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The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#22Proposing things is free after all, and few of the politicians of 2024 will be there in 2040 to be called about it, and even if they are, they can blame it on previous office holders and whatever... This is as "trustworthy" as the "Only sell EVs by 2035" EUs proposal, and Musk's mission to Mars.
Sooo your solution is to just do nothing at all?
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
OTOH, it could be as trustworthy as the Montreal protocol of 1987 which agreed to reduce CFC production by 50% by 1999. Instead production in signatory countries hit 0 by 1996. Measured scepticism is rational. Blind scepticism isn't.
Indeed. Most coal will be phased out of Europe by 2035 [1], and could run entirely on renewables by 2030 if they choose to spend accordingly (~€2T, not terribly feasible but gives an idea of fiat-time tradeoff) [2], leaving buildings (heat pumps [3]) and EVs [4] to sweep out quite a bit of the remaining emissions (with manufacturing, agriculture, and other sources still needing solutioning [5]). [1] https://beyondfos…
sorry but this is not realistic. i looked at the [2] document and it's just a dream.
it's written in the style of "currently EU consumes this much energy, we project this to grow to that much until 2030/2040, we currently produce this much energy from renewables, so we need to multiply the amount of renewables with the correct number".
completely ignores the largest problem with solar/wind, storage. it just says that we should build enough storage. that's easy to say. i don't know of any country on this planet that made it work with purely solar/wind (please just tell me which one does, bonus point for one with a similar climate to europe), so it means we need to literally develop the technology (pls note, we do not even know what that technology will be) and then deploy it... in 6 years. that's completely unreal.
also, they recommend that we let the nuclear power generation go to zero, arguing for example, that nuclear-fuel needs to be imported into europe, but seems to be totally fine with importing in anything else (rare earth minerals etc.)
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#24Proposing things is free after all, and few of the politicians of 2024 will be there in 2040 to be called about it, and even if they are, they can blame it on previous office holders and whatever... This is as "trustworthy" as the "Only sell EVs by 2035" EUs proposal, and Musk's mission to Mars.
Given SpaceX's amazing progress in 2023 (and every year before) I'd bet the Mars mission is going to happen.
People don't seem to realize that in 2023 they broke the record for most amount of launches of any entity on earth. They beat the second best record (Soviet Union at 60 launches in a year). His Falcon heavy updates broke the record for most amount of cargo delivered(beating Saturn V).
The rate they are iterating on Starship means they may make their targets on that ship this year.
The private sector has made incredible progress in getting this green initiative done. While the investments in EVs and batteries have definitely helped, a lot of this rhetoric based targets have gone nowhere. Just look at the results of COP21. I was there in Paris. It feels like such a long time ago now.
The real question is why these initiatives fail? Maybe its just not possible to have the entire population transition over to a new way of thinking about emissions. After all what are emissions? They are an unaccounted for externality. Some percentage of the population cannot make their lives/businesses/operations work if they have to account for this cost.
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. Most coal will be phased out of Europe by 2035 [1], and could run entirely on renewables by 2030 if they choose to spend accordingly (~€2T, not terribly feasible but gives an idea of fiat-time tradeoff) [2], leaving buildings (heat pumps [3]) and EVs [4] to sweep out quite a bit of the remaining emissions (with manufacturing, agriculture, and other sources still needing solutioning [5]). [1] https://beyondfos…
sorry but this is not realistic. i looked at the [2] document and it's just a dream. it's written in the style of "currently EU consumes this much energy, we project this to grow to that much until 2030/2040, we currently produce this much energy from renewables, so we need to multiply the amount of renewables with the correct number". completely ignores the largest problem with solar/wind, storage. it just says that…
You are looking at individual countries. Europe has a transmission network, as well as battery storage, pumped storage, hydro generation, wind, solar and some nuclear. You keep adding renewables and storage, and keep retiring fossil generators. Europe has enough wind potential to power the entire world, for example. It's not impossible, it's math.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map?wind=false&solar=false
https://www.energy-storage.news/europe-reached-4-5gw-of-batt...
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#26The EU could take a page out of Denmark's climate playbook to easily meet emissions targets. A large contributor of projected Danish emissions has been low-lying wetlands converted to farmland via draining. Calculations predicted that reflooding these areas could saves millions of tons of emissions, so this became a hot political topic. However, the Danish climate minister recently announced that he had wonderful cli…
Still good news given all the recent farmers protests in the EU.
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#27We recently got a series of articles on the EUs stagnating economy and industry and a few days later we get this ludicrous proposal. The EU is probably one of the most masochistic regional entities in the world.
Sometimes regulation can help an industry forward quite a bit. For example when a cleaner technology requires massive investments, but nobody wants to be first. When there is a clear cut-off date, like with ICE cars in the EU, then manufacturers can justify the investments and go ahead. At the same time, a lot of spending on green technologies often means a lot of local jobs. Which can be good for the economy if the…
>But people might be more happy walking, biking, etc.
Or they might drag their tractors into the highways and block off all access to the city in protest.
I feel like I had this same conversation against a presenter at CCC recently. Do people really not see the backlash brewing against the left for proposing these ideas onto others?
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes regulation can help an industry forward quite a bit. For example when a cleaner technology requires massive investments, but nobody wants to be first. When there is a clear cut-off date, like with ICE cars in the EU, then manufacturers can justify the investments and go ahead. At the same time, a lot of spending on green technologies often means a lot of local jobs. Which can be good for the economy if the…
>But people might be more happy walking, biking, etc. Or they might drag their tractors into the highways and block off all access to the city in protest. I feel like I had this same conversation against a presenter at CCC recently. Do people really not see the backlash brewing against the left for proposing these ideas onto others?
If we don't do good things out of fear of backlash from regressives, we have already lost.
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#29Proposing things is free after all, and few of the politicians of 2024 will be there in 2040 to be called about it, and even if they are, they can blame it on previous office holders and whatever... This is as "trustworthy" as the "Only sell EVs by 2035" EUs proposal, and Musk's mission to Mars.
Sooo your solution is to just do nothing at all?
Hum... no. The GP is complaining that what is on the title is the equivalent of doing nothing at all.
Of course, there's an entire plan, with shorter term goals and ways to achieve them. With actionable steps, what is a huge change from most climate accords. The article just does a very bad work of citing those and not getting at any detail at all.
Re: The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
#30EU proposes being poorer by 2040