typical whiney driver. If you're actually so close to the poverty line that you can't afford the taxes, maybe you'd be better off on welfare. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
People should stop expecting everyone else to bend over backwards for their nutcase ideas.
Exactly backwards; you're making the world worse for everyone else for the sake of your own personal comfort.
What you are doing now is telling the nigger-slave to work harder or else he gets the whip.
Actually it's very much like telling the overseer to stop using slave labour. If you look at what slaveowners were writing you'll find very similar complaints to your own - "I can't afford machines or paid labour. Changing the way I farm is not an option, changing professions is not an option. Either make it so I don't have to harvest or shut the fuck up about how I do it."
Re:That all makes sense for SUVs . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a lot easier to control the pollution at one large power plant than tens of millions of tiny ones.
Additionally, electricity acts as an abstraction layer. If there were a breakthrough in fusion generation, the EV fleet wouldn't have to change, in fact nothing would have to change, merely by putting the new fusion station on the grid, the entire fleet becomes a lot less polluting.
Re:To expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Who ever said regulations had to be rational?
Wouldn't it just be better to keep tightening the emissions requirements on new cars until only electric cars qualify?
If everyone were forced to drive 100mpg cars or cars with near-zero CO2 output, wouldn't the result effectively be the same -- but without having to resort to a "ban"?
That way, people don't have to buy new cars immediately and we don't end up with landfills full of perfectly functional cars.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
In your fantasy they were.
The first five year plan, 1928-1933, was the collectivization of agriculture in order to promote a headlong rush to industrialization. It ended in a famine in which millions starved.
The twelfth plan, 1986-1990, was intended to accelerate economic development, which was lagging disastrously after the second through eleventh plans. It ended in an economic crisis so profound and pervasive that it led to the failure of the Soviet system and a breakup of the Soviet Union.
In between, there was mostly persecution, misery, national alcoholism, a sense of hopelessness, and periods of vast premature loss of life. If that is you definition of successful, then yes, the plans were were successful.
Re:Typical Euro politics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely possible to ban petrol cars from cities.
Thousands of towns and cities in Europe have car-free areas in their centre, sometimes just a couple of streets, sometimes the whole city centre. A few charge cars to drive in/near the centre. Some ban highly-polluting vehicles (LEZs, e.g. for Greater London).
Re:UK already rejected (Score:0, Insightful)
Troll.
Most Brits are against the EU and its subsidizing cos they perceive a net loss to the UK. Frankly they're fed up with subsidizing French farmers who are too damn lazy to work for a living.
Far more to it than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus we have a double insulation against fuel cost uncertainty; there is capacity for the Government to reduce taxation in a fuel price shock to maintain economic stability, and we use less of it anyway and so are less exposed. The policy has succeeded; Europe doesn't have exurbs with collapsed property values, and we have a much smaller park of uneconomic passenger trucks which represent a future drain on the US economy.
The Real Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Works for lightbulbs. Dispite the popular ramblings of the internet, neither the EU nor US have actually banned incandescent bulbs - they just set efficiency standards high enough that no incandescent can achieve them.
Just because you don't use the word "ban", doesn't mean it's not really a ban.
LK
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:1, Insightful)
It's remarkable, how you have to jump 50 years forward to demonstrate yet another "failure".
Mostly agricultural land was turned into nuclear superpower by mid 50th, with economic growth rates twice as much as in the West.
It was 30 years of conservative stalemate under Brezhnev rule, that eventually ruined USSR.
Re:To expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
it isn't the use of the bulbs that has been banned. it is the manufacture and sale of them that has been banned
Re:To expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Per OSHA, and EPA regulations a broken CFL requires a hazmat team to properly clean up after it.
Recycling CFL's doubles their cost. Not recycling them guarantee's that the mercury will end up in your water table. CFL's can't be dimmed intelligently or fully. Dimming an incandescent to 75% of the output doubles the life, but halves the life of CFL's
CFL's are just stupid. LED's while harder to manufacture will be a far better replacement.
Re:Come on man (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is really better lighting, why do people need to be pushed towards it? Won't they adopt it as they become convinced that it is better? Further, how do you know it is better for all situations?
This basically comes down to some people thinking they know what is best for other people and using the power of government to force those people to behave according to their wishes. What happens when people who think they know what's best decide to force you to do something you don't want to do?
Re:To expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Clean energy is *NOT* a free market issue, or even a regulated market issue. It is one of the greatest issues of our time, and it requires complete social support--as we defend our homelands from intruders--as we protect our liberty and freedom--we ought protect our lifesupport, our environmet.
There is a point where waiting for people to do the right thing on their own is not safe or wise.
So says the guy using an coal powered machine to make the rest of us feel guilty about the car we drive.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:By 2050? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To expensive (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, considering that many Tea Party members are Libertarians, then I'd say yes, many of them are. The Tea Party movement is an ideologically diverse group made up of people from many walks of life. As a general rule Tea Party people aren't brought together by social issues, but by economic issues, none of which you mentioned. Incidentally, making Govt. smaller (a general Tea Party movement target) has the interesting side effect of preventing religious do-gooders from imposing their ideology too. Neat how that works, isn't it?
Face it. You don't know jack shit about the Tea Party movement other than what you've been spoon-fed by watching MSNBC, BBC, and their ilk. You wanna spray your ignorance around, that's fine. Just don't expect to be taken seriously by anyone with any intellectual prowess.