…wait, stop, I can’t breathe, no more:
As my old buddy Paterson might have responded:
This headline actually gets up there with my all-time favorite:
AIDS CURE FOUND IN DOLPHIN LIVERS
…only that one’s fiction. The rainforest thing isn’t. Excuse me…
BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
If there’s anything guaranteed to make me glad to be old, it’s bullshit like this:
The mandate will demand that an increasing percentage of new models sold by manufacturers each year are zero-emission cars, with a credit system in place and financial penalties for those that fail to meet the targets.
But which car makers are best placed to thrive under such laws? We take a look at 43 brands’ current zero-emission-vehicle offering – and what they have planned for the next decade leading up to the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030.
The only good thing about this is that by the time we’ve become all-electric-and-nothing-but-electric, I’ll be pushing up the daisies and the rest of the world will have to live with the consequences of foolishness like this.
It’s enough to make me want to buy the biggest, honkiest in-your-face diesel truck which would belch out more black smoke than Al Gore’s cremated body.
Fuck it, I’m off to the range.
Yet another news snippet that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the Third World:
Just over half of the world’s urban greenhouse gas emissions come from just 25 mega-cities — 23 of which are located in China — a study has reported.
The cities that emit the most greenhouse gases included Handan, Suzhou, Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin in China — but also Tokyo, Japan, and Moscow, Russia.
And for the gullible eco-weenies:
China’s President Xi Jinping has pledged to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement.
Of course he has; provided that such capping does not stand in the way of his aim of global domination. If it does, he’ll just ignore those goals, relying on the foolish lickspittle Western media [some redundancy] to assure us all how wonderful this is in raising poverty levels in China.
And lest we also forget this: the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers are responsible for almost 90% of ground-sourced pollution in the northern Pacific Ocean as well.
Update: Seems like I’m not the only one.
I’m not so sure I believe this one:
Carmakers will increasingly find themselves in a race to shut, switch or sell factories producing vehicles with internal combustion engines to avoid being left with “stranded assets”, as regulators set a course for a decade of electrification to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Why?
The year 2020 will be seen as key for electric cars because of new EU regulations that mandated a limit on average carbon dioxide emissions of 95g/km across all cars sold.
The UK has committed to carrying on its emissions regime at an equivalent or stronger level after the Brexit transition period ends on 1 January 2021.
I am really curious about this, because the Grauniad article strangely seems to omit any actual numbers of carmakers reducing their regular engine production. Instead, all sorts of “analysts” are quoted as saying stuff like:
Philippe Houchois, an analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank, said carmakers’ share prices will be in large part dependent on their ability to avoid losses on fossil fuel assets. “If you want to be a better valued carmaker you need to find a way to shrink your assets faster than a gradual transition to electric vehicles would suggest,” he said.
And yet:
Volkswagen has already conceded that it will miss its 2020 target, incurring a fine estimated at around €270m (£248m).
Given VW’s size, that’s not such a big deal, especially as it can be written off against taxes. And one of the other big guys seems strangely un-panicked:
BMW announced on Sunday it would build 250,000 more electric cars than it had previously planned between now and 2023. Oliver Zipse, the company’s chief executive, said he wanted roughly 20% of cars it sells to be electric by 2023, up from 8% this year.
For the mathematically-challenged, that means that regular cars will still account for 80% of BMW’s sales.
And all that activity is in Europe and the U.K., where distances are not vast and there’s always a public transport option as a last, albeit expensive and inconvenient resort.
How about Over Here? Forget about it. As much as the Biden / AOC Greens would like to do what the Eurotrash are doing, that shit isn’t going to fly in North America, because
And now, let’s talk about the Third World, because for yet another strange reason the Grauniad article doesn’t.
In places like Asia (India, China and South-East Asia specifically) and Africa, not only is there insufficient power generation capacity — they can barely power their light bulbs let alone millions of cars — but there is no industrial capacity capable of putting in the electric automotive infrastructure. Just the geography alone is daunting — Africa because of the distances and fragility of the countries’ ability to prevent sustained vandalism (I won’t even talk about the endemic African corruption as a brake to progress), South-East Asia because jungles, and China doesn’t have the cash. As for India and Pakistan… oy. Even the Russians would have a better chance of success than the Indians, and nobody’s talking about them either.
The only countries in the Eastern Hemisphere which would have anything like a chance of setting up a European-style automotive electrification infrastructure are Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan (small size and islands), and South Korea might have an outside shot at success. Australia? Tiny market and vast distances. Ain’t gonna happen. (I note in passing that Japan’s Honda has quit supplying engines to the F1 market, giving as a reason that they want to concentrate their resources on electric automotive technology, but it’s also true that their F1 engines are markedly inferior to those of Mercedes, Renault and possibly even Ferrari; and even Honda might think that chasing success in Formula 1 — i.e. increasing the existing $100 million annual spend — isn’t worth it.)
So while the Guardian’s breathless headline (“Race is on as carmakers shut, switch or sell combustion engine factories“) may make one nervous — which I think is its purpose — a little reflection shows that in this case anyway, Europe and the U.K. are quite possibly going to be the outliers for the foreseeable future of automotive production, large a market as they are.
And unless the Euro (and even Japanese) carmakers can sell their electric cars at the same rate as they sell their regular cars in the U.S. (don’t hold your breath), they’ll face even harsher financial consequences than just paying taxpayer-subsidized fines.
Think about it: what if Toyota suddenly announced that they were only going to be selling Prius models in the U.S., and not Corollas, Camrys, RAV4s, Tundras, Venzas, Land Cruisers, Tacomas, and all the others? Think Prius could pick up the slack? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course.) Now repeat that scenario for BMW’s I3 and all the other manufacturers’ electric offerings.
Ain’t gonna happen. Not now, not soon, and quite probably, not ever. Despite what the Guardian wants to believe, and us to believe.
Are the Brits going stark, raving mad? This would certainly seem to indicate so:
A dramatic report from the government’s Climate Change Committee laid out a swathe of measures to slash emissions over the next 15 years.
It urged moves including halting sales of gas boilers by 2033, banning new fossil-fuelled cars – including hybrids – by 2032, and encouraging people to cut the amount of meat and dairy they eat by a fifth in the next decade.
None of this is going to happen, of course. They might as well try to end murder by making it illegal… oh, wait.
Basically, all this amounts to a government increasing its hold over the population by ratcheting the screws ever tighter.
Of course, there is a way to fix this tyranny:
…but no doubt someone is going to have a problem with my suggestion.
Sometimes, I just wanna shoot people. Here’s one reason:
The world’s wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, a new UN report has found.
And what, exactly, are we supposed to do with that information?
FFS: The world’s wealthiest 1% also account for about 75% of new job creation, about 99% of the world’s yachtbuilding industry, all the top end car / watch / jewelry / etc. business. They drive cars, fly around the world (on business, mainly — business which helps sustain the poor and gives them jobs), and as a result of their industry, the world is a far better place than it was in the Middle Ages, for instance.
I know: the hidden meaning behind this “study” is that we should take away their wealth so they can’t emit carbon or whatever.
I would also like to point out that the poorest 50% of the world’s population account for about 90% of all terrestrial and maritime pollution (i.e. garbage) and if you don’t believe me, take a trip anywhere in the Third World: look at the garbage carried out to sea at the river mouths of the Ganges, Congo, Yangtze and Amazon — to name but some — and drive for any distance outside the major cities to see how the Pore & Starvin just fucking trash the place.
The sooner we defund or otherwise destroy the United Nations, the better off we’ll all be. Ask me which is my preference.
