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Who's forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it's Mary Nichols. She's run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state's zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing President Barack Obama's national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplishment in a four-decade career.
Nichols really does intend to force automakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency's heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regulations today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California's famous highways. "If we're going to get our transportation system off petroleum," she says, "we've got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now."
We've seen campaigns to defend smoking and not wearing seatbelts and not getting vaccinated. Is this like that, or is there more to it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:19PM
So you teach wild ass economic speculations as physical science? I think what you describe is bizarre. For example, why is the cost of saving Miama = cost of absorbing CO2? You could also just build a system of dikes and canals... That is just for example.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hubie on Monday August 03 2015, @10:02PM
No, he's teaching them how to think a problem through. To be a good scientist, you need to be able to attack these kind of order of magnitude problems. That's why Enrico Fermi cared how many piano tuners there were in Chicago [utexas.edu], among other things [umd.edu]. Too many people think Googling for an answer is a sufficient replacement for being able to think through problems.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @10:21PM
Not from that description. I find it difficult to believe that thinking a problem through would result in concluding that we need to either scrub X amount of CO2 from the atmosphere or evacuate miami. Either way, it is (extremely inappropriately in my opinion) presenting wild economics speculations as hard science. The Fermi examples are good, but they are a completely different beast. Estimating something is not the same as wildly speculating. If I said "CO2 is so bad it'll cost a quadrillion dollars to fix it", it is just as valid as the above which makes bizarre assumptions.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:19PM
Thank you! This is exactly the point. Not to assume that my two "solutions" are the only ones, but rather to consider options and analyze them for feasibility. Aka critical thinking. Apparently the AC hasn't heard of that idea. ;)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.