Richard Parry-Jones is Ford's former chassis guru, the man who worked miracles for Ford of Europe's mainstream motors. icWales.co.uk reports that the Welshman isn't enamored with the ongoing assault on motoring in the name of climate change. PJ told members of the Cardiff Business Club (at The St David’s Hotel & Spa) that CO2 emissions must be reduced by all sectors; cars are only a part of the climate change problem. In other words, don't throw the four-wheeled baby out with the rising bath water, boyo. “Should we not look again at the sheer cost effectiveness of cars providing transportation and pleasure to society and embrace and encourage new car technology and improved road capacity?" Hey, good luck with that. Meanwhile, the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) wants his fellow Welshmen to know he's not a car slut. "I am pro-mobility and I am pro the environment – and actually I think most of us are.” If only common sense were common.
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I think Mr Parry-Jones is talking rubbish. The car industry is being hit just like the manufacturing side is (do you know how many licences and documents I need to sign to show various agencies that we’re trying to reduce our emissions?!) and nearly every other industry is. Global warming is a man-made problem and WE need to fix it. Not just the car industry. We need to reduce, not just CO2, but other poisonous gases too.
I could go on here spouting about people driving SUV’s when there’s clearly no need to have one, but we all have a part to play. I actually wish petrol prices were higher. It’s funny to see these mothers moaning about an extra 2p on a litre of petrol, but seem quite happy to spend £40K on a SUV they don’t really need.
It just amazes me how many car companies (I’m looking at YOU, Detroit!) spend so much energy fighting these regulations, rather than work just as hard at meeting them.
CARBON TAX
@David – I’m up for a debate again. No carbon tax – raise gas taxes! (edited)
Brendon, but we must also deal with coal. Ergo, a carbon tax. If you like, make it revenue-neutral by cutting some other tax (although infrastructure investment would be better).
KatiePuckrik: “It’s funny to see these mothers moaning about an extra 2p on a litre of petrol, but seem quite happy to spend £40K on a SUV they don’t really need.”
Yep; I had to laugh out loud at that. You’re describing a close relative and her Yukaburbahoe.
@KixStart: perhaps I’ve missed something – why must we deal with coal on the vehicle directly? This simply doesn’t take into account the usage of a vehicle – if one is set on a carbon tax, why not tie the carbon tax into a gas tax? The typically story that I refer to is a person doing a 150km commute in his Prius vs. the guy doing a 2km commute in his Yukaburbahoe (I like the term – and obviously at 2k, you should probably be walking!). I believe we’re encouraging the wrong (discouraging the right?) behaviour…
A gas tax (or motor fuel tax) is only going to address the portion of CO2 emissions that are derived from operating your car, which is a significant fraction of our CO2 emissions but not nearly the whole story. A carbon tax would be a more comprehensive way of taxing CO2 emissions and would include CO2 emissions that fuelled your electric vehicle. A carbon tax would encourage investment in all kinds of alternatives to carbon-based fuels (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, OTEC…).
In any event, the carbon tax would still be proportionate, so a 15mpg SUV that goes 2 miles/day would pay less carbon tax than a 45mpg Prius doing 150 miles/day. So, it would still be an incentive to trip reduction, carpooling, etc.
And, yes, at 1.6 miles/day, it’s hard to see how waiting for it to warm up and then finding a place to park would make driving any easier than walking. Certainly biking looks a lot more attractive (the bike racks are always right by the door!).
Brendon,
Ideally, a carbon tax would tax fossil fuel whereever it is used. Thus, there would be incentives not just to buy efficient cars, but to insulate your home, to reduce the packaging and transportation of products to market, to make manufacturing more efficient, etc, to encourage the super wealthy to have normal sized houses, to farm organically instead of chemically. Thus, the pain would fall not just on motorists, and conversely, the incentives to conserve would fall hardest where the need is greatest.
You could, in theory, replace the income tax with a comprehensive carbon tax, or at least reduce the income tax.
@Kixstart – I can more readily understand a carbon tax if it where in line with actual consumption, but if this where the case, why seperate it out from the regular gas tax? I’m a fan of keeping things simple – we already have the infrastructure in place for collecting gas tax and adding a secondary tax and all the government management that goes along with it simply doesn’t seem like a good idea (and perhaps even more so with all the current discussions about C02 potentially be a false alarm when compared with methane, etc, etc).
I also don’t “buy” the idea that Carbon tax would be used to find alternative energy sources any more then a gas tax would. One can still appropriate tax money to a given cause, regardless of the label under which it was collected.
I suppose my point is that socienty seems to want to reduce overall effects of vehicle use in the easiest way possible (naturally without it affecting anyone’s lifestyle – but that’s another story); to that end, it’s easy for people to see that the more they use their vehicles the greater they’ll pay at the pumps – I’m hoping this won’t spawn a huge number of alternative vehicles, but force slightly denser population models and better transport systems in North America (ie sink gas tax into public transportation, regentrification of cities, etc); after all, even if we were all driving electric cars, I’m not a fan of sitting in quiet traffic either!
Before we ruin our economy and our fun, don’t you think it would be prudent to make sure any new anti-global warming laws would have a significant effect on global warming? From what I have read, an increased gas tax, 35 mph CAFE rules, carbon trading, etc. would have little or no substantial effect on long term global temperatures. If so, then such draconian measures would be terrible public policy.
@David – you may swaying me a bit – however, it still sounds like the same tax under a different label… After all super-sized houses still need to be heated/cooled; if this was done using solar (if someone could figure this out cost-effectively!) the carbon tax evaporates does it not? I suspect that higher gas prices will probably hit people more then the carbon tax; the only “advantage” to a carbon tax is that it could be due all at once (ie yearly) – the shock value might dissuade some people…
I do suspect that there are too many social services in place to to replace income tax with carbon tax in the long run, however a reduction is certainly viable.
There are so many easy, immediate things that could be done to reduce carbon emissions that aren’t being addressed at all, such as making it illegal for environmental crusaders to have more than one 50,000 sq ft house, and so many sources of C02 emissions that are being ignored that it is very hard to take this movement seriously. The fact is, cars are being targeted for purely political reasons that have more to do with finding a reason to raise taxes, environmental grandstanding, and limiting people’s choices and mobility.
The more I read these anti-CO2, anti-car, “We MUST save the world from global warming” bits, the more I realize modren environmentlaists are just green washed fascists.
YOU are wrong for wanting to drive a Ford Exhibition. Thou must drive Toyota Pious.
YOUR greed and love of a 1st world existence will kill all life on Earth and possibly the galaxy. YOUR a bad person who’s lifestyle is wrong and must be detroyed.
YOU are wrong for questioning the science of global warming (I’m looking at you hockey stick graph, lack of oceanic temperature data, and complete lack of solar radiative input data).
YOU ARE A BAD MAN from the oil companies for daring to question the wisdom of The Creator of the Internet and First Emperor of the Moon, Al Gore. YOU MUST BE A SWILL for not blindly accepting the link between cars and global warming.
Seriously folks, the Earth’s getting warmer. Big whoop. Longer growing seasons, less wintertime enrgy consumption, faster shipping through the Northwest channel, easier access to mineral and energy wealth in Antartica and North Pole, sounds good to me (and I’m sure good to Russia, Canada, and China).
Brendon,
You apply the carbon tax when people buy the fossil fuel. You tack it onto the price of gasoline, the price of heating fuel, etc. The whole point is to encourage people to switch to efficiency or renewables, and away from CO2 emitting fuels.
There would of course be some carbon tax embodied in the manufacture of anything. The manufacturer will have had to pay for the fuel, some of the added carbon tax will inevitably be passed onto the consumer. How much? I don’t know. If the carbon tax were to substitute for the income tax, it would be substantial; if the carbon tax were simply an add-on to discourage consuming fossil fuels, it would amount to much less. But I don’t have numbers for you.
@David – you may swaying me a bit – however, it still sounds like the same tax under a different label… After all super-sized houses still need to be heated/cooled; if this was done using solar (if someone could figure this out cost-effectively!) the carbon tax evaporates does it not? I suspect that higher gas prices will probably hit people more then the carbon tax; the only “advantage” to a carbon tax is that it could be due all at once (ie yearly) – the shock value might dissuade some people…
Morbo,
Don’t tar all environmentalists with being fascists. Most aren’t. Many are probably not even targeting the car deliberately, although undoubtedly many are.
Most people don’t try to think deeply about anything, and the car is such an obvious user of fossil fuel that it’s easy, if you’re not thinking, to say, lets get rid of most of them and shrink the rest, and we’ll save the environment. (It’s the same principal as thinking that the solution lies in nuclear power. It’s a big, macho-sounding technology.) If you investigate this stuff, you realize that buildings are the source of far more greenhouse emissions than cars, and agriculture is also a major source, and thus, if you target cars, you are targeting only a small piece of the problem.
Unfortunately, warming is real, and it is going to make things harder, not easier, for agriculture, because weather is going to be more extreme, and there will be more drought all over. Further, tropical diseases will start invading the US. Literally millions will be displaced as the ocean rises. Coastal cities will be very hard hit, including those in the US.
Brendon,
The purpose of the carbon tax is not to use the proceeds to search for altenative fuels. The purpose is to raise th cost of conventional fuels so that people conserve energy and use altenrative fuels instead of conventional fuels. Th proceeds could be used to defray the income tax, to support the arts, to give every family a Boxster, whatever the body politic dictates.
Brendon (and anyone else)
The theory behind the carbon tax is that carbon causes damage to the environment which is what economists call an externality–a cost of the transaction of buying fossil fuel that is not paid for by anyone. Thus, in theory, the ideal size of the carbon tax should be enough to pay for said damage–a hard figure to gauge, but one that the relevant scholars are probably working on.
Another fossil fuel related externality is the cost of defending our access to oil fields, and having to be obsequious to nasty middle eastern and other countries. One could, in theory, also have a special tax for that, which would be levied on petroleum.
I know I’m just a head-in-the-sand denialist with no regard for God’s green Earth, so consider that when you read this.
All of the doomsday predictions as laid out above are mere theories, yet (as the “green” movement repeats over and over ad nauseum) they are presented as undeniable consequences! These theories are conceivable and possible outcomes but, in fact, these theoretical outcomes are far from scientifically certain. I could postulate that there will be little consequence to increased CO2 in the atmosphere and be just as certain.
The anti-CO2’s also continue to ignore solar inputs to the climate change equation and arrogantly assume man is actually capable of changing the Earth’s climate. These theories are generally based on the correlation of CO2 spikes to temperature spikes through geologic history (through the use of ice cores and such). However, correlation does not mean causation. Is it not possible that sunspot activity could result in higher average global temperatures? Is it also not possible that higher temperatures may lead to higher CO2 levels? What is the cause and what is the effect? Is there definitive proof anywhere?
Further, without the benefit of such knowledge, it is beyond foolish to implement regulations and taxes as proposed above. Frankly, it smacks of elitism. Such legislation will erode freedom and limit enterprise most significantly for those who cannot afford them. The wealthy will continue to afford such luxuries as luxury vehicles, large residences and secondary homes, and personal air travel. Forget a tax. Ration fuel for all. Mandate per capita energy consumption limits regardless of means to acquire. No more Gulfstreams. For anyone. Especially elitist snobs like Al Gore. After all, it is everyone’s Earth and it is only fair.
jschaef481: “The anti-CO2’s also continue to ignore solar inputs to the climate change equation ”
I don’t understand the popularity of this myth. In fact, insolation IS used in developing climate models and it IS in the IPCC report. It’s easy enough to get the facts and, yet, somehow, few do.
As it happens, last year was also in the top 10 for hottest on record (tied for second hottest) and we were at an insolation MINIMUM, so it reeeeally shouldn’t have been quite so hot… if insolation is the only thing that matters.
Maybe CO2 concentration IS important.
These theories are generally based on the correlation of CO2 spikes to temperature spikes through geologic history (through the use of ice cores and such).
They are also based on the fact that CO2 acts like the windows on your car when it sits in a parking lot in the sun. The windows let the sun’s wavelength’s of radiation in, but they are opaque to the wavelengths that radiate off of the inside of the car, so that the car heats up much hotter than the outside air. CO2 acts like the windows of the car. That’s a physical fact. If it weren’t for CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the earth would be far colder than it is. but the increase is heating it up.
If you still don’t believe that, consider this: the oceans are becoming increasingly acid from th co2, and if this keeps up much longer, the shellfish, the fish, and the coral will all die. Since seafood caught from the oceans is a signficant portion of what earthlings eat, and since the population is expected to keep on rising from the current 6.6 billion to about 9 billion by mid-century, losing a big source of food is a scary prospect.
Katie:Global warming is a man-made problem and WE need to fix it
1. no scientist has proven global warming
2. even if the planet is getting hotter no scientist has proven that its due to man
3. even if the planet is getting hotter and its us no scientist has proven what it is we are doing that is causing it. what if its something else we are doing (like running billions of air conditioners that turn energy into heat).
the planet has been significantly hotter (the whole earth was a dust bowl) well before man was on the scene.
the planet has been significantly colder (the whole earth was a snowball) well before man was on the scene.
the largest source of energy on earth is the sun.
there has not been enough investigation into what is actually happening with our climate and current models are not nearly sophisticated enough to even begin to describe the situation fully or with any amount of certainty…
lets not destroy our economies and way of life on a guess. how about we actually pay someone a few billion to actually investigate this and determine for certain what is happening and why (including doing contradictory analysis – something that isnt happening now because no scientist can get funding unless he follows the party line).
dont expect to see any politician support this idea though…too many lay people who have no knowledge of science and no understanding of the difference between fact and theory already believe the hype – even though no one has proved one god dam thing…
in short – global warming is not a fact…
And cigarette smoking does not cause cancer.
Cigarette smoking does not cause cancer. Wouldn’t ALL smokers develop it if it did? Smoking is just one factor in one’s propensity to contract the disease, but it is not THE cause. Again, more incomplete statements. How about this: Cigarette smoking can be harmful to one’s health.
By the way, if the Earth is as surely headed towards doomsday as the anti-CO2er’s hypothesize, shouldn’t our solutions be far more dramatic? I mean, famine, drought, rising oceans to draw proposals more likely to actually reverse the CO2 levels, eh?
There are different genetic susceptibilities. Some people will definitely get lung cancer if they smoke, but there are people who can smoke like chimneys without getting lung cancer due, I believe, to single gene differences. Eventually, people will probably be able to find out what their susceptibility is so that they can make an informed decision about whether to quit. Of course, smoking causes far more heart disease than cancer, and the relationship is probably considerably more complex than that between smoking and lung cancer. There are better, safer ways to satisfy a nicotine craving.
And yes, measures to mitigate CO2 should be far more dramatic. (see Plan B 3.0, by Lester Brown, for example.) Unfortunately, H. sapiens have trouble responding to abstract threats, and by the time this is no longer abstract, it will be too late.