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EU unveils sweeping climate change plan:
The European Union has announced a raft of climate change proposals aimed at pushing it towards its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
A dozen draft proposals, which still need to be approved by the bloc's 27 member states and the EU parliament, were announced on Wednesday.
They include plans to tax jet fuel and effectively ban the sale of petrol and diesel powered cars within 20 years.
The proposals, however, could face years of negotiations.
The plans triggered serious infighting at the European Commission, the bloc's administrative arm, as the final tweaks were being made, sources told the AFP news agency.
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EU Unveils Sweeping Climate Change Plan
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She's so tough she won't take 'yes' for an answer.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday July 18 2021, @09:18PM (1 child)
>some peasant like existence.
My knowledge of peasant history is limited, but AFAIK few if any had electric cars :-)
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday July 19 2021, @04:12PM
It's all relative, but as an example: peasants had restricted mobility.
Indeed most of humanity for most of history rarely were able to venture further than the next few villages from theirs. Back in the day only the nobility could afford a "Grand tour" of Europe, or to spend Summer down on the French Riviera or Italian lakes. Now millions of people do the same trip each summer, be it by train, car or plane.
The ability for Joe average to hop on a plane and fly half way around the world is a recent phenomenon. Something that (according to the powers that be) is unsustainable, so it must be curtailed for the masses, with exemptions only for themselves and the rich.
Electric cars are a good example, as they are almost in every way an inferior technology to what they are replacing. Their long recharge times and limited range make them far less flexible than ICE vehicles, thereby limiting the range a person can travel per unit time. They are more similar to horses than cars, where a horse could only travel a certain distance a day, and then would need many hours to feed and rest before you could resume, and whose range decreased with age (like a BEV's range decreases with battery age). While the ICE car was a fundamental step forward from the horse, the BEV is a step back to those times.
Sure, there is promise of magic energy storage capacity with sub 5 minute recharge time, 500 mile ranges and no capacity reduction with age, but until I actually see something concrete in production and available for purchase for the masses, I can't consider them.
COVID restrictions have also put a major dent in travel, but unless they find a way to permanently make international travel expensive and time consuming, that may return to normal. However I think their goal is to make it expensive enough to severely restrict international travel to the rich, and those who have to travel. I guess it would be somewhat a return to the "Jet-set" age of the 50's and 60's.