#not that I agree with the optimistic environmentalists on everything they say

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

the more I listen to the Optimistic Environmentalists like Bjørn Lomborg and Alex Epstein, the more I realize how morally bankrupt and utterly despicable the climate alarmists and their “solutions” are

[theconservativebrief]

Though it may seem like several dozen scandals ago, the Trump administration is just now finalizing plans to freeze national fuel-economy standards in place, rather than steadily increasing them as Obama planned.

This is a terrible idea, for reasons I have detailed at length — it will cost consumers more, ensure more air and climate pollution, and, obviously, yield less fuel-efficient vehicles. It’s a bad idea economically, environmentally, and in terms of America’s international reputation.

I’m not going to go through all that again, though. Instead, in this short post, I want to do two things: point out a fact about the political calculations of this plan, namely, that it is opposed by the very corporate entities for which it was designed; and, second, make a bold prediction about the effect of electric vehicles on this fuel-economy debate. Basically, I think EVs are going to render the whole dispute moot!

First, the fact.

Soon to be everywhere. Shutterstock

Car companies have acted with grotesque dishonesty throughout the history of the fuel-economy debate. It was only when Obama bailed them out — literally saving them from bankruptcy — that they agreed to come to the table to work out increased national standards.

When Trump took over, they immediately reversed course and, like jackals, descended on the new administration, pleading for regulatory relief, for a few more years of SUV profits.

And as in so many other areas, Trump gave business what they wanted. More than what they wanted. So much of what they wanted that they don’t want it anymore! Let me explain.

The administration has been holding public hearings on its proposal, and not surprisingly, it has received a torrent of opposition from the usual suspects — environmentalists, health groups, California. What is somewhat surprising is that considerable opposition has come from the auto companies themselves.

Ford has opposed it, along with the United Auto Workers. “Let me be clear,” said Bob Holycross, Ford’s global director of Sustainability & Vehicle Environmental Matters. “We do not support standing still.” GM and Chrysler have also lobbied the administration to alter its plans.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a major automaker trade group, has also opposed the plan. “We support standards that increase year over year,” said AAM CEO Mitch Bainwol at a hearing.

“The industry is united in its request that the agencies work out an agreement with California” for a single, rising national standard, Honda said in recent comments.

As for Trump’s plan? “We didn’t ask for that,” Robert Bienenfeld, Honda’s assistant vice president in charge of environment and energy strategy, told the New York Times. “The position we outlined was sensible.”

Oops.

So why are automakers nervous and pushing back? Several reasons.

This is what sells. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

First, they had hoped for a subtle weakening of standards, mostly outside public view. Instead, the Trump administration is loudly and brashly nuking standards entirely, doing everything it can to brand itself a corporate-friendly environmental villain (with help from its environmental opposition, of course). Automakers don’t want to be seen as environmental villains! Unlike Trump, they don’t want to alienate the 70 percent of Americans who aren’t hardcore conservatives. (Something about “lying down with dogs” seems apropos here.)

They also don’t want to wait for years while the federal government and California battle it out in the courts over whether the feds will be able to revoke the state’s waiver under the Clean Air Act, which allows it (and 12 other states that follow it) to set its own air quality standards, including for vehicles.

Given that California is likely to win that legal fight (though with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, one never knows), the industry really, really doesn’t want to make two sets of cars — one for low-standard states and one for California and its high-standard brethren, which represent over half the national market.

And finally, there’s one other reason, which brings us to the latest remarkable development, and my prediction.

The development: General Motors, the largest US automaker, has proposed a national Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, similar to the one operating in California.

Whaaat?

This is one of those developments in the energy world that sounds almost reasonable now, based on incremental shifts taking place over the last several years, but if you’d told anyone a decade ago that it would happen, you’d be dismissed as a lunatic. I mean, do you remember the semi-famous 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? GM was the villain in that movie — they killed it!

Now GM is proposing, as Green Car Congress describes it, “the establishment of annual requirements that electric vehicles and plug-ins make up 7 percent of the market in 2021 and increase 2 percent each year, to eventual targets of 15 percent by 2025 and 25 percent by 2030.”

In and of itself, that’s not a hugely ambitious target. Depending on who you believe, EVs could well be 30 to 40 percent of new vehicle sales in the US by then, with or without a mandate. Here, via Jeffrey Rissman of Energy Innovation, are projections by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator (EPS), and the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Energy Innovation

Putting aside EIA’s ludicrously pessimistic prediction (it has a long history of lowballing clean energy tech projections), you can see that analysts are incredibly bullish — and getting more bullish every year — about EV growth. In some cities, talk has already turned to banning internal combustion engine vehicles entirely.

Still, the fact that GM is proposing an EV mandate at all is a big deal.

Among other things, it reveals the automakers’ final fear about Trump’s plan. If it passes, they will have no short-term incentive to innovate or improve the environmental performance of gas cars. Instead, there will be intense pressure from shareholders to make more of the SUVs and trucks that represent the lion’s share of their profit. (Ford is ditching cars almost entirely.)

Which is fine, for a while. But automakers know that an EV revolution is coming. If they don’t get ahead of it — if they screw around with fancier pickup trucks for the next 5 to 10 years — they will be caught flat-footed, scooped by rivals like Tesla and their European counterparts. (Volvo is ditching gas engines almost entirely.)

They do not want to be caught flat-footed. They want to be forced to innovate; only performance standards can do that.

GM is effectively saying: Never mind fuel economy standards. Force us to make EVs.

And that brings us, at last, to my prediction.

Federal CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards are worth fighting for as a short-term measure, but they are never going to get us where we need to go, i.e., to zero carbon. It is a flawed program in many ways (the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer has an accounting in this great piece), and even when it’s working as intended, it is a torturously slow, stop-and-start accretion of incremental gains, each one the result of a vicious battle. At this rate, it will take us forever.

The only way to fully decarbonize personal transportation is a) to drive less and b) to shift entirely to electric vehicles, hooked up to a zero-carbon grid.

The future, basically. Shutterstock

Especially in states like California (and my home state of Washington), with ambitious carbon-reduction goals and low-carbon electricity grids, there is no way around it: decarbonization means tackling cars.

The logic behind EVs is inexorable. It’s why BNEF keeps revising its already optimistic forecasts for EVs upward every year. It’s why electric alternatives are popping up from long-haul trucks to city buses to scooters. It’s why cities all over the world are taking steps to reduce or eliminate cars from public spaces. It’s why China, India, France, and Britain have all discussed plans to ban diesel and gasoline cars entirely, and at least eight other countries have EV targets in place.

The Koch brothers and the groups they fund are fighting EV programs and incentives at the state level (even fighting against electric buses) and lobbying to repeal the existing federal EV tax credit. And of course they support Trump’s plan on fuel economy. They will fight the decline of fossil fuels in the transportation sector every step of the way.

Nonetheless, I think they will lose. I’m betting on the distributed innovation that is currently improving EVs and batteries at a rapid clip, and on the learning that will come from economies of scale soon.

My prediction is that EVs will come on so strong that they will lower transportation-sector carbon emissions faster than CAFE standards ever could have. It’s not that CAFE standards aren’t worth fighting for as a backstop, but in my view, acceleration of EVs is the climate priority. (Actually, revise that: reducing dependence on cars is the climate priority; electrifying vehicles is priority No. 2.)

Just as I lived to see, much earlier than I ever expected, the costs of new renewable energy decline to the point that they are frequently lower than the costs of running existing fossil fuel plants, so too I think I will live to see the costs of a new EV decline below the existing maintenance and operational costs of a gasoline or diesel vehicle — especially as oil prices rise and new regulations and mandates come into place across the world. China alone will guarantee it.

When that happens, we will wonder what the fuss over CAFE was all about.

That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it.

Original Source -> Electric vehicles are going to render the fight over fuel economy standards moot

via The Conservative Brief

[rawinternets]

Environmental long-term policy is dead

From an environmentalist’s perspective, the past 4 months have convinced me that we’re screwed. Let’s start with the situation. 

Situation

The expansion of the human population from <1B to >7B has been driven by fossil fuel. Fossil fuel enabled the industrial revolution and the green revolution (massive expansion of yields in agriculture which feeds the world - this expansion from Haber-Bosch - fertilizer - and from synthetic herbicides/ pesticides, and from the mechanization of farming). Fossil fuel powers our homes and businesses and heats and cleans our water. Fossil fuel enables a more financially efficient distribution of resources through a global system of trade. All this has created massive gains in societal stability, longevity, and overall health and standards of living. The optimist would look at the last 100 years and say - wow. Look at all we’ve accomplished. 

Complication 

This all looks good from a linear perspective, but the world is non-linear. Why is eating 2000 calories of milkshake every day worse for you than 2000 calories of healthy vegetables and grains? Because our bodies are complex systems that react non-linearly (dynamically) to inputs. And just as the virtual milkshake-ification of our human diet is causing global epidemics in obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, so too is the fossil-fuel-driven boom causing disease symptoms in our ecosystem upon which we depend for everything. 

One more unit of fossil-fuel-driven development is no longer causing one more unit of benefit, just as that fifth milkshake isn’t getting you the last 20% of the way to a healthy diet for the day. In fact, the opposite is happening, but diabetes and obesity are harder to see and to fight than starvation. So we drink the milkshake. And similarly, we insist that the world can’t exist as it is without fossil fuels. We stay dependent on our linear, scale-economics-focused system, and we ignore or de-prioritize the acidification of the ocean, increasing weather volatility, accelerating temperature shifts, accelerating ice shelf collapses. 

Obesity and ecosystem disruption are brethren diseases. They are symptoms of over-consumption.

Resolution

In my former profession, we told stories using the framework “Situation-Complication-Resolution.” First say something everyone can agree on - then assert a problem or issue (complication). Lastly, follow with a solution that addresses the problem logically and concisely. 

I have lost faith that we’ll find a resolution as a species. There will be no global collaboration to significantly reduce carbon emissions. This election and the worldwide movement away from globalism, away from “the elite” and “the experts”, has all but cemented this. And since a framework around carbon is probably the clearest and easiest thing we could have agreed on, I believe that:

1) we won’t address the global destabilization of the environment in any structural, systematic way

2) Adaptation will rule, and adaptation will be driven regionally. Any actions taken to address nitrogen-cycle, water cycle, or ecosystem destabilization will have to be taken where the problem is very clearly defined and visible to the local population, e.g. regulation of fishing or deforestation activity, regulation on the types and means of farming, how to provide clean water for a particular area, how to deal with shifting weather patterns and their impact on infrastructure like water systems and low-lying lands... and so on

3) Regional adaptation won’t be sufficient and all the most vulnerable regions in the world are due for a lot of threat multiplication, which will almost certainly lead to conflict, dislocation, destabilization, etc. Hotspots will be places like: 

India/Pakistan, massively overpopulated and dependent on a very regular monsoon cycle and snowpack in the Himalaya (also both nuclear-capable!)

Bangladesh, even more over-populated and dependent on the Himalaya and the sea, low-lying (sea level rise disruption), already facing massive problems with arsenic in their wells, and so on

The Middle East, dependent on fossil fuel revenue, significantly overpopulated due to over-drawing of depleting water sources (Egypt, wheat imports, and the Nile-fueled water table which is dependent on runoff from decreasingly glaciated mountains in East Africa... Syria, already a mess; Saudi Peninsula, already a mess with only more environmental stress to come)

Oceania e.g. Indonesia and ocean-bordering Southeast Asian nations, with incredibly overpopulated dense land reliant on all kinds of ecosystems that are extremely stressed and potentially on verge of collapse such as fishing, palm oil

Central and East Africa, dependent on aforementioned glaciated mountains and with very low levels of infrastructure yet pretty high population density

Who’s not mentioned? North America. NA is probably going to be the safest and most insulated, although local or systemic fishery collapse or water table collapse will hurt states or entire regions. California and Texas and parts of Oklahoma (farming/ag/heat), Florida/Eastern Seaboard/NY (rising sea levels) might face pain, but the northern states might actually benefit from a more moderate climate. 

Europe. Europe’s likely risks are political and social, although the bleed-over from MidEast climate disruption will continue to exacerbate tensions. Parts of southern Europe may be hurt by desertification-type shifts (Spain). 

South America. Always geopolitically isolated. Brazil may face challenges due to their insane dependence on resources (mining, soya) and the culling of the rainforest. But otherwise, it’s not clear the most dangerous or egregious issues could occur in SA. 

Conclusion

So what can we do? What long-term policy should we take? The point is moot. I don’t think much about long-term environmental policy any more. Carbon tax, cap-and-trade, too late. The ship has sailed. Regions (in the US, states and cities) will lead the charge to address their own individual issues, and it probably won’t be enough and poor people will suffer, but we’ll end up paying enough to adapt and the middle-class+ will likely muddle through. 

What’s the optimist’s take? 

That the global trend toward insular nationalism is somehow quickly reversed - that our leadership (and populations that elect them) quickly see the value in coordination from a global community perspective. 

That those with the greatest means take responsibility for helping those with whom the system hasn’t been so generous. 

That a thousand, a million innovations, that a billion altruistic and passionate individuals, collectively shift our focus away from consumption and mandated growth toward purpose, progress, efficiency, harmony, and collaboration. 

That we harness the power of capitalism within a thoughtful, healthy society and a thriving ecosystem, rather than letting consumerism and the power of the transaction rule us and degrade all else. 

Even if we were so fortunate, we’ll still face most of the same issues. So do your best in your personal and professional life to fight a good fight. And prepare for storms. 

[theconservativebrief]

Though it may seem like several dozen scandals ago, the Trump administration is just now finalizing plans to freeze national fuel-economy standards in place, rather than steadily increasing them as Obama planned.

This is a terrible idea, for reasons I have detailed at length — it will cost consumers more, ensure more air and climate pollution, and, obviously, yield less fuel-efficient vehicles. It’s a bad idea economically, environmentally, and in terms of America’s international reputation.

I’m not going to go through all that again, though. Instead, in this short post, I want to do two things: point out a fact about the political calculations of this plan, namely, that it is opposed by the very corporate entities for which it was designed; and, second, make a bold and possibly unwise prediction about the effect of electric vehicles on this fuel-economy debate. Basically, I think EVs are going to render the whole dispute moot!

First, the fact.

Soon to be everywhere. Shutterstock

Car companies have acted with grotesque dishonesty throughout the history of the fuel-economy debate. It was only when Obama bailed them out — literally saving them from bankruptcy — that they agreed to come to the table to work out increased national standards.

When Trump took over, they immediately reversed course and, like jackals, descended on the new administration, pleading for regulatory relief, for a few more years of SUV profits.

And as in so many other areas, Trump gave business what they wanted. More than what they wanted. So much of what they wanted that they don’t want it anymore! Let me explain.

The administration has been holding public hearings on its proposal, and not surprisingly, it has received a torrent of opposition from the usual suspects — environmentalists, health groups, California. What is somewhat surprising is that considerable opposition has come from the auto companies themselves.

Ford has opposed it, along with the United Auto Workers. “Let me be clear,” said Bob Holycross, Ford’s global director of Sustainability & Vehicle Environmental Matters. “We do not support standing still.” GM and Chrysler have also lobbied the administration to alter its plans.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a major automaker trade group, has also opposed the plan. “We support standards that increase year over year,” said AAM CEO Mitch Bainwol at a hearing.

“The industry is united in its request that the agencies work out an agreement with California” for a single, rising national standard, Honda said in recent comments.

As for Trump’s plan? “We didn’t ask for that,” Robert Bienenfeld, Honda’s assistant vice president in charge of environment and energy strategy, told the New York Times. “The position we outlined was sensible.”

Oops.

So why are automakers nervous and pushing back? Several reasons.

This is what sells. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

First, they had hoped for a subtle weakening of standards, mostly outside public view. Instead, the Trump administration is loudly and brashly nuking standards entirely, doing everything it can to brand itself a corporate-friendly environmental villain (with help from its environmental opposition, of course). Automakers don’t want to be seen as environmental villains! Unlike Trump, they don’t want to alienate the 70 percent of Americans who aren’t hardcore conservatives. (Something about “lying down with dogs” seems apropos here.)

They also don’t want to wait for years while the federal government and California battle it out in the courts over whether the feds will be able to revoke the state’s waiver under the Clean Air Act, which allows it (and 12 other states that follow it) to set its own air quality standards, including for vehicles.

Given that California is likely to win that legal fight (though with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, one never knows), the industry really, really doesn’t want to make two sets of cars — one for low-standard states and one for California and its high-standard brethren, which represent over half the national market.

And finally, there’s one other reason, which brings us to the latest remarkable development, and my prediction.

The development: General Motors, the largest US automaker, has proposed a national Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, similar to the one operating in California.

Whaaat?

This is one of those developments in the energy world that sounds almost reasonable now, based on incremental shifts taking place over the last several years, but if you’d told anyone a decade ago that it would happen, you’d be dismissed as a lunatic. I mean, do you remember the semi-famous 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? GM was the villain in that movie — they killed it!

Now GM is proposing, as Green Car Congress describes it, “the establishment of annual requirements that electric vehicles and plug-ins make up 7 percent of the market in 2021 and increase 2 percent each year, to eventual targets of 15 percent by 2025 and 25 percent by 2030.”

In and of itself, that’s not a hugely ambitious target. Depending on who you believe, EVs could well be 30 to 40 percent of new vehicle sales in the US by then, with or without a mandate. Here, via Jeffrey Rissman of Energy Innovation, are projections by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator (EPS), and the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Energy Innovation

Putting aside EIA’s ludicrously pessimistic prediction (it has a long history of lowballing clean energy tech projections), you can see that analysts are incredibly bullish — and getting more bullish every year — about EV growth. In some cities, talk has already turned to banning internal combustion engine vehicles entirely.

Still, the fact that GM is proposing an EV mandate at all is a big deal.

Among other things, it reveals the automakers’ final fear about Trump’s plan. If it passes, they will have no short-term incentive to innovate or improve the environmental performance of gas cars. Instead, there will be intense pressure from shareholders to make more of the SUVs and trucks that represent the lion’s share of their profit. (Ford is ditching cars almost entirely.)

Which is fine, for a while. But automakers know that an EV revolution is coming. If they don’t get ahead of it — if they screw around with fancier pickup trucks for the next 5 to 10 years — they will be caught flat-footed, scooped by rivals like Tesla and their European counterparts. (Volvo is ditching gas engines almost entirely.)

They do not want to be caught flat-footed. They want to be forced to innovate; only performance standards can do that.

GM is effectively saying: Never mind fuel economy standards. Force us to make EVs.

And that brings us, at last, to my prediction.

Federal CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards are worth fighting for as a short-term measure, but they are never going to get us where we need to go, i.e., to zero carbon. It is a flawed program in many ways (the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer has an accounting in this great piece), and even when it’s working as intended, it is a torturously slow, stop-and-start accretion of incremental gains, each one the result of a vicious battle. At this rate, it will take us forever.

The only way to fully decarbonize personal transportation is a) to drive less and b) to shift entirely to electric vehicles, hooked up to a zero-carbon grid.

The future, basically. Shutterstock

Especially in states like California (and my home state of Washington), with ambitious carbon-reduction goals and low-carbon electricity grids, there is no way around it: decarbonization means tackling cars.

The logic behind EVs is inexorable. It’s why BNEF keeps revising its already optimistic forecasts for EVs upward every year. It’s why electric alternatives are popping up from long-haul trucks to city buses to scooters. It’s why cities all over the world are taking steps to reduce or eliminate cars from public spaces. It’s why China, India, France, and Britain have all discussed plans to ban diesel and gasoline cars entirely, and at least eight other countries have EV targets in place.

The Koch brothers and the groups they fund are fighting EV programs and incentives at the state level (even fighting against electric buses) and lobbying to repeal the existing federal EV tax credit. And of course they support Trump’s plan on fuel economy. They will fight the decline of fossil fuels in the transportation sector every step of the way.

Nonetheless, I think they will lose. I’m betting on the distributed innovation that is currently improving EVs and batteries at a rapid clip, and on the learning that will come from economies of scale soon.

My prediction is that EVs will come on so strong that they will lower transportation-sector carbon emissions faster than CAFE standards ever could have. It’s not that CAFE standards aren’t worth fighting for as a backstop, but in my view, acceleration of EVs is the climate priority. (Actually, revise that: reducing dependence on cars is the climate priority; electrifying vehicles is priority No. 2.)

Just as I lived to see, much earlier than I ever expected, the costs of new renewable energy decline to the point that they are frequently lower than the costs of running existing fossil fuel plants, so too I think I will live to see the costs of a new EV decline below the existing maintenance and operational costs of a gasoline or diesel vehicle — especially as oil prices rise and new regulations and mandates come into place across the world. China alone will guarantee it.

When that happens, we will wonder what the fuss over CAFE was all about.

That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it.

Original Source -> Electric vehicles are going to render the fight over fuel economy standards moot

via The Conservative Brief