European Union countries have reached a deal backing stricter climate rules that will eliminate carbon emissions from new cars by 2035 and a multibillion-euro fund to shield poorer citizens from carbon dioxide (CO2) costs.
The 27 EU members found a common agreement on Wednesday morning on draft legislation aimed at slashing EU greenhouse gases by at least 55 percent in 2030 compared with 1990 rather than by a previously agreed 40 percent.
[...] The decision to introduce a 100 percent CO2 emissions reduction target by 2035 for new cars and vans will effectively prohibit the sale of new cars powered by petrol or diesel in the EU nations.
After fraught negotiations, they agreed to form a 59 billion euros ($61bn) EU fund to shield low-income citizens from the policy's costs over 2027-32.
[...] Europe's leading clean transport campaign group, Transport and Environment, said the EU governments' agreement is "historic" as it "breaks the hold of the oil industry over transport".
[...] By declaring that only cars and light utility vehicles which emit no CO2 can be sold from 2035, "we are sending a clear signal that we need to meet the climate targets. This gives the car industry the planning security it needs," she said.
[...] The overall goal is to put the EU on track to become climate-neutral in 2050 and to prod other big polluters, including the United States and China, to follow suit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anotherblackhat on Friday July 01 2022, @09:07PM (1 child)
Several pundits have predicted that EVs will be the majority of car sales RSN - politicians must act quickly or else they won't be able to take credit for the switch to EVs.
Seriously, as the price of batteries falls, the price of EVs fall. Soon, people will buy EVs because they're the cheapest option. No additional government action required.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2022, @09:48PM
Wake me up at that time.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by Opportunist on Friday July 01 2022, @09:18PM (3 children)
I won't be in office anymore by then, let's do something that makes us look good and also entertains us later when we watch our successors try to manage the clusterfuck!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2022, @10:42PM
Ha ha, forward planning. Suck it nerds.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday July 02 2022, @11:55PM (1 child)
Do you propose we continue to do not a lot, and only make sort term decisions and plans that suit the currently elected individuals? Maybe I didn’t pick up on your sarcasm?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday July 03 2022, @02:02PM
How about setting manageable milestones to that goal? Declaring that you want to achieve a goal by some arbitrary, far away future is meaningless. What's your milestone for that goal in 2 years? In 5?
By punting the problem down the road, we don't get nothing in the end. Of course we can't go "carbon neutral" (or whatever the high profile goal du jour is) with a month. But we can start moving towards it. Declaring a lofty goal and pretty much dumping the execution onto your successor or, worse, the next generation, that's dishonest.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 01 2022, @09:57PM (12 children)
It's relatively easy to pass laws. Especially fool-good laws. But, Europe is facing a rather severe energy shortage in the near future, thanks to all the sanctions against Russia.
So, is Europe going to re-colonize Africa and Asia, maybe South America to get all the resources necessary to shift to a carbon free economy? Good luck with that, LOL! You can always come get a piece of North America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2022, @10:22PM
We could just do it the old fashioned way. Plenty of popcorn stocked up.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday July 02 2022, @01:09AM (5 children)
If they have to do that to reach a "carbon free" economy they will have to double down to keep using petroleum as they now do. If the fossil fuel parties in the EU and the US had not screwed us so badly, by now we would all have CAFE standards at least double what we do now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 02 2022, @10:55AM (4 children)
Fossil fuel parties like buyers of cars - who also happen to vote? I'm always wary of ideologies that have built in excuses for why they don't work. Here, the bottom line is that we don't have those standards because that's not what the public collectively wanted at least strongly either in the car lot or the voting booth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03 2022, @12:58AM (1 child)
That is not a good metric for some heavily lobbied issues like this. For instance, significant majorities in both parties want reasonable gun laws and restrictions, but that is very hard to do in the Congress (especially Senate) over the last 20 or 30 years. When you have situations where, say, Republicans all vote as a party on most issues, you know the system is broken because there is a world of difference between a Northeast Republican and a Southwest or deep South Republican, but the refusal to cross party line on almost all legislation means you can't say the voter has a strong voice on votes. Party primaries tilted by the vocal minorities of the parties leave us with non-ideal solutions. The Lisa Murkowskis of the world winning on ballot write-ins are the very rare outliers that get held up as the norm whenever any attempt to change the system is proposed. There should be far more issues besides renaming post offices where a "conservative" Democrat and a "liberal" Republican should be teaming up on, sort of like back in the 70s and 80s, because it benefits their constituents, but with the rise of national "personalities" telling people what to care about has left us with a situation where people are gladly and willingly voting against their personal interests to support their "team," even when their team changes their fundamental core values 180 degrees from what they were before simply out of political expedience.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 03 2022, @12:42PM
And why do you think we don't already have reasonable gun laws and restrictions? You're begging the question. And then follow with babbling about Republicans.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 05 2022, @01:17AM (1 child)
I'm wary of ideologies that always excuse the failings of the status quo by claiming "that's what the public wants". I've never heard a single person complain their new car gets better gas mileage than their old one. There has been a massive marketing effort over the years to convince the public that what they want is what most benefits the established industry players, especially the fossil fuel industries. The "public wants what the public gets". The "fossil fuel parties" do everything they can to make sure that continues. The problems with this is that it ensures that we are stuck with far lower mpg for our vehicles than if higher standards had been met, it prevents or stifles innovation and growth in those industries, as well as those that could spring up in supporting such innovation and growth, we will have the continued higher than necessary level of pollutants as a result from the operation of such vehicles, and we will still have the continued environmental devastation caused by the efforts to extract and refine the fuels necessary to run them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 05 2022, @03:26AM
And yet, when it comes to car preferences there it is.
Gas mileage is a near universal preference, but it is a shallow preference. For example, people also want cars that have power everything, easy to shift, AC, and accelerate well. All those things run counter to better gas mileage.
I see you haven't shown this is something that car purchasers want.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday July 02 2022, @02:29AM (2 children)
So I have to think that the Russian issue both did and will continue to push Europe towards burning less oil.
The good news is that they've got a head start on doing so, and there's a lot they can still do without causing major problems. However, your concerns about re-colonizing are misplaced: They figured out that instead of planting a flag, they simply create the economic conditions where one of their business executives shows up in a poor country with a suitcase full of cash for the people with political power, and they can extract any resources they need at steep discounts without all that bother of maintaining an army or civil government.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Saturday July 02 2022, @03:03AM (1 child)
They've already caused major problems with too-aggressive anti-carbon plans in Germany. Last winter saw freezing deaths in Germany.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday July 02 2022, @11:23AM
This is in sharp contrast to the very pro-carbon-using USA, where ... there are freezing deaths every year [epa.gov], in part caused by climate change. In 2021, Texas had hundreds of people die from a week of cold weather [texas.gov] while Ted Cruz was vacationing in Cancun.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Saturday July 02 2022, @07:27PM (1 child)
Putin will be displeased at your use of the term "re-colonize" instead of the party line "special military action".
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 02 2022, @10:05PM
Touché feelé for that one, lol. Wouldn't want to hurt Vlads feelé.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 01 2022, @10:50PM (9 children)
A clear signal to whom? Nobody who hasn't already drunk the kool aid doesn't care. Here's hoping that 2035 EU can afford to listen to that 2022 EU roar. 13 years probably isn't long enough for the wheels to come off the car, but you never know for sure.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Saturday July 02 2022, @06:02PM (8 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 03 2022, @01:07PM (7 children)
The signal is that EU governments are collectively nuts. While I think it'll be healthier in the long run for that signal to happen, there will be unintended consequences. A key one is that EU hasn't demonstrated an ability to distinguish actions that reduce CO2 emissions from those that don't. For example, Germany's Energiewende policy has increased their CO2 emissions while making their people poorer through higher energy costs. But at least, they're weaned off of nuclear power, the safest and least polluting form of power they had. /sarc
Here, I think we'll just see a considerable exercise in hypocrisy, as businesses and other organizations pretend to embrace the cause du jour just to collect that considerable public funding. The more farseeing firms will then secretly plan for a return to business as usual once things become too unsustainable. Hopefully, these future EU actions won't harm the environment too much in the cause of saving it.
I just glanced over the abstracts. The first constructs a vague "Media Climate Change Concerns index" (based on climate change-related news) and makes the unsubstantiated claim that this somehow has an effect on stock price.
While it is interesting that there is an alleged correlation between climate change news and the actual emissions of greenhouse gases, they didn't actually find the more important correlation between that alleged media exposure and stock price decreases - they merely state that somehow their work implies such a correlation.
And note this is merely for investment dynamics between 2010 and 2018. There's no particular reason to expect that to last through 2035 - especially considering that the firms which are "green" (that is, have low greenhouse gas emission per unit of revenue) are now overpriced relative to firms which are "brown" (the other thing).
As to the other paper, it claims that the centralized structure of European bank systems is a hindrance to "greener economic activities". Well, such a structure is a hindrance to far more than just that so I'm all for getting rid of it. But how does a top down mandate from the EU have even the slightest positive effect on that problem?
My take is that the EU would be far better off to just ignore the climate change unicorn and break up/decentralize their banking systems. That would have a far more positive effect - even on "greener economic activities", if your second paper is accurate.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday July 05 2022, @03:55PM (6 children)
Abstract 1.
Abstract 2.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:27PM (5 children)
In the second paper, we have again that pointless categorization of firms into green and brown, and the introduction of the dubious "Media Climate Change Concern index". And not even a decade of economic data. Seriously.
Let's see if the green/brown distinction as well as the rest of the claims made by these studies survive the next economic downturn. My take is that it'll fall apart well before 2035 arrives. For example, EU needs transportation way more than it needs token virtue signaling about climate change. And with the present green investor viewpoint, green companies are significantly overvalued and brown companies significantly undervalued. Stock markets are very efficient at fleecing the naive and delusional.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:28PM
FTFM.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday July 07 2022, @04:22PM (3 children)
Leading a mule ...
..to the water.
(And yet he still kicks and screams)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 08 2022, @04:28AM (2 children)
Or because innovative and green firms don't actually add value to polluting industries? I'll note that there are a lot of would-be green firms that had no trouble acquiring such finance. The Spanish green firm Abengoa [wikipedia.org], for example, managed to borrow somewhere in the neighborhood of 9-10 billion Euro for renewable energy projects. So those banks might be "reluctant", but they do lend.
Yet despite the innovation and value, Abengoa finally descended into a particularly large bankruptcy [bqprime.com] in 2021 due to more than a decade of bad decisions and easy money.
What will happen in a few years when those concerns about climate change fall "unexpectedly"? The elephant in this room is that there remain few significant problems from global warming and a hard sell that's getting harder to justify by the year. As I said earlier, I don't believe the present viewpoint will survive to 2035, much less have the EU meet this aggressive goal. But should it, I bet a number of countries, including the US, will be eating the EU's lunch at that time.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday July 08 2022, @07:05PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 09 2022, @12:14AM
(Score: 5, Funny) by optotronic on Saturday July 02 2022, @01:40AM (6 children)
Kudos to the European Union for trying to save the planet. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Supreme Court has decided that the agency tasked with protecting the environment doesn't have the authority to do it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Saturday July 02 2022, @03:19AM (5 children)
The United States Supreme Court has as its only responsibility deciding whether something is within the law. The U. S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and anything that disagrees with the Constitution (that is brought before the court) should be declared unconstitutional, i.e. illegal. It is not constitutional for the court to decide based on what is best for the country or what the court likes best. As has already been pointed out by several broadcast commentators, it is the job of Congress to legislate some of the things that federal agencies have usurped. Most Congress-critters are deeply immoral and lazy, so it should come as no surprise that they have shirked their duty. Expect them to continue doing so.
"Save the planet." Har de har har.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2022, @07:39AM (1 child)
Add to your list: congress are overwhelmed by lobbyists- there's little hope for the people to be heard.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday July 02 2022, @07:28PM
The people are already herd.
The people just don't know it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday July 02 2022, @11:33AM (2 children)
And yet that's exactly what the court has been doing for the last week, in case you hadn't noticed.
As for the EPA trying to do its job, the Clean Air Act as passed by Congress (and signed into law by radical liberal Richard Nixon and revised significantly under George H.W. Bush) specifically describes what the EPA is supposed to regulate as "emissions of which, in his judgment, cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare". There's a good argument that climate change endangers public welfare, and thus the main known causes of climate change, CO2 and methane, should fall under that. It wasn't like they just made up that authority, they were specifically granted it by our elected representatives. You can argue that maybe Congress should have narrowed the scope of the EPA's powers, but they didn't.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2022, @04:24PM
Nerr nerr, 6-3 again.
ComputerSupreme Joke says NO. [wikipedia.org](Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 02 2022, @10:20PM
Quite the opposite. Past SC justices have wagged their tongues around nearly insoluble problems, and reached compromises that were utterly flawed. All genuine constitutional scholars have agreed on one thing: Roe was flawed. Ruth Bader Ginsberg said so.
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit [uchicago.edu]
That was one of the most adamant defenders of Roe, telling you that the decision was flawed. However much I may have liked or disliked Ginsberg, she was an honest person, and she was intelligent enough to understand the compromise behind Roe. Any fool who tries to tell us that the Supreme Court gave constitutional protections to abortion, or that the Supremed Court established a constitutional right to abortion is dishonest and/or no scholar at all.
I mentioned earlier that congress fails to do it's job at every opportunity. It is not the EPA's job to create law. That is the job of congress. Like every other government agency, the EPA is tasked with carrying out the laws that congress writes. If congress decides to outlaw internal combustion engines in 2040, it is congress' duty to write such a law. For the EPA to make such a decision usurps the authority of congress.
We are seeing the same sort of nonsense with ATF changing rules regulations and laws on the fly, trying to shut down federal firearms dealers. On the whim of the president, ATF is actively working to put honest people out of business. In fact, they are overriding laws that congress has written.
There are too many agencies in this nation that exercise too much authority, and EPA is one of them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday July 02 2022, @03:09AM (2 children)
And hands it over to the Chinese battery makers.
The crap used to make batteries does not just appear out of thin air. Nor does all of the electricity used to power them.
A goal of perhaps some percent, or building certain infrastructure would be a better goal. But no, lets just ban everything.
How much money are the lawmakers getting from the EV companies?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2022, @04:06AM
> And hands it over to the Chinese battery makers.
I'll have Japanese batteries in my BEV, thank you very much. The Chinese ones catch fire all too often for my taste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02 2022, @07:44AM
https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/does-hybrid-car-production-waste-offset-hybrid-benefits.htm [howstuffworks.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Saturday July 02 2022, @06:13PM
Germany has abandoned a lot of the planning criteria for the implementation of wind turbines. For example, previously a distance of minimum 800m between the wind turbine and urban areas was required. That requirement is now ditched, on a national level: something rather unique for Germany, where the federal states have strong jurisdictional rights. The reason given is national [energy] security. Before anyone asks: it looks like the lifetime of the 3 remaining nuclear power plants is going to be extended [with another 10 years].
To put this further into context: the new target of the German government is 80% of the total energy expenditure coming from renewable sources, by 2030. Note: 2030. That means that the current Scholz government at the next elections in 2026 is going to be held accountable for the progress in that direction. (I only follow Die Zeit, but I've noticed that they now put statistics for energy usage out on their front page, daily. You can check that here [www.zeit.de] yourself (scroll down to Energie in Deutschland)).