Yeah, that's gonna work

I don’t think this is going to work so well. And were are they going to get all of those horses that they will need? That and the cities are bigger than can easily be supported by horse transport.

Killing the economy is what the greens are really good at…

Harrods, Fortnum and Mason, and other posh stores will have to move out to the suburbs. I can’t imaging wealthy elderly Ladies riding public transport and walking to Harrods. And how will they get their packages home? Not going to be good for downtown business. Maybe horse drawn carriages? And how about the sick getting to their docs? Musicians? How about catching public transport with a ‘cello or a bass viol and a case of music? Maybe that will be enough to start the revolt against the EU!

“Backwards to the future . . .”

So if you want to get from point A to point B, the government has to allow it or you have to walk. No going where you want, when you want. You go where the train goes, when the train goes. So once a train departs City A, it is now a “route assisted target” and you know exactly where each individual who got on the train is. No buzzing off for an unaccounted for side trip.
My guess is what they really mean is that the “masses” will not be allowed to have cars. The ruling elite will likely keep theirs. I doubt you would see anyone “important” milling around rubbing elbows with the riffraff.

Currently the way our Glorious Leaders are attempting to enact these ludicrous EU Targets is by stealth, via the local Town Hall who have powers to raise and implement local town and city “congestion” charges, e.g. London City , Durham, Oxford. But there are gleams of sense in all the for of EU madness where the majority of UK Councils are putting said “rules” to the people in referenda and are getting a resounding “NO!” back from the populace.
Democracy in action. Australian Labor seeing it in Real Time. ;->
who’s next…..?

And where pray tell will the funds for the additional infratructure come from? After we spend it on useless windmills and other equally useless power sources and people are unemployed because all the jobs have gone to Chindia what will be left? A Europe and Gillard’s Australia will be using hose and carts just like the old days. Can we put the pollies who led us to this in the stocks just like the old days too?

A prerelease of a April Fool’s prank?

“Whom the gods would destroy …”

The EU does not have the power to enforce unpopular laws in practice. To pass the laws the officials, national governments, and the directly elected MEP have to support it. Then in practice the people or elected national governments can just not execute it in practice. The EU is just too close to various countries seeding from the union for it be heavy handed. For example the UK has increasing strong border controls – see Eborders, and various countries has retained visa/work permit requirements for some other EU countries’s nationals. If you want to see athe EU fudging to avoid confrontation look at personnally importing cigarettes in to the UK for your own use.

Actually, the vision of only electric cars in inner cities doesn’t disturb me that much (Americans should remember that there are no European cities that are anything like LA ;)). I’m much more worried about “low-carbon sustainable fuels in aviation” which I guess means that they’re going to force airlines to burn more food…

Ok, petrol and diesel is bad, so lets have cars that get their energy from the power grid. Brilliant idea, however despite the well known foibles of the electric car there’s a huge problem here.
Coal, Gas and Nuclear is apparently bad too. Where are we supposed to get all this energy to run these cars as well as the rest of the country runs on? Power need will be greater in 40 years. Do they really think they can supply enough electricity for everything from bloody wind power?
I suspect this is their way of making sure energy is a lot more expensive than it need be. All them rich Al Gore and EU beurocrat types will be able to afford it, but what about the common man?
They keep going on about our children and granchildren lives in their AGW propaganda, but it looks like they’re the ones threatning next generations’ futures.

I wonder how long it will take all those 20-something activists to work out that it is their generation they are shafting – it is them who will have to walk to the city or queue interminably if they’re lucky enough to live near a rail link when they are 50-something years old. Those of us closer to 50 now won’t want to drive our car into the city by 2050.

Everyone, here’s the new vehicles, please chose a model you like:
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-8/uppsala-bicycles.jpg

I suggest that this idea needs a pilot study to thrash out the detail prior to implementation. How about Brussels take the lead to ban all carbon sourced forms of transport by 2020, no chauferred limousines, no short haul flights and all EU ministers to have reduced their personal carbon budget by 60%. That is if they would like to lead by example!

Cities to phase out petrol cars. Problem is that when you make it impossible for the productive people to get to and from their jobs, customers, suppliers, entertainment, restaurants… They (and the tourists too) just go somewhere else. Pretty soon all you’ve got left is a city emptied of productive people and businesses and “urban decay” left behind. Let the hand wringing begin. How can we solve urban decay and renew our failed cities? I know! Relax tax laws, allows cars back in, attract some businesses to build here and bring jobs with them…
And can someone tell me what kind of jet fuel is “low carbon”? and renewable to boot?

David Cameron keeps telling us he has his reasons for keeping the UK in the EU so he isn’t going to give us the chance to decide the issue for ourselves. When I see proposals like this I have to question not only his competence as a Prime Minister but also his sanity.

Gotta love these pointy-headed bureaucratic nincompoops: enthralled with their own superior intelligence. The brainiacs in Berkeley concocted a traffic management scheme decades ago that blocks most streets in an attempt to funnel all traffic to major thoroughfares; what they created are huge labyrinths that force angry motorists to wander all over town trying to find the way out – oh bytheway…wasting time, money, serenity – and FUEL, thereby causing MORE pollution than necessary. This type of thinker finds the reliable laws of unintended consequences to be ever beyond their grasps.

Russell says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:43 pm
I wonder how long it will take all those 20-something activists to work out that it is their generation they are shafting
20-something? Isn’t it rather 60-something? I.e. all those “68-ers” whose value set and political attitudes are still deeply rooted in the Malthusian miserable world view of the early seventies? As more of a “gen x” I used to admire them and share their views – but fortunately I didn’t share their complete inability to change.

Oakden Wolf says:
March 28, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Excellent!

I did hear that traffic in London moved faster when it was horsedrawn at the turn of the last century but one so there is a sense that the wheel has turned a full circle.
However, the emissions from horse digestion, faeces as well as the coal fired heating systems can’t have been markedly different in terms of contribution to climate change to what they are today.
Even when you add it all up, I think more hot air comes from Brussels…….

@the_Butcher
More bitterly ironic than you know. Dear old Siim Kallas, new hero of the EUSSR, was President of the Estonian Cyclists Union for nearly a decade in the Nineties and Noughties.
No wonder we Brits are emigrating in droves.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1569400/Emigration-soars-as-Britons-desert-the-UK.html

I guess these predictions will be trotted out as support on the precautionary principle
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12881779

Not for nothing is the EU becoming known as the Fourth Reich.
Oh, and Brian Johnson uk (The UK must … disengage from the EU as soon as David Cameron has the guts to allow us a referendum on the subject), that’ll be no time soon then. The moron is as closely wedded to the concept of EU superiority over every aspect of British life as any EU Commissioner. With every major party firmly captivated by the EU (and CAGW) we have little choice over most aspects of our lives nowadays.

Interesting.
How high do they plan to raise the price of gas? $37.50 per gallon?
What are they trying to do, turn the movie, Atlas Shrugged-Part I into a documentary even before its release in the U.S. on April 15?

Some of my friends give me funny looks when I start talking about the great wars that were eventually won without firing a shot; Napolean fell short, thanks in large part to the brilliant soldiering of the Duke of Wellington, in imposing his ‘Systeme Napoleanique’ on the UK, the Low Countries and the Iberian Peninsula, but the EU is now carrying out the fulfilment of Napolean’s visions. The climate cancelled his designs on Russia.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was supposed to lead to freedom and democracy for East Europeans; instead, we have former Soviet-era aparatchiks inflicting their totilatarian forms of social control on the Western European nations.
At least the Australians in New South Wales have cried ‘enough!’ and dumped the ALP and its mad Marxist blueprint for impoverishment and social control disguised as environmentalism in the recent elections there. Now all we need is for the citizens of the UK to revolt and throw off the yoke of the EU, Aussie style.

Crosspatch: “How about a “high speed rail” system that uses individual vehicles rather than long trains of cars? ”
——————–
I see where you are coming from on this and it is an improvement over long trains, but it by no means replaces the convenience of the motor car.
I know when I get in my car that it will not have vomit, beer cans, used condoms or any other waste in it before I get in. I know that it will not have been occupied minutes earlier by someone with an easily communicable infections disease. I know that I can get to my car far sooner than I could get to one of these pods, and I know that I would be far more likely to be able to park my car closer to my intended destination than I could one of these pods.
Banning petrol cars from cities would require me to have two cars and an extra garage outside the city. This is less green than just owning one petrol car.
I would not consider owning an electric car, until they are a cheap as a petrol to buy, have a range comparable to a petrol from one charge, and can be charged up in an equivalent amount of time as it takes to fill a petrol tank and when batteries are available and cheap.
As I understand it, it is currently far cheaper to charge an electric car than pay petrol for the equivalent mileage. However this does not take into account the astronomical cost of replacing all the batteries every two or three years. This means that owning an electric is considerably more costly than a petrol at the moment.
There currently is no alternative to running a petrol/diesel/natural gas/LPG car at the moment. I would be delighted if a breakthrough could be made with Hydrogen powered cars, and there are some fascinating and exciting things happening in that field. I just hope that innovations in that area are allowed to continue and are not snubbed out by battery car fanatics.
Cella Energy are pioneering a new hydrogen based fuel which is cheap, environmentally friendly and does not require expensive hydrocarbon use to extract the hydrogen. This artificial petrol consists of tiny nano-beads which contain the hydrogen and so can be poured like conventional petrol and used in conventional petrol engines with a small modification. They could produce this fuel for 19p per litre (approximately 90 cents a gallon).
I would rate this kind of breakthrough as being a far more exciting development of green energy than any technological development of batteries.
This would allow petrol-heads to keep enjoying the roar of a throaty V12, or the scream of a V6 as they drive, whilst being more green than any Prius driver!

I’m pretty sure the total ban will actually be either postponed, modified or both. There might for example be a penalty for driving a gas/diesel car in certain areas.
There is about zero possibility of this happening if we have failed to make electric cars a majority by that time. I see this as an promise to car manufacturers that there will be a big market for “greener” products.
Do not like the totalitarian way of pushing the message though.

just small correction, ‘petrol’ and ‘diesel’ cars

If you are worried about GHG’s then horses are not a great idea, they fart a lot.
Victorian London was under so much horse crap that when, eventually, the motor car came along people cheered because it meant that the horse crap would go.
This EU idea is typical of the socialist mantra that comes from Brussels. Ill thought out prognostications with unknown consequences which will be worse that the imagined disease. Another system to control the so called voters ( if a vote comes out ‘wrong’ then we will vote again until we get the result we want!)!

Rail? In Britain?
British trains are a national disgrace. The regular fares are outrageous, and the “cheap tickets” are a sham (near impossible to get one when you actually need it.) The policies are draconian, and they’ll happily charge tourists huge penalties for not reading the fine print on the ticket re. which times of day the ticket is invalid, or that you have to present the useless “seat booking stub,” even if there’s no actual seat, otherwise your actual ticket, which has everything printed on it, becomes invalidated, and they charge you full price, which is often a hundred quid or more. If you are a tourist, DO NOT USE UK TRAINS. They don’t deserve your business. Frankly, just don’t come to the UK, period. And did I mention that the outrageous prices are actually already subsidised by the government???
There are long term systemic problems with our trains and it has only been getting more and more expensive. There are already problems with lack of capacity and overcrowding, and the idea that they can just legislate us into relying on the trains is absurd — the existing capacity shortfall won’t be met for a decade, as we await new rolling stock, so god knows when it’ll be increased any further.
Let them legislate that all companies have to allow office staff to work from home over fast broadband. I see no other way to “reduce” travel.

on april 1st please publish EU former dictats on bananas and carrots.

Wucash says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Ok, petrol and diesel is bad, so lets have cars that get their energy from the power grid. Brilliant idea, however despite the well known foibles of the electric car there’s a huge problem here.
Coal, Gas and Nuclear is apparently bad too. Where are we supposed to get all this energy to run these cars as well as the rest of the country runs on? Power need will be greater in 40 years. Do they really think they can supply enough electricity for everything from bloody wind power?
I suspect this is their way of making sure energy is a lot more expensive than it need be. All them rich Al Gore and EU beurocrat types will be able to afford it, but what about the common man?
They keep going on about our children and granchildren lives in their AGW propaganda, but it looks like they’re the ones threatning next generations’ futures.
—————–
You’ve got to bare in mind that in 40 years time there won’t be much oil left so we really have little choice on the matter anyway.
They’ll still be gas for a few more decades after that though and plenty of coal to put into power stations.

It kind of shows how far detached from reality these people have become. I suppose that is what happens when the people making the laws no longer have electoral oversight. The middle of a recession with huge risks still left in the financial centres and their most pressing priority? Uncosted and untested ways of reducing a tiny proportion of the co2 emissions – without any mechanism of ensuring it does actually reduce co2 emissions.

Meanwhile in the great white north.

Apparently the Times of London in 1894 estimated that every street in the city would be nine feet deep in horse manure by 1950.
So they were only out by 100 years.

Volt Aire is right. The Euro is a busted flush – I’d give it another five years tops before Germany pulls the plug and abandons the Southern European states to their respective fates. I wouldn’t give the smaller Benelux countries much of a chance of surviving in the new financial era either, for that matter… Bye-bye EU!

Ah, but of course the inner city habitants cheers for it is much nicer to have above ground railroad system perforating the city streets rather than petrol cars and buss’. The screeching noise is more enjoyable than the occasional honking horn. The iron dust is more healthier than the nasty CO2. And just imagine nobody needing to do their hairs, step outside and get buzzed and fuzzed and really use all that static electricity.
Not to forget that the rubber particulates from the tires of electrical vehicle is so much more tastier than the rubber particulates from the nasty old petrol machinery.
Of course, gas powered vehicles will be allowed along side the nice electrical self inflammable hydrogen poppers in these new inner “static electrical” cities.
Then comes the tax collector to collect extra tax on energy used and spent and most importantly the new tax’s on rare earth metals, because we will need to save the planet and the future generations from rare earth metal scarcity.
And soon, in a town near you, streets will be filled with hippie communists running around screaming about the new plague of static electricity induced rash’, or what not, and demanding, yet again, the end of civilization, or else . . . they go really really bonkers . . . again!

Or, possibly, today’s cartoon! DOH! http://dibert.com/strips/

Oh, get a grip and check before posting! http://dilbert.com/strips/

The year, 2050: The place, Northern Hemesphere, PDREU, Sector:- UK. The time, Gaia Rebirth Season, (I think my grandparents used to call it Springtime in the bad old days) Hello, commrades in Colonia! Greetings, I have saved up my allowances for five months now, & have been given permission by my village commissar to use the interweb thingy & Youface/Facetube! I have an amasing 20 minutes useage allowed before the power grid shuts down for the week, except of course in Downing Street where the mighty powerful diesel generators run constantly with donated fuel from the glorious people to the Beautiful Leader! He promised in his last “What a State we are in” address to combat the rape gangs & murderous drug crazed criminals who roam the towns & countryside in the darkness stealing everything & anything, sadly we are powerless to stop such actions ever since the last person to defend himself with his legally held 12 bore was arrested, imprisoned, & “dissappeared” by the Glorious Forces of State Security, (well he did shoot one of the thieving murderous villains for raping his wife, killing his children, stealing his property, which under UK PC/Socialist laws was a jolly naughty thing to do as the criminal’s family were very upset, shocked, & traumatised about his sad demise, & they would be forced to claim the benefits directly instead of relying on him to claim them! (Apparently he should been have spoken to very firmly, that would do the trick they said!). Anyway, the News, many people were found frozen to death in their homes earlier this year, but official sources said the good thing was that they were slightly fewer than last year, & some of the deaths were attributed to the deadly Fukushima radiation disaster 40 years ago, (which is still circling the Earth, officials say, one of the many reasons we are not allowed out of our hovels very often, had a real treat last week end, my new neighbour has an electric oven & we had a two course hot meal, first in weeks, but he’s lucky, he works for the Beautiful Leader’s minions), but that the sacrifce to save Gaia was worth it as the temperatures were definitely coming down worldwide, & the people were certainly making lots of those……………sacrifices that is! Whoops, time is up, the lights are flickering, speak to you next August when the power comes back on & I have saved enough allowances! PS, I have been offered a chance in a lifetime holiday next year to the far East, where they enjoy free everything, care of the old west!
🙂 Sarc off! Enjoy the interglacial.

I assume the people that thought this up are leading by example as we speak, and have already given up their cars, chauffeaur driven limos. and won’t be flying anywhere ever again … yeah THAT’LL BE RIGHT!!!

Daryl M says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:16 pm
First we have the UK declaring to the citizens that they should not assume that power will always be available in the future.
Then we have Germany’s knee-jerk reaction to the accident in Fukushima, declaring that they will dismantle their nuclear power plants, leaving everyone to rely upon wind and solar power, like the Brits.
Now we have this declaration from from the EU. I’m sure all of the lazy overpaid bureaucrats will continue flying first class, staying at 5 star hotels and enjoying fine food and premier cru bordeaux, but all of the regular people can take the train.
This will be a good test for the people of Europe. Are you sheep or men? If you’re men, then throw these lunatics out of office now before they ruin your lives.

Unfortunately, your last point is not possible. The people in the European Commission who run the EU are unelected they are appointed. So they cannot be ‘thrown out of office’. The European Parliament is elected, but powerless to reign in the EC and is full of people there for the expenses and the free travel.
The best approach would be to insist that these bureaucrats and their staffs and parliamentary members are first to only use 100% electric vehicles in and around towns, they only travel by train between towns and only fly on aircraft that are powered by at least 40% low carbon fuel. In fact this rule should be implemented immediately.
This may make it difficult for an organization whose entire toothless talking-shop parliament shuttles monthly between EU Parliaments in Brussels and Strasbourg together with wagon-loads of papers.

It’s all George Orwell’s fault.

Oakden Wolf at the top says:
March 28, 2011 at 10:29 pm

“To dream, the impossible dream…”

Oakden,
I hope folks realize this was not a frivolous comment:
The Impossible Dream ( The Quest ) is from Man of LaMancha,
with lyrics by Joe Darion.
The tune is sung by Don Quixote… who, for a lack of better
opponents, was occasionally found tilting at windmills.

“Gee, ya think? And the greens/labor wonder why they just got booted out of power in Australia ”
Anthony; Australia is a democracy; the EU is not. We cannot boot comrade Kallas out of office. This, of course, only means that it will not be an election that puts an end to these schemes, but something else. My personal guess would be eruption of violence in various member states, followed by half-hearted attemps of violent suppression, followed by a mass exodus of entire nations from the stinking cadaver of what was once the EU.

Scottish Sceptic says:
March 29, 2011 at 12:12 am
“…we, the people of Britain have never signed up for this quango, and so the EU is an unconstitutional and therefore illegal union.”
It only took the PM and the Monarch to sign the various “Treaties”. It is law all right. Watertight, even if treasonous. Revolution is the only way out but Jeremy Kyle, soap operas and sports programs keep a drugged populace “happy”.
As to, no more cars in cities – Mercedes, etc will have a “van” out in a jiffy. Looks like a utility vehicle from the outside. Feels just like a luxury limo on the inside. Costs a fortune. Complete with flat panel screens to simulate windows, bulletproofing and a “Return to Vendor” clause in the lease.

They wont be happy till we all return to the existence that was the lot of our forefathers, where people didnt travel further than they could walk from the confines of their village
Makes it a lot easier to implement control too

I would love to see these eurocrats leading by example: getting rid of all their limos; using internet conferencing rather than flying to exotic venues for meetings; flying cattle-class, where the per capita CO2 cost is far less (if there is no alternative to flying); abandoning centralised parliamentary sessions which means dragging thousands of staff and officials hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles from their home countries to Brussels.
Add to this the cost and inconvenience of vastly increased travel times. My experience in the UK is that public transport adds significantly to travel times , compared to car travel, even at peak times. The trouble with the ruling classes is that they are essentially town based. They simply do not understand the problems of public transport travel in rural areas.

I mean, those EU bureaucrats

Total nutters!

2050 1984

“Sustainable low carbon fuels” puzzles me, but this looks like my own ignorance. Does that mean fuels in which the molecules’ backbone has less carbon atoms???

I don’t see any problem with this, as by 2050 we’ll all either have personal jet-packs or Star Trek transporters to get to the grocery store and back. ;->

I’m not giving up my Freelander for anyone.With winters growing colder and snowier and the roads where I live (in the sticks) tending to flood there one way I’ll ever use a tiny, low wheel base electric car.

Socialist A Hitler would be proud of the EU. Socialists can recognize one other across centuries. Why do Europeans allow themselves to crawl like this?
Keep it over there Lord, keep it over there.

dp says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Remember when the biggest problem they faced was just a thousand year Reich?
And what, dear dp, do you think this is?

I am quite surprised you are all so sarcastic about this measure. Are you all anti-EU nationalist British or average Murrikans ? “EU said X, so X might be extremely bad, or worse: communist.”
1) I do not really believe in Global Warming but I do think city air pollution really matters.
2) I do not know if you noticed, but 2050 is in 40 years. 40 years ago, technologies were different. As they will be in 40 years. The big thing said in this report is banning cars with current oil technology. Even though there will be a huge cataclysm when we’ll discover no temperature increase,bad air in populated cities would still be of policy matter. No one likes black pulmons as well as noone likes traffic jams. Since there is more walking way in my city center I discovered the joy of wandering around.

Easy to see why these idiots are not elected, Yep, the European Government is an employment boondoggle for the boys and girls, now if this was to become law it would put plus minus, 50-60 million people out of work, then think of the sweat and tears that that new car cost, and the mountains of trucks and cars that litter the countryside, etc, etc,

Annei says:
March 29, 2011 at 3:09 am
Train? What train? How come, when we live quite a few miles from the nearest station which is itself several miles on the far side of our nearest small town? There are three buses per day into that town from our village, and only two back out…
Interesting. Now that you mention it, I notice that the nearest working train station from where I am (in Portugal) is 36 km from where I live, that via autobahn with tolls. The nearest bus station is 2 km from here, but there are only 2 buses a day to the nearest city, where one can get a long-distance bus.
Finally, they’re phasing out trains — too costly to maintain, they say. This is getting medieval in a different sense.
DirkH says:
March 29, 2011 at 4:18 am
Anthony; Australia is a democracy; the EU is not.
Precisely. No longer part of the so-called free world.
UK Sceptic says:
March 29, 2011 at 5:54 am
[…]the roads where I live (in the sticks) tending to flood there one way I’ll ever use a tiny, low wheel base electric car.
I looked into electric cars too, and that was the argument out of them. Today I hardly made it back home with a Polo.

As a proud GW denier I have to say it is an excellent idea. I hope they can pull it off.
Just because I deny Global Warming does not mean I am going to automatically attack progressive thinking when it comes to the environment in general. FF powered vehicles must and will be removed from our culture. The sooner the better.
With ideas like this taking root perhaps they will tackle the way we grow food next and instead of mass transport from all over the world everything is grown locally in hydroponic towers.
Discrediting good ideas on this site, simply because they pertain to improving the environment, is a discredit to WUWT, which is supposed to support logic not defy it purely out of spite.

I wonder how long it would take after this went into effect to require those wanting to use the rails to “show ze papers” to the brown shirts in order to board.
How to Control the Population 101:
1. take their guns
2. take their money
3. restrict their movement
4. restrict their information
5. ration their food
6. incarcerate those who do not comply

“I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile. Why? The automobile actually provides a useful function for people.”
lol Anthony. 2050!!!!!!!!!! 2013 is nearer! Portugal has now gone t/ts up with more to follow! The Euro is in terminal decline and the only way Brussels bureaucrats can operate is with financial clout. The problem is that they are bent cheats that could not run a piggy bank!

The really good reason to ban cars from cities is nothing to do with carbon emissions – it is to get rid of the gridlock traffic jams that ensure that the average car speed in e.g. central London is about 8 mph. For this reason I would say, go for it. But what London needs is effective park and ride schemes that link up with an efficient and non-overcrowded tube and rail network. At the moment the tube is worse than cattle trucks in the rush hour – you literally would not be able to transport animals under those conditions – so investment in infrastructure will be needed if more people are going to leave their cars behind.

Tom in Florida says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:16 am
Not to worry…. the UN will enforce it!. It has the right to intervene anywhere.

The auto industry is rubbings its greasy sweating palms together with glee because the government is going to force everyone to buy new cars instead of letting them upgrade in their own time. Millenium bug scam all over again.

Restriction from freedom of movement and mobility is against European Human Rights legislation. They will probably just amend the legislation
/Mango
I don’t deny climate change, I know climate changes

Travis B:
March 29, 2011 at 7:04 am
… Discrediting good ideas on this site, simply because they pertain to improving the environment, is a discredit to WUWT, which is supposed to support logic not defy it purely out of spite.

I am all for developing clean and renewable energy technologies – the sooner the better. But there is a basic problem in the bigger picture that I believe you’re not seeing. I call it the Tarzan Principal.
The Tarzan Principal – When swinging from tree to tree high above the jungle floor it is vitally important to make sure you have the next vine firmly in grasp before letting go of your current vine that is carrying you. Failure to follow this very basic concept will result in tragic consequences.
This is fallacy of thought that I see being espoused by these green ideologues (as opposed to green realists whom I believe most WUWT visitors to be). They think it a good idea to force humanity to completely let go of the energy that has supported us before clean and renewable energy is firmly in grasp. It’s not a good idea.
It is a good idea to create free market incentives to pursue clean and renewable energy development and transition as it becomes both economically viable and sufficiently capable of supporting the world’s energy needs. Right now it is not and cannot. Championing disincentivizing taxing schemes and draconian laws now to force humanity off FF without real energy alternatives is blind and foolish ideology that ignores the Tarzan Principal to disastrous consequences.
I don’t automatically attack progressive thinking. I automatically attack ignorant, idealistic, and narrow minded thinking that is masqueraded as progressivism.

Hank Hancock says:
March 29, 2011 at 10:18 am
The Tarzan Principal – When swinging from tree to tree high above the jungle floor it is vitally important to make sure you have the next vine firmly in grasp before letting go of your current vine that is carrying you. Failure to follow this very basic concept will result in tragic consequences.
@@@
Of course. Not sure where anyone said “banning cars tomorrow”. Pretty sure the article said in 2050, close to 4 decades away.
Most of the people on this planet are entirely ignorant as to what exactly, “technology” can do for us today, let alone 40 years from now.
Inner city transport is conducted today via FF vehicles not because there are not alternatives but because the status quo is easier to follow than change. Change is expensive, status quo is cheap. It is about “will”, both personal and political. And of course it is about money. But what it is not about, is technology and alternatives, those already exist today.
Your Tarzan Principal is entertaining but hardly all encompassing. There is always the “Courageous Tarzan Principal”, which states that as long as you can “see the next vine” you don’t always have to have it firmly in your grasp. You could always let go and hope you catch it.
No one ever accomplished or changed anything without first setting a goal.

1DandyTroll says:
March 29, 2011 at 2:57 am
And soon, in a town near you, streets will be filled with hippie communists running around screaming about the new plague of static electricity induced rash’, or what not, and demanding, yet again, the end of civilization, or else . . . they go really really bonkers . . . again!
I’m finally going to call bs on your constant whining about “hippies”. I call you out because I see that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. The “hippies” I’m comfortable around care nothing for communism (or consumerism come to think of it). They will happily accept electricity from sensible sources which are at best harmony with (for want of a better expression) nature. So, difficult though it may be for you to understand, that means that such things as bird mincers don’t do it – the cleanest practical way of making the stuff that helps generate the heat and light (not to mention the music) which we all need, is what we want and when there is a better way of doing that than now, then we will embrace that. Until then, we’re stuck with what we have. Oh, and, by the way, we are all in favour of saving as much power as possible – think what else we can buy with the money we save ;-).
Mind you, clean is good, it’s simply not good enough to foul your own nest – just look at the birds in your garden, or have you killed them all to demonstrate your “non-hippy” credentials?
By the way, don’t think I’m particularly vexed with you dear boy – I do look forward to your posts as I think that even the No. 1 Science Blog needs a comedy poster from time to time. Maybe it’s you going “really really bonkers again”!

@Thierry says:
“In centers of cities like London or Paris, individual cars are no longer a convenient and efficient mean of transport.”
How very authoritarian of you. So because you think it is not a convenient way of transportation for you you are to decide it is not convenient for everyone else too?
What does the inner city center folks think is convenient you think? I know one thing it is not very convenient for them to have outsiders running around however they bloody please. :p

malcolm says:
March 29, 2011 at 10:07 am
It must be nice to be able to make arbitrary decisions which get enacted into law without any of those tedious obstacles like feasiblity, practicality or reality.
Where are Jorj X. McKie and
BuSab when we need them?
Does this make the Europe the new Dosadi?

UK Rejects first ever sensible EU proposal:
http://canspeccy.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-rejects-first-ever-sensible-eu.html
“The idea that it requires a noisy, pollution-creating, ton-and-a-half mobile living room with leather arm-chairs and a 200-horse-power motor to haul some commuter’s arse across town at an average speed of about eight miles an hour is simply insane.
“It is time for the developed nations to redesign and rebuild their cities and transportation infrastructure to provide a safer, healthier, more beautiful, and vastly more energy efficient human habitat. …
REPLY: Traffic troll, ignore, Anthony

Didn’t the IPCC tell us that most of Europe would be under water by 2050 because of melting ice caps due to runaway global warming? So that would eliminate the need for automobiles! Now lets see, where did I put my row boat… ;->

I met a man from Tito’s Yugoslavia. He talked about the papers that were necessary to go from town to town. Often, even if you had the right papers, one would be met with “what do you want to go there for?” and a big refusal stamped on it.
First, take away thier vehicles, then deny thier pass to travel.
No need to go out tonight, just call the EU for pizza.
The UK needs to get out from under the heel of the EU before the concertina wire and the guard posts go up.

@Don K re The Oil Drum
I spent years following TOD – and yes they are utterly obsessed with peak oil. I learnt a lot from that site, but I would be cautious about believing most of it anymore. The commenters and editors are mainly uber-greens, disciples of James Hansen and Jim Kunstler, and firm believers in the notion of Powerdown. If you ever look at dieoff.org, there’s all this stuff about peak oil / rolling blackouts and basically the end of civilisation. It’s all thoroughly depressing stuff. It was only with the advent of climategate and my happening across WUWT, that I managed to shake myself free of all that nonsense! Look at the gigantic volume of the earth’s crust – compared with the meagre amount of resources we extract from it – 1 cubic mile of oil per year. Note that on TOD, they hate the abiotic theory of oil production – they will not countenance it or speak of it. And yet it seems to me to be far more plausible than the dead dinosaur theory of oil formation. Yes the oil price is very volatile, but that appears to be mainly a function of political instability and general weakness of the world economies.

Mikael Ros says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:13 pm

A prerelease of a April Fool’s prank?

Right! That is most likely what it is. Such a crazy scheme could only be implemented by a totalitarian regime, not in a democratically elected one.

And with reference to your postscript: “I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile.” Why do you consider the EU and automobiles in cities to be mutually exclusive?
You say “The automobile actually provides a useful function for people,” but in what way does that eliminate the possibility that that function could be fulfilled with greater energy efficiency and overall utility without automobiles, at least of the kind we have today, in cities?
It seems that you wish to damn the proposal to eventually eliminate cars from cities on the grounds that it’s a top-down bureaucratic solution. But the fact that we have cities full of cars is entirely the result of an accumulation of public policy decisions made over the last 100 years. Why, then, is it intolerable to you to consider public policies that would have a different tendency?
Energy efficiency, efficiency in the use of road space, improvement in urban air quality and traffic safety are all desirable ends. But to advance those objectives will take coordinated public policy — its the same with sewage disposal and street lighting. The free market, however splendid in some circumstances, won’t do it.

When Rush sang Red Barchetta I thought it was over-the-top paranoia.
I guess not.

People want freedom. We’re not drones. Automobiles provide us with such freedom to travel anywhere we like at anytime. This is contrary to the ideology of the insane people in charge of most governments on this planet. Liberty will always win, thankfully the United States exists, i just hope the American people haven’t forgotten how they their country was founded.

“Automobiles provide us with such freedom to travel anywhere we like at anytime.”
Freedom’s good, for sure. But the freedom to travel “anywhere we like anytime” by car comes at considerable cost — including the costs of noise, of particulate emissions and smog, of traffic-clogged thoroughfares and of massive infrastructure expenditure. Moreover, it is subject to many inconveniences and limitations. For instance, in London, cars travel at an average speed only ten miles an hour (http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/804876.london_cars_move_no_faster_than_chickens/) — that’s after the imposition of the “congestion charge” sped things up from 8.5 mph — and an hour’s parking costs five quid, if you can find a spot.
And then there is the enormous personal cost of gas, depreciation, etc., which means that many people spend much of their working lives to earn what it takes merely to pay for their car.
The automobile was an extraordinary development and a great improvement on the horse-draw carriage. But today, we can surely come up with something vastly more efficient, more compact, faster and with with a much smaller environmental impact. This is not about green politics, its about good engineering and a better quality of life for a global population of seven billion and rising.
The politics of devising better transportation solutions will be contentious and complex, but with this initiative, the EU seems to have made one of its few if not its only useful contribution to European life. At least they have put the issue on the table. Who knows, something good may come of it.

Travis B says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:04 am
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And how do you suggest those of us living miles out in the country, with rotten, pot-holed roads, no nearby railway station, hardly a bus to be seen, are supposed to cope? Just die of starvation? Never see our families and friends? Too tall to use mini electric cars (never mind failing supplies of power)? We’ll stick to our larger car, with winter tyres in season, thank you very much.

BillD says:
March 29, 2011 at 5:21 pm
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BillD:
The Netherlands is largely flat. I live in a hilly village 3 miles from the nearest town. I live up a steep hill from where the nearest bus infrequently appears and I am senior in years. Using a bike for shopping, along a dangerous, narrow, pot-hole bedevilled road is not safe, nor within my energy capabilities; neither is dragging a large amount of shopping up said steep hill. You know not of what you speak.

Alfred Burdett says:
March 29, 2011 at 5:16 pm
It seems that you wish to damn the proposal to eventually eliminate cars from cities on the grounds that it’s a top-down bureaucratic solution.
That’d be a good enough reason for me.

“And how do you suggest those of us living miles out in the country, with rotten, pot-holed roads, no nearby railway station, hardly a bus to be seen, are supposed to cope? Just die of starvation?”
Drive a truck. That’s fine with me. Just don’t drive it through town every day, without paying the costs that you impose on residents of the city.
Those who object to top-down solutions to transportation problems will no doubt be happy to confine there automobile use to toll roads and live without street lighting.
“but the English don’t do revolution.”
Rubbish. Did you never hear of the War of the Roses? Or the civil war that ended with the execution of Charles I and the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell? Or the Glorious Revolution that resulted in the flight of James II and the system of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, which in degraded form, you enjoy in Britain today?

Alfred , you obviously have not seriously examined the costs of running a car in the UK, even though you write about the high costs. We pay a £50-plus fee every year for a very cursory MOT inspection, over 80% of our fuel costs are government-imposed taxes, insurance costs will shortly be rocketing upwards due to the mad EU directive for insurers to charge the long-suffering insured the top whack regardless of gender in the dubious cause of ‘equality’, the exhorbitant sales tax on motor parts including tyres cannot be avoided. Armies of otherwise unemployable parking wardens enforce the high charges for parking and the annual vehicle tax demand is yet another charge against the vehicle owner.
Successive governments have regarded motor vehicles and everything pertaining to them as a wonderful golden goose; a senior exec of a multinational oil company once told me “If oil companies were truly greedy they would opt out of the oil business and into the government business.”
I pay what I consider to be an exhorbitant Council Tax for the privelege of occupying a very modest but wildly overvalued terrace house; this tax should be suficient to pay for the space my car occupies anywhere in the borough but no, I must pay again and again, wherever I need to go.
To add insult to injury and to the general motorists’ burden, Kamikaze pedestrians who ignore pedestrian crossings and traffic signals and suicidal cyclists who think a bit of bright Lycra, a plastic hat and a twinkling Christmas light on the rear of their cycle renderss them immortal and even bulletproof all combine to ensure my constant high state of alertness wherever and whenever I drive.
And you think we wander casually about town in our ton-and-a-half of machinery with leather armchairs using 200 horsepower for this. You forget that most who own cars choose the style or configuration because of a combination of factors important in and to their lives that only the individual owner can know, factors which are beyond the ken (and rightly so) of civic busybodies such as remote planners employed by the EU.
The freedom of the individual is one of the rights and priveleges our forefathers fought and died for, including the right to participate fully in a technologically-enabled society. IMHO you are not just a traffic troll, sir, you are a very ignorant anti-liberties traffic troll.

“Alfred , you obviously have not seriously examined the costs of running a car in the UK”
On the contrary, Alexander, as I have written here (may I mention where without rebuke, Anthony?) :
http://theinexactscientist.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/the-uk-rejects-first-ever-sensible-eu-proposal/
“As suburbs sprawled further from downtown areas, the vast majority of the working population spent an ever increasing proportion of their time either driving their cars or working to pay for them. ”
The fact is, the automobile, at least in it’s present form, represents a huge misallocation of resources. Individually, we are compelled to make this misallocation because a city can have only one transportation system at a time, and currently most cities rely on the automobile of the type I described. Sooner or later, Western nations will likely be forced to switch to an alternative, if only because they are now going bankrupt. The UK I believe is running a government deficit equal to ten % of GDP, and real incomes are falling as is the GDP. The US might be in even worse shape were it not able to go on buying oil and vast quantities of manufactured goods with pieces of paper so helpfully printed by Mr. Bernanke.
Whether your taxes actually cover the external costs of your automobile use might be difficult to determine. However, the external costs are certainly very large as is evident from the effect of traffic volume on property values, the reduction in life expectancy due to urban air pollution, mostly of it from automobiles, etc.

Alfred Burdett says:
March 30, 2011 at 8:34 am
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I don’t drive a truck and I don’t go near a town more than I have to for basic supplies; on the other hand, townies fly through our village to the detriment of the villagers, which makes it very dangerous for walking, cycling, horse-riding, or even driving. The Townies also like the trade we give them when we do have to visit to shop. We don’t have much choice actually, as we lack shops, schools or pubs.
As to the English and revolution: the examples you quote are not from recent history. In recent times the English have NOT gone in for revolution, and it’s certainly time they did once more.
Now I think about it…you do seem to be a bit troll-ish; so I’ll not be responding to you any further.

Alfred, you are repeating nonsense. London is a city and it has a number of transport systems, not just the one you state it can have. I can choose to use the excellent bus service, I can choose to take the bus to an Underground station to go into the City or to other destinations, or I can walk to our suburban above-ground railway station to access the same or another wide list of destinations. I could walk, run or cycle. Or use my 200 horsepower car with leather armchairs. Or call a cab, which we do to travel to and from Heathrow.
I lived for decades in rural New Zealand. Cars were absolutely essential to go anywhere for us there – too far to walk, no bus service off the main roads with the exception of School buses that only school children could ride on and we were at least 20 miles from a railway.

Alfred, the only transport system in London I described as excellent is the bus service. You have serious reading comprehension problems and you are an anti-car troll, so I won’t respond to your contrary nonsense again.