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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: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:27AM
There's another easy way to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere: it's called "planting a tree". Plant lots of trees, and you'll absorb huge amounts of CO2. Of course, the trees eventually die and fall over and the CO2 is released, but while they're alive they make seeds and those grow into even more new trees to replace their parents. The main danger is forest fires (though that frequently helps clear out old trees and helps new seeds grow).
The other thing we should be doing, besides planting lots of trees, is building the SkyTran system. Then we can get around with a tiny amount of energy (much less than even Teslas), plus we'll get to our destinations much faster since there's no traffic lights and the pods travel at 100mph. It costs much less per mile to build than a highway, and will have huge economic benefits by saving people so much time as well as money, since most people won't need private cars any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:37AM
Are you saying we could either spend a quadrillion dollars or each plant a tree?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:19AM
Bamboo grows faster and is a really versatile source of material inputs. You can make flooring with it, build whole houses with it, make paper with it, eat it, and even spin its fibers into tough, silky yarn.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:11PM
I would like to grow it but it sounds like the stuff will spread like crazy beyond my yard. The containment solutions online are marketed like some terrible Jurassic Park thing. "They will never escape containment!"
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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:06AM
Yeah, but how long does it live?
If you're looking for a way of sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and turning into a useful raw material (a wood-like product in this case), then yes, bamboo is a great idea. It grows faster than trees.
However, if you just want to plant a bunch of plants, and have them suck carbon out of the atmosphere for as long as possible (and then reproduce so their children do the same), it seems like large, deciduous trees are the better choice. They can live for centuries. Large fir trees might work too (things like sequoias and redwoods); those things are giant, and probably live a pretty long time too, though I don't know offhand. It seems to me that bamboo probably does not have a very long lifespan, so unless you plan to harvest it, it would not be a good choice here.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:40AM
About 120 years. That's roughly equal to pine trees.
Washington DC delenda est.