UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

2050? Realistic?
And why not?
Just because the Poms don't want to, so what?

Try building the infrastructure required to support business and peoples homes and access to city centres over here and see how far you get - quite apart from the total lack of any money to complete such projects, the whole way the city economy works currently is just not compatible with pie in the sky ideals such as this.

Plus there's the 'way things are done' ...I'd quite like to work from home; I have all the facilities to manage working from home as a draughtsman, but this will never happen. Reason being, most companies, and bosses for that matter, just wouldn't do it, never mind the saving they'd make on office rental space and a myriad other costs associated with having employees travelling to and working from a central building somewhere, they just wouldn't go for it.

Environmental issues and their solutions for the conurbation are much more socially complex than an arbitrary benchmark for reducing emissions, issued by a bunch of overpaid eurocrats.
Better off talking to china first. No matter what everyone else does in regards to reducing carbon emissions, it'll be a complete waste of time on a golabal scale (and that's really the only scale that matters here) if the chinese and other rapidly developing industrial nations follow the path we made, before things like global warming were even heard of. This, of course, brings the inevitable 'well you built all of your industry and manufacturing the cheap and dirty way, so why should we have to do it any differently, and importantly, more costly than you?' I'm sure some countries would view such strictures as a means of keeping them down on the world stage and not as a means to reduce whatever climate change is happening.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by jumpy

Environmental issues and their solutions for the conurbation are much more socially complex than an arbitrary benchmark for reducing emissions, issued by a bunch of overpaid eurocrats.
Better off talking to china first. No matter what everyone else does in regards to reducing carbon emissions, it'll be a complete waste of time on a golabal scale (and that's really the only scale that matters here) if the chinese and other rapidly developing industrial nations follow the path we made, before things like global warming were even heard of.

<applause> Thank you for saying all that so I didn't have to

[tater]

I think they should wait and see. Frankly, by that late date I expect most urban vehicles might be electric anyway for a number of reasons. Screw "carbon," noise and clean air are good enough reasons (not to mention fuel costs).

I think cities could easily incentivize it instead of a ban. Many already have limited access (helps for islands like NYC), so you could have cheaper toll passes for zero emission cars. You could make a large number of tiny car spaces to encourage tiny, urban cars.

While I don;t buy the AGW issue (or more specifically that it is well characterized enough to make predictions on what emissions should be limited to for an accurately predicted effect), I think noise, and lack of fumes is good enough reason. Would even be nice here in ABQ so I can maintain my 100+ mile views out my windows.

[joegrundman]

this is just EU "save the world" posturing, counteracted by tory party "save our british sausages" posturing.

Jumpy's objections are odd. By 2050, there's a good chance that oil will be too expensive to be used in conventional cars. What are you saying? That Britain will grind to a halt rather than adapt to a new form of power? Now i put it that way, perhaps it would grind to a halt

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

this is just EU "save the world" posturing, counteracted by tory party "save our british sausages" posturing.

Jumpy's objections are odd. By 2050, there's a good chance that oil will be too expensive to be used in conventional cars. What are you saying? That Britain will grind to a halt rather than adapt to a new form of power? Now i put it that way, perhaps it would grind to a halt

Quite right in the long run, it will "cost" of having a car, and many countries already have bans in place, without the EU's presence

[jumpy]

Nothing odd about it at all.

It's less about my personal objections, and more about repeated observations of the way things are, as opposed to the way they ought to be.

I live here and know the sort of people who are running the country (firmly into the ground for the foreseeable future). It's all about short term plans to make it look like something is being achieved... same goes for the economy, but that's another story... nobody is looking at the long term view as part of a greater whole.

It's like the beaches here, we have a 'cleanliness' scale thing happening for water quality, pollution, effluent etc. Whilst one beach might have a grade A certificate of cleanliness, if the next beach along the coast has a raw sewage outlet, overall it does very little toward not polluting the sea. Everyone at the A-grade beach can congratulate themselves on a job well done on their teency ikkle bit of sand, which in the grand scheme of things amounts to exactly FA.

Doesn't matter what we stand as proponents of, it has to be everybody doing it together globally or it's not much better than wasting a lot of time and money for nothing. And whilst developing nations are the prime suspects, they're not the only ones to blame... I'm looking at you here America (and the UK too who follow a similar model)... why should a country damage its economy for the sake of some as yet vaguely incontrovertible 'facts' about global warming? Unless it's on your doorstep (bp oil spill anyone?) no-one cares.

For anything to really start to happen, there has to be a fundamental change in science, politics, economics, lobbying, social care, business... The list goes on and on and on. And it must apply broadly to every country in the world, every nation, every community. If none of these things happen we may as well piss into the wind for all the long term difference it will make. Mayhap the pollution of some fancy capital cities might be reduced, but it's just lip-service - everywhere else will continue to be a **** hole.

I'll take my gloom somewhere else for a bit though...

[joegrundman]

sounds like you need to go to the pub, mate