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It is inevitable that motoring will have to be rationed in some way. Either by restrictions on the amount of times we use our cars, or just a restriction on the number of cars per house hold.
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a restriction on the number of cars per house hold.
Why? You can only drive one vehicle at a time after all. The number of cars a person may happen or choose to own isn't relevant, unless they encroach on the neighbours' parking spaces.
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yes indeed, but if two kids and the 'other alf have a car as well, then you have four people using cars (so how is that irrelevant then?). The point is we have a finite resource (road space) with a growing expansion of users of that resource. So either we change user behaviour so we use our cars less, or we physically cut the number of cars by only allowing so many per household. Frankly some sort of rationing is just inevitable with the projected growth of car ownership
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Not sure of the details, but probably lots of retro websites recalling the old days, maybe a 'HonestGrandPaJohn.euzone' , with colour pictures of 'cars' - things that ran (incredibly enough!) on liquids found in the ground & with controls called 'steering wheels' (I know, weird idea isn't it?) that allowed you to go to places - entirely independently without even a Bio-ID card!!
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controls called steering wheels.
Hang on... This is like reading a 1960s magazine about how the 80s would be.
Compare a 60's car to an 80s car and the difference is huge.
However an 80s car to an 00s car and the difference is much less.
I don't think we'll see much difference.
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It's odd how motorists are both the major target of the anti-CO2 brigade and seem to be prepared to accept that they will/should be penalised and that they might need to radically change their car-buying habits.
I did a quick Google and found that road transport (not just private cars) is responsible for 20% of EU CO2 emissions. Households however are responsible for 28%.
I wonder how we would react if there was an "environmental" tax in bands like VED on all electrical appliances (have you a gas-guzzling dish-washer, plasma TV, tumble drier?) and on heating costs/boilers etc.
Why are car drivers the "green criminals" who must be penalised at every opportunity? Why not you(!) with your dish-washer (I can be self-righteous about this because I am the dishwasher in our house!!)
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I was thinking the very same thing. Plastic bags and their alleged environmental impact ! - policy based on a flawed dossier.....reminds me of something else....!
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You couldn't be suggesting that plastic bags have been seen as a weapon of mass destruction (of wildlife) could you PU? Based on the research that 2 out of 283 dead albatrosses were found with bits of plastic bags inside them - from which of course someone decided that about 1% of all animal deaths were caused by ingesting plastic bags? (or something like that) Have you ever known a cow eat a plastic bag? Even sheep from North Wales have more sense than that!
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" .. research that 2 out of 283 dead albatrosses were found with bits of plastic bags inside them .. "
I think Pugugly was referring to the report in the newspaper, which we cannot name, which said it was NOT plastic bags but fishing tackle that was the culprit.
" Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to ?plastic bags?.
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the ?typo? remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing ?plastic bags? with ?plastic debris?. But they admitted: ?The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.?
In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment. "
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jbif
-It was my attempt at being ironic (obviously not successful!)- I read the same report as you.
Wonder if cars are being "blamed " as culprits in "Global Warming" for the same reason?
Bloomin' cold here today!
Regards
Phil
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"Frankly some sort of rationing is just inevitable with the projected growth of car ownership"
See what I mean? Why? Why not restrict the electricity supply to every home?
Why not only allow a max of 2 TVs per house?
Why not limit the number of computers per house?
Why not limit the number of house/flats built? If no houses available you just have to continue to live with parents/family?
Put a limit on air- miles you take each year?
Put a limit on amount of heating oil/electricity/gas you use?
Put a limit on amount of bread/meat you buy?
etc etc. Views above seen as daft - but suggest that we should limit our use of cars and it seems reasonable - or does it?
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or....reduce food waste and how that causes more greenhouse gases than cars.
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Views above seen as daft
PhilW - Now, now, how dare you put these ideas into their daft heads. ;-)
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I didn't mention the environment - you did! For the record Glodal Warming and Carbon Footprints and the like are in the Not Proven camp as far as I am concerned. What is proven are the growth predictions for car usage and ownership over the next twenty years (the question at top) So either we continue with the 'right' to own as many cars as we like, using them as often as we like, and we can all sit in traffic going no where fast - or we introduce rationing of either the usage of cars or the number of them on the roads. Daft of just a logical thought process?
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What is proven are the growth predictions for car usage and ownership over the next twenty years (the question at top)
Is that proven? As I understood it, currently a massive percentage of the population has a car. So how can car ownership and usage possibly get a great deal higher?
Ownership could rise, if people own more than one car - but they can only drive one of them at a time, so that makes no difference.
I can see car usage growing a little over the next few years, but there's an obvious natural barrier to it getting much higher.
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I didn't mention the environment - you did! For the record Glodal Warming and Carbon Footprints and the like are in the Not Proven camp as far as I am concerned.
Fair enough - no environmental considerations either way.
What is proven are the growth predictions for car usage and ownership over the next twenty years (the question at top)
Side issue: What does it mean to prove a prediction? I could predict the next five winners of the FA cup. And if I did it in front of witnesses and a video camera, I could prove in court that I had made that prediction. But that wouldn't increase the chance that I would turn out to be correct.
So either we continue with the 'right' to own as many cars as we like using them as often as we like and we can all sit in traffic going no where fast - or we introduce rationing of either the usage of cars or the number of them on the roads. Daft of just a logical thought process?
It's an incomplete logical thought process. You've ignored at least:
Build more and wider roads so that the increased number of cars will fit without getting in each others' way all the time.
Provide attractive alternative means of transport so that people choose (i.e. without cause for car rationing or other coercion) not to use their cars for some of the journeys that they currently use them for.
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"Now, now, how dare you put these ideas into their daft heads. ;-)"
Daft?? I'm just starting my election campaign - just add words "green" and "environmental" plus "Co2 reduction" and I reckon I could be the most successful Chancellor in history.
Just think of the money I could raise to spend on consultants, daft IT projects ( identity cards, NHS data bases, anti-truant measures, sure-start in education etc), MP's expenses, fantastic pensions for MPs, free second homes for MPs (while penalising the rest of you if you have a second home), nice chauffeur driven limo for ministers, free first class rail travel, heavily subsidised food and booze in the House of Commons ( sod you lot - extra tax on wine to stop you bingeing) etc.
And then, the final aim make a total cock-up of being a Minister - be a European Commissioner (Mandelson and Mr and Mrs Kinnock watch out, I want your jobs) - even better - except of course that I would have to shift everything from Brussels to Strasbourg and back every month, so inconvenient with regard to CO2. Must go to Bali for a couple of weeks to discuss how I can cut down on YOUR CO2 emissions to make up for it. Fiddle expenses, work for such a corrupt financial/political institution that its accounts have never been approved........
Oh, hang on - am I a bit late? Has this already been done? ......
Better continue as I am - paying for excessive fuel taxes and accepting that I am responsible for all the environmental damage done by driving my car??
Bitter? Me?
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"It's odd how motorists are both the major target of the anti-CO2 brigade"
It's not really odd.
1 It's old fashioned anti-motoring spite (and how they've got on the "green" wagon).
2 It's old fashioned leftie spite.
3 It's eco-fascist spite (they are worse now when it seems their global warming religion is beginning to be seriously questioned).
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No crystal ball so its just my view on things.
But i see long term that families will be running 2 or more cars (2 small cars will be cheaper than 1 big 1) so they can go on holidays etc.
Don't think that will help congestion or co.
Sell the Mondeo/Vectra etc and buy 2 aygo's or similar. And how does that help our manufacturing?
Edited by yorkiebar on 12/03/2008 at 18:46
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With rising cost of fuel + more penalty for larger cars + high cost of living + not that bright economy will result in people buying smaller & smaller cars.
What do you think about multi-car families? Will their number grow or shrink?
The logical solution to the rising fuel costs is to have more cars NOT fewer! You then buy cars to suit a use. Integrating costs into mileage (ie pay as you drive, fuel based insurance charging, drop the RFT) would certainly encourage me to have more cars.
I speak as a 4 car household (2 drivers). I even think about buying a 5th every now and again.
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Stop getting your underwear in a twist. We successfully brought up 2 children to ages 7 and 4 using a Mini estate as transport.
Nothing wrong with small cars: you change what you take with you.. no Mother In Law for a start so that's a bonus.:-)
Everything is relative.
Whether you believe in global waming or not is 100% irrelevant.
Disbelieving does not make it untrue and believing does not make it true.
it's the price of oil that is the issue.. global warming is irrelevant in the short term.. and in the long term I'm dead.
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I do think some people here miss the point about what's become known as 'green taxes' or the 'green agenda'. We've simply got to get used to using a bit less (the size of the 'bit' is debatable) & destroying either directly or indirectly our (only) environment.
Yes, plastic bags may not seem like a particularly big deal, using less fuel when you can afford it is easy to scoff at, as is multiple car ownership. Now this the the thing: if much of our wealth isn't diverted into less damaging uses in the near future, the wealth creating capacity of the planet & natural environment we take for granted will be compromised beyond repair.
We've got to do no other organism has ever done - limit our consumption & reproduction - otherwise we're behaving no more intelligently than bacteria on an agar plate.
Edited by woodbines on 12/03/2008 at 20:04
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"I do think some people here miss the point about what's become known as 'green taxes' '. We've got to get used to using a bit less & destroying either directly or indirectly our environment.
We've got to limit our consumption & reproduction - otherwise we're behaving no more intelligently than bacteria on an agar plate."
I ain't going to disagree with that woodbines - but why are car drivers the primary target?
Perhaps there should be an "environmental tax" on children - or a "one child" policy - would you agree to that?
The other point is whether or not penalising the 20-30 million car drivers in the UK out of the 6,000,000, 000 people on the planet will make the slightest difference or whether it is just a tax-raising exercise with an excuse.
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What do you think about multi-car families? Will their number grow or shrink?
The changing habits of indigenous Brits means fewer are getting married and/or fewer are going on to produce even fewer children than in the past. This is slightly balanced by the higher production from the "incoming" settlers. Overall, the trend is going to be one car per person over the age of 18, and the chances of that person living within a "family" group is diminishing all the time. So the average is tending towards one car per adult.
if much of our wealth ... we take for granted .... We've got to do ... otherwise we're behaving ....
"our", "we", "we've", "we're" - who are these people who have this responsibilty? Or is it that Britain as usual takes the world's pain - including in Iraq, and Afghanistan - while the rest of the World, and especially the EU, carry on in their planet-destroying ways? Or do you see the Italians and the Spanish and the French and the Germans rushing to destroy their motor industries for the sake of Britain's concerns about pollution from cars? And never mind the Americans, and the Chinese and the Indians.
Cloud (smog?) cuckoo land, that is the Britain of today.
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I think cars are only part of the problem and as such we will have felt the pressure all round in our lives rather than just with our cars.
The hope is that cars will improve in the cleanliness department and economy also - the technology is improving all the time and with the obvious drive towards the enviroment im quite sure that car makers are now working furiously to get ahead of the game - they have rather alot of notice on this one.
I dont think we will run out of fuel as there are plenty of alternatives and when push comes to shove, these will be adopted.
Its just a case of making it cleaner.
What remains to be seen is whether or not the governments of this world actually take it seriously, which currently, they do not in any shape or form - if cars etc were really killing the planet so quickly, economic considerations are irrelevant if there is no planet.
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Just want to point out that a dishwasher, fully loaded, is far more efficient than doing the job by hand. Some Germans compared them years ago, so it must be even better now with the more economical cycles.
Erm... back to motoring. I would wager that accidents caused by lack of attention or awareness will be a thing of the past.
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David,
really! Including manufacture & all that? My energy is free. Honest! If I don't use it for that it'll turn into fat so I'll have to run round the block, and it's 3/4 mile just to the bottom of the lane ;-(
As for accidents, you're assuming that eveyone will be driving a car controlled by a Gordon (the name for the little black box hooked up to Highways Agency HQ and your bank account) but you'll still get T boned by grandad in his old Astra which still has one of those steering wheel things, not to mention the kids who have hacked / chipped their car, the cyclists, the pedestrians and Fido both robotic & canine.
And I assume that the Gordon isn't running Windows else we could see the end of the pension crisis (and housing / population / food / water/ CO2).
JH
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20 years, with any luck ol' Grandad's Astra will be banned from the road. Cyclists I admit are a problem, but hopefully computer vision technology might be good enough to allow the car to react faster than me if a pedestrian steps into the road.
As for dishwashers, I quote (from a tree-hugging magazine, no less):
"Scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany who studied the issue found that the dishwasher uses only half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap than hand-washing an identical set of dirty dishes. Even the most sparing and careful washers could not beat the modern dishwasher. The study also found that dishwashers excelled in cleanliness over hand washing."
I would expect a dishwasher to easily last ten years or more, so I imagine the payback in terms of manufacturing is taken care of.
www.fridayteam.co.uk/articles/2006/01/12/hand-wash.../
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David, I think I read in Which? recently that they can use less water than handwashing but obviously use more electricity!
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...and the environmental issues surrounding their making, transporting, in life servicing and ultimate disposal.....they have been eschewed in our home, just washed the pots now actually, listening to the R4 news as I did so, a very civilized pastime.
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Hang on... This is like reading a 1960s magazine about how the 80s would be. Compare a 60's car to an 80s car and the difference is huge. However an 80s car to an 00s car and the difference is much less.
I'd have said it was the other way around. A 1965 Cortina is really just the same as an 1985 Sierra, other than electronic ignition so you didn't need a can of WD40 with you.
A 2005 Mondeo is very different - traction control, ABS, aircon, heated seats, a fair chance of surviving a crash, probably more computing power in a Mondeo than existed on the planet in 1985 ;-)
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