I hope the gov (fed, prov, muni) are prepared to invest big time in infrastructure.
If the Conservatives win the next election they’ll cancel all positive climate action because that’s what the Republicans would do.
As much as I prefer the market-based bottom-up solutions provided by carbon tax, the advantage of green infrastructure is that it’s sticky.
The conservatives can destroy the carbon tax with the stroke of a pen. They won’t destroy the wind generators and the charging stations that have already been fully implemented.
They can officially do it. However the out of power liberals can just announce next time they get in power they will just restore the laws to where they were. This might allow ICEs to exist until 2038 or sometime (I don’t know what Canada’s election cycles are so I picked a random year), but eventually the ban will come down hard and the liberals won’t give the industry any time to adjust - they will just ban all sales of ICEs effective when the law is signed. As such all the future changes in the law does is specify when the last ICE assembly plant shuts down - auto makers will still plan on all new vehicles being EVs (either only or as a popular option), then they keep producing ICEs until the law stops it, but they are ready for the day.
The smart thing for auto makers to do is to instead look for the limits and find a compromise. ICEs do have some advantages over EVs that are compelling in specific things (the energy in a liter of fuel is a big deal). Focus the conservatives on adding an exception for a few remote or long distance travel situations and they can get an exception the liberals won’t repeal.
Canadian federal election cycles are 4 years, but the PM can call them sooner.
Personally, I think the goal should be finding agreement amongst all political parties now on reduction/elimination targets.
Sounds good to me but I do worry that new vehicles will be even more expensive than they are now and the used car market will go the way of the current housing market.
That’s a good point. I think one solution is smaller cars. For the past two decades, we’ve bought way more car than we need—everyone has huge SUVs and pick up trucks, despite the fact that families are smaller than ever and fewer people carpool than in the past. That’s because big cars are subsidized with relaxed regulations.
The other solution is fewer cars. We’ll always need cars, but there’s lots of low hanging fruit to improve our mediocre public transportation and lack of mixed zoning.
People are too stupid to buy a smaller car. Media tells them that bigger = safety and luxury, and that’s all they need to know. Just look at how many people scream “the grid isn’t ready”, “they don’t work in the cold”, and “the batteries cause slavery” about EVs because they heard it in a tik tok once.
Fewer car is the ideal solution but the people who will loose their cars are the ones with the least lifestyle choices, they don’t commute by choice. There will never be a lack of rich pricks to buy white Audi/BMW/Merc suvs.
You might be right, but it would be a good motivator to have people pay the true cost of big heavy cars — including the negative externalities to health, safety, road wear, parking, and pollution. Drivers don’t currently pay those costs, which means we essentially subsidize big heavy cars now. If we stopped doing that, Canadians would act more like consumers in the rest of the world.
Also, strong agree on fewer cars being the ideal solution. In fact, fewer cars is a mathematical necessity. We can’t electrify ourselves out of terrible land use, e.g. the oceans of parking lots, crumbling roads, and inefficient highways that contribute to carbon emissions and environmental degradation.
So not a single solution at all.
Raising the cost of living is a typical moron economics. The net result of large rises in the cost of living has always been and will always result in loss of life. Good luck getting voted back into parliament on the back of destroying the middle and low income classes.
How do smaller and fewer cars raise the cost of living? And why is the thing that’s successful everywhere else in the world not a solution? Your comment makes no sense.
Strangely enough china’s cheap-ass cars are coming to the rescue. Since they’re available. They’re making the dodges and Lincolns consider smart-car-sized bare conveyances.
I’ll buy they for c$12k
I don’t trust Chinese quality control on lithium ion battery packs. I don’t trust Tesla either, but that’s besides the point.
At least the are better diy ev options then there were 10 years ago.
Both housing and electric vehicles can be mass produced if the political majorities and bureaucracy are there.
Resources, that is raw materials, skilled workforce, construction planning and coordination, need to acquired. Among the requirememts for faster production is the realisation that luxurios amenities such as child-height radiator grills or ‘unique’ buildings that cannot create any shade are hindering cheap, that is accessible, mass production of electric vehicles and housing.
The ‘stuff required’ (political, infrastructure, bureaucracy, etc.) is unfortunately at odds with unrestrained capitalism. While it would be lovely to have everyone deal with a modest car and a modest house, companies will do everything they can to lure customers to a more luxurious offering; and the customers will work themselves into an early grave to be able to afford it.
I don’t care about grand narratives of economic ideologies anymore, but I wouldn’t call corruption capitalism. Apart from all 18th and 19th century ideologies being unfit for 20th to 25th centuries climate change mitigation and resilience, a few countries being held back by decadence will not stop change, as we have seen with the PV industry.
Scheming this into Cold War-style binary thinking of Socialism/Communism vs Capitalism is insufficient. We will have achieved either parts goals and the planet turns into a hot desert.
Make sure to buy a brand new ICE vehicle in 2033 because it will be worth a fortune on the used car market around 2040 😜
Maybe, maybe not. People follow the path of least resistance.
Right now, electric cars are a pain because there aren’t DC fast charges everywhere. They’re great for the daily commute because you can charge them at home, but they’re a bit annoying when you want to do a road trip.
What happens when adoption of electric cars goes up? We’ll see more charging stations, and fewer gas pumps. When gas pumps are as rare as DC fast chargers are, who is going to want the annoyance of a gas car? You’ll only be able to sell to hobbyists who don’t mind driving 30 min to a gas station. And will they really want whichever car you’re driving?
What’s the definition of a “car” here? Do pickups and vans count?
I bet some set of those will be excluded and if that’s the case this will have a side effect of driving further adoption in those larger vehicles.
too little too late, as usual
So get fucked if you are poor as per usual
