I’ve written very briefly about climate change once before. It’s not an issue I follow much, because it often invokes an “ARGH we’re all doomed lets spend these last few days we have watching Buffy” response in me. But what has really frustrated me is how easily efforts to fight climate change have been co-opted by industry.
On Tuesday Checkpoint (a national NZ radio show) had an interview with someone from the trucking industry, about how the trucking industry thinks we should fight climate change. Now lets take a moment to point out that if we’re going to move cargo in the most efficient way possible, then trucking is pretty much out. ((To what extent can we afford to move cargo at all? Is it another part of our lifestyle which will result in the sea rising and the penguins dying? I’m not even going to begin to answer those questions. But would recommend watching Innocence while you still can.)) The only things worse than trucking is flying; rail and sea are much more efficient.
So if the trucking industry shrank considerably then that would help lower carbon emissions straight away. What did the trucking industry suggest?
1. The government should change the depreciation rates on trucks so that trucking companies can buy newer, more efficient, truck soon.
2. The government should invest in the road system, because if trucks are in traffic they’re wasting carbon.
3. Change the safety rules so that trucks can carry more cargo and be more efficient.
What do we notice about these rules. Well the first thing is that 1 & 2 would only save carbon emission if you were able to make truck and road building carbon neutral. I don’t know what sort of carbon emissions road building creates, but I do know that metal production creates a shit-load of carbon emission.
But as well as not being at all useful, all of these changes are things the industry were wanting anyway, and have just dressed up as helping reduce emissions (which they wouldn’t).
Note for comments, this is not supposed to be another generic thread on climate change. The topic is how (or whether) industry co-opts ideas of climate change
Wow, a major industry trying to get the government to give them a break? Who’d have thought? Next we’ll find out that Unions often try to use political clout to change the bargaining structure whenever possible.
I think an open and well regulated Carbon market is the best way to reduce carbon emissions. A tax on carbon production would be the next best thing.
To be effective it would have to be world wide and not subject to a lot of cheating. But since that would screw the developing world this is hard. I think I’ll watch firefly tonight.
Laying down roads sequesters carbon and is a net environmental good, from a global warming perspective. Save the earth, pave the Amazon.
But you’re quite right that private industry is going to use the currently fashionable environmental rhetoric to pursue their own agenda. At the same time, that agenda is pushing many corporations to green their operations in meaningful ways. So I’d expect we’ll see a fair amount of real improvements, accompanied by an enormous amount of hype, waste, and stupidity, from the private sector.
Making freight more suitable for humping(*) would go a long way to reducing carbon (and fuel consumption, because as you’ll recall I’m all about the fuel consumption angle :) ).
There is a perfectly suitable, highly effecient, safe, non-traffic-affecting way of moving freight — railroads. Just after barge and other water way sorts of moving freight, rail is the most efficient. Additionally, because rail lines have fixed paths, rail is suitable for electrification, something that’s impractical for truck transportation.
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(*) I love to writing “humping” when I talk about freight, but it refers to a practice where rail cars are pushed up a “hump” in a rail yard, then sorted in the yard using gravity. It has nothing to do with freight sex. The rail car ends its journey through the yard by smacking into the other cars that are being put together. It’s the violent jolt at the end that makes humping impractical for much freight.
Most roads are paved with asphalt, which is a petroleum product.
I’ll point out that while trains and boats are great for getting freight from Point A to Point B, since goods are rarely produced exactly at Point A, and customers are rarely at exactly point B, you still need trucks to get the cargo to and from the ports/stations. Thus, it makes sense to try to reduce the carbon output from the trucking industry regardless.
Private industry is going to use any hook it can to pursue its own agenda. I do not believe in enlightened self-interest. Naked greed, yes. Corporations will get greener only if it saves or makes them money.
(And, Maia, I’m totally with you on giving up and watching Buffy.)
Corporations will get greener only if it saves or makes them money.
Exactly. It behooves us as consumers to pattern our behavior accordingly, if “green” issues are important to us.
It also behooves us, from a public policy point of view, to ensure that the incentives we create for corporations spur them to environmentally productive actions, rather than the converse. Depreciation schedules for trucks may be a small but not insignificant part of that. New trucks pollute a lot less than older models; it’s probably not a good idea for tax policy to encourage holding on to older trucks.
not according to this or this article. apparently, it also depends on what one is using to pave.
Trucks make no sense for cross-country shipping. However, they all run diesel, which means they can all run biodiesel, which at least is carbon neutral.
Industry will co-opts anything they can. Zimbardo, of Stanford Prison Experiment fame, has a new book out about evil. He thinks environment is a huge factor in evil. therefore, as a society, we should try to get rid of the factors which lead to evil. Our legal rules for corporations say that they have to maximize their products in the next quarter. Long term thinking is illegal. Trying to prioritize anything over immediate profit is illegal. Passing up an opportunity to make an extra buck, well, you get the idea. This is recipie for disaster and a race to the bottom. If we want corporations to behave in a reasonable manner, we have to change their legal framework.
1. They’re NOT people.
2. They need to be regulated.
3. Rules about shareholder lawsuits need to change.
4. Executives need to be liable for descisions – the protections of incorporating should be greatly reduced.
5. The government needs to take a leading role in mandating fuel changes.
Corporations exist in a system that will produce evil too often and that needs to change or we’re all doomed. They have way too much power, including to screw up the earth itself.
Watch End of Suburbia to see how the car companies intentionally destroyed the rail industry several decades ago.
Biodiesel isn’t a road we should be looking at – if we grow enough crops to run trucks and cars, there won’t be farm land left to feed ourselves. And I’d hate to leave it up to the powers that be to determine which is more important.
Generally I think the answer to global warming is a technological one. In the 2 or three years there has been a large infusion of investment cash into technolgies like batteries, solar pv, solar thermal, wind, clean fuels, energy effeciency etc., which is a positive step. There should be more encouragement both in the private and public sector in this direction.
I think focusing on individual consumer solutions is limited and mostly just a distraction. I’m pretty convinced humans (at least the ones rich enough to be consumers) will let the Earth cook before they give up there car or make some widescale lifestyle changes. And the numbers show that each year there are more cars on the road throughout the world.
I personally think that there are a number of reasons to get the U.S. off of the oil/carbon standard. I think that 100 years from now we will be viewed as completely insane for taking something as useful and versatile as oil and burning it for fuel. There’s also the national security issue – why are we sending all this money to people who often use it to fund people who hate us?
This is what we get for electing a bunch of oil people into office.
Having said all that – yeah, “green” is something that corporations will try to co-opt and use for their own agendas, just like they co-opt music and sex and athletics and anything else. No surprise there. OTOH, just because a corporation makes a claim doesn’t mean it’s not true. It just means that we have to be skeptical and informed consumers, shareholders, and voters.
Now:
“Well the first thing is that 1 & 2 would only save carbon emission if you were able to make truck and road building carbon neutral.”
Well, I disagree. If older truck “A” gets 20 miles a gallon and newer truck “B” gets 30 miles a gallon, truck B emits 33% less carbon per mile of operation and carbon emissions are saved (presuming a constant number of miles driven).
Sage writes:
Two words: Thermal Depolymerization
Feed it stuff with big carbon chains and it produces hydrocarbons with lengths up to around 18-anes. It’s thermally intensive (duh) and can be fueled with solar power and biomass. I think it can also be fed junk from landfills.
RonF – the question is how long would that difference of 10 miles a gallon take, before it made up for the amount of carbon requires to make the truck.
RonF writes:
Fortunately we can make more using stuff that we can also make more of.
This is one of the things that troubles me about finding more dino-oil — it puts off the financial incentive to produce renewable source crude oil. So, instead of recycling the carbon in the system now, we’re pumping more from the ground.
Definitely a fair question, Maia. Lots of time “green” arguments don’t take into account the full manufacturing/distribution/sales/disposal/recycling cycle. OTOH, the old truck has to be replaced sometime – it’s not going to last forever. So the carbon cost of making the new truck is going to be paid at some point. What’s the cost of doing it sooner vs. later, and does the extra carbon saved pay for that?
carbon market!
RonF writes:
This raises an entirely different issue about manufacturing and design processes, and parcticularly how vehicles are designed and obsoleted. The basic three axle design of the “truck” has not changed in my lifetime. There is a front axle and two drive axles, frame, cab, etc. There’s no practical reason a “truck” has to be scrapped, besides the usual “We need to sell new ones in order to survive”. Well, we need to stop making new stuff if we’re going to avoid running out of various resources.
You’ve made a good point that the basic design hasn’t changed but you’re missing the fact that there’s a lot more going on than just the basics. (Most 5th wheels have more than three axles but that’s tangential to my point)
In addition the basics there are steering, brakes, exhaust/emissions systems, ride control systems, safety systems and the inside of the cabin. All of those systems wear out and eventually need to be replaced. This sort of machine downtime is expensive so a lot of trucking companies will sell the used rigs for someone else to use and replace them with new product. Eventually the trucks will be scrapped, but by that point there pretty used up.
Non-commercial vehicles are typically replaced long before they need to be. If your definition of need is “does the vehicle run at 75 mph.”
The objective of business is to turn a profit. Period. {Yes, I am a Monetarist.}
What these regulations are about is financial freedom.
Do we tell a business what to do with their money, and how they should earn it?
Do we then tell individuals like Maia and Amp what to do with their money, and how they should earn it? Where they should work? Whether they can walk, bike or drive? What they can purchase, when and in what quantities.
The money in your wallet is yours, just as the money owned by a businessman or corporation is theirs.
Do you want someone else telling you when, how and in what fashion you can spend your money?
Then why should we accept such for a business?
Once we accept such intense intrusion into our every day lives, decisions and basics; how we can spend our money – then it is a short distance to telling us what we can do and when in all aspects of our lives.
Of course, all of this is “For the good of the Planet” and “To Deter Global Warming”.
The result will be, no matter how worthwhile the cause, a rollback of freedoms the likes of which most people simply will not tolerate.
Kevin,
If we assume that creating C02 and releasing it into the atmosphere causes some harm . (Maia said that was the start of the discussion) than we can also assume that there should be some cost associated with it. Someone must pay to clean it up. Currently this cost is not born by the person that created the carbon. Thus we have a free rider problem.
My proposed solution is to create a carbon market where people can buy the right dump as much carbon as they can afford. I think this is a much more efficient solution than suing people that litter my airspace with their industrial by products.
Sage,
90% of grain grown in the USA is fed to farm animals. Eat less beef and we can eat and drive without suffering.
Kevin,
A corporation is not a sole proprietorship. In exchange for wiggling out of personal liability, corporate execs should have to accept additional regulation. Businesses are NOT people. They don’t act like people. They shouldn’t have the rights of people.
If somebody wants to start a buisiness and have it treated just like a person, they can do a sole proprietorship. But treating corporations like people creates a system full of actors who face no liability and are unregulated. That’s not working.
Julie, HoC says:
They are scrapped because they wear out. Ever crawled underneath a 10-year old truck? Things rust though. Fittings, pistons, valves, etc. wear to the point that you cannot put a new/oversize/re-engineered widget in there and get the device to continue to work. At some point, it’s done; it has to be scrapped. The materials can/should be recycled, but it has to be made into a new truck, not just fixed.
Also, while the basic design of the truck body and frame may not have changed, the engine designs have changed radically. Finally, the materials used to turn those designs into reality have changed radically. I’m old enough to remember when plastic wasn’t even used to make the steering wheel of a car. Now 1/2 the car is plastic. When I was in high school a friend of mine had a 1948 Buick Roadmaster. One long story later, we were accosted by kids from a rival high school after a football game. They pulled up beside us and smashed their car doors into ours. Their door crumpled like aluminum foil; ours was only scratched, because in 1948 car doors were made out of 1/8″ steel. Materials change. Designs change to match.
RonF,
One of my two cars is 28 years old. I’m aware of what happens with “old”.
That said, what makes old vehicles expensive isn’t that they are old, it’s that the parts are extremely difficult to replace because the manufacturer didn’t plan for them to be replaced. It’s not impossible, or even hard to do.
Nor is it because, as you suggest, bigger, oversized, whatever parts aren’t available. Many engines, such as the venerable GM 350 c.i.d. (5.7 litre for those of you using new money), haven’t appreciably changed basic mounting geometry in decades. But getting them in to and out of an engine compartment is just tedious.
The real proof that vehicles aren’t designed to be maintained comes from what happens when a vehicle is scrapped — they are very seldom parted out. Designing vehicles to be maintained would go a long ways towards making them recyclable — and that’s something we’ve got to do or we really are royally screwed.
Another aspect of the problem is that swapping out old trucks for new trucks is going to take decades to make any difference whatever–five years from now the majority of trucks are still going to be old. Any major breaks with the past are going to be too expensive and risky and long-term for any corporation.
Now me, I’d prefer scrapping our old cities and replacing them with arcopolises (ala Paolo Soleri) to save fuel, but it’s not going to happen.
Julie, HoC, I didn’t say anything about availbility of parts. I’m taking about things for which either replacement parts don’t work or for which there are no parts. Thus, a frame rusting though on a car kills it; it’s not something that can be fixed and still have structural integrity. Another example; as the inside of an engine wears, optimum performance of the engine requires that at some point you do a ring, valve and/or lower end job. You can hone out the cylinders and valve seats, and you can polish the crankshaft bearings. All of these operations remove metal, so you then put in a set of oversize rings, valves and bearing seats. But at some point you can no longer do this; the next set of oversize fittings exceeds the design limits of the engine and it could not be safely operated.
Now you might be able to replace the cylinder liner (if it has one) and the cylinder heads and maybe even the crankshaft bearing seats, but maybe not; and in any case, the amount of labor and materials to perform these operations becomes prohibitive compared to buying a new, more efficient car or truck that does not also have issues with the body, frame, etc.
OTOH, I’ll agree that there is plenty of room for consumer vehicles to be better designed for maintenance. When you can’t access some of the spark plugs or the oil filter without removing parts there’s a problem. And a better maintained vehicle is often a better running and more efficient vehicle, and thus “greener”.
Another aspect of the problem is that swapping out old trucks for new trucks is going to take decades to make any difference whatever–five years from now the majority of trucks are still going to be old.
True. However, there’s an old saying. When’s the best time to plant a tree? The best time is 20 years ago. The next best time is now. You have to do what you can now, even if it only benefits the next generation. That doesn’t mean that you don’t look for what makes a big difference now, but you also have to do what’s best for down the line.
Do commercial trucks really last 10+ years? If a truck is typically driven 50 hours per week at 60 miles per hour, that’s 3000 miles per week, or about 150,000 miles per year. I assume commercial trucks last longer than consumer cars, but are they really good for over 1.5 million miles?