The Uninhabitable Ireland (3 Viewers)

How does taxing people for using creating more Carbon make any sense without offering an alternative fuel solution?
Seems like It’s yet another money grab from Fine Gael.

Why the hell isnt there any incentive to retrofit cars with an Electric motor and batteries?
Develop basic kits and have state-wide installation / service garages and start converting all the buses and governmental vehicles and roll out 500% more charging points
Are they still planning on spending €3 billion on a luas line to Swords? You could probably make the entire public transport system in the country carbon neutral for that amount.
 
How does taxing people for using creating more Carbon make any sense without offering an alternative fuel solution?
Seems like It’s yet another money grab from Fine Gael.
There are pretty strong economic arguments for a carbon tax. There is a cost to adding carbon to the atmosphere, and atm we are not paying it. Basically it boils down to:

1. people might add less carbon to the atmosphere if it costs more to do so
2. if they don't then the state has more money to mitigate the damage caused by the extra carbon

It's the Polluter pays principle

If you drive/burn more then you are causing more damage, therefore you should pay more. Simples
 
Are they still planning on spending €3 billion on a luas line to Swords? You could probably make the entire public transport system in the country carbon neutral for that amount.

All this big talk is from having spent one day wandering around the euro bus expo in Birmingham last year but IIRC the big push on electric buses were all on urban public transport and the most impressive machines were in the region of 150 miles on a charge I think so while you could conceivably get Dublin Bus all electric (though if it's 150 miles on a charge I wonder how big your fleet would have to be to compensate for the increased time the vehicles would spend out of service while charging) the intercity machines are probably going to have to remain diesel for a while.

I suppose you could do that "it's a bus, but connected to power lines" thing you see in some places.
 
The carbon tax might be a 'necessity' - though, its worth considering what the average person could do with ten grand in 12 months to reduce their carbon footprint.

 
All this big talk is from having spent one day wandering around the euro bus expo in Birmingham last year but IIRC the big push on electric buses were all on urban public transport and the most impressive machines were in the region of 150 miles on a charge I think so while you could conceivably get Dublin Bus all electric (though if it's 150 miles on a charge I wonder how big your fleet would have to be to compensate for the increased time the vehicles would spend out of service while charging) the intercity machines are probably going to have to remain diesel for a while.

I suppose you could do that "it's a bus, but connected to power lines" thing you see in some places.
150 miles wouldn't be much more than a driver's shift would it? Lucan to the city centre for example is 10 miles. Plus 3 billion would afford you ample room to supplement the fleet.
 
150 miles wouldn't be much more than a driver's shift would it? Lucan to the city centre for example is 10 miles. Plus 3 billion would afford you ample room to supplement the fleet.

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Mentions of 35km or there abouts. once fuck up would be that the buses might not be chargable where they actually terminate and there might be another 10km added to actually get to a charger.

Buses are sorta low hanging fruit.

The couple of 100,000 people like me who live in the sticks on no bus route and drive into a city every day are the real problem. Nobody who gets the bus is gonna have a melter if one day it happens to be electric, however taking my penis extension status symbol out of my driveway, thats were the grown up politics is.
 
150 miles wouldn't be much more than a driver's shift would it? Lucan to the city centre for example is 10 miles. Plus 3 billion would afford you ample room to supplement the fleet.

This article, which I just googled and it was the first thing I found, suggested that the average bus does 150 miles in a day (I assume that is referring to commuter/urban buses) and talks about the effective range being 20-30 miles with a need of a 5 minute charge after that so a bus with a 150 mile range might be a real game changer.


Take a bus going through Lucan for example, the 67 from Merrion Square to Maynooth. According to Dublin Bus that should take 63 minutes to get from one end to the other and it runs every half hour and it's about 16 miles. So there's probably 4 buses at any time operating on that route (possibly a 5th or 6th available to allow for delays? You're looking at a 10 minute turnaround from the bus arriving at it's final destination which IS tight) Obviously it's not the same 4 buses all day because diesel buses need refueling too AND it's unlikely that you'll have a bus driver doing a breakless 9-hour shift. So maybe you're looking for a bus that can easily do that route 4 times on a charge before being taken back to the depot for recharging if needed/the driver having a break/getting a new driver. That's all envelope calculations but on the face of it it seems doable.

The other thing to consider is that the switch presumably wouldn't be done overnight, buses usually have about a 12 year lifespan so over a number of years you could introduce new electric buses as diesel ones age out and put them on routes where they would certainly be manageable (the 67 has to be one of the longer routes surely?) and as time goes on improvements in capacity/range/charging time might take care of issues that are being faced now. It's probably doable.

Incidentally, here's some more rough figures:

Dublin bus has a capacity of 1016 buses, If they were to be replaced at a steady rate over their usual lifespan you're looking at 84 new machines a year at a cost (I am just pulling these off google) of approx €660000 per machine (they are far pricier than diesel ones) that's an outlay of 55 million a year on new buses, and after 12 years you could have spent about €665m on your fleet. At which point you'd probably start replacing your fleet again. You could probably get 4 and a bit cycles (50ish years) of electric buses for the entire city for the proposed cost of the swords metro. However ... this doesn't account for inflation or the fact that the goal is to get more people into buses so you'd probably be wanting to buy more than 1016 machines.
 
The 2017 dublin bus report mentions 27.6 million liters of diesel being consumed, so you can figure that annual cost as probably being reduced or replaced with electricity.
 
There are pretty strong economic arguments for a carbon tax. There is a cost to adding carbon to the atmosphere, and atm we are not paying it. Basically it boils down to:

1. people might add less carbon to the atmosphere if it costs more to do so
2. if they don't then the state has more money to mitigate the damage caused by the extra carbon

It's the Polluter pays principle

If you drive/burn more then you are causing more damage, therefore you should pay more. Simples
If I don’t live in an area serviced by public transport, I don’t have an alternative means and therefore I get shafted because I Have to spend more. As far as I’m aware, money is not ringfenced and being spent on renewable / alternatives and money can’t unpollute the atmosphere. So yeah, while I think trying to deter people from creating more carbon by charging them more money is in theory good, it is absolute horsehit in practical termus until there is a viable alternative.
 
This article, which I just googled and it was the first thing I found, suggested that the average bus does 150 miles in a day (I assume that is referring to commuter/urban buses) and talks about the effective range being 20-30 miles with a need of a 5 minute charge after that so a bus with a 150 mile range might be a real game changer.


Take a bus going through Lucan for example, the 67 from Merrion Square to Maynooth. According to Dublin Bus that should take 63 minutes to get from one end to the other and it runs every half hour and it's about 16 miles. So there's probably 4 buses at any time operating on that route (possibly a 5th or 6th available to allow for delays? You're looking at a 10 minute turnaround from the bus arriving at it's final destination which IS tight) Obviously it's not the same 4 buses all day because diesel buses need refueling too AND it's unlikely that you'll have a bus driver doing a breakless 9-hour shift. So maybe you're looking for a bus that can easily do that route 4 times on a charge before being taken back to the depot for recharging if needed/the driver having a break/getting a new driver. That's all envelope calculations but on the face of it it seems doable.

The other thing to consider is that the switch presumably wouldn't be done overnight, buses usually have about a 12 year lifespan so over a number of years you could introduce new electric buses as diesel ones age out and put them on routes where they would certainly be manageable (the 67 has to be one of the longer routes surely?) and as time goes on improvements in capacity/range/charging time might take care of issues that are being faced now. It's probably doable.

Incidentally, here's some more rough figures:

Dublin bus has a capacity of 1016 buses, If they were to be replaced at a steady rate over their usual lifespan you're looking at 84 new machines a year at a cost (I am just pulling these off google) of approx €660000 per machine (they are far pricier than diesel ones) that's an outlay of 55 million a year on new buses, and after 12 years you could have spent about €665m on your fleet. At which point you'd probably start replacing your fleet again. You could probably get 4 and a bit cycles (50ish years) of electric buses for the entire city for the proposed cost of the swords metro. However ... this doesn't account for inflation or the fact that the goal is to get more people into buses so you'd probably be wanting to buy more than 1016 machines.

will read this essay when I’ve a few minutes later
 
If I don’t live in an area serviced by public transport, I don’t have an alternative means and therefore I get shafted because I Have to spend more. As far as I’m aware, money is not ringfenced and being spent on renewable / alternatives and money can’t unpollute the atmosphere. So yeah, while I think trying to deter people from creating more carbon by charging them more money is in theory good, it is absolute horsehit in practical termus until there is a viable alternative.
I also live in the sticks with no public transport, so I have to drive pretty much everywhere. A carbon tax inconveniences me too, but I think it might help stop the planet from going up in flames, so I'd vote for it in the morning. Changes have to be made, and someone has to pay for them - so it might as well be people (like me, and apparently you) that are contributing to the problem most.
 
As far as I’m aware, money is not ringfenced and being spent on renewable / alternatives and money can’t unpollute the atmosphere
AFAIK it's unconstitutional to ringfence tax money, and money absolutely CAN unpollute the atmosphere (convert grazing land to forest, for example), and prevent it from being polluted further
 
I also live in the sticks with no public transport, so I have to drive pretty much everywhere. A carbon tax inconveniences me too, but I think it might help stop the planet from going up in flames, so I'd vote for it in the morning. Changes have to be made, and someone has to pay for them - so it might as well be people (like me, and apparently you) that are contributing to the problem most.

It’s another tax that some poor people cannot afford to pay. It is beyond their means and that’s unfair. Work pay for my diesel so I’m not too worried.
 
AFAIK it's unconstitutional to ringfence tax money, and money absolutely CAN unpollute the atmosphere (convert grazing land to forest, for example), and prevent it from being polluted further

While in theory, yes, converting grazing land to a Forrest is great, is there much evidence of it happening in this country?
 
In the realm of spitballing, fantasy, throwing ideas around I think there is some argument for having some kind of fuel card system tied to car taxation where people from different locations pay different fuel taxes. Like if you live on 2 bus routes and a luas line and are driving a giant land rover then you should be paying more than if you live on no transport routes. The closest bus to my house is a 41 minute walk and there are about 4 services a day, i'd lose roughly an hour a day by taking it.

In further spitballing a carbon tax probably shouldn't leave the local electoral area and be itemized, so people for example know that that they are collectively paying for a park and ride or something and then have all manner of micro-referendums and stuff in steering communities towards sustainability.

The difficulty is that the kind of changes required are really hard to fit into the political and financial structures, and more so, psychological constructs.

Best case scenario, all cars off the road in 90 days from today*

*will explain this later...
 
It’s another tax that some poor people cannot afford to pay. It is beyond their means and that’s unfair. Work pay for my diesel so I’m not too worried.
As per the thread title the planet is to become uninhabitable over the course of a single lifetime and you're worried that a few people will have to pay a bit more for diesel?
 
While in theory, yes, converting grazing land to a Forrest is great, is there much evidence of it happening in this country?
What do you mean "in theory"? In practice it works, and it's simple. You said "money can't unpollute the atmosphere". You are wrong. Just because we're not doing it doesn't mean it can't be done
 

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