General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

I think that the approach is asinine, but SUVs are a significant reason why our vehicle emissions have been rising instead of declining like they should have with modern technology.

They aren’t #1 for emissions, but it’s moving the goalposts if we are only allowed to spend effort protesting and controlling the #1 emitter.

I wanted to come back to this.  I’m not against this protest because it’s not targeting the #1 source of emissions.

The current big climate goal is “net-neutral CO2 by 2050”.  A goal which is both unlikely to be achieved and if achieved unlikely to be ambitious enough to stop a lot of climate damage.

We’re at a point where achieving this goal doesn’t mean driving fuel efficient cars.  It means only driving cars that have no (net) emissions when driving, no emissions during manufacturing, no emissions when mining the raw materials, no emissions when transporting the cars around the world, no emissions when building the roads, no emissions when generating all the energy used at every stage, and so on. 

I hope that we have the technological breakthroughs necessary that existing incentives will exist to achieve this.  But that seems very unlikely.  And so we need Governments to play a big role to (amongst other things):

* Create incentives (some monetary, some legal) that make companies move to net neutral technologies and processes.
* Fund/incentivize research to develop technologies we’ll need but don’t have.
* Make sure public projects aim for net neutral.

And so on.

One big problem we have is that people think reducing emissions by X% (say 50%) by an intermediate goal like 2035 means we’ll be on target.  But if we do that with only the low hanging fruit (increasing fuel efficiency) it means we’re screwed achieving the rest.  We need to work on the hard parts now so we can scale them up in time.  And the hardest parts need the most government and public support. 

So, yes, fuel efficiency is important.  Every ton of CO2 we keep out now is good.  But we can’t waste political capital and public support on minor fights that aren’t going to move the needle in the most important ways.

You are welcome to throw your support, energy, money behind whichever environmental cause you feel is most effective.

But I really hate it when people tell others that they are focused on the wrong cause. Unless their policy is literally harmful (like EVs or suburban sprawl) if you just feel that they'd be better to spend their effort on what YOU think is the right focus area....I find it self defeating at best.

I advance my goals by spending my energy promoting them and recruiting for them. I don't advance my goals by telling others that their goals are wrong, unless their goals are actually harmful.