Our society has a near-consensus that fuel economy and social justice are both important. Even if the terms can sometimes be politically charged, there is no point in wasting energy nor does any decent person seek to oppress others simply because of their race, religion, or education. At the same time, we have to recognize that policies that promote one can end up harming the other.
Photo by Niagara.
Transportation engineer Michael Sivak has scrutinized the fuel economy of cars, trucks, and other motor vehicles. He periodically updated data for many years when with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and, since 2018, as an independent consultant.
His most recent updates points out that fuel economy rapidly improved between 1973 and 1991, then the improvements tapered off. While there was a jump between 2004 and 2008, since then the gain has only been 0.4 miles per gallon.
Some of the increases in fuel economy may have been due to federally mandated fuel standards. But Sivak’s analyses show that, when fuel prices were high, fuel economy grew faster than the standards required. One reason why fuel economy hasn’t greatly improved in recent years — according to Sivak’s data, it actually declined in 2019 — was that prices have been low since 2015.
It is made accessible in the market of order viagra slovak-republic.org a lot for its high purity of medicine and its main function is to increase the blood flow to the penis during sexual activity. Sex is the most desirable activity known to the victims and they should avail online levitra its benefits after consulting their physician. It means that the couple suffers from bad sex and tadalafil purchase online the decline in sexual satisfaction and general quality of life. Partaking of sugary or starchy food cipla tadalafil 10mg much like those trendy junk foods could very well give your thyroid glands some real trouble. One solution, then, would be to artificially increase fuel prices by imposing a carbon tax or another stiff tax. The United States, after all, has the lowest fuel taxes in the world. But this is where social justice comes in: low fuel prices have led many low-income people to buy cars, giving them access to far more jobs and other economic opportunities than they reach by transit or other means. This contributed to the historically low unemployment rates the United States enjoyed before the pandemic.
Another alternative is to improve the fuel economy of cars on the road. “One fundamental hurdle to improving the average fuel economy of the entire fleet,” observes Sivak, “is that improvements in fuel economy for new vehicles take a long time to substantially influence the fuel economy of the entire fleet.”
One way to speed this up is through the cash-for-clunkers program that the federal government had in 2009. Since only fuel-efficient cars were eligible for rebates, Sivak estimates that cash-for-clunkers improved the average fuel economy of new autos sold while the program was in effect by 0.6 to 0.7 miles per gallon.
This once again runs up against social justice issues. Cash-for-clunkers destroyed 750,000 vehicles, taking them off the used-car market. This drove up the prices of such vehicles by as much as 16 percent.
The world in general and the United States in particular has lots of energy. It is more important to help people out of poverty than to save a bit of something that we already have in abundance. Unfortunately, when progressives hear the words “environmental justice,” they usually think of ways they can put the middle class in as much pain as low-income people rather than ways they can give low-income people the same perks enjoyed by the middle class.
Working to make automobiles more fuel efficient when the fuel is gasoline or diesel is an example of fighting the last war.
In five years, 40% of GM models sold in the US will be electric, GM said. This will include models from all of GM’s US passenger vehicle brands, GM said. As part of this plan, GM is also accelerating its vehicle development timeframe so that some vehicles, such as the Cadillac Lyriq SUV, will arrive on dealer showrooms earlier than originally planned, said Doug Parks, GM’s head of global product development. GM had planned for the Lyriq to go on sale in late 2022. It’s now planned for early 2022.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/business/gm-electric-vehicle-strategy/index.html
“Our society has a near-consensus that fuel economy and social justice are both important. Even if the terms can sometimes be politically charged, there is no point in wasting energy nor does any decent person seek to oppress others simply because of their race, religion, or education. At the same time, we have to recognize that policies that promote one can end up harming the other.”
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Breathtaking and disappointing display of collectivism. “Society” is merely a social construct, and the consensus it supposedly “has” is bunk, nor is it a logical strumming or evidence. “We” do not have to recognize anything, especially not the meaningless weasel words “social justice,” which is code for socialism and forced redistribution of wealth.
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“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why?” -Walter E. Williams
Trump did more for African Americans in 4 years than the combined 140 years Democratic “Success Stories” of LBJ’s “Great Society”, Roe v. Wade and Biden’s Crime bill. 3 laws
1st law Paid blacks to abandon their families and give up working and disintegrated the black family.
2nd wiped out 25 million black children in uterus; to avoid the escalating upfront costs of the first law and the 3rd incarcerated millions of African Americans; the ones that survived the abortion doctor.
The main reason for increased fuel economy standards is to produce less CO2. This is best accomplished by imposing a carbon fee and dividend, where the increased cost of carbon will be paid back to citizens equally. As the price of fuel, heat, etc goes up then lower income people should still be able to pay for the increased cost of gasoline with their dividend. The incentives will be for new car buyers to buy more fuel efficient or electric cars. These will gradually become available for lower income people as used vehicles. See:
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/
This policy will also prevent politicians spending carbon fee money on pet vanity projects like high speed rail.
In terms of the fuel economy improvement decreasing after 1991 this is when automakers started to increase horsepower. Had carbon reduction continued to be emphasized then instead of horsepower increase, we would probably already have many more used vehicles with higher fuel economy for lower income people.
It is possible that new technology will in crease thermal efficiency of gasoline engines from around the 40% in a Toyota Prius to over 50% in Mazda’s new engines, see:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/18048/with-skyactiv-x-mazda-seeks-to-keep-the-internal-combustion-flame-burning#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20Mazda%20claims%20future%20versions,gas%20is%20lost%20as%20heat.
Combine a Prius hybrid drivetrain with the Mazda engine and 70 mpg in a car weighing over 3,000 pounds should be possible. Run it on E85 or ethanol derived from plant material, particularly waste cellulose, and carbon neutral driving may be possible.
Let us start a carbon fee and dividend and see where technology takes us. With the right incentives we should be able to maintain or improve living standards while producing no CO2.
Death by natural disaster declined 99% in the span of a century. The environmentalist uproar over population is their counter to their failed arguments. In one breath they argue we need to do something about climate or a lot of people will die; then in the next breath argue the world is Overpopulated and deaths are inevitable.
The great failures of our education system today is failure to teach kids how much better off they are than prior generation. hese remarkable improvements (that they often take for granted) could not have been achieved without fossil fuels providing the energy and feedstock. NO ONE is forcing you to use fossil fuels; Give them up any time.
To control society, you fabricate a crisis or problem indicative to all. Then “Wage War” for the sake of eliminating that “Enemy” because it’s in the name of the greater good, watch your liberties collapse.
People just don’t understand the Global demand for the minerals to make so called Green technology will skyrocket 20-30 fold. A Tesla battery uses the energy of 80-300 barrels of oil, to convert 400 tons of raw rock and ore into a 1200 pound battery and it cant even store the energy equivalent of One Barrel of oil, At 100 kilowatt hours can only store 1/17th.
Most of that mining is done in the third world. If electric vehicles are to replace conventional gas powered cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, it’s’ two most quintessential ingredients, will rise more than 30-fold. 70% of cobalt mining is done in Africa where they use CHILDREN to dig the rocks out.
Despite billions of dollars in subsidies and mandates for EVs, the smartphone achieved more than a hundredfold greater market penetration. That, in a nutshell, illustrates the stark difference between the world of bytes and the world of atoms. When, Or If…the number of EVs in the world does increase by a hundredfold from today, such an outcome, arithmetically, eliminates barely 10 percent of global petroleum use. That’s a meaningful impact, but it’s not a revolution. Batteries, windmills, and solar panels are physical systems that also require mining and processing of new minerals. But there’s one important
distinction. Compared with hydrocarbons, “clean technologies” require anywhere from 20-50 times greater tonnage of stuff extracted out of the ground and 20-100 times the land to perform their tasks.
Before coal became widely available, wood was used not just for heating homes but also for industrial processes; it was the prdominant energy source for humanity. Even if half the land surface of Britain had been covered with woodland we could have made 1.25 million tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of current consumption) and nothing else. Even with a much lower population than today’s, manufactured goods in the land-based economy were the preserve of the elite.
The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion. A nuclear plant covering for example Calvert Cliffs covers 40 acres (That includes all the property, including the parking lot and storage and switchyard, the reactors themselves and their containment barely cover a 3 acres). The facility alone produces over 14 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year. If you had to replace it’s power production with renewable you’d have to cover 143,000 acres with wind turbines to do the same job; WEATHER PERMITTING they work. why waste renewable resources by turning them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the industrial revolution. They dammed up all their major rivers…and it was ecologically devastating.
Traction was intimately linked with starvation. The more land that was set aside for feeding draft animals for industry and transport, the less was available for feeding humans. It was the 17th-century equivalent of today’s biofuels crisis. The same applied to heating fuel. As EA Wrigley points out in his book Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, the 11m tonnes of coal mined in England in 1800 produced as much energy as 11m acres of woodland (one third of the land surface) would have generated.
Just remember this
The same government who cant
– Fill potholes
– count pieces of paper
– put out tree fires on land THEY OWN
Wants to be in charge of your healthcare.
Modern internal combustion engines are incredibly efficient. In the last 50 years we’ve more than double the amount of miles we drive. Oil used has not doubled, it’s 60% less than that.
The left’s obsession with CO2 is as idiotic as their previous obsession with fat in our diets. Just as their ignorant zealotry lead a ginormous shift to harmful and deadly sugar in our diets, their obsession with CO2 is going to cause a lot of death and destruction.
The United States, after all, has the lowest fuel taxes in the world……..And we wonder why our roads are in such shit shape….
Biden is a 47 year consecutive failure in everything he’s ever done. When the economy tanks and his approval numbers sink faster than the titanic.
Trump did more for African Americans in 4 years than the combined 140 of 1: LBJ’s “Great Society”, 2: Roe v. Wade and 3: Biden Crime bill; each law roughly a generation apart. What exactly is Democrats biggest accomplishment?
1st, Pay black fathers to walk out on their children and black mothers to abandon raising families
2nd law wiped out 25 million black children in Uterus to avoid the costs associated with the 1st law that incentivized them to have kids out of responsible homes and the 3rd shuffled tens of millions of African Americans into and out of our prison system.
Harlem and Baltimore in the 1940’s black and white kids could escape the summer heat sleeping out on the fire escapes. One generation later; they would swaddle infants in bathtubs so they wouldn’t get shot by stray gunfire.
Explain to me in detail how if China get’s to build 250 Gigawatts of coal, 100,000 miles of pipelines and 60,000 miles of automotive highways will have any measurable effect on emissions, Just because Biden put us on the Paris Accords and we put up a few windmills?
90% of climate change is not occurring because of man. Our priorities should be to _not build on barrier islands, abandon New Orleans or build a sea wall around Miami because no matter how carbon-free ( aka sin-free) we become, all these things will still be a problem.