Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Institute of Public Policy Research, even Electric Vehicles are not green enough to permit unfettered growth in car ownership.
Climate change: Set target to cut car use, minister told
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystShifting to electric vehicles will still leave the UK with serious transport problems, a report has said.
The IPPR think tank said emissions will fall, but the number of cars on the road will continue to grow.
It foresaw a 28% increase in car ownership by 2050, leading to more jams and harm to the economy.
But the government said it had plans to make transport greener and it was committed to offering people a range of travel options.
…
Unless there is a change in policy, car ownership is expected to be driven up by a growing economy and increasing population.
The IPPR% said failure to tackle this will have negative effects on:
- Health: Walking and cycling (when practical) are healthier than sitting in a car.
- Resources: An ever-expanding car fleet drains raw materials and energy.
- Urban space: Fewer cars would mean more trees, play space, and room for walkers and cyclists.
- Congestion: Traffic jams damage the economy and lead to demand for more and bigger roads.
- Inequality: Allowing current trends to continue will widen the social divide between those who own cars and those who don’t.
…
The IPPR’s proposals to achieve the UK’s low-carbon transition fairly include a national guarantee to make it possible to live a good life without needing to own a car.
It says this should include seven-day public transport for all areas, and the principle that everyday needs should be accessible within a 20-minute walk, cycle or public transport trip.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57570010
Why do think tanks like IPPR keep trying to mess up the lives of ordinary people?
Outside London British public transport tends to be inaccessible, unsafe, and infrequent. Cars keep you a lot safer from muggers (providing your employer can be pressured into providing carpark security) and keep you warm and comfortable in bad weather.
Even in London I can’t imagine what it is like for single women trying to travel at night. As a regular commuter on British transport for over a decade, including the London tube system, I encountered plenty of situations which made me feel unsafe. Britain’s revolving door justice system ensures a steady supply of drug addict muggers and rapists, to keep life interesting for public transport commuters.
Yet despite the obvious problems, there seems to be this ongoing utter determination amongst climate activists and progressives to force people back to using public transport, or force them to abandon long commutes altogether, regardless of the harm this does to people’s lives and personal safety.
The IPPR could try listening to the people whose interests they claim to represent, drop the climate nonsense, listen to the self evident desire of British people to own a car. They could try to solve car ownership inequality by using their funds to help poor people purchase their first car. But for some reason think tanks like IPPR almost never seem to back solutions which empower the ordinary people whose interests they claim to represent.
The economics of rail transportation are driven, literally, by the cost of fuel for operations and for infrastructure. If the desired outcome requires rail transportation driven by stationary electrical generation, they’ve already over-committed that fake “resource.”
The News South Wales Government advised last year that the cost of public transport is double the amount of fares paid by commuters.
Dennis, that is pretty standard around the world. Since I am partially sighted, I use a lot of public transport. In major cities like Glasgow the public transport system is pretty good. However, outside big cities, public transport is poor to non-existing; I don’t know how people who live in the country could function without a car.
In other words, public transport is being subsidized by those well enough off to be able to own private cars. If cars are eliminated, then public transportation will have to be expanded considerably, and the fares will have to be increased to cover the actual costs, or the subsidies will have to be hidden in general taxes.
There’s a book, “Romance of the Rails”, which ought to be required reading for everyone who thinks rail passenger traffic is good. Whether long distance, suburban, or urban, it is always just about the worst choice, in terms of cost, carrying capacity, and flexibility. The book not only documents that, it also shows how politicized light rail has been since horse-car days, with governments first fighting the newcomer, then taxing it, then subsidizing it, always a generation or two behind the curve. And now that there have been no new generations of rail transport, it is still a couple of generations behind the curve in what it subsidizes and taxes.
Felix,
Thanks! I was trying to find that title, but had lost it completely. I’d played a couple of the interviews with the author, and remembered his summaries, but the book itself had disappeared from my reading list. I’ve put it back on.
I find it especially entertaining when the green goons insist that we’ve all got to go back to the bad old 1750s by expanding the footprint of dirty and inefficient 18th century technology. Just another giant leap backward for mankind.
I like trains, especially steam locomotives, and wasn’t expecting the book I got, even though I read the reviews. It was a good surprise, and I’ve recommended a few times on various forums when people pretend that light rail is a good mass transit option.
Can’t let the masses move about too much.
thats the idea
all confined to corridors in multilevel no private transport
and farm n suburban land taken over for “nature” ie govt hands
Yep, land tax coming soon too to help clear anyone trying to be self sufficient.
Next permits must be applied for to travel outside the district which is a citizen’s domicile location.
Something like COVID-19 interstate border permits now.
“Build Back Better” controlled and managed by the elite masters.
That’s exactly what electric cars are about….
A government THAT enlightened deserves better masses.
Eric,
Even The Guardian has worked out that their problem of emissions is not solved by moving to electric cars but rather that cars themselves are (allegedly) the problem.
See: “Electric cars are not the only Green solution”, Chris Barker,The Guardian,26 January 2021.
… “In fact,if electric cars become cheaper and continue to benefit from tax relief the total number of cars may well rise.
Electric cars produce no toxic emissions at the point of use, but as with all cars, embodied carbon in the production of vehicles and batteries generate greenhouse gas emissions.”
Talk about unintended consequences.
Electric cars do produce toxic emissions at point of use from their tyres. This is worse than internal combustion cars because electric cars are heavier.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2017/03/particle-pollution-from-electric-cars-could-be-worse-than-from-diesel-ones/
Even the BBC agrees so it must be true.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48944561
Bill
Presumably that also applies to their brakes? Mind you cars are dwarfed by the toxic materials given off by large lorries.
I wonder just how heavy trucks will need to be if they go electric and what sort of damage they will cause to the road.
48 tonne Trucks already cause 120 times more damage to road surfaces than domestic cars
In a way you’ve nailed The Problem.
What is wrong with using rail to move most/all the stuff the big trucks currently do?
If they cannot even organise that, they haven’t a hope in hell of getting people onto trains.
And then, thanks to the train-wreck that is/was Covid, huge numbers of people have decamped to The Countryside
The roads we have would work sooooo much better without the trucks and in soooo many ways.
You cannot see through past or under them, they block up T-junctions and squeeze you off roundabouts,
Then, being stuck behind the rolling road-block that is one truck overtaking another, at a speed differential of 0.01mph, on dual carriageways is like having anaesthetic-free dentistry
How Do We Get Rid These Clowns
For bulk freight transport, rail is by far the most efficient mode in terms of energy. But at the LCL level (less-than-carload), the extra steps needed to sort freight make rail unable to compete with over-the-road trucking. And, the cargo still has to be put onto trucks at the rail terminal to get to the final destination.
I like rail but so many stores are now out of town and remote from the railway network. They would require decamping at the railhead into say 6 smaller lorries which arguably would be as bad as the 48 tonne truck.
With just in time delivery-another bane of modern life-it seems likely delivery slots would be continually missed if large trucks were not permitted to travel direct to the superstore.
Face it, trucks are a great invention that far exceed their social cost…..
How do you plan on getting a rail spur to every super market in the country?
When I was growing up in the 50’s almost every small farming community had a rail spur that served to deliver almost everything, including groceries to the local store.
It worked but at a much slower pace. No next day delivery of an item, might be 3 days, might be 3 weeks. This was before the trucking industry really took off. Sometime in the late 60’s all these spurs started disappearing in favor of trucks with next day delivery (e.g. of an exhaust pipe the local mechanic needed). By the 90’s they all these local spurs were gone, the tracks pulled up and the railbed turned back to the local landowner.
The other big problem with rail is the maintenance of the rails and railbed. I can’t tell you how many derailments I saw at various local grain elevators where heavy grain cars would distort the track and cause later trains to derail. That doesn’t happen much with trucks on the highway.
I would love it if the trains came back. They won’t.
The real problem is not cars, but the WHEEL. The Japanese did without it for a very long time, and we could, too. Everyone has to walk, everywhere.
Get rid of the wheel, fire, the printing press, and agricultural. The result would be heaven on earth
/sarc ? 😀
Count me in, Rcx. Nobody has to live past forty anyhow. That plan takes care of that whole ‘aging population’ problem.
(Yes, 😜)
“Nobody has to live past forty anyhow”
RENEW!
The Great British Public have yet to wake up to the reality of what’s in store for them. It will hit them at some point, especially when used ICE cars start increasing in value whilst the cost of a new electric car is unaffordable.
Ditto gas boilers and heat-pumps etc.
Some of us have. Covid lockdowns have been good in some ways, helping to wake people up to the big scams going on.
All part of the agenda 21 plan. The masses should not have cars as they will be happy living in the new smart cities
Most of what’s negative happening around the Western world today is following the Agenda 21 plan. It’s happening and people don’t even realize it. Many cities have already embraced it. Even countries …. New Zealand anyone? People should read Agenda 21 to see what the Globalists have planned for you.
conspiracist nonsense.
The UN document is mere boilerplate green aspiration
Once again, everything a liberal doesn’t want to talk about is just a conspiracy theory.
Agenda 21, as you cite it, is a conspiracy theory.
discussion about climate science, renewables or sustainability can’t be conducted on the basis of ‘it’s a conspiracy’ (or a ‘leftist plot’, etc)
Criticism of Climate Scientology, Unreliables, Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 or The Great Reset cannot be made, because all criticism is ‘A Conspiracy Theory’.
This happens even when the actual socialist goals of these movements are clearly and plainly documented by the perpetrators. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic
Just a few months ago the belief that COVID may have escaped from a Chinese lab was a “conspiracy theory” and anyone who mentioned it would be cancelled.
It really is fascinating how leftists declare anything they don’t want to talk about as a conspiracy theory.
The document exists, the writers of the document are quite open about what their goals are. The writers are not just a bunch of college kids, they are movers and shakers in the financial and political worlds.
United Nations Conference on Environment & DevelopmentRio de Janerio, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992 AGENDA 21
You should read it
A conspiracy right on the gov website
https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/agenda-2030/national-strategy.html
These 20 minute Neighbourhoods are already being given serious consideration by town planners e.g https://www.tcpa.org.uk/guide-the-20-minute-neighbourhood
This is what has been planned since the start of the “pandemic”. First you need to crash the economy and change the nature of said economy to a “sustainable” one.
As for EV’s we wont all have one so no need to worry any that are on the roads will be AI controlled as per the Fourth Industrial revolution.
They are building one of these 20 minute communities about 2 miles down the road from me.
Back in the Cretaceous, when I was a lad, cities were 20 minute neighborhoods. You had houses on ‘city lots’; small plots with a lawn you could mow with an old reel-type mower, if you had a yard at all.
Then there were the store fronts with apartments above, and then some apartments. Small parks would be scattered here and there.
Of course the Powers That Be screwed up the cities and people left for the suburbs in droves. So now they are building what used to be the norm in cities out in the countryside surrounding the decaying or dead inner cities.
How long will it take for these ‘Utopian Neighborhoods’ to go to hell in a handbasket?
.
.
BTW, the first homes built in this new development were in the $500,000 to just-shy-of-a-million dollar range. They have not sold out all of the plots for houses and already they are building the apartments, which is discouraging the sale of any more of the single family home sales. There were some homes built there on speculation, and they are still sitting empty two years on into the project.
The planned retail and office space is inadequate for the number of people who will be living in that utopian neighborhood. The planned little corner small grocery store will be swamped and everyone will be getting in their cars to go to the bog standard modern grocery store another two miles down the road or to Costco about 12 miles away. No one is going to walk there.
For years I have done an audit on the buses that roll around city noting how many passengers are on board. Rarely do I see a bus that’s even half full. Usually just a few, and often enough, just the driver.
When someone gets their first reasonable paying job, the first thing they do is buy a car.
Local governments do have a mandate to provide public transportation to those who can’t drive cars, but buses lumbering about the city empty at three AM in the morning isn’t a very good solution for that issue.
A passenger bus can be a fuel efficient way of moving people but obviously a near empty bus is inefficient and poor value for taxpayer’s monies.
How exactly does a multi-ton bus that comes to a full stop every 1000 feet or so, and has to idle for a minute or two qualify as being fuel efficient?
The more people on the bus, the more it weighs.
MarkW
Because you are using the wrong metric you come to the wrong conclusion. Efficiency for buses and freight haulers should be on the basis of ton-miles per gallon, or in the case of buses, passenger-miles per gallon
If you just use miles per gallon, you come to the erroneous conclusion that that the smaller the vehicles the better for hauling freight and people.
Miles per gallon for buses is measured by having the bus run down the freeway. It is not measured from buses that drive in traffic and have to make full stops on a regular basis.
Beyond that, you need to calculate the number of passengers based on actual ridership, not the number of people the bus is capable of carrying.
For more than a year, the public transportation in the Denver area was operated at near 100% full scheduling with near zero ridership. I’d estimate that ridership is around 50% now, at least in the Denver/Boulder corridor.
Milwaukee has the HOP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hop_(streetcar)
A colossal boondoggle if ever there was one.
This is the obvious answer to the problems electric cars for us all bring:That we don’t generate enough electricity; don’t have the infrastructure to carry the extra spark needed; raw materials will be in short supply (thinking of particularly of rare earth metals) and therefore expensive.
Except of course the wealthy in crowd / card carrying members.
In our large town in the South West of England we have very good public transport-free for the over 60’s.I could walk outside now without looking at the time table and within 10 minutes a bus will be along to take me to the town centre
The trouble with public transport is that whilst good if you want to get from point A to Point B, there are many times you might need to get to lots of other points which might not be on the route of any buses.
factor in poor weather, time, the need to get large items, the likelihood you will drive to a restaurant or an evening show, or the desire to explore further afield and whilst public transport has its place it also has its shortcomings.
So there will always be a place for cars but at the high price of EV’s it seems unlikely we will see the huge rise in car ownership envisaged
Talking about the high cost of EV’s the i newspaper recently road tested the new Jaguar I-PACE and commented
“It’s practical too, with plenty of space for two proper-sized adults in the back ” (Wow that’s a relief) And prices start at ONLY £70,000 or for the full tech and gadgets just over £75,000 (about $107,500)!
Come on Dave, you look wealthy, why not buy a pair then you will be REALLY saving the planet!
In Oz recently a paper on fuel burnt per sector showed that public transport, both diesel & electric powered used 70% more fuel per passenger kilometer than did private cars.
I thought they wanted to reduce the resources consumed. Perhaps they just want to stop us pesants enjoying life as much as the elites.
When I lived and worked IN Chicago, the CTA was the best thing on wheels. $1/ride (back then), or use a bus pass (cheaper) and no hassles, and you could read on the bus to and from work, or just watch out the windows. There are buses where I live now, and yes, I have used then, but it’s quicker to simply use a POV or even just walk, if what I need is small and easily carried. Good exercise, light POV traffic and not too bad most of the year.
And if it is raining or snowing? Or, the dark of Winter? What do people do if they get to the age they need a cane or walker?
Rain? Carry an umbrella. You DO know what that is, right? Snow? Bundle up, man, and get to the bus stop. Of course, I know that assumes that there IS bus service in the general area. Are you afraid of getting wet? Might be good for you.
Cane or walker? Get a taxi, and also ask if your store makes deliveries. Most of them do that now. Dven the Jewel eight miles from my house does that.
You don’t seem very resourceful, big guy.
Or, like me maybe you just like owning and running a car. I’m a confirmed petrol head and I keep my car(s) well maintained, plus I don’t do heavy mileage so they produce little in the way of CO2 and other evils. I just like owning and driving my car and anyone who has a problem with this can do one- it’s none of their damn business. Most modern cars are highly efficient compared to even 30 years ago tbh so the emissions from them will be far less damaging.
If you pay taxes, it isn’t really free. However, it is really being subsidized primarily by those who pay taxes who don’t use public transport.
I just love the logic:
Urban Space – Fewer cars would mean more trees, play space, and room for walkers and cyclists.
How about:
Urban Space – More Solar Panels and Wind Turbines would mean less trees, play space, and room for walkers and cyclists.
Forget Urban Space. Let’s resettle us (including the elites) in huge concentration camps.
I suspect that the people most loudly proclaiming the advantages of public transport never use it. There used to be a week in Toronto when using public transit was promoted. It inevitably led to some journalists declaring they would take public transit for the week and chronicle their adventures. None of them ever continued the experiment past the week. As I recall, most bailed after 5 business days. Most often cited as an issue was the 2-3 hours of total travel time for what would take 1 – 1 /12 hours by car. Second was the inconvenience of multiple transfers.
The first time I went to New Zealand in 1979, I purposely relied on public transportation for the first two weeks as a way of observing people and the countryside. However, it was quite limiting as to where I could go, so I rented an (under-powered!) car for the last week.
Some people have a problem with understanding the difference between living and existing.
“Why do think tanks like IPPR keep trying to mess up the lives of ordinary people?” – article
I think Tolkien said it best: Because Hobbits as miserable slaves are more pleasing to Sauron than Hobbits happy and free.
The elites that developed this have never, NOT ONCE, walked 20 minutes to the grocery store in sub-freezing, wet weather and tried to get several bags of groceries IN PAPER BAGS (no plastic you know!) home with a 20 minute walk in the same weather.
It is just plain sad how isolated from the real world so many of today’s elites are. It makes me cry!
Let’s abolish grocery stores.
One of my great fears is that as I get older I may develop physical disabilities that may prevent me from driving. I’ve given thought to how to handle it. As long as I can still walk, I suppose I could put a back pack on and take a half-hour to walk, even if I need a walking stick, to a store that is currently only five minutes away by car.
One of the results of the COVID-19 pandemic is that grocery stores have been promoting home delivery, which will be a boon to the aging population. It will increase the cost of groceries, and probably result in reduced quality of fresh produce and meat, but I will still be able to eat.
Try getting about 5 million people in and out of London, every day, without private transport. Good luck with that BoJo.
Can you imagine the size of the terminals that would be required? How many in and out doors would be required? What the size of those doors would need to be?
I used to drive the M3/M4 corridors (To 101mph) and the M25 and North circular for years. I have been stuck in traffic jams that, on the M3/M25 overpass/intersection, all you could see in every direction was red and white lights. For miles! That was in about the early 90’s.
Simple, require them all to live in London in the first place. Everybody will be assigned a room with communal kitchen and showers.
I’m reminded of the movie Dr. Zhivago where he comes back from the war and finds many families living in his family home, and doesn’t have adequate fuel to keep the single room for him and his wife warm in the Winter.
Everyone who works in London receives a “London allowance”. If everyone who commutes to London moves to live and work in London employers would not be able to afford the salaries of their employees and employees would not be able to afford to pay rent let alone buy property. Property prices in London rose by 10% in the year ending in May.
If companies don’t have enough money, we’ll just have to raise taxes.
Isn’t that the solution to every problem?
10 years ago I ran across this dystopian piece from the Stockholm Environment Institute: ”
Towards a Zero Carbon Vision for UK Transport”. It is tremendously repetitive but the chapter on “Life in a zero carbon transport Britain” indicates the extent to which these folks really want to control my life. I am sure that their “vision” has been refined and sharpened and more complete now. It reminded me of the models of “ideal” communities generated in Germany during the 1930s, not to mention the monstrosities built in the UK in the 50s and 60s.
https://www.sei.org/publications/towards-zero-carbon-vision-uk-transport/
You’re in your guilt free EV in a traffic jam and you’ve almost run out of charge….
Your electric vehicle might need a tow for a few reasons. A dead battery, a flat tyre, and running out of charge are some of the reasons. You don’t want to drag your EV down the road. If you need a tow, be sure to get a flatbed truck to ensure the car isn’t damaged.
How Do You Tow an Electric Vehicle? (motorbiscuit.com)
It does get better
Transport Minister Baroness Vere said that she was ‘astonished’ to learn that electric cars slow to a stop comparatively quickly, rather than coasting to a stop like a normal car. There are also concerns that electric cars are more difficult, and therefore slower, to remove.
The debate in the House of Lords comes amid the current ongoing discussion around smart motorways.
Transport minister ‘astonished’ by the hazard of electric car motorway breakdowns | Motoring Research
Smart Motorways are the dumbest idea ever. They are deadly.
Harrabin is a busted flush.
We have these same idiots in the US. They cluster in urban areas and pontificate. They care nothing about people that have forty-five minute commutes across countryside, sneering at them for being so stupid that they don’t live in cities.
What will these self-imagined nabobs do when the food stops arriving?
Complain!
I confess to have the feeling to live in a bad end-world science fiction motion picture.
Zero carbon, Green New Deal, COV-19 with more or less no interest to heal people in “favour” of dubious vaccinations, following doubtfull memes with no scientific proof, digital control of everybody, religious behaviour in several science branches etc etc.
It may end in s.th. like stone age, only missing living mammoths
Whatever the apparent problem, too many people is the cause.
Not too many people is the probleme, but too many people believing too many people is a cause of what ever.
Every dynamic system has an optimal range of operation. That’s is why speed governors were put on steam engines, so they wouldn’t tear themselves apart; that’s why your car has a tachometer with a red zone. Above (and below!) a certain speed, cars get poorer gas mileage. Large cities have demonstrably higher crime rates than small cities, worse air pollution, noise pollution, and traffic congestion — not to mention exacerbated Urban Heat Island effect.
I can’t think of a single social problem that couldn’t be improved by a lower population. The bigger problem is that many people deny that there are any issues associated with high population densities, and therefore the situation has gotten to where any ethical remediation is impossible.
So the problem is population density, not population itself.
You beat me to it.
Exactly my thoughts reading Clydes comment.
My car has a red zone on the rev meter.
As the tachometer is built in in several cars with different engines, a red zone on a tachometer is useless.
This looks like a dictator’s plan.
The privately owned auto is a positive part of the economy. The car allows people to go when and where they want or need to go. It’s a form of communication for business and pleasure.
Their concern should be how to engineer and construct better roads, like the Romans. And not to force people into something they don’t want at the point of a spear.
Anytime you read inequity and social in the same sentence hold on to your freedom before some panel of thinkers grabs it.
For an excellent example of the UK’s social policy try “the Fatal Shore.”
No wonder Australians have an attitude.
Total insanity in rural farming communities. Farming and ranching would grind to a halt.
How dare those plebes think that they have a right to mobility.
They’ll live and work where we tell them to, and like it. Or else.
/sarc
I can’t help thinking it’s the “ownership” part of “car ownership” they want to sort out. It’s not about cars at all.
As it is with “climate change”, where it’s not really about climate, is it?
I enjoy a walk in a place that is new and different. However, after the 99th walk through a nearby park, I’m ready to see something new. It is awkward, at best, to take a bicycle on public transportation. Public transportation doesn’t usually drop-off (and more importantly, pick-up) at out-of-the-way places that might provide some unusual sight seeing. Depriving people of the freedom to go where they will when the want to, by banning cars, will make for a much duller existence! Serendipity may be a word that passes from the English language.
I sympathize with the idea that more walking and cycling would be a good thing. As a physician much of my work is driven by an epidemic of obesity and diabetes which is largely due to life style changes (poor diet and inactivity). Old cities built before the emergence of car ownership were, by necessity, smaller and denser. People who live in those centres now are often healthier because they walk a lot. So yes having a change in direction in urban design that provides greater choice for a car-free existence is a great idea.
But experience tells us that this is a problem for the market, private innovation and consumer choice. When the government decides what’s good for us and starts writing policy the Pandora’s box of unintended consequence opens fully and nothing but misery and government jobs pour out.
Now I see Honda are committed to no ICU cars by 2040.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/evs/300341171/hondas-bold-approach-to-evs-is-in-stark-contrast-to-toyota
We’ll see if this statement is just virtue signaling in order to get better press from the weak minded. Or it’s actually a plan they intend to follow through on.
Regardless, given many governments stated objectives of banning non-electric vehicles over the next few decades, it’s hardly surprising that some companies are making plans based on that.
In either case, it’s not the proof that you are so desperate to believe in.
BTW, I read through the article, and through all of the links provided, as well as all the links from those articles.
Nowhere did I find an actual statement from Honda, just EV advocates declaring what they believe Honda has said. More than likely your article is just more of the usual left wing propaganda, based on nothing more than smoke and wishful thinking.
Earlier this year griff made a similar pronouncement about a GM press release.
When I checked the actual release, it was merely an announcement that every GM model was going to have an EV option. Nowhere did it say that GM was going to stop making ICE cars altogether. I suspect if any of the so called reporters had the courage to actually link to a press release, we would find something similar.
The writing is on the wall for ICE cars. You just have to open your eyes to see it.
This stuff is hilarious in view of the Covid restrictions on public transport. If there’s one sector that people now really dislike it is being forced onto buses and trains in masks, with social distancing, which with the reduced carrying capacity are now hard to find and get onto anyway. Then add the recently increasing crime on subways etc and the chances of banning cars is nil.
Then as for the cars we’re all going to be Cuba now, with 50 year old Chevys and a very good artisan-mechanic sector. And if the pollies try to ban gasoline it’ll just be displaced to the black market.
On top of everything nothing much climatewise has actually been happening in the real world this century. The indicators are going sideways.
The ones that aren’t going sideways, are going down.
I somehow feel sure that the no cars requirement does not apply to the people making the decision. It’s only the peasants who need to give up their cars.
That’s the way it has been in most socialist paradises.
If only these ‘think tanks’ could have thought ahead 30 yrs ago and advised the town planners to build bigger roads and adequate car parking spaces instead of reducing them with bicycle lanes .
Doubtless all the members of the IPPR would be in some special category who are still allowed the freedom an mobility of autonomous individual transport.
Like the Malthusian death cult of climate zealotry, it’s always something which applies to other people.
RT (untermenschen times) has a nice article about solar panels creating a mountain of trash that will negate any conceivable environmental gain from the highly disposable technology – and then some:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/527472-solar-panels-create-more-waste/
“Inequality” So someone who’s sacrificed a lot of money and free time to learn a good trade, develop a business or get a degree and good career doesn’t deserve to have more money and be able to spend it how they like? Solving inequality for socialists involves the most uncreative and uncaring way: make everyone poor.
The gov’t un-think tank better be careful what they wish for: no private cars means no one paying road/registration and fuel taxes!
“Unless there is a change in policy, car ownership is destined to increase.” But there has been a change in policy. It involves the banning of the sale of new ICE cars after 2030, after which you can only buy EVs. I’m surprised people keep missing this crucial point.
The idea is that at least half current car owners will not be able to afford an EV. I believe this to be true because I see a lot of cars more than 10 years old. Typically you can buy these for under 4000 GBP. And at the tail end of the bell curve, there are a number of 15+ year old vehicles as well.
Where are 15 million second hand EVs supposed to come from? Even if they existed, they would cost a lot more than 4000 GBP. And if they did by some strange economic fact cost 4000 GBP, that would imply a massive depreciation on the vehicle.
So there you are. Current policy is designed to reduce car ownership by a large percentage.
“at the tail end of the bell curve, there are a number of 15+ year old vehicles as well”
I drive 2 or more 30 yr old cars.
The big laugh, one of them has a Honda engine with catalytic exhaust and meets modern – current emission standards.
Seriously though, the private car and the civilisation that came with it is obsolete, at least 100yrs out of date, but we haven’t yet thought up a viable alternative.
Shutting people in concrete boxes by decree, doesn’t work either, resulting in just spontaneous outbursts of violence, as the Covid aftermath has shown.
Hardly a week goes by here, l without some gruesome crime taking place (blasted through the media)- usually resulting in some poor women being beaten to a pulp or murdered by their partner, or some lunatic going amok with a knife or a gun.
People murder with impunity in private cars,but nobody seems to take any notice.
Let me fix some of these ‘points’:
THink what this would mean. Ordinary people removed from the roads, less traffic, better commutes for the rich, the Elite and the connected.