by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Banning older cars in city center
France is the first EU region, as, according to Junker and Co there are, or will be, no longer nations states (member states) in the EU but only regions, to ban older cars, before 1996 or thereabouts, from the center of the cities. Germany is about to consider the same, and there it might even become an outright ban of cars of that age.
Obviously, the claim is that this is designed to improve the air quality in the cities and to benefit the biosphere, aka environment, but it may also be a ploy to enable the automotive industry to sell more new cars. Presently people seem to be hanging on to their older cars more than they used to only a decade or so ago. That means that industry is not selling as many new cars and another way must be found to rectify that.
Outlawing petrol and diesel cars altogether
Norway and the Netherlands. in the next couple of years or so. want to totally outlaw gasoline and diesel cars. And those two may just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. How this is going to work is anyone's guess but note that it will be cars only, not trucks, buses and such like.
It is becoming more and more obvious, at least to me, that the aim is to make personal travel over longer distances an impossibility for the ordinary folks even though for the sake of the ecosystem we do need to change our habits and rethink how we travel and especially as regards to commuting to and from work.
Most places, especially in the UK, and in towns and cities, have on street parking and thus overnight charging of cars and their batteries just is not a possibility.
Electric vehicles are, currently, are also several times more expensive than motorcars of the same size and the range of electric cars are still very much reduced compared to gasoline or diesel powered motorcars. Much of it due to – one – the fact that the batteries have much shorter range to cars with a full tank and – two – that the batteries still take several hours to charge compared to a few minutes of filling up a tank. Unless that changes in the very near future and the prices come down significantly then personal motoring in many places will be stopped.
So what does that leave us really?
The ordinary punter will be forced to either use public transport, which in many places is already overstretched or in some places more or less non-existent, or will be forced to use human-powered transport, that is to say walking or cycling. In rural areas the horse for riding and for pulling a cart or buggy may come into use again, but that depends on the availability and price of such animals.
While we will have to change the way we travel and where we live and work for the sake of the Planet but also because of cheap oil running out and electric vehicles will never be able to replace the internal combustion engine for cars and trucks, as I have said before, the transition, which will have to happen, will now not be a transition but an abrupt end and one without anything on offer to replace it.
When it comes to heavy transportation and agriculture, for instance, battery-power will never be able to make it and thus we either will have to continue to live with heavy diesel engines or we have to return to the ways of our forefathers, which is to say animal power and for maritime shipping the power of wind, for example.
I hate to say it but I have been warning for years that aside from the fact that we, honestly, have to change and rethink how we travel and also and especially our commute. It was obvious that the powers-that-be were going to use climate change and pollution as a vehicle to curb the mobility of the poorer in society.
When it comes to the proposed total ban of gasoline and diesel cars in those two countries (with other more than likely to follow) the current date is less than five years away and, as far as I can see it, there will be no alternatives available – at an affordable price at any rate – that will enable the majority of people to continue have the ability of the mobility that comes with a car, and I say that as a non-driver, a freedom of mobility that was unknown to people before the age of the car. But this mobility, no doubt, has also been a thorn in the side of the elite who wish to control the plebs.
It is true that the pollution from cars and trucks with internal combustion engines not only are a possible contributing factor to climate change their emissions also cause many health problems in our towns and cities (and elsewhere), as do combustion engines everywhere, as shipping, rail, and air transportation, is another contributing factor. But note that they are only going to ban gasoline or diesel cars, not trucks, planes, diesel trains or diesel ships.
As said already several times we all have to change our attitude to personal travel and rethink many aspects of it, especially in regards to commuting to and from work, but it should be, of have been, ideally, a transition where people slowly advance to the new ways.
Then again, how much time do we still have to actually perform this transition before the pollution levels, nowadays referred to as emissions, actually cause an ecosystem collapse and also the question is as to whether gasoline and diesel will continue to be available and at what cost.
© 2016
