An utterly crushing day for Big Oil
1) Chevron investors demand emission cuts
2) Dutch court tells Shell to cut emissions by half
3) Exxon shareholders buck the company and elect directors demanding climate action.
Thanks to all who fight–you push long enough and dominoes tumble— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 26, 2021
This guy @jamieclimate is a big reason big oil had a bad day https://t.co/7raJEP7sIZ
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 26, 2021
When the Wall Street Journal confirms that the oil giants have suffered "crushing defeats," you can…take it to the bankhttps://t.co/JtktiH5oj6
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 27, 2021
A Dutch court has ruled that Royal Dutch Shell must slash its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels in a landmark climate decision https://t.co/WBy8rpnBMH pic.twitter.com/ITsg3yn24w
— CNN (@CNN) May 27, 2021
Climate activist says Royal Dutch Shell ruling will "change the world" https://t.co/WbmGKH5M9J
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 26, 2021
So just today:
-Shell ordered to cut emissions (though that will be appealed)
-Chevron shareholders direct it to cut emissions.
-Exxon gets at least two climate activists on its board
-Ford announces it's received 70k orders for the Lightning.
-Ford says 40% EV by 2030.— Ben Lefebvre (@bjlefebvre) May 26, 2021
This happened so fast, I didn’t even know about it until this evening. I follow quite a few climate activists, but was offline most of the day. Michael E. Mann called this a tipping point today, and I trust his expertise on it.
I’m glad Anne Laurie covered the Ford F-150 the other day. I’d like to take a deeper dive into it when I have a chance. I am heartened by the advances in technology. I’ve believed for a long time, we have had the ability to solve this crisis for a long time, but what was needed was the economic incentives to make it happen.
This a late evening open thread.
craigie
The economic incentive is Change or Die.
Mo Salad
Dos
Dos.
I live in Ford country and my ex works for them. I am actually proud of the company now. They did a brilliant trick by coming out with electric Mustangs and F-150s first, instead of some tiny-ass Fiesta or Focus. If you can get people to be early adopters and buy your high-profit vehicles as electrics, then you can fund the rest of the revolution off of the profits. Bill Ford, Jr. Is for real.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
This is really excellent news! EVs are the future. My folks recently got an electric Club Cadet riding mower and honestly? It’s actually fun to drive because it has such high torque and can accelerate quickly
I think it will be important to reduce the costs of EVs so that they’re more affordable for more people
TaMara (HFG)
As it is 9:30 here, it’s duck bedtime, so I’ll leave you guys to it while I go wrangle the feathered menance.
dmsilev
Here’s a decent overview of the F-150 introduction.
A lot still to be determined, like what sort of production rate Ford can sustain (are they limited by battery supply, the number of willing buyers, etc.?), but at least from what we’ve seen so far it looks promising.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I used to think that Laurie Garrett and Michael Osterholm were un-pessimistic about Covid, I’d really think we had turned a corner.
That’s how I feel about Bill McKibben and climate.
Let it be so.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dmsilev: I’m going to be tempted to get in that line.
Ken
I will be absolutely fascinated to hear the arguments (and you know they will be made) that Chevron should ignore its shareholders.
Salty Sam
Change happens at a glacial pace, until all of a sudden, it can’t be stopped…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ken:
It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Imagine professing to believe in the free market and capitalism so much, and then throwing all of that out because new technologies are displacing old, familiar ones. It’s like EVs and renewables are being turned into yet another front of the culture war. It’s crazy
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): EVs are kind of a conservative approach, too–I know a lot of cycling and transit advocates hate them because what they really want is the complete restructuring of land use and the elimination of cars.
MobiusKlein
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Life saving vaccines are a front in the Culture Wars. That tells us that anything can become a new front.
Next up, The Parallel Postulate? Axiom of Choice?
Matt McIrvin
@MobiusKlein: Set theory has been a front in the culture wars ever since the 1960s, since it was an element of the New Math. To this day there are math curricula for the “Christian” homeschooling market that proudly advertise that there is no set theory in them.
Jager
We are on our 2nd Chevy Volt, my wife has been driving Volts for 6 years, she averages 143mpge. Normal maintenance is cheap, it costs 28 a month to charge it and it’s a really nice car, leather, great audio system and it handles like a sports car. I’m an old motorhead, (my regular car is a Z51 Corvette). The other day I was driving her Volt a young dude in a slammed Honda with a trash can muffler pulled up next to me at a light. I slipped the Volt into Sport Mode and smoked him. BTW, with the new ICE technology, the Corvette regularly gets high 20s, low 30 mpg on the highway, and I’m never under 20 in town, not bad for a car with a top end of over 180.
Gin & Tonic
@Matt McIrvin: I took 1960’s SRA New Math and loved. It made complete sense to me, and likely determined the course of my life.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, in cyclist circles they refer to car drivers as “cagers” so I’m not surprised lol. Fun fact: Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys ran a San Francisco mayoral campaign in the 80s I think. One of his campaign pledges was to ban cars within SF city limits. He didn’t win unsurprisingly
LeftCoastYankee
Change is a slow until it’s time comes.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: Christianists being so obsessively opposed to set theory might help explain why their brains are such mush.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MobiusKlein:
Hell, face masks were politicized too amazingly. So many people are so stupid it boggles the mind. I’ve encountered people who can’t seem to grasp the principle behind masks r/t infectious disease and why medical personnel wear them
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: Land use restructuring is a great idea but is 100% not going to happen fast enough to stop climate change by itself. Sure EVs don’t fix everything either but to hate them for that is just nuts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, there are always people who won’t be happy without a complete reordering of society. Unfortunately for them, most people don’t want that.
Craig
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): that’s funny, cause he lives on top of a hill and drives all the time now. Old punks are funny folks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin: These folk must never leave the city.
CaseyL
I was astonished, amazed, and heartened by the news of Big Oil’s new travails.
Another plus of EVs: Once they’re widely accepted, bought, and used, Big Oil – OPEC, Russia, whoever – will find their monopoly of the oil supply is no longer a strategic economic imperative the rest of the world has to accommodate.
Plus, I’d like to see a lot of the EV vehicle factories located in Blue states. The GQP being what it is, I can see a lot of Red states refusing to allow EV factories just out of spite. Fine!
I really wanted to get an eCar a couple years ago, but just couldn’t afford one. Maybe soon I can! I’m fine with buying a recharge membership account and “tanking up” at a charging station at a mall or whatever. (Tanking up is another term that will, please God, lose meaning in a decade or so.)
This is kind of a dizzying time to live in, in terms of scientific advances. Between EVs getting better, and mRNA vaccines looking like they could treat or cure a wide variety of diseases, we could be on the edge of a new golden age of advancement.
Pity – actually, maddening – that our politics is going in the complete opposite direction.
Sister Golden Bear
Oil companies never could internalize that they’re in the energy business, not the fossil fuels business. (Just as the railroads before them didn’t make the conceptual leap that they were in the transportation business. Likewise with Kodak never figuring they were in the “capturing images” business, not the film business.)
While there’s a lot of dislike about Silicon Valley culture, the ethos of “if you don’t cannibalize your own business, someone else will” has a lot of value. I.e. it’s better to embrace market disruptors and change the direction of your business with it, than to hold on to the past.
Admittedly this ain’t easy, and it means a lot of pain throughout the company, but if Big Oil had embraced becoming the providers of solar and wind power, etc., they would’ve been less in a position to be crushed.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Related, from Axios: States warn banks — Drop coal, and we drop you
These states collectively control over $600 billion dollars in assets in various financial institutions. The article goes on to say that even for sizable banks, these state pension funds can represent a sizable portion of their business. Of course, the federal government has a lot more dough I’m sure
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sister Golden Bear:
That’s not really true, I know of two oil companies that had solar divisions back in the 90’s.
Chetan Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Is one of them BP? I remember reading about just how much of BP’s “green energy” schtick was plain greenwashing.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I actually would not be surprised if Big Oil is sitting on a lot of innovative tech and just wants to wring every last cent out of coal and petroleum before moving on.
ETA: It also would not surprise me if they were stupid dinosaurs.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): These big banks don’t give a shit about West (By God) Virginia when it comes to choosing between them and what California wants.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy: It’s not, I used to work for them(and don’t have good feelings towards them).
SectionH
@Jager: I love my Volt sooooo much. We don’t even have a plug-in in our condo building, but we manage – free once in a while when we’re at the close shopping center, chargers various other places. Going to plug in at a “secret” place was our daily outing for a few months during the most Be Careful times. Now we’re going back to the fishing pier on Shelter Island, etc.
The Volt’s turning radius is excellent, acceleration is excellent (Sports mode? I didn’t even know. omg… ) Drives better than most of the sports cars I was ever in, never mind drove.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: They don’t have any killer tech that they’re sitting on, but they know which way the wind blows(pun intended).
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Craig:
In fairness, I don’t think his candidacy was entirely serious. But holy shit did he espouse some stupid stuff through his music as much as had good insights
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Besides where is WV going to go with its money – the investment guys at Edward Jones in Wheeling?
Brachiator
@Mo Salad:
The current base price for a F-150 is $28,940.
The projected price for the electric versions (from Marketwatch):
A bit high compared to gasoline vehicles, but very competitive compared to other EV autos, including Tesla’s upcoming truck.
If Ford can get some significant fleet sales, they might have a winner.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Start their own bank, though that sounds kinda socialist.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Do you believe that Jello Biafra was always in the level? Killing the poor and lynching the landlord? Stealing people’s mail? Although, if i were you, I would be a little worried about the Suede Denim Secret Police.
Jon Marcus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Whatever the constraint, I’m shocked that the limiting factor is how many trucks Ford can build.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
And where is that bank going to invest? Bitcoins?
Another Scott
@Sister Golden Bear: BP had its mitts on solar for quite a while – had a place in Maryland. The trouble with all new tech is getting the tech right (good enough and cheap enough and profitable enough) and getting the timing right. Few companies are willing to stick with something until the timing is right. That’s where government investment can play a big role (either at universities and national labs, or via funding R&D at companies).
It’s good that things are moving now; more!
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Hey if it was good enough for SD….
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Subaru Diane started a bank?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): North Dakota, and that’s when they were run by the original progressives.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure, it’s the money of the future. //
ETA: Sort of like UNIX, the operating system of the future for the last 50 years.
Another Scott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Finance Committee advanced legislation on Wednesday that would boost electric vehicle tax credits to as much as $12,500 for EVs that are assembled by union workers in the United States.
https://reut.rs/34ieN0G
Elections have consequences…
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, it’s not just West Virginia. It’s also PA (because they elected a GOP treasurer in 2020) and a bunch of other states. I imagine PA probably controls a lot of money being a state with a large population
I did point out that the federal government controls a helluva lot more money, so that’ll help, along with California etc. I basically agree with you
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): As does New York, New Jersey..
ETA: Remember, the states that Hillary carried in 2016 have at least 2/3 of the country’s wealth.
mrmoshpotato
Also, what macho man is going to laugh at a Mustang or an F-150?
And, try “rolling coal” in the Lightning, you assclowns!
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
I think that some oil companies realize this. But in any event, as some of your examples show, it is often difficult for a business to swerve into new areas, especially if their investment in physical assets and talent is focused on what they currently do best.
BTW, a successful pivot into new realms might be found in NCR, which began as a company which made cash registers. What they learned during WW2 in code breaking helped propel them into the computer business.
mrmoshpotato
Good luck to them on that. *eye roll
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
there will be an App for that,….
mrmoshpotato
What? Did the railroad owners think they were just hauling cars of materials and people all over the country just for fun?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I mean, I would say he was trying to be entertaining as much as giving serious observations on American society at the time. The lyrics were exaggerated for effect. It was hyperbole. Hell, DK even had a song titled, “I Kill Children” about a deranged loser who, you guessed it, kills children to be “king for a day”
However, yeah, I don’t agree with some of the messages of his songs, particularly “Kill the Poor” (“Jane Fonda’s on the screen today, convinced the liberals it’s OK, to kill the poor tonight!”, anyone?), or “California Uber Alles”, where he portrays Jerry Brown as a hippy dictator. It was dumb then and it’s dumb now.
I also never got the sense that he/DK liked video games either. DK criticized a lot of 80s culture in “Rambozo the Clown”, such as action movies and cartoons as toy commercials such as GI Joe, relating them to some kind of reactionary impulse. They saw them as recruitment tools for the military:
I think it’s hilarious how Biafra probably saw games like Metal Gear, Galaga, etc as tools to romanticize war or something lol
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Universities I think sometimes provide unexpected and indirect funding for general research, but I am not so sure that direct government funding for commercial ventures is that significant.
BTW, an odd historical footnote. Napoleon III established the Volta prize of 50,000 francs for “extraordinary scientific discoveries related to electricity.” The winner of the prize in 1880 was Alexander Graham Bell, for the telephone, even though by then he did not really need the money.
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: I think ‘hate’ is a bit too strong. The problem with BEVs is that they are likely to already take the existing massive subsidies for car/truck travel, add to them to incentivize BEV uptake, and then both miss the climate goals and continue to fuck up other things like housing.
The residual emissions from BEV construction and renewable grid construction to power them pushes out the carbon neutral point by quite a bit. Bikes and mass transit avoid these problems and serve the community better (people with disabilities, too young to drive, etc.)
The US has more land area dedicated to parking than to housing. This is not helping our housing affordability problem.
Currently 50% of the planets population live in urban areas, and that’s growing. 80% of the US population live in urban areas. Cars are well suited to rural areas, and poorly suited to urban. We need to invest in urban transportation solutions.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Have you heard of the internet? Government funded research at universities(UCLA being one of them), not initially a commercial venture, but it became one.
Martin
Also note yesterday’s announcement for offshore wind for CA. We need deep water floating turbines which is a relatively new thing. The offshore wind potential for CA is 200% of current consumption. Similar for OR and WA. And that windfield is sufficiently reliable that this can serve as baseline power.
You know who are energy companies with experience with deepwater operations? Exxon and Chevron.
Craig
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): yeah, he never intended on actually winning, pretty funny 80s dadist punk campaign though. He’s an interesting guy, kind of untethered to the reality that most of us deal with, but he’s intensely loyal, goes to the matt for any bands on his label, has an interesting perspective because of how his life’s played out, and says some interesting things now and then.
Craig
@?BillinGlendaleCA: yeah exactly! DARPA says hello.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I am starting to visualize a graph comparing the rise in the number of electric vehicles on the road and the steep decline in federal fuel taxes collected.
Martin
@Another Scott: CA, rather than provide tax abatements and the like to attract business, has developed a variety of grant programs and such from revenue generated from various carbon taxes. These fund everything from research to more direct development of technologies – EV charging, etc.
About 80% of the greentech funding in the US is in CA.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: Then you just raise the funds for road construction and maintenance another way.
ETA: It doesn’t need to be a user fee.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But Al Gore invented the internet. Also, he is very fat //
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Again, I agree with you
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL, I meant North Dakota, I guess.
I’ve said this before, but I really think Superman’s Kansas upbringing doesn’t work anymore because of contemporary politics (since you brought up ND being run by Progressives way back then. IIRC, a lot of plains states, including Kansas, had Progressive presences). I could see the Kents being far-right evangelical Christians who brainwash Clark into being a RWNJ today. God help us all if Superman is a Republican…
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
during the Gilded Age, Railroads engaged in a large range of schemes from conspiracy and collusion to repression of trade, to the point that trucking and roads became a thing.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Universities I think sometimes provide unexpected and indirect funding for general research, but I am not so sure that direct government funding for commercial ventures is that significant.
Again, that this was not a result of direct funding of a commercial venture makes all the difference in the world. Hell, a lot of government funding was for possible military purposes that did not pan out.
During WW2, the British were among world leaders in computing and programming, as a result of their Bletchley Park code breaking activities. They poured millions into this during the war, and then shut things down, labeled everything as “secret” and abandoned their lead in fields they had helped to create.
Bell Laboratories, formally established in 1925, is maybe the premier example of a research organization set up by a business. But even Bell Labs’ discoveries could not be quickly turned into commercially viable products.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The first message on the internet was sent from this room in Boelter Hall at UCLA.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: That’s why government funds basic research at universities. Many companies used to do their own basic research, the MBA’s killed that off.
ETA: Companies used to also do a lot of training for their employees and viewed that as part of the company’s culture, they don’t do much of that anymore either.
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah, and the federal fuel taxes aren’t remotely high enough to cover the infrastructure costs. USDOT estimates total external government and social costs for autos/trucks to be $0.40-$0.50 per mile. That’s road construction, maintenance, lighting, signwork, free parking, impacts from pollution, etc.
It’s unclear how the govt is going to recover transportation funds from BEV drivers, but the cost smoothing is going to be tough to work out. Right now people don’t notice if they’re paying $1000/yr in gas taxes for a lower MPG vehicle, but send them a bill for $1000 and they’ll be outraged. As I noted above, I don’t see that the feds are going to even get back to the current funding, rather than the necessary funding.
Quite a few cities outside the US have started banning vehicles from city centers and transitioning to bikes/mass transit. The cost to build out this infrastructure is less than 1/10th for cars, and the subsidies needed to entice residents are also about 1/10th.
Cars are this absurdly inefficient technology that we simply cannot stop pouring money into. At the very least, the industry needs to pull back to a much more reasonable state. The best selling EV in the world is the Hongguang Mini EV. It’s co-developed with GM. It weighs about as much as the battery pack in a Model 3, has 100 miles of range, and as a result puts about 1/250th the wear on roads as the model 3. Also less tire wear, less particulates from tire wear. Oh, and it costs $5K, so you don’t need to subsidize it in a market where median car prices are $33K.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
This is true in an urban setting, but untrue outside of one and that include folk that live in an urban area and want or need to travel outside of one.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t particularly believe in user fees, nor was I trying to advocate one in my example.
The impact of increased fuel efficiency on fuel taxes is already hotly debated. An acceleration in the adoption of electric vehicles just adds another layer to this discussion.
Comrade Colette
@Matt McIrvin:
I wouldn’t say a lot want the complete elimination of cars; it’s more like a noisy, extreme few who get a disproportionate amount of attention and misrepresent themselves – mostly in social media and comments sections – as a bigger force than they are. (Hmm, sounds familiar.) The mainstream transit and cycling advocacy positions are that land use and transportation infrastructure should be (1) built to prioritize pedestrians, transit users, and other non-single-occupancy-vehicles humans and (2) massively restructured with expansion of transit and safer non-motorized options so that far more people in far more places don’t have to drive to meet their needs. Of course lots of people, especially in non-urban areas, will still need to drive, but they should have more options, too.
Martin
Here’s an example of what’s being done with utility eBikes.
Hongguang Mini EV.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Comrade Colette: Let me put it this way, this past weekend I traveled to Anza Borrego State Park, which is out in the middle of nowhere and some of the places I visited were not even on paved roads. I could not do this without a car. Mind you, I also had to haul a bunch of camera gear.
Jack Canuck
And here’s another one to add to that list for today, from a news report on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp, to be clear): “The Australian Federal Court has ruled that Environment Minister Sussan Ley has a legal duty not to cause harm to young people of Australia by exacerbating climate change when approving coal mining projects.”
Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/climate-class-action-teenagers-vickery-coal-mine-legal-precedent/100169398
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Oh yeah. Gonna have to re-read Dee Brown’s book.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s true outside of that as well. The average weight of cars in the US has gone up by half a ton, while families have gotten smaller, and the population more urban.
It’s simply not possible that we have a greater need for adding mass to vehicles that are doing less work. An F-150 weighs 4,000-5,000 lbs and most of the time is only carrying a 200 lb person. That’s not sustainable. It’s how we got into the climate situation we’re in. Preserving the privileges of a 5% efficient vehicle by simply shifting to a different drivetrain isn’t going to hold. I know everyone wants it to, but it won’t.
Craig
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. Various agencies pour money into research at Stanford, Cal, MIT, etc.. and lots of those researchers spin private companies out of that research. Places like DARPA also dump money into private research shops like Applied Minds(which has a shop in Glendale) to do either highly focused projects, or just ‘I got an idea’ projects. Govt. does both University research and funds private companies, often these are the same people.
So your original point holds true.
Comrade Colette
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Of course. I do that, too (minus the cameras, because I am the opposite of a photographer). Roads and cars aren’t going away and will still be essential for lots of places and uses. But it’s not an extreme position to say that transportation infrastructure and modes should be rebuilt, over time, so that most people in urban areas can safely and conveniently go most places they need to go from day to day without driving and parking a single-occupancy car – and without the immense climate-destroying emissions, the huge number of fatalities and injuries to drivers/passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists, the devotion of a quarter or more of our cities’ land area to pavement instead of housing, etc., etc. That won’t happen through some idiots’ notion of banning or eliminating cars. That’s a false choice.
ETA: I want to re-emphasize what I said above about prioritizing transit, pedestrians, and bikes. That doesn’t mean eliminating everything else, just changing our planning priorities so those go first and fewer of our resources go to cars of any kind.
ETA II: because we won’t need cars as much. It’s not a matter of depriving or punishing car drivers but of creating better, life- and climate-saving options.
Brachiator
@Martin:
This is simply not true. Mass transit is a weird Holy Grail for some people. Even the pandemic demonstrated that you can cut down on the use of cars only if you increase the use of trucks and SUVs to deliver stuff to people’s homes.
I used to commute for years, by originally by choice, and later for health and other reasons. In Los Angeles County, commuting was sometimes easy, but often a pain. And I watched as routes were curtailed as costs increased and federal matching funds decreased. You had idiots like the Bus Riders Union stupidly fighting against commuter rail service and trying to argue that buses should be in effect an on call limousine service for low income riders.
The effectiveness of mass transit varies greatly by community and city. But it also has to be augmented by taxi service and delivery vehicles, and by personal use autos as well as other vehicle options.
Ruckus
Like everything else, technology change takes time and effort.
Electric cars are a huge technology change. The concept has been around for over 100 yrs, but the early race went to petroleum, which was cheap, it only needed availability to use and that was solvable with the technology of the time. Battery technology was lead acid, because that could be made, but that was heavy, very heavy and requiring lots of room and servicing for any kind of range and power. So we got gas and diesel, and all it took was money and pollution. Modern automotive propulsion battery production is very different than lead acid battery production. It is very possible that the recycling of these batteries can be well into the 90+% recovery range. So they have a lot longer life, better and very likely lot cleaner recovery. But a big problem right now is battery production and cost. The cost part is dropping rather fast and the price per kilowatt hr is getting very close to the range where an electric car with good range can actually cost less than a petroleum powered car. But most car companies are following the Tesla mode and making high end cars with extras to sell at a premium to help pay for the development costs because the cost to change the entire concept of automotive manufacturing that’s existed for about 100 yrs is immense.
Electric vehicles are better in most every way but we have a huge manufacturing history and investment with petroleum based transportation and that will not change overnight. It is changing rapidly though and over the next couple of years the change will be obvious.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
Kodak was sometimes among the first with respect to innovation, but could not pivot into new business opportunities.
Even though Kodak’s discoveries were amazingly innovative, other companies were better at delivering consumer and professional products.
Ruckus
@Martin:
There will have to be changes in how roads and infrastructure is paid for by the government but I’d bet that given our spread out of a lot of our population we will never completely get rid of personal transportation. Take LA. We have several bus lines, and they do work after a fashion. We have the Metro train system that works pretty good but of course right of way is tough to come by in a price effective manner. So LA is building out more subway track. Yes LA has subway trains. And then there is the MetroLink system with diesel locomotives and double deck cars. I’ve ridden both systems and they work OK. The MetroLink lines are/were, pre Covid, often standing room only leaving Union Station in LA and that’s a lot of people. I’ve ridden trains in Europe, a long time ago and they worked better because they ran a lot more trains. But then gas is a lot more costly there because of the taxation, to help pay for the entire transportation system, roads, trains and buses.
My point about LA is that to build more you have to take out something else, housing/commercial space, making it even more expensive and you will likely still never have enough coverage to make coverage good enough. Cars are here for the foreseeable future. Better electric and renewables than what we have now. Far better.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
The pandemic will be gone at some point. Enough vaccinations, enough deaths and the virus will be slowed in transmission enough to be a pain in the arm rather than a pandemic. It seems that most of the problem with the system now is political and eventually that can be a self fixing problem, abet a very messy one. But look at CA, most areas are getting into the at least not bad level of spread. Even at the rate vaccination has fallen to is not all that bad in over all participation. But the pandemic has cut mass transit participation down massively. I drive now in situations that I used to ride the LA mass transit system and I did that quite often. The exposure to Covid was just too likely.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Some folk need trucks to do their job, and some folk need a all wheel drive vehicle to go where they need to go. You are correct that many folk want a larger vehicle, some want it for safety, make them pay extra for them, tax them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Comrade Colette: In the before times, where I could take mass transit, I would. If I needed to go to DTLA on a weekday, I’d take Metrolink from here in Glendale. I love mass transit, but there are some places, even here in the basin, it’s not practical or even possible to get to your destination.
SectionH
@Comrade Colette: Our neighborhood(s) in SD have been busy building dedicated Bike lanes on our streets. That’s great. But… um, I actually encountered A polite cycler today. I remember one last week too. Woo, best ever!
Sorry, attitudinal as a description of most them is probably unfair, but it’s common. I think it’s the Blow Through the stop signs on the flat lands without giving a shit that bugs me. Oh, and fuck the pedestrians…
I’ve spent enough time in the Netherlands that I know from bicycle riders. So this “I’m a superior person because I ride a bicycle” really grates on me. SHARE THE ROAD also involves pedestrians, for instance.
VeniceRiley
@Matt McIrvin: Ro get rid of cars, you must impoverish women, or make men civil.
What I mean by this is find every woman who rides mass transit you can and ask her about her experiences. Believe me they aren’t an engineering challenge.
Youll pry my automobile from my cold dead hands.
Mary G
Ridiculously pleased because the teen got home from 11 hours washing dishes because a bunch of people didn’t show up, and the big manager told him today that he sees him working hard and doing things other people should’ve done. He and three others in the kitchen are going to be getting a weekly bonus. Also, if he’s still there when he turns 21, they will make him a bartender, because he’d be so good at it.
While I think it’s mostly BS to keep a good employee in a kitchen that has a revolving door of staff members, it still makes me happy because he’s been told all his life that he’s just a fuckup who’ll never amount to anything. He says he will definitely graduate though he is “strategically” failing one class he doesn’t need to graduate. I told him to check his math; I did that in college and ended up one credit short and had to go to summer school.
Keith P.
@SectionH: I’ve got a Volt, too. It’s a great car.
Mary G
@VeniceRiley: Preach, sister. I took a bus from LA to Lake Tahoe for spring break alone because I had a late midterm, and it was a freaking nightmare. Not going into details because “not all men” makes me want to slap somebody, and the “I’m shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment” can be strong here.
Joey Maloney
That was Superman as Alan Moore wrote him back in the mid 80s, in The Dark Knight Returns. “Yes—you always say yes—to anyone with a badge—or a flag,” is how Batman describes him.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I recall seeing variants of Superman’s origin story in which Clark Kent left Kansas and traveled the world before settling down and getting his job at the Daily Planet. (I know that some adaptations, like “Lois & Clark”, had jokes where during a late-night work session, Clark would offer to pick up some takeout Chinese food, and come back in about ten minutes with some very good stuff from a little place he knew … in Shanghai.)
I suspect a big part of what makes an RWNJ or a true-blooded Trumpist is isolation and epistemic closure. And part of the Superman origin mythos (as I understand it) was that he grew up different, having to hide what he truly was, and didn’t come into his own until he accepted his underlying self, that under Clark Kent of Kansas was Kal-El of Krypton, and it was only then that he could become Superman.
Amir Khalid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Actually, I think a Kansas-raised Superman could still work today. Not everyone in Kansas has succumbed to full-blown Republicanism. It remains entirely plausible that Ma and Pa Kent can be politically conservative and still be good, decent people as well. Also too, Kal-El/Clark has the benefit of his birth father Jor-El’s pre-recorded education at the Fortress of Solitude.
Robert Sneddon
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Big Oil companies are already moving on, to natural gas which doesn’t have the cooties of the older forms of fossil carbon energy. In the US in 2020 natgas fuelled about 40% of electricity generation as well as providing a lot of home and premises heating, process heat for industry etc. Natgas share of the world energy markets has been increasing year on year for the past couple of decades and everyone is scrambling to frack and pump more and more natgas to meet the demand.
Basically the EV car revolution will mean more natgas extraction and consumption and atmospheric CO2 with a few Galts Gulch owners being able to afford fifty thousand bucks worth of solar panels and home batteries fitted to their million-buck McMansion to provide IGMFY “green” power.
Geminid
@Comrade Colette: The environmental movement has always had it’s left wing. In the climate debate, groups like the Sunrise movement and Extinction Rebellion (and militant bicyclists) occupy this end of the spectrum. For Extinction Rebellion, a transition to clean power is insufficient; they demand “Degrowth.” The Sunrise Movement may share the Degrowth ideology, but they emphasize pace and timing, and contend that fracking has to be ended now; Biden’s goal of a carbon-neutral grid by 2035 will be five years too late!
An interesting aspect of the ambitious Green New Deal proposed by Senator Markey and Representative Ocasio-Cortez was that “Big Green” entities like the Sierra Club did not sign on. The left wing would argue that this is because these organizations are dominated by corporate interests. I would argue that they understand that if we must achieve a sustainable planet, we need a politically sustainable program to get there.
In it’s October 2018 report, he U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. That is to avoid climate change effects much worse than those we are incurring already. A target date of 2050 may seem like just a nice round number, but according to British climate scientist Myles Allen, IPCC modeling of a clean energy transition showed that a reduction of two gigatons of carbon emissions per year was a practical limit even with governments mobilizing to achieve the target (current world carbon emissions are currently ~44 gigatons a year).
Miles Allen served with the IPCC and contributed to it’s report. Allen’s article in the February, 2019 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled “The Green New Deal: a View from Across the Atlantic” provides a very good overview of challenge of combating climate change.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And I’m not suggesting that cars go away. Of course there will be a need for them for some people. But we need to pay the full costs of automobiles, which we’ve never done. And when you see those costs in full, a lot of alternatives start looking a lot better, not the least of which being simply smaller, more efficient cars.
Mokum
@Matt McIrvin: Wow, are these Christians advocating univalent foundations? Infinity categories for those speaking in tongues? Topoi for the end times?
Booger
@Craig: And don’t forget FFRDCs.
Another Scott
@Booger: DoD Title III also too – https://www.businessdefense.gov/Programs/DPA-Title-III/
It goes on and on.
Cheers,
Scott.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not really. I mean, I own a car and I leave the city, but I would be totally cool with restricting car access to DC (I live in the DC area). Getting around the city by bike, e-bike or scooter is perfectly practical. I rode my bike into work pretty regularly in the before times and it was actually faster than driving because DC has put in a lot of dedicated biking infrastructure and in the bike lanes a commuter can bypass a lot of the car traffic congestion.
And my commute is like 8.5-9.5 miles via the most direct bike friendly route, so I’m not like going only a couple of miles. Plus I use the dead time I’d be spending behind the wheel of my car to get a decent workout.
Biking is a lot cheaper because no gas or electricity bill impact and I don’t have to pay through the nose for parking. I could take DC’s metro but with the walk to the nearest metro that takes just as long as biking. Driving is literally the slowest, most costly, least efficient of my options. I suspect that in a lot of metro areas that is the case for many trips, but people are just conditioned to get into their cars when they go anywhere.
With panniers/trunk bag I can make grocery store runs on my bike and avoid the aggravation that is the disaster of a parking situation at the nearest Whole Foods. Or I have a Giant a little over a mile away where parking is fine but it really doesn’t take me any longer to bike than to drive there.
My main problem with cars is not the environmental impact (although that is a serious problem) but the danger they pose to anyone not in a car. I’ve been hit by a car (totally 100% the driver’s fault) commuting to work by bike. I know two other people in my neighborhood who have been struck by cars walking across intersections. I witnessed another jogger be struck by a vehicle while crossing at a crosswalk with the right of way. That’s one guy whose seen two such accidents happen in real time and knows two other people with similar experiences, and it’s not like I’m canvassing the neighborhood to try to find everyone whose been hit by a car either.
I like being able to get in my car and get out of dodge. But, I like not having to get in my car to get around the city. Parking is a pain in the ass everywhere, expensive in a lot of places, and scooter, e-bike or regular old muscle power bike + metro is probably as fast or faster than driving. Honestly, why pay $1,200 per year for insurance, plus $25K or so for a car, plus gas and maintenance, to use the least practical way to get around? I may not buy another car when the one we have bites the dust. $40K – $50K in lifetime ownership costs pays for a shit ton of uber rides and car rentals.
Ken
@Mokum: I suspect the curriculum is arithmetic, some geometry, and maybe some algebra, with no foundations. And really, that’s all most people would ever use.
I am somewhat curious how they teach subtraction; by the “carry” method, or by the “borrow” method that came in with the “new math” in the 1960s. Most of the parents would be after that generation so might not know the carry method, but set theory was also part of the new math package.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@SectionH: Yes there are asshole cyclists but they do less damage than asshole car drivers. People constantly complain that people on bicycles don’t obey the rules of the road. It’s true, we don’t always come to a complete stop at 4 way stop signs. Often, it’s because the car driver with the right of way is waving us through. Often it’s when we are actually first to the stop and have the right of way, in which case rolling through gets us and everyone else on their way faster.
That’s the classic “bikers won’t obey the rules of the road example” except, every single person who drives violates various driving laws all the time! Everyone. I know, because I drive. Failure to signal turns is an epidemic, as is failure to obey the posted speed limit. Just because everyone accepts that a car driver should be able to go ~ 10 miles over the speed limit without getting ticketed doesn’t mean everyone is not breaking the law. I never ever break that particular law while on my bike. And I see plenty of cars that run red lights, roll through stop signs, etc. – all the very same things they bitch about bicyclists doing.
When it comes to pedestrians I try to be extremely courteous while on my bike – I basically treat them as if they have the right of way on multi-use paths and sidewalks (which I avoid riding on sidewalks whenever possible). I know many cyclists are kind of dicks in various situations but honestly car drivers are total assholes in a lot of situations too. Changing modes of transportation doesn’t change the asshole quotient. It’s just for some reason everyone gets pissed at the few asshole cyclists and pretends all cyclists are like them but people accept that if I drive and I’m not an asshole, not all drivers must be assholes. Well, no, not all drivers are assholes but they have the same asshole quotient as every other mode of transportation.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@SectionH: Also here’s the situation where I see the biggest issue with pedestrians while on my bike, and I’m guessing it’s the situation where cyclists are the biggest “assholes” in the Netherlands. A common biking infrastructure setup in the US is dedicated bike lanes adjacent to lanes for car traffic, and adjacent sidewalks for pedestrians. Now, if a pedestrian decided to mosey down the middle of the lane dedicated to cars, severely impeding traffic, most people would think the pedestrian was either an asshole, or a crazy person with a death wish, or both. They would be like why isn’t that person using the sidewalk?
Well, that same thing happens all the time with dedicated bike lanes. Pedestrians treat those lanes as an extension of the sidewalk. That is not their purpose. In that set up pedestrians have dedicated infrastructure – the sidewalk – and they should use that infrastructure and not the infrastructure dedicated to biking. But, if a cyclist says something to a pedestrian using the bike lane it’s always the cyclist that is perceived as the asshole.
The Netherlands has a lot of dedicated “bikes only” infrastructure but a lot of people not from there who visit treat that bike only infrastructure as “anything but cars” – meaning pedestrians – rather than bikes only. When you invade their dedicated space they will urge you to use your dedicated space instead, which is what you should be doing anyway. The fact that you don’t know the rules or don’t like them doesn’t mean they’re in the wrong. Now, if you’re in multiuse space or pedestrian space and they’re running you down then, yes, they’re just being assholes.
Just Chuck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): And in the other corner, weighing in at probably bigger than WV’s entire economy, is CALPERS. They’ve refused to divest so far, but the pressure is there, and when they do WV will lose.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Just Chuck: I really don’t understand WV’s dedication to the coal industry. It doesn’t produce hardly any jobs anymore – they have big machines that do most of the work that people used to do. My mom grew up in PA coal country and those jobs were awful. They literally take decades off your life. Why not try to move toward something that’s both less dangerous and has better long term prospects?
Just Chuck
@Ken: “Carry” is the inverse of “borrow”, it’s for addition. Can’t really get rid of that concept, it’s how number systems work.
Common core math tends to teach using intermediate results that are easy to do in one’s head, for example doing the powers of 10 in the multiplicands first. It’s a trivial example of mathematical tactics, something actual mathematicians do all the time, and a subject that normally doesn’t come up until advanced calculus. But some snowflakes can’t stand the idea of their precious children doing anything but rote mechanical calculation according to The One Right Way they were taught.
Just Chuck
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: It produces the job of Coal Company Executive, and that’s the only job that matters to WV.
Just Chuck
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear he takes his holiday in Cambodia too.
burnspbesq
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
‘But it could be, if you could make the little box connected to the odometer that transmits data to the folks who send out the bills indestructible and non-hackable.
Uncle Cosmo
It’s more general than that: Too many enterprises (whether private or public) fail to understand that they’re really in the service business: They deliver their customers something that serves those customers’ ends. Coal, oil, gas – railroads, airplanes, autos – are all a means to an end (even if a few steps removed from that end). They may be more tangible than things like money, governments and laws, but they come down to the same thing.
I’m reminded of a couple of SF concepts: the Epstein Drive (James S.A. Corey[1], The Expanse) and the Shipstone (Robert Heinlein, Friday[2]). When someone asked the authors of The Expanse how the Epstein drive works & they replied, Extremely well! Well enough to enable a Solar-System-wide human society without violating things like the speed-of-light limit. In Friday, the Shipstone is an extremely-high-density power source that comes in all sizes from lighting a flashlight to powering a starship. Like the Epstein Drive it’s a “black box” – not a word about how it works, just what it can do when it does – and like the Epstein Drive, it effectively “powers” the star-spanning society of the novel.
No one who uses an ICE-powered vehicle[3] particularly cares how the engine works[4], certainly not down to the “bare metal” of the chemistry, physics and thermodynamics involved. They care about how it affects their lives and what they need to do in order to maximize its positive effects (and minimize the negative)[5].
[1] Pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.
[2] No opinion expressed or implied re the quality of the novel; discussion confined to the Shipstone concept.
[3] Except for those who work on their design, fabrication, maintenance, or consumable requirements; and then only to the extent of what they need to understand to perform their tasks.
[4] Putting aside the side effects, the answer, frankly, is “surprisingly reliably and well” for a mechanism so complex. Wouldn’t we all love it if our self-phones and computers were as reliable?
[5] I.e., for your typical shortsighted, cantankerous Homo sap, effects on their own lives and people and things they care about. Everyone/thing “other,” screw ’em, amirite?
Unique uid
@Brachiator:
I think you are slightly misled by the $29K gas base price. That is for a 2WD, regular cab pickup (XL model).
I’m looking at the Ford build-a-F150 in another tab. The electric one is SuperCrew, and all the electrics are 4×4. Just choosing those two items gets the base price to $40,160! If the $12,500 tax credit goes thru, the selling price of the electric Pro model would be $28,000 !!
I haven’t added the destination and “acquisition fee” (?) which leads to an actual price of $42,500 for the gas version. Probably the same addition for electric?
The most I’ve ever spent on a new vehicle is $26,000 for 2000 Grand Caravan. (and even better with the 0.9% financing offer) I just don’t even consider anything above $40k. My last truck died in 1999, I have been wanting a replacement for a long time. While I hate short beds and SuperCrews, I could maybe make this work.
Dan B
Great news for renewables! We’ve had solar pv on our roof for 11 years so it’s paid off in rainy Seattle. The $2500 check every year is very nice. We’ve had Nissan Leafs for 6 years and dread driving the truck. When I dug into my retirement savings and bought a new gas range I bought two induction countertop cookers – Duxtop – to assuage my partner’s horror at deadly chemical filled franking gas (our silverware suddenly developed weird black spots). I’m the cook. I’ve used the wonderful new gas range six times in the last month. Induction is fast and there’s little cleanup. The fans are noisy but it’s not bad since the cooking time is quick.
We’re amazed at how few young people are marching in the streets. We were young, and activists in Vietnam, Civil Rights, Gay Liberation, AIDS, etc. So the news is good and we hope for more feet in the streets.
Dan B
@Martin: Smaller cars, yes!! And especially smaller trucks. The world outside of the USA is filled with little trucks hauling materials efficiently. My partner would love to have one but we’d have to buy two and wreck one for the National Highway Transportation Board to certify. It’s nuts. I used to haul 4×8 plywood sheets in my Toyoya Tercel wagon. It was easier than lifting them into the bed of my one ton truck.
currawong
@Jack Canuck: You beat me to it