dcbwhaley wrote:
They want to deprive us of cars for various reasons, some good and some bad. But with them it is, contrary to jomo's contention, the car per se that is the target not our freedoms in general.
Even if that is the case the effect is still a reduction of freedom. Without personal powered transport movements are restricted to those you can make under your own power or to the locations and at the times provided by public transport. If public transport is available to your destination the cost or travel time may effectively make the journey infeasible.
Movement of people or goods requires energy, at the moment the most compact, portable and convenient energy sources we have are chemical oxidation based. Renewable biologically produced energy sources cannot it appears supply the requirement or at least not without impacting on food production. Electrical power for charging batteries or producing hydrogen cannot be supplied by renewable sources for the same reasons we cannot make enough biofuels for vehicles. Nuclear power is a stop gap that may sustain us beyond fossil fuels at the cost of dealing with the waste and the potential hazards if something goes wrong. Unless and until we come up with some new way of generating energy, e.g. fusion, the most sustainable sources we have are solar, gravitic, and geothermal.
Of course even clean power may not solve everything, we have already seen the way cities have higher mean temperatures with the suggestion that it is due to the local heat sources we have created.
This co2 stuff is just rubbish, there are much bigger problems coming.
Edit - Not to mention the urge for reducing carbon footprint keeps falling over its own shoelaces.
Quote:
The Times - The focus on making each housing unit carbon neutral may lead to lower-density developments that use more greenfield space and encourage more car use, said Aurore Julien, at Llewelyn Davies Yeang, an architectural practice.