Prime Minister brings forward ban on petrol and diesel cars to 2035 – but is slammed on his handling of climate crisis

If you want to get to 'net zero' you need to reduce or offset 100% of emissions.

You can't ignore one sector because it 'only' accounts for 20%.

But CO2 is not the only thing that vehicle produce. It's just the hot topic at the moment. Plenty of other fumes vehicles produce that have nasty and lasting consequences.

If I am bold enough to represent at least some of the 'dolts' you refer to.

It is not thr target, the Scottish government for example announced a similar plan some time ago. It is the complete lack of a plan to make it possible.

A bit like, 'we will double cycling journeys ', but we won't spend money or put in any effort to change anything. It will just magically happen.

In terms of plans to remove ICE cars the government has given a huge tax break to EVs through BiK rates of 0% from April 2020.

This is already driving a surge in EV registrations.

There was a survey published recently suggesting that 96% of EV drivers intended to buy another EV.

If that figure holds up at all then we will see a huge snowball effect over the next 5-10 years.

Current economics still favour ICE.  If you look at Norway you will see what could be done in terms of a tax environment.  By that perspective EVs don't have a huge tax incentive in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07bjc52/focus-why-is-norway-the-l...

If the Government wants to get the 'huge snowball effect' really going it has to do more.

I think it should do more.  Even the fuel exise duty escalator was scrapped as successive Governments have not had the nerve to see it through.

Current economics favour EVs IF you are getting a company car.

A lot of my friends have crunched the numbers and they're going to be a lot better off with an EV from April than they would be with an ICE.

That may well be true, but the majority of ICE cars are not company cars. Can't find an up to date number at the moment, but just about 950,000 cars a few years ago.  Doubt it has gone up markedly.

There are more than 32 million passenger cars in the UK.

Which means roughly 3 million are likely to be current or ex company cars.

That's not an insignificant percentage.

aplcr0331 wrote:

Climate Emergency?

Whats the plan to stop the billions of Chinese from owning ICE autos?

Or a billion Indians?

UN projections have the continent of Africa at 7 BILLION people by 2050. How we stopping them from owning ICE vehicles?

The house is on fire some autistic depressed half wit is running past the living room, down the hallway past the den and rec room to fling open a small cupboard and screech at us to blow out a candle.

We live in fascinating times. If Labour made this same pronouncement you dolts would practically fellate each other over it.

Oh dear oh dear; when in doubt, distract.  Just because 99.9% of climate scientists agree that there is a climate emergency "Climate Emergency?" you think differently.

I know, let's ask imbecelic questions to distract, like "What's the plan to stop the billions of Chinese from owning ICE autos?" 

Your comments about Greta Thunberg are frankly disgusting, and if you had any morals, you'd be ashamed, but I strongly suspect that you have none.  Your last sentence could only be described as the height of irony, given what the tories are doing.

If you respond to this, please don't expect a reply.  I refuse to enter a battle of wits against an unarmed man.

Ouch, you sure told me.

*yawn*

So the better plan is to do nothing?

Forget the fact that air polution caused by ICE vehicles has caused asthma rates in this country to rocket and is contributory to many premature deaths and diseases?

If you think the gases of the vehicles aren't harmful, lock yourself in a room with one and let the engine run.

If you wish to preach to others, first look at yourself and lead by example.

aplcr0331 wrote:

Whats the plan to stop the billions of Chinese from owning ICE autos?

I just love it when the ignorant point their finger at the Chinese, in a vain attempt to justify their own reluctance to act.

Several major cities in China already have in place a total ICE ban, as a result of which the percentage sales of plug in domestic vehicles in China is higher than ours. So it seems we don't need to worry about the Chinese, now back to our own problem.....

I agree with that, though traffic jams in Beijing reminded me of lots of other World cities.

I worry about the US with a climate change denier in charge.  A nation with much higher per capita CO2 emissions than China or India or almost any country outside the Gulf States.

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-hig...

Sniffer wrote:

I agree with that, though traffic jams in Beijing reminded me of lots of other World cities.

I worry about the US with a climate change denier in charge.  A nation with much higher per capita CO2 emissions than China or India or almost any country outside the Gulf States.

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-hig...

Indeed, it annoys me greatly when people point the finger at India in particular as being one of the biggest polluters, and supposedly doing nothing. They have 1.3Bn people , emitting per capita around a third of what we emit. How can you sit in your SUV, putting the blame on people who can only afford to cook on an old woodstove?  There is also the perception that people in the East don't care about the climate, but my experience of working for a while with an Indian company is that they are more worried about warming than we are, because much of their country is in the front line, either from extreme weather events, or large low lying areas risking floods or sea level rises. 

 

I am not sure where you are getting your data on transport being 14%.  Seems low with figures I have seen quoted.  For example lifted from the BBC website story today.

'About a third of CO2 emissions in the UK come from transport.' Source BBC.

On the wider point, coal has already gone, and if we want to make s difference we want to reduce emissions in all sectors.  With viable options in cars already here or probably more accurately, soon to be here, why wouldn't there be an action in this area?

I do prefer reducing the use of cars whatever they are powered by.  It would just make the world a healthier more pleasant place if unnecessary car journeys were eliminated.

Its not as much of a problem as you might think. Average UK mileage is around 7000 miles, or about 20 miles per day. Electric car users tend to plug in their cars every night, and therefore on average, they just get topped up by 20 miles worth each day.  What we do need is the long awaited "smart grid" in place to allow appliances such as car chargers to connect at 4:00 am while demand is low. (Admittedly, it would be a problem if 30M cars were all trying to get on charge at 6pm when commuters arrive home!) Nuclear plants often have to vent excess steam overnight when demand is low, and wind turbines also produce overnight, so the problem is not total capacity, its about avoiding peaks.

True, 95% of all car journeys are less than 35 miles per day.

We use our EVs alot, over 50000 miles in 2 years.

We charge overnight to give us our 100mile a day capacity

Griff500 wrote:

Its not as much of a problem as you might think. 

A bigger problem is how people are going to charge their EVs. An awfully big percentage of the country live in houses/streets built before cars were a thing, or an everyday thing at least. Without off road parking charging your vehicle from your home becomes tricky at best.

I live in a mid-terraced house in a pre-WWI urban street and most evenings can't even get parked on the road outside my own house. Without some sort of public infrastructure of sufficient capacity to deal with all the cars down the street an EV would be a complete dead loss for us. 

This is definitely a big issue for EVs.

However I don't think an insurmountable one, after all you current ICE vehicle doesn't charge at home - so given that most people now fill their vehicles at the supermarket it wouldn't be a huge leap to think you could have chargers in the car park and charge while you shop.

As battery technology advances the range would probably easily get most people a week to charge at the weekly shop.

My office also has charging point in the carpark so you can charge while at work. Admittedly not many at the moment, but this could become far more common practice by 2035.

kt26 wrote:

This is definitely a big issue for EVs.

However I don't think an insurmountable one, after all you current ICE vehicle doesn't charge at home - so given that most people now fill their vehicles at the supermarket it wouldn't be a huge leap to think you could have chargers in the car park and charge while you shop.

Which is fine but, as someone who rarely shops at a large supermarket and generally walks or takes his bike when he does, it seems counterproductive to make me use the car more than I do now, just in order to be able to "fill er up". 

I agree the problem is not insurmountable but I don't think copying the system we use for ICE vehicles is going to work unless charging time and vehicle range are a lot closer to what we can get from our current pollution wagons.