The reality is that we're out of time. 'Soft landings' where the economy does not undergo radical change (for better and worse) are not going to work if we're hoping to dodge some truely hellish...
The reality is that we're out of time. 'Soft landings' where the economy does not undergo radical change (for better and worse) are not going to work if we're hoping to dodge some truely hellish outcomes.
My biggest takeaway is that the last 20 years have by been an utter failure, because we're still living under the delusion that the market can innovate itself out of this.
The market is itself the problem, the global warming effects of industrialization has been hypothesized since 1896 and proven by the 1960s. We don't need to kill the entire market, but it needs some seriously hefty guardrails put in place swiftly.
The real answer for oil is equitable rationing. You set a hard cap which goes down every year, distribute rations equally to people, and force companies to purchase them from the people. Prices will naturally rise as supply becomes scarce. Rational people will use the sale of their excess rations to further reduce their reliance on them.
Other simple wins:
Set the speed limit to 55 mph again and implement automatic fining on highways that already monitor every on/off ramp.
Add a universal federal tax on electricity of $0.10/kwh, redistribute half as a monthly check to bottom 70% of earners toe ase the burden, use rest to fund green power deployment.
You burn more fuel in a city, stopping and going and peaking at under 30mph, than maintaining a continuous 70mph on a highway. The EPA MPG figures literally reflect this. More energy has to be put...
You burn more fuel in a city, stopping and going and peaking at under 30mph, than maintaining a continuous 70mph on a highway. The EPA MPG figures literally reflect this.
More energy has to be put into a system to get a heavy object moving than to keep it moving at a constant speed. One is simply negating air resistance and friction, while the other is, well, getting a heavy object moving.
Oh I am aware. But you can't defy physics with regulation. But you can save a ton of carbon, far more than just with a tax. The whole reason for the rigamarole is because we need to use every...
Oh I am aware. But you can't defy physics with regulation. But you can save a ton of carbon, far more than just with a tax. The whole reason for the rigamarole is because we need to use every method, because the less carbon, the sooner, the better.
Looking at this calculator, at 30 mpg at 55mph, that drops to roughly 27.6 mpg at 65mph. There are 260 million vehicles in the USA. That translates to 736,667 gallons of gas conserved per collective highway mile driven. If we assume that every car does only 1000 miles of highway per year (1/12th of the average total mileage), that's a savings of 736,667,000 gallons. At 20lbs of carbon per gallon, that's 7,366,670 tons of CO2 conserved, by a very conservative estimate.. most cars are far less fuel efficient and drive way more miles. That's about 0.1% of the entire emissions in the USA, purely by regulating a top speed from 65mph to 55 mph.
It does rely on enforcement (as @first-must-burn noted), but the flow of traffic will shift to within 5-10 mph of it over time. It would probably be prudent to install governors on cars.
And bare in mind this would pay dividends on electric cars too, extending their range and lowering their overall consumption as well.
I'm not sure about other EV owners, but I tend to drive much closer to the speed limit in my EV than in my gas crossover. The feedback on how much less range you get at high speeds in the EV is...
I'm not sure about other EV owners, but I tend to drive much closer to the speed limit in my EV than in my gas crossover. The feedback on how much less range you get at high speeds in the EV is much better at reminding me to slow down and not rush (which I think is just all around a good thing). But I don't have charging at home, so that may also make me a bit more conscious of lost range from higher speed.
I lived in Houston at a time when they dropped the speed limits to 55 to curb emissions. It was chaos. It is, in my experience, completely impractical nd very unsafe to follow a speed limit that...
I lived in Houston at a time when they dropped the speed limits to 55 to curb emissions. It was chaos. It is, in my experience, completely impractical nd very unsafe to follow a speed limit that is dramatically lower than the actual flow of traffic. If you had 100% enforcement, maybe it could be more effective, but more likely you have an angry mob burning down city hall.
On the market front, I doubt we'll ever see a solution as long as corporations can externalize the risk onto people who aren't their investors. Since it probably does affect their investors in the sense that they all live on planet earth, they can at least obscure their responsibility for the risk.
Regulation would be an answer, but it requires politicians and a government with more backbone than I have seen (in the US). It seems like both parties are largely bought and paid for, so we get to choose between robber barons and lukewarm lip service to progressive action.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information, personal thoughts Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Posted speed limits are a generally ineffective method to consistently control...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, information, personal thoughts
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
I lived in Houston at a time when they dropped the speed limits to 55 to curb emissions. It was chaos.
Posted speed limits are a generally ineffective method to consistently control driver speed. Senior engineers often do not acknowledge this reality, especially in places like Texas; they routinely design roads that feel safe to drive super fast on, faster than the posted limit. So of course people continue driving fast. Changing that limit doesn't change the "feeling" that it's okay to go fast. And people make decisions based on feelings more than rational thought.
The best way to consistently slow drivers is to narrow the width of the roadway and otherwise psychologically signal that driving fast risks destruction of their vehicle. This includes making roads seem visually narrower by making them look enclosed, such as with trees, high walls, or different paint patterns.
Speed cameras can help too. In Philadelphia they reduced instances of speeding by about 90% from the baseline, which reduced crashes by about 36% and deaths by 50%. This is a fairly passive method of enforcement. Physical infrastructure is more passive though...and less complex.
more likely you have an angry mob burning down city hall.
People make a fuss about literally any change whether or not it meaningfully affects them. In theory the city could do this piecemeal on various streets over the course of 3-5 years. Most drivers would not notice a gradual change from 70 to 55. Automobile traffic demand is fairly elastic and therefore real travel times would remain similar after possible initial spikes.
As an environmental activist, I'm not sure I would specifically target driving speeds. I would be more interested in reducing reliance on gasoline-powered engines, either by supporting more EV infrastructure or by supporting alternative transportation methods such as trains/buses. As far as environmental impact goes, speed by itself seems marginal at best. Slightly better MPG on the highway maybe, somewhat slower tire microplastic proliferation... that's maybe all. I would certainly welcome the change but it's not something I would spend political capital on personally. High-effort, low-reward.
As a traffic safety activist, I would absolutely target high speeds on any nominally multi-modal road. It would maybe not be super beneficial on a grade-separated automobile-only highway relative to its cost. I'm sure it would save the lives of a few drivers going way too fast, but I would tend to focus advocacy on roads with vulnerable road users such as pedestrians first, especially roads that people live on.
I wonder how much of the issue is poor feedback mechanisms and the illusion of going slower in taller vehicles (an American specialty). It's much easier to feel like high speed is the...
I wonder how much of the issue is poor feedback mechanisms and the illusion of going slower in taller vehicles (an American specialty). It's much easier to feel like high speed is the "appropriate" speed on a wide straight road in a tall vehicle. And if you've gotten used to it, 55 can feel very slow compared to even 65.
So like most of the issues related to energy and climate, it just feels like the biggest barrier to progress and change is just how entrenched we are in existing behavior and infrastructure.
I completely agree, path dependence will probably be our end, unless there is a real sea change in attitudes toward the environment. Naomi Alderman's The Future is one of the only pieces of...
I completely agree, path dependence will probably be our end, unless there is a real sea change in attitudes toward the environment. Naomi Alderman's The Future is one of the only pieces of fiction I'm aware of that even conceives of a way out that doesn't require a cataclysm first. And (without spoiling it) the circumstances that make it possible in the book seem unlikely to be replicated in real life. Nevertheless, recommended read!
It's worth noting that Houston in particular is so insanely car dependent that its easy to be an exception. Better city design around public traffic would be the best choice but that would...
It's worth noting that Houston in particular is so insanely car dependent that its easy to be an exception. Better city design around public traffic would be the best choice but that would honestly require decades of efforts in other areas.
Regulation would be an answer, but it requires politicians and a government with more backbone than I have seen (in the US). It seems like both parties are largely bought and paid for, so we get to choose between robber barons and lukewarm lip service to progressive action.
Really, the two party system in the US, paired with the cooperate media, social media and the current polarised political climate is such a toxic combination that reforming that alone would probably help many of the longer term issues in the US.
From the article: Paper link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl6547 Climate Policy Explorer site: http://climate-policy-explorer.pik-potsdam.de/
From the article:
An international research team has unveiled the first comprehensive global evaluation of 1,500 climate policy measures from 41 countries across six continents. Published in the prestigious journal Science, this unprecedented study provides a detailed impact analysis of the wide range of climate policy measures implemented over the last two decades. The findings reveal a sobering reality: many policy measures have failed to achieve the necessary scale of emission reductions. Only 63 cases of successful climate policies, leading to average emission reductions of 19 percent, were identified. The key characteristic of these successful cases is the inclusion of tax and price incentives in well-designed policy mixes.
The reality is that we're out of time. 'Soft landings' where the economy does not undergo radical change (for better and worse) are not going to work if we're hoping to dodge some truely hellish outcomes.
My biggest takeaway is that the last 20 years have by been an utter failure, because we're still living under the delusion that the market can innovate itself out of this.
The market is itself the problem, the global warming effects of industrialization has been hypothesized since 1896 and proven by the 1960s. We don't need to kill the entire market, but it needs some seriously hefty guardrails put in place swiftly.
The real answer for oil is equitable rationing. You set a hard cap which goes down every year, distribute rations equally to people, and force companies to purchase them from the people. Prices will naturally rise as supply becomes scarce. Rational people will use the sale of their excess rations to further reduce their reliance on them.
Other simple wins:
You burn more fuel in a city, stopping and going and peaking at under 30mph, than maintaining a continuous 70mph on a highway. The EPA MPG figures literally reflect this.
More energy has to be put into a system to get a heavy object moving than to keep it moving at a constant speed. One is simply negating air resistance and friction, while the other is, well, getting a heavy object moving.
Simply tax carbon and avoid the rigamorale.
Oh I am aware. But you can't defy physics with regulation. But you can save a ton of carbon, far more than just with a tax. The whole reason for the rigamarole is because we need to use every method, because the less carbon, the sooner, the better.
Looking at this calculator, at 30 mpg at 55mph, that drops to roughly 27.6 mpg at 65mph. There are 260 million vehicles in the USA. That translates to 736,667 gallons of gas conserved per collective highway mile driven. If we assume that every car does only 1000 miles of highway per year (1/12th of the average total mileage), that's a savings of 736,667,000 gallons. At 20lbs of carbon per gallon, that's 7,366,670 tons of CO2 conserved, by a very conservative estimate.. most cars are far less fuel efficient and drive way more miles. That's about 0.1% of the entire emissions in the USA, purely by regulating a top speed from 65mph to 55 mph.
It does rely on enforcement (as @first-must-burn noted), but the flow of traffic will shift to within 5-10 mph of it over time. It would probably be prudent to install governors on cars.
And bare in mind this would pay dividends on electric cars too, extending their range and lowering their overall consumption as well.
I'm not sure about other EV owners, but I tend to drive much closer to the speed limit in my EV than in my gas crossover. The feedback on how much less range you get at high speeds in the EV is much better at reminding me to slow down and not rush (which I think is just all around a good thing). But I don't have charging at home, so that may also make me a bit more conscious of lost range from higher speed.
Never before have the stakes been so high and the drive to do something so low.
Miserable reality, this one
I lived in Houston at a time when they dropped the speed limits to 55 to curb emissions. It was chaos. It is, in my experience, completely impractical nd very unsafe to follow a speed limit that is dramatically lower than the actual flow of traffic. If you had 100% enforcement, maybe it could be more effective, but more likely you have an angry mob burning down city hall.
On the market front, I doubt we'll ever see a solution as long as corporations can externalize the risk onto people who aren't their investors. Since it probably does affect their investors in the sense that they all live on planet earth, they can at least obscure their responsibility for the risk.
Regulation would be an answer, but it requires politicians and a government with more backbone than I have seen (in the US). It seems like both parties are largely bought and paid for, so we get to choose between robber barons and lukewarm lip service to progressive action.
Comment box
Posted speed limits are a generally ineffective method to consistently control driver speed. Senior engineers often do not acknowledge this reality, especially in places like Texas; they routinely design roads that feel safe to drive super fast on, faster than the posted limit. So of course people continue driving fast. Changing that limit doesn't change the "feeling" that it's okay to go fast. And people make decisions based on feelings more than rational thought.
The best way to consistently slow drivers is to narrow the width of the roadway and otherwise psychologically signal that driving fast risks destruction of their vehicle. This includes making roads seem visually narrower by making them look enclosed, such as with trees, high walls, or different paint patterns.
Speed cameras can help too. In Philadelphia they reduced instances of speeding by about 90% from the baseline, which reduced crashes by about 36% and deaths by 50%. This is a fairly passive method of enforcement. Physical infrastructure is more passive though...and less complex.
People make a fuss about literally any change whether or not it meaningfully affects them. In theory the city could do this piecemeal on various streets over the course of 3-5 years. Most drivers would not notice a gradual change from 70 to 55. Automobile traffic demand is fairly elastic and therefore real travel times would remain similar after possible initial spikes.
As an environmental activist, I'm not sure I would specifically target driving speeds. I would be more interested in reducing reliance on gasoline-powered engines, either by supporting more EV infrastructure or by supporting alternative transportation methods such as trains/buses. As far as environmental impact goes, speed by itself seems marginal at best. Slightly better MPG on the highway maybe, somewhat slower tire microplastic proliferation... that's maybe all. I would certainly welcome the change but it's not something I would spend political capital on personally. High-effort, low-reward.
As a traffic safety activist, I would absolutely target high speeds on any nominally multi-modal road. It would maybe not be super beneficial on a grade-separated automobile-only highway relative to its cost. I'm sure it would save the lives of a few drivers going way too fast, but I would tend to focus advocacy on roads with vulnerable road users such as pedestrians first, especially roads that people live on.
All politics are local. Start there.
I wonder how much of the issue is poor feedback mechanisms and the illusion of going slower in taller vehicles (an American specialty). It's much easier to feel like high speed is the "appropriate" speed on a wide straight road in a tall vehicle. And if you've gotten used to it, 55 can feel very slow compared to even 65.
So like most of the issues related to energy and climate, it just feels like the biggest barrier to progress and change is just how entrenched we are in existing behavior and infrastructure.
I completely agree, path dependence will probably be our end, unless there is a real sea change in attitudes toward the environment. Naomi Alderman's The Future is one of the only pieces of fiction I'm aware of that even conceives of a way out that doesn't require a cataclysm first. And (without spoiling it) the circumstances that make it possible in the book seem unlikely to be replicated in real life. Nevertheless, recommended read!
It's worth noting that Houston in particular is so insanely car dependent that its easy to be an exception. Better city design around public traffic would be the best choice but that would honestly require decades of efforts in other areas.
Really, the two party system in the US, paired with the cooperate media, social media and the current polarised political climate is such a toxic combination that reforming that alone would probably help many of the longer term issues in the US.
From the article:
Paper link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl6547
Climate Policy Explorer site: http://climate-policy-explorer.pik-potsdam.de/