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from the ban-gas-instead-of-passing-it dept.
France and the United Kingdom are doing it. So is India. And now one lawmaker would like California to follow their lead in phasing out gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.
When the Legislature returns in January, Assemblyman Phil Ting plans to introduce a bill that would ban the sale of new cars fueled by internal-combustion engines after 2040. The San Francisco Democrat said it's essential to get California drivers into an electric fleet if the state is going to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, since the transportation sector accounts for more than a third of all emissions.
"The market is moving this way. The entire world is moving this way," Ting said. "At some point you need to set a goal and put a line in the sand."
California already committed five years ago to putting 1.5 million "zero-emission vehicles," such as electric cars and plug-in hybrids, on the road by 2025. By that time, the state wants these cleaner models to account for 15 percent of all new car sales.
Could the hills surrounding Los Angeles one day become visible?
(Score: 4, Informative) by pe1rxq on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:08AM (2 children)
If you left it to a free market murder would still be a profitable business.
Sometimes you need to use laws to make sure something does or does not happen.
The Apollo and Manhattan projects were not done by the free market, they were funded by the US government with tax money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:31AM
Original poster here.
I wasn't thinking of an overall "free market" solution. I was thinking free market in regards to taxing new production of ICE powered vehicles, and associated fossil fuels. Synthetic fuel production and technology would be government funded. A combination of government funding and free market style solutions.
The faster we develop synthetic fuel tech, the better off we'll be. I believe that private industry will be unwilling to fund/invest in a crash development program of this tech. Its too expensive. Thus, government funding and national commitment will be necessary.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 01 2017, @05:38PM
The difference is that with murder, the correct solution is obvious: It should not be done. While with cars, all we know for sure is that we want to get out of fossil fuels. It is a bet that electric cars are the right solution. It might turn out that the right solution is fuel produced (in whatever way) from CO2. In that case, banning gas cars may be the exact wrong step.
A possible solution would be to forbid selling fossil fuel after 2040. Taxing it sufficiently high gives almost the same effect, but with much less enforcement effort (the tax enforcement that already exists would automatically cover it).
The point is: Regulate only the part the free market is bad at (reduce/eliminate fossil fuel consumption), but allow it to do what it is best at (find the most efficient solution to do it).
That's something completely different: Those were projects developing something, not decisions to prohibit something. And yes, spending government money on the development of alternatives to fossil fuels could also be helpful.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.