Author's Note:
The
most significant fact in this piece – “However you slice it, cars just aren’t
that big a part of an ostensible CO2 problem. Personal cars sit idle 95% of the
time. Planes, trains, ships, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles
account for well over half the emissions associated with the transport sector
globally. And the transport sector itself accounts for only 14% of all
emissions.” In other words, personal cars generate only 5 % or so of man-made carbon
based emissions.
There can be no question – spending trillions
of taxpayer $ subsidizing electric vehicles -- including an alternative infrastructure
required to build remote charging stations and prevent landfill and water supply
contamination from battery disposal (pure fantasy), is yet another fruitless, ideologically
driven dream promoted by privileged, elitists who refuse to look at the facts
and then spread ideologically driven myths about the sources of and solutions to
man-made carbon based emissions. No better example of this than Al Gore’s book “Earth
in Balance” – written 26 years ago, stating, among other myths -- “the
internal combustion engine, used on most cars and trucks, as an outdated
technology, is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide production and
thus poses a ‘mortal threat’ to society.” There was not a single fact
that supported his statement. It was
pure nonsense that he continues to promote, flying around the globe in his
private jet while making millions of $ in speeches attended only by self-righteous,
uninformed activists.
We can only hope that, at some point, fact based lessons of history, logic and common sense will eventually overrule the fantasy of some sort of undefined “technology breakthrough” that will efficiently duplicate the trillions of $ already invested in the fuel supply chain and production of increasingly cleaner internal combustion engines that, worst case, produce 6% of carbon based emissions.
"The folly of the “Green Movement” equates to “Alchemists” of the Medieval period in the sordid history of human folly."
The Lessons of
‘Dieselgate’
Insane amounts of
political capital were spent trying to wring meaningless CO2 reductions from
cars.
Angela Merkel had a bad 2018. Outsiders heard the word
“migrants” during her party’s many electoral defeats. But a more urgent concern
for millions of German voters was the fate of diesel cars they bought because
they were told it was good for climate change.
In May, Hamburg became the first city to ban all but the
most recent diesel models from its downtown. Well, parts of its downtown
anyway—those parts suspiciously close to air-quality monitoring stations.
Other large cities such as Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf have
rolled out more-stringent bans or must soon do so thanks to environmental
lawsuits. Stuttgart, home of Daimler and Porsche, will impose a citywide ban.
Starting next month, Frankfurt—the nation’s financial capital—is under orders
to outlaw a quarter of the vehicles registered to city residents. Even a
stretch of the autobahn near Essen will be closed to diesels.
In typical fashion, Ms. Merkel dithered forcefully through several
party elections, hinting that the snafu would be fixed at the expense of German
auto makers, not taxpayers or car owners. Voters were not fooled. Now Ms.
Merkel is a lame duck. Meanwhile, the travails of the German car industry are
cited, most recently by the Bundesbank, as a factor in Europe’s sudden and
ominous economic slowdown.
The air-quality lawsuits were the work of a small group
known in English as Environment Action Germany, which goes by the German
acronym DUH, and is funded mainly by donations from Germany’s central and
regional governments (and Toyota).
It doesn’t help that DUH was itself once a proselytizer for
“clean diesel,” even pushing the technology on U.S. environmental groups as a
quicker way to bring down carbon-dioxide emissions than waiting for electric
cars to catch on.
Diesel does deliver a tad less CO2 per mile than gasoline
but produces more smog and particulates, a detractor that turned out not to be
fixable. Remember the Volkswagen
scandal of 2015, when U.S. regulators ended the charade by discovering that
emissions from imported VWs were 400% worse than advertised?
To this day, though, nobody in Europe is willing to
acknowledge the biggest flaw in the continent’s now-defunct regulatory fetish
for diesel.
However you slice it, cars just aren’t that big a part of an
ostensible CO2 problem. Personal cars sit idle 95% of the time. Planes, trains,
ships, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles account for well over half
the emissions associated with the transport sector globally. And the transport
sector itself accounts for only 14% of all emissions.
Now for the knee-jerk response from groups like Union of
Concerned Scientists: Yes, but road-vehicle emissions are a significant share of
total emissions in the U.S. and Europe.
This is a perfect example of the politics of the meaningless
gesture, the dominant motif in climate policy. The planet doesn’t care where
the emissions happen. The U.S. and Europe could ban driving altogether and it
wouldn’t make a sizable difference. For real leverage over CO2, the target has
to be heavy industry, electricity generation, and home heating and cooking.
So why the car obsession? It’s a mental legacy of the
air-pollution fights of the 1970s. To many voters, the car remains a sinful
object. Eco groups, for purposes of self-promotion, can’t go wrong by
portraying themselves as fighting against the automobile. Yet they get
virtually nowhere on the alleged problem of CO2 by doing so.
Result: Insane amounts of political capital are spent trying
to wring meaningless reductions from cars rather than spending it where it
might do some good (such as reviving nuclear power). A case in point is a new
European standard, announced two weeks ago, that would require emission cuts of
37.5% from new autos by 2030.
This target, it’s already clear, will be met by car makers
subsidizing consumers to buy electric cars to offset profitable petrol and
diesel cars. Europeans pretend these electric cars will be charged with wind
and solar power. They won’t be. Germany already is clearing a forest to open a
new coal mine to supplement its heavily subsidized but inadequate wind and
solar power.
Europe’s diesel folly ranks as a colossal policy screw-up.
Even today preferential taxes, a legacy of the push for diesel, continue to
incentivize Europeans to buy such vehicles. The problem isn’t just Western
governments reaching the limits of their competence
(though that’s a factor that
bears careful consideration). A whole generation of green activists and
politicians probably will have to die away before rational priorities for
limiting CO2 emissions will be discussable. When that day comes, you’ll know it
because nobody will be lying to you that putting a Tesla in your driveway is
the solution to climate change.
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