The first thing the UK could do to reduce the usage of fossil fuels for transport is to increase the fuel duty and raise the at the pump price to roughly £3 per litre.
Drivers or their employers would find a way to reduce their costs.
Then the government would need to keep increasing the fuel duty so that fuel price inflation was roughly 5% higher than retail price inflation.
Hybrid vehicles would become instantly popular.
Public transport and cycling/walking would become much more used in the towns and cities.
Next we need to tax air fuel. Cut down on air generated pollution and cut down on air freight.
I would not get elected as an MSP, nor an MP and the costs would hit me hard since I live out in the country and rely on a car. The bus service to anywhere is one per hour during the day dropping to a 2hourly service later and nothing after 11pm. No back shift for me.
And another thing. Living miles away from our place of work/learning/leisure is what brought about much of our polution. It was very different 100 years ago. we lived next to the factory/school/coalmine/farm
Drivers or their employers would find a way to reduce their costs.
Then the government would need to keep increasing the fuel duty so that fuel price inflation was roughly 5% higher than retail price inflation.
Hybrid vehicles would become instantly popular.
Public transport and cycling/walking would become much more used in the towns and cities.
Next we need to tax air fuel. Cut down on air generated pollution and cut down on air freight.
I would not get elected as an MSP, nor an MP and the costs would hit me hard since I live out in the country and rely on a car. The bus service to anywhere is one per hour during the day dropping to a 2hourly service later and nothing after 11pm. No back shift for me.
And another thing. Living miles away from our place of work/learning/leisure is what brought about much of our polution. It was very different 100 years ago. we lived next to the factory/school/coalmine/farm
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Amen Brother, watch the video I suggested in post #34 😛
FWIW I live in a *large* city, haven´t had a car for the last 15 years ... nor needed it, most of my life lived near downtown and now I moved away ... 2 miles, still well within the City, with excellent and inexpensive public transport.
On average twice a Month need some Cargo capacity, whether full sheets of wood, rolls of Tolex, full sheets of aluminum, or need to deliver half a dozen speaker cabinets, in that case just pay for a van/truck/lorry (he he, multi lingual edition 😉 ) and use it.
If needed any other day to, say, bring rolls of copper wire or transformer lamination or electronic parts of cans of paint or glue, a rented car or Taxi is cheap and more than enough.
Moved to the same place where I make my amps, speakers and cabinets so no commute at all, am close enough to downtown, including our "Music shop streets" that customers prefer to pick their stuff here, at the Factory, instead of a downtown shop where they have parking problems.
Added bonus: they can test anything, full blast 😉
And for faraway province customers, I am near a couple transport/freight hubs/terminals, where I drop stuff and let them distribute all over the place (all of Argentina and neighbouring Countries).
In a nutshell, perfectly adapted to "very expensive oil and cars" future. 😎
IMO, electric vehicles would need to meet the minimum guidelines to be viable for most suburban folks:
300 mile range (~500km) minimum worst case.
10 year battery life w/ prorated warranty.
Battery must retain 90% of chargeable capacity at 10 year life.
Abundant 15 minute charge stations.
Of course, vehicle cost, technology and electrical grid issues would have to be resolved. Imagine the electrical requirements of a charge station with ten large electric SUVs on a 15 minute charge!
The actual number of fast charge stations could be much less than gasoline stations because they are most important to travelers. Most people commute well within a 300mi range and since cars spend a far greater part of their life parked, they could be charged at a much lower rate, usually right at home.
The latest electric vehicles show that we are close but not really there yet. The rest of the infrastructure needs work.
300 mile range (~500km) minimum worst case.
10 year battery life w/ prorated warranty.
Battery must retain 90% of chargeable capacity at 10 year life.
Abundant 15 minute charge stations.
Of course, vehicle cost, technology and electrical grid issues would have to be resolved. Imagine the electrical requirements of a charge station with ten large electric SUVs on a 15 minute charge!
The actual number of fast charge stations could be much less than gasoline stations because they are most important to travelers. Most people commute well within a 300mi range and since cars spend a far greater part of their life parked, they could be charged at a much lower rate, usually right at home.
The latest electric vehicles show that we are close but not really there yet. The rest of the infrastructure needs work.
I'm watching it, on and off. I liked the cheesy beginning by the way, but that's because I'm weird........as a small boy I saw lots of people driving one way and lots driving the other and thought why don't they stay where they are and each do what the other was going to do.....as I said...weird!
How would charging at home work when so many UK towns and cities are like this or worse ? Many roads are little more than car parks, often reduced to just one lane.
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The street I lived on was like that, it was also a bus route, and the buses regularly shifted people's cars onto the pavement for them, I jest not, America is another world......300miles are you for real? Your problems are only just beginning.....
Another way is to build super fast public transport fueled by reduced investment in new roads or extensions. There are cities in Europe where owning a car is only essential if you work outside of town, you just can`t beat speed of public transport there. Unfortunately, going for high taxes on air freight would impact business and if trade has barriers - no one wins. Then new factories would be opened locally and due to lack fo competition, you`d get into a soviet era quality (like British Leyland for example). Air transport polutes a lot, but we still have no alternative to it. Besides, gas-turbines are very efficient propulsion devices.
Yeah right. Then you sanctimoniously walk to your supermarket to discover that everything has trebled in cost as trucks are used to deliver to the goods to, well everywhere. And the lowest income people, who never had cars will not be able to afford to eat. Great idea.
You think a return to the 1940s way of life would be good. Talking to my parents not sure I would agree. given the changes in the last 70 years the only way back is a major loss of population, war, famine, desease or natural disaster. Tambora eruption in 1816 caused about half the population of some european countries to starve to death. That would help.
We are too addicted to fossil fuels, but there is no easy single fix.
+1, Bill
more humane and universal birth control should be part of the greater strategy, since we're also addicted to the activity that leads to growth, and for most of the population, life spans are substantially longer on average than ever before
but Mother Nature will always have the last laugh
more humane and universal birth control should be part of the greater strategy, since we're also addicted to the activity that leads to growth, and for most of the population, life spans are substantially longer on average than ever before
but Mother Nature will always have the last laugh
My brother was listening to a group of his contemporaries talking about their very ecologically conscious green recycling lifestyles like it was some kind of a competition when one of them challenged him on his planet saving credentials. He said "I'm greener than all of you merely by not reproducing"
Billshurv, you are part of the problem, I suspected as much.........
Billshurv, you are part of the problem, I suspected as much.........
"People will need to go back to City living"...Are you nuts? American culture was built on the premise whereby, if you worked hard, eventually you would be able to evade the city-life by your wealth, your own oasis of a home surrounded by a buffer of greenery (as small as it maybe).
Me & my family reside in Mar del Plata, as you probably know, is a "getaway" city, for residents who live in virtual "landlocked" locales. The suburbia style housing is indeed lost here in Argentina, upscale homes still have sandwiched common walls...& yes indeed at times we still have to endure the screaming children of the neighbors because of that common-wall.
You want to return us to that bee-hive of housing?...& all the traits of crowded peoples?, No thank you...No bee-hive, no farm either, the "suburb", a comfortable compromise. Sure, I'll erect a wind-turbine if necessary, and a solar-panel...but I wouldn't be able to do that on a layered, "space-saving" concept that seems to be prevalent here & other locals (see UK 'homes' picture)...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...........
To get to Andrew's Idyll of a factory at the end of road, where people walk to work with the new world symphony playing in the background would require a pretty major reboot of society, which would be a lot easier if we got back to the population levels of 100 years ago. It'll happen one day. After all current genetic research claims the human race was down to around 1000 individuals at one point about 100k years ago!
Edit: I do accept the human bottleneck theories are still contentious
Edit: I do accept the human bottleneck theories are still contentious
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Yep, most things are just a matter of time after all. The fossil fuel era will probably end up just being a blip in human history. The transition back to localised living will I imagine take a similar time as it took to get here. I just find it a bit depressing that quality of life as regards pollution breathed can't be improved in the meantime. I don't think it's about education, we know about the carbon cycle, and that burning fossil fuels is a kind of madness.....but so long as it's not in my backyard........who cares about the inner cities I mean really...it's obvious from the posts and links here that not enough people do
I do actually care, just that there is no simple single fix. It is a complex socio-economic puzzle, which means that politicians and lobbyists are the wrong people to try and solve it.
Good, you are describing the future.
What part of "no-more-oil" you don´t understand?
Do you think that actually there´s lots of it, at low price, just a couple bad guys are hiding it under their mattresses?
Wishful thinking won´t solve the problem.
Good? ... no .... but probably there´s no choice, so relax and enjoy.
All addictions have a universal cure, it´s called "cold turkey".
But no need to go to that extreme.
I bet it will be gradual and focused: regular cars might be forbidden or more probably taxed so high that *you* will choose not to drive unless *really* necessary or urgent; delivery trucks will probably be kept, with controlled routes and rationed fuel so they do what´s needed but no "free tickets", mid-long distance goods transport will rely on trains, which can easily be electrified, they need no batteries at all; liquid fuel will be reserved for planes which have no other option and probably ships, which are incredibly efficient.
In all, quite a livable society.
And we´ll have to get used to it, like it or not.
1 ton of steel/plastic to drive 1 person 50 miles either way every day so they can just work?
Or 10/15 miles around home just to do the shopping?
Forget it.
The "We're running out of oil mantra" has been drummed into our heads since the likes of Jimmy Carter in 1977 saying something the likes of ' we should be getting by with less, it is inevitable, we won't have oil soon". All crap, the technology has been steadily marching ahead & "miraculously", new really really big discoveries have been made...the Canada tar-sands & the American fracking industries have broken the backs of the OPEC nations. No longer will all of us be slaves to the cartels, the technology has broken everything wide open. This doesn't even take into account the massive yet untapped reserves found off-shore of Brazil.
Reminds me of the science-fiction short story of the time-traveler, this individual seeking riches, has access to a time machine, travels back in time to an oil-field in Texas somewhere around 1915...he knows of a giant, massive oil-field, worth billions of dollars in HIS TIME...he comes across this down on his luck oil driller..."I'll give you $2000 for your hundred acres of land"...the poor soul says, "yeah, OK, I can't get anymore oil here, It's run dry for the longest time, I'm giving up on the oil business"...the greedy one says "here ya go, $2000"...the landowner hands over the deeds...the greedy one says ..."You have no idea what you've done...there's billions of dollars worth of oil down there, you just haven't found it yet"....the now former landowners says "...of course I know there's oil down there, it's just three miles down & I can't get to it". The greedy one says, "Three miles down?, that's easy...?" The tired former landowner says "since when can a oil drilling derrick go down more than 750 feet?"" Tungsten carbide drill-bits & gas-turbine engines, easy!".............."What's Tungsten Carbide?...& Gas-Turbine?" says the old man..."don't you know anything about oil-drilling?", says the former landowner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.........
Reminds me of the science-fiction short story of the time-traveler, this individual seeking riches, has access to a time machine, travels back in time to an oil-field in Texas somewhere around 1915...he knows of a giant, massive oil-field, worth billions of dollars in HIS TIME...he comes across this down on his luck oil driller..."I'll give you $2000 for your hundred acres of land"...the poor soul says, "yeah, OK, I can't get anymore oil here, It's run dry for the longest time, I'm giving up on the oil business"...the greedy one says "here ya go, $2000"...the landowner hands over the deeds...the greedy one says ..."You have no idea what you've done...there's billions of dollars worth of oil down there, you just haven't found it yet"....the now former landowners says "...of course I know there's oil down there, it's just three miles down & I can't get to it". The greedy one says, "Three miles down?, that's easy...?" The tired former landowner says "since when can a oil drilling derrick go down more than 750 feet?"" Tungsten carbide drill-bits & gas-turbine engines, easy!".............."What's Tungsten Carbide?...& Gas-Turbine?" says the old man..."don't you know anything about oil-drilling?", says the former landowner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.........
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> The "We're running out of oil mantra" has been drummed into our heads since...
It was hot news in 1918. The easy gasoline was gone. "Gasoline" was increasingly what used to be kerosene, hard to spark. Significant differences in car engines. The "end of oil" WAS in sight.
I too panicked in the 1960s and 1970s. But gasoline today is cheaper than ever (on a hamburger/pizza index). I'm not worried about real shortage in my lifetime.
It was hot news in 1918. The easy gasoline was gone. "Gasoline" was increasingly what used to be kerosene, hard to spark. Significant differences in car engines. The "end of oil" WAS in sight.
I too panicked in the 1960s and 1970s. But gasoline today is cheaper than ever (on a hamburger/pizza index). I'm not worried about real shortage in my lifetime.
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