
Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050 - pwg
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/29/023230/Europe-Plans-To-Ban-Petrol-Cars-From-Cities-By-2050
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thecoffman
I'm surprised to see the comments here are overwhelmingly positive. Usually I
feel like the hacker community tends to have a somewhat libertarian bent in a
lot of ways, but I guess not here? I don't particularly understand why the
government needs to step in and do this. If we've reached the peak oil
inflection point by that time as some of the commenters here have speculated,
would that not force essentially the same action anyways by driving the price
of gas sky high? Additionally, it would provide a gigantic monetary incentive
for whichever companies want to pursue alternative fuel sources. To me this
seems to be something that will be sorted out by the market in time, rather
than forced at the barrel of a government gun.

~~~
cryptoz
> To me this seems to be something that will be sorted out by the market in
> time, rather than forced at the barrel of a government gun.

The purpose of this type of legislation is to _save the planet Earth_ from our
polluting ways. What if peak oil never happens for some reason? Are you just
going to sit there and let rich people pump out poisonous gasses?! For
hundreds of years?

No! Let's say that again. NO! Even the most intense libertarians must realize
that if there is zero financial incentive to help out the Earth, perhaps
government intervention is a very smart way of going.

If we _know_ that we're changing our atmosphere so quickly and so negatively
(for us and our fellow animals, anyway) and it's cheaper to keep doing it, you
already know humans will keep doing it unless it becomes illegal.

Legislation is necessary and good here.

~~~
thecoffman
I do see where you're coming from - and I tentatively agree except on two
points

 _if there is zero financial incentive to help out the Earth_

I would argue that there's a HUGE financial incentive. The company/person that
comes up with the "next big thing" in fuel sources is going to be
incomprehensibly wealthy - I think that much is clear.

 _and it's cheaper to keep doing it_

I think supply and demand almost guarantees that it will not always been
cheaper. Maybe not on an acceptable timeline, but, its obvious that at some
point it will become prohibitively expensive to continue to use fossil fuels.

I also feel like your _rich people_ reference is sort of a catch-all FUD
argument. Oh no, those terrible _rich people_ are causing all the problems.
There are plenty of people on this very forum that are probably rich by most
standards. Surprisingly, that doesn't make them faceless evil monsters.

~~~
VladRussian
>I would argue that there's a HUGE financial incentive. The company/person
that comes up with the "next big thing" in fuel sources is going to be
incomprehensibly wealthy - I think that much is clear.

the economical analysis shows that nuclear fusion energy wouldn't be cheaper
than the price of coal's energy [4c/kwt], thus without government intervention
like carbon emissions pricing and explicit forcing of phasing out of fossil
fuels this type of energy is out of question. The arithmetic is similar for
other alternative sources as well.

~~~
thecoffman
As supply of carbon based fuels dwindles, their price will go up. The fact
that carbon based fuels are currently cheaper than any alternative backs my
argument. As soon as they aren't cheaper - the market will shift.

~~~
VladRussian
>As soon as they aren't cheaper - the market will shift.

or there wouldn't be any market anymore. It is also possible that they will be
cheaper for centuries to come - the amount of coal and oil reachable in the
next 50-100 years just isn't known. And the higher the price, the less demand,
thus the less the price - the free-market behavior which has kept the price of
oil pretty stable since WWII. Instead of flying cars [more fuel consumption]
people of San Francisco are biking. As a result we have civilization developed
into Facebook instead of homes on Mars [the last statement is (C) of another
HN commenter]

It is plain stupid for the human race to sit and wait until the price of oil
will go up instead of stimulating development of new technologies [some of
which can carry us at least to closest planets].

------
lefstathiou
I view this as a disturbing assault on individual liberty and freedom.
Automobiles and the mobility they offer communities have played a monumentally
positive role in the shaping of modern society. In many ways they serve as a
form of checks and balances. With automobiles, we can put our kids in better
schools, even if they are further away, we can learn about different
communities that offer benefits relative to our own (for example lower
taxation, more open-minded, etc) and move to them. They give us the ability to
fulfill the innate human desire to explore. You may think this is silly but i
know with 100% certainty i am far less inclined to take a road trip to new
places if it entails connecting on 4 different forms of public transportation.
I own a car in the city now, but if i'm not allowed to drive it, where do i
put it?

The reality of how this will play out is that it will only further increase
the perceived and actual separation of wealth with no descernable improvement
in environmental conditions. Property prices are going to sky-rocket since
this is essentially government mandated urbanization. Poor people are going to
have to live further, commute longer and now wont have access to simple
"luxuries". Their employment options will be more limited as will their
leisurly activity. Owning a second home, something many people in europe do,
becomes that much more difficult. All because the government wants to control
how you get to from point A to B.

I hope they fail.

~~~
rfrey
My goodness, why is this being downvoted? It's a rational presentation of an
unpopular position, with some thought-provoking assertions of unintended side-
effects: who here is punishing such comments?

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donnyg107
I don't know if the EU is taking the right approach. I don't personally see
how this kind of deadline will nudge anyone along. Perhaps it will let car
manufacturers know that their Britain division will not do as well in 2050 if
they do not develop now, but I doubt that's what they were going for. I think
the EU needs to provide consumer incentives to buy EVs, such as designated
lanes or parking, or tax rebates. Companies producing electric cars are really
going out on a limb right now, and until they know that there's some kind of
serious demand beyond the environmentally minded, who simply want AN electric
car to exist, they can't understand their demographics or create a sense of
direction for their R&D. Quite simply, If governments want electric cars to
catch on, they need to turn the project into an industry, not a charity
effort. And for the industry to catch initially, the companies need to
understand the demands of their first customers, those who are most willing to
buy. They can build from there. The idea of creating a deadline turns the
prospect into more of a charity effort toward the environment, not a self
regulating, consumer rich industry. Environmental aspiration is important,
which is why the governments need to press the gas pedal in the first place,
but the companies need real paying customers to grow, not deadlines.

That, or I'm missing something having to do with the logistics of this whole
thing.

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rmc
No, The European Commission is suggesting banning cars from city centres.

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epenn
It's a good idea in my opinion, although if possible I'd rather they be more
aggressive with their time frame. By 2050 we may already have reached Peak
Oil. If that happens we may not have enough left to run cars in the city
anyway.

~~~
david927
Peak Oil is about an inflection point after which the expense of extracting
oil rapidly accelerates. It's a cost issue. And those concerned with Peak Oil
are afraid that acceleration will be faster than our ability to switch to
alternatives, causing a period of cramping where energy jumps from being dirt
cheap to tremendously expensive, until we can build out the alternatives (a
process that will most certainly take decades).

There will always be oil; we just won't be extracting it after a certain point
anyway. 2050 is an easy target for that.

~~~
epenn
Very true and an excellent point. Even so just taking the cost of production
into account, if us would-be buyers are unable to afford what's available then
we've still run out as far as being able to drive our cars in the city is
concerned. I just hope we can expand our use of alternative energy forms
quickly enough so that we don't still have all our eggs in one basket.

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quattrofan
Yeah except in Britain apparently because the Tories buggered up our rail
system so badly in the 90's we won't have a decent other option, even by then.

~~~
calpaterson
The conservative party isn't solely to blame. The 11 year stint with labour
didn't exactly lead to a host of improvements.

Furthermore, normally people banning cars in cities are in favour of improve
internal city travel via local buses, metros and bicycling. It's not really
about the kind of services that National Rail provide.

~~~
quattrofan
I would agree and disagree with that. The Tories DID bugger up the rail system
and Labour partly put it right by bringing the infrastructure back into public
ownership but they should've finished the job. I would argue though that
Labour were far to pro-airline and the Tories did at least can the 3rd runway
at Heathrow.

Lets face it like a lot of things Britain sits half-way between the US and
Europe. We want European rail travel but we aren't prepared to pay the taxes
to support it.

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enko
My first thought is that it may not be necessary. Petrol will be so expensive
by 2030 that only the rich will fill their collectible cars with it, and they
are about as likely to drive them around the cities as the Baron Montagu
commuting in his Rolls Royce Phantom.

I reckon we have about a decade of reasonably affordable petrol left before we
hit the wall in a big way. 2050 is way past crunch time. By 2050, nanotech
should be in full effect. This idea is a gesture, nothing more.

~~~
ceejayoz
> By 2050, nanotech should be in full effect.

And flying cars!

~~~
enko
If nanotech is in full effect then yes, flying cars all around, in fact we
shall have to do all we can do stop those lighter than air buggers drifting
off willy nilly.

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SePP
It should be by 2020.

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Kilimanjaro
How much oil is left?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Estimated_reserves...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Estimated_reserves_by_country)

How about natural gas?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_reserves>

If all gasoline engines are replaced by natural gas engines, we would have
fuel for a hundred years more.

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jerf
The time value of money is also a statement of our exponential decrease in our
knowledge of the future. If you knew the future precisely, the time value of
money wouldn't decrease into the future.

This statement is worthless. The politicians who would be responsible for
actually telling people that yes, its actually time to get these things off
the road are teenagers now, and those making this pronouncement today are
going to be dead.

Anything past about 2030 is worthless, and any statements about where a
government will be ten years from now is very, very suspect. Especially a
(putative) democracy, since it's a claim about what the populace of _forty
years from now_ will be willing to do. Please. If you could plan that well and
accurately we would live in a very, _very_ different world.

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dot
I'd hope so.

50 years ago a gallon of gas cost $0.27, the average yearly salary was just
over $5,000 and Ringo hadn't yet joined the Beatles.

50 years is a long time. And so is 40 :)

~~~
monochromatic
Adjusting for inflation, the gas price 40 years ago was startlingly close to
what it is now.

~~~
VladRussian
because a gallon of fuel/oil is the real unit of value in the economy,
convertible across the world, and compare to gold it isn't confined to narrow
segments of economy/population. The paper/electronic money is just reflection
of it.

------
sp332
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgZlpRdQlRI>

I think there should be some exceptions.

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alanh
Is there going to be oil left in 2050? Serious question.

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protomyth
Does this include delivery trucks?

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tybris
Usually I'm skeptical about European plans, but this time I think they might
just get lucky and petrol runs out just in time.

------
hammock
Even though you see those buses spewing black smoke from the top, and even
though a lot of them run with just a couple people some of the time, in just
about every American city, if you net it out they are saving gas (and
therefore emissions, which are directly proportional) by a factor of 15-20x.

It's a fact that 30-45% of traffic [1] in urban centers is caused by people
cruising around looking for a parking spot. With more public transportation,
not only do you reduce this traffic, you reduce regular traffic (less cars),
and perhaps most importantly, you increase the economic productivity of the
city since instead of erecting giant parking garages, they can erect giant
office buildings and condo buildings - which, by the way, has the small added
side effect of putting you closer to your job anyway since now you don't have
to commute across five parking garages just to get to work.

Taxation and skewed incentives are bad, but let's be honest that's the reason
why we have too many cars and roads to begin with. more public transportation
in cities is a good thing.

The reason the suburbs blew up is because of skewed incentives. They blew up
because everyone and their mother was able to take out a loan on a car they
couldn't afford, and fill it with gas that costs half as much as what the rest
of the world pays. It's not a good thing, and I'm not sure why you would try
and argue that it is. Suburbs aren't where we ought to be and I'm happy to
expand on why if you'd like.

Furthermore, electric vehicles and the like don't help the situation. If your
car suddenly gets 60mpg instead of 20, it's only going to ENCOURAGE you to
drive all the way across the state to get that special jar of peanut butter
you like, instead of walking down the block to the corner store. as a result,
we need to build more roads to get you to your precious peanut butter; and the
new roads in turn invite more traffic, etc.

The solution is urban development with appropriate public transportation. Now,
people hear the word "public" in public transportation and instantly think
that it has to be funded by the government in an inefficient way. But I have
been saying for a long time that that's absolutely not true. What we really
mean to say is mass transit.

The New York subway system, which is one of the first and best subways in the
world, were originally run by a couple of different private companies. Most
cities in the world (outside the US) have free-market taxi systems that are
10x cheaper than what we pay here. and the private el trains and streetcars
that used to be all over NYC before the government did away with them were
even better.

Here's another interesting line of reasoning to chew on: banning cars in the
city would go a long way to making public transportation more profitable for
the city. think about it this way, the reason public buses need such huge
subsidies to survive is because every person that rides a bus is freeing up
space for someone else on the highway, actually making it MORE desirable for
that other person to drive rather than ride the bus. but if you remove the
option to drive, then you get around this problem and you don't have to pay
extra (subsidy) for that person who looked out his window and saw that there
was one less car on the road.

Also note that I'm taking about commuter-distance travel and less- intercity
rail is a whole other story to go into.

If you live in a sprawl area like Tampa, naturally that's what you will think
about, but Tampa is not the future. Tampa is a fine place, but it grew up as a
result of bad policies and incentives. The future is cities like Shanghai,
London, Hong Kong - these are the cities with the largest GDP growth over the
last 25 years and projected for the next 25. Coincidentally, these are also
the cities with the best mass transit- London is widely regarded as having the
best bus, rail and metro system in the world; Shanghai has the longest and
fastest-growing metro system in the world; and of course 90% of all daily
journeys in Hong Kong are on public transport.

The smaller, newer cities that are "hot" in terms of growth are also mostly in
China, and where there is no mass transit yet developed, bicycles are the main
mode of transport.

The 20+ year historical trend of the US pop is towards urbanization, and
that's not stopping. In 2000, 58% of the US pop [2] lived in cities of 200,000
or greater. The WORLD's population (yes, think of even the nearly one billion
rural Chinese) is expected to be 70% urban [3] by 2050.

The future waits for no one!

Another note: We don't have to transplant people; it happens naturally. That's
the power of markets. Just look at the changes in population of Detroit vs.
New York over the last 20 years. See also The Great Migration [4]

[1]
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/par...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/parking-
fact-of-the-day.html) [2] <http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm>
[3]
[http://www.prb.org/Educators/TeachersGuides/HumanPopulation/...](http://www.prb.org/Educators/TeachersGuides/HumanPopulation/Urbanization.aspx)
[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_%28African_Amer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_%28African_American%29)

~~~
VladRussian
man, you took the time to write the post. I'll address just one point:

>Furthermore, electric vehicles and the like don't help the situation. If your
car suddenly gets 60mpg instead of 20, it's only going to ENCOURAGE you to
drive all the way across the state to get that special jar of peanut butter
you like, instead of walking down the block to the corner store. as a result,
we need to build more roads to get you to your precious peanut butter; and the
new roads in turn invite more traffic, etc.

1\. electric vehicles will for quite some time be limited in range. 150mi
currently feasible in $30K car would at best be 600-800mi if some of the
promising research reach productization

2\. the main limiting factor in the driving to get the butter is the human
time. Most of the people in the developed countries value their time high
enough.

3.wrt. "new roads" - it is a bit far fetched for today, yet for 2050 year can
we assign at least a bit higher than 0 probability of "flying car" ? :)

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dotcoma
big deal, there's gonna be no petrol left by 2050 anyway...

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TheSOB88
2050 doesn't really seem to be soon enough to cause any action. There will be
people hemming and hawing, and by the time 2050 rolls around, the deadline
will be 2100.

