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113 comments on DrumBeat: October 29, 2006

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roel on October 29, 2006 - 10:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's a good point. The same goes for emissions, those in China for Wal-Mart junk, but also for instance the ones from the gas and oil (especially tar sands) going from Canada to the US. Production emissions are all added to Canada's record.

Emissions should be calculated, like efficiency, throughout the entire production/consumption process. Don't hold your breath on that one.

As for the article, it talks about commodities, not finished products, an important distinction. Still, there's no doubt prices for and at Wal-Mart will rise. China, so keen on export, underestimates its growing domestic demand, which rises with the economy, at over 10% a year.

Which in turn may also be behind the decision to slow down commodities and/or half-products export. If they can't keep feeding the rising appetite at home, there's trouble looming.

1.3 billion people have seen a dangling carrot. Better not take it away.

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roel on October 29, 2006 - 10:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As an aside to that, the UK reports talk about giving each citizen a "carbon swipe-card", which would be used everytime gas at the pump is bought or a flight is booked.

From the above, we can already clearly see how inadequate that well-intentioned plan is. Since a car produces 1/3 of its pollution before it hits the showroom, the card should certainly apply to those purchases as well, if it has to have any serious meaning and effect.

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tstreet on October 29, 2006 - 11:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Ok.  Make it so you need to use your card at the dealer as well.
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LevinK on October 29, 2006 - 8:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A simple carbon tax would fix that by making everything that requires burning fossil fuels more expensive (and will also show if that 1/3 number is correct by the way).

I see the carbon card a good idea in the opposite direction - for rebating the tax on a certain carbon allowance back to the people. This would make it much more fair and socially acceptable.

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Engineer-Poet on October 29, 2006 - 10:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
... a car produces 1/3 of its pollution before it hits the showroom....

Not 1/3.  According to the ILCA, it's 10%.

A simple carbon tax will roll the cost in automatically.  That's why it's so important.

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roel on October 30, 2006 - 12:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
10% is way too low

Dirty from cradle to grave

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Engineer-Poet on October 30, 2006 - 8:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
10% is right, unless you accept Whitelegg's assumptions (including that the vehicle only runs 81,000 miles in its lifetime).  ILEA assumes 160,000 miles, which is reasonable for the USA (I sold my Taurus with about that much on the odometer).  Their assumptions about economy are about the same (21.8 MPG for ILEA, 23.4 for your cite) so that doesn't account for it.

If you'd paid attention, you would have noticed that your link talks of things like "cubic meters of polluted air", a rather elastic measurement (if you concentrate or dilute the emissions, you can make the numbers into whatever you want them to be).  Last, it's a newspaper article duplicated on a personal site.  You should be citing - and reading - the original source; there's no telling what the reporter decided to leave out.

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kjmclark on October 30, 2006 - 3:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Of course, you're hoisting yourself with your own petard there.  The ILEA page you cite appears to be simply reporting the results of a 1998 Carnegie Mellon study.  That isn't exactly "citing - and reading - the original source."  

Frankly, it looks as though the difference is largely down to the amount that the vehicle is driven and the Heidelberg research including the eventual disposal, which the Carnegie Mellon research left out.  Europeans drive less so that manufacture is a bigger percentage, Americans drive more so manufacture is a smaller percentage.

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Engineer-Poet on October 30, 2006 - 6:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
No, it's much more than mileage; if you assume an 81,000 mile lifespan the manufacturing fraction only rises to ~20%.  Something else is needed to account for another multiplier of roughly 1.6.
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Oilrig medic on October 31, 2006 - 1:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
On the mileage thing brand new totaled vehicle wrecks bring the average down, as do any wrecks.
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Virtual Ipecac on October 29, 2006 - 12:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
But could finished products built from these "energy-intensive" materials be increasingly taxed in the near future?
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113 comments on DrumBeat: October 29, 2006

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