Cash for Carbon: Schumer Climate Plan Would Help Consumers Buy Electric Cars

The proposal by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York
is far narrower than plans put forth by Democratic
presidential candidates. It also has no chance of
 passage in the current Senate.

WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, is preparing a $450 billion climate change initiative that aims to replace about a fifth of the nation’s traditional gasoline-powered vehicles with hybrid, electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars and trucks in the next 10 years.

Mr. Schumer’s proposal is far narrower than the economy-altering plans put forth by most of the Democratic presidential candidates, and it has no chance of passage in the current, Republican-led Senate.

But in an opinion article published Thursday night in The New York Times. Mr. Schumer said his proposal to push the country away from internal-combustion engines would be part of any climate-change measure that would be considered if the Democrats won the Senate next year.

Read the story from The New York Times by Coral Davenport - “Cash for Carbon: Schumer Climate Plan Would Help Consumers Buy Electric Cars.”

Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska Wreaks Havoc on Communities and Ecosystems

Alaska in March is supposed to be cold. Along the north and west coasts, the ocean should be frozen farther than the eye can see. In the state’s interior, rivers should be locked in ice so thick that they double as roads for snowmobiles and trucks. And where I live, near Anchorage in south-central Alaska, the snowpack should be deep enough to support skiing for weeks to come. But this year, a record-breaking heatwave upended norms and had us basking in comfortable—but often unsettling—warmth.

This spring, temperatures in Alaska and northern Canada
 have been significantly higher than usual. Red indicates
 areas warmer than average while blue indicates colder
 than average. The darker the red, or blue, the greater
the deviation from average.

Across Alaska, March temperatures averaged 11 degrees Celsius above normal. The deviation was most extreme in the Arctic where, on March 30, thermometers rose almost 22 degrees Celsius above normal—to 3 degrees. That still sounds cold, but it was comparatively hot.

“It’s hard to characterize that anomaly, it’s just pretty darn remarkable for that part of the world,” says Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in Fairbanks. The state’s wave of warmth was part of a weeks-long weather pattern that shattered temperature records across our immense state, contributing to losses of both property and life. “When you have a slow grind of warming like that, lasting weeks or months, it affects people’s lives,” Thoman says.

Read the Smithsonian story by Tim Lydon - “Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska Wreaks Havoc on Communities and Ecosystems.”

Which generates more greenhouse gases, transportation or buildings?

It all comes back to buildings.

A few months ago I wrote that transportation is now the biggest source of US CO2 emissions, noting that the switch from coal to natural gas for power generation had caused emissions from power generation to decrease while cars kept turning into trucks and emitting more. More recently, the Rhodium Group released final US emissions numbers for 2017, including other sectors, like industry and buildings.

Architect Gregory Duncan saw this graph and suggested that architects and others in the industry should not get complacent just because the yellow line was so low, way lower than power or transportation.

Read the Treehugger story by Lloyd Alter - “Which generates more greenhouse gases, transportation or buildings?”

America Crowns a New Pollution King

For the first time in 40 years, power plants are no longer the biggest source of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. That dubious distinction now belongs to the transport sector: cars, trucks, planes, trains and boats.  

The big reversal didn’t happen because transportation emissions have been increasing. In fact, since 2000 the U.S. has experienced the flattest stretch of transportation-related pollution in modern record keeping, according to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The big change has come from the cleanup of America’s electric grid. 

The chart below shows carbon dioxide emissions from transportation exceeding those from electricity production in 2016 for the first time since 1978. The pollution gap has continued to widen further in 2017, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Read the Bloomberg story by Tom Randall - “America Crowns a New Pollution King.”

The end of petrol cars could be just eight years away

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.

Waymo is Google's self-driving car project. 

This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba . His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.

Seba's premise is that people will stop driving altogether. We will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are 10 times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel.

Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or anybody to fix the 2000 moving parts that bedevil the internal combustion engine.

Read Ambrose Evan-Pritchard’s comment in today’s Melbourne’s Age - “The end of petrol cars could be just eight years away.”