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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Combined with the recent news item that at least one bank in Australia will cease offering loans for gasoline/diesel vehicles, the trend toward electric seems to be getting more coercive and less up to the consumer.

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Saving the planet shouldn't be up to the consumer.

Until we can accurately build in negative externalities (probably never) it will always be cheaper to pour industrial waste in the river, spew sulphur dioxide into the air, chop down ancient forests, overfish the oceans, and drive cars based on cheap fossil fuels that warm the planet.

We endow the government with the right to make long-term decisions that are good for society, even if they are less profitable to us in the short-term. (Not that the government always does a good job of it, but that is one of its mandates.)

>Saving the planet

That's what they told you and you believed it. Hope you enjoy the crickets they're gonna make you eat while you charge your car. All in order to 'save the planet' I'm sure.

Not going to address the snark but I am here to say fried crickets are actually pretty tasty!

And?

This has always been the plan. We are migrating to electric because of the harm gas does to the environment, not consumer preference. Just like the migration away from leaded gassoline, or chlorofluorocarbons was done by regulation, not preference.

No one ever said it's up to the consumer, it's up to the market. Granted, California banning them isn't the market, but the bank not offering loans is.

Consumer demand -- or lack thereof -- drives the market. There have been massive product flops in the past... no level of supply or price cuts could get consumers to buy items they didn't want. I'm not saying that's the case with electric cars, only that consumers have to want them before it can succeed.

Consumer demand is shaped by credit availability. Regardless, the issue with electric cars right now is almost entirely supply constraints, not demand. You have to wait months or even over a year depending on which particular car you want.

Banks would only stop offering loans if required by law to stop, how is that different from a state or federal ban?

No, this was a bank who said they would stop offering loans for gas/diesel cars because of their corporate stand on environmental issues. It's only one bank for now.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/australian-bank-wont-offer-loa...

We're talking about California BTW

Virtue signalling from an organization with a whopping 16 locations.

I think there is a significant chance that a backlash against this kind of coercion will reduce support for climate policy as a whole and will ultimately be counterproductive for efforts to reduce emissions.

Hard to be counterproductive when the current support for and ability to implement climate policy is already so low. What are consumers are going to do, slow the already far too slow pace of combatting this existential threat down? Oh no, impending doom still equals impending doom.

When you compare the places worldwide and in the US where governments are pushing and where governments deny change and intentionally do nothing, there is a stark difference in progress. There can be no doubt that current levels of government effort basically perfectly correlate with the amount of progress done. California's government is the only reason the United States has any competitiveness on electric cars, lithium batteries, solar panels, and without CA, the other 49 aren't in the same universe as China or Europe in this space.

Ultimately, I don't think there is any future for human civilization as we know it if climate policy is purely a grass roots, bottom up, consumer and market oriented change. I believe the government-minimum scenario is the billions die when breadbasket regions fail and mass famine hits scenario

Here is what might happen:

State governments like the one in California try to ban gas car sales. This will not be popular. Right-wing politicians scream "they are taking away our cars and our freedom". Many people secretly agree, resulting in the election of politicians who roll back many climate policy provisions. End result: fewer good climate policy laws than what we could have ended up with if the left wing had been more incremental and less strident.

The raft of anti-automobile measures taking place in true-blue areas are facing backlash already. People talk a big game about phasing out cars and forcing people to take public transit or ride bicycles, but once those measures start to directly affect people the backlash is significant. Losing street parking makes business owners angry, losing a lane on your commute because it was converted to a bike lane no one seems to ever use causes a lot of resentment. I can also see a lot of middle class people becoming angry about the fact that if they want an automobile they have to pay for a more expensive electric car - perhaps even making it unaffordable. Then they realize this is by design because their leaders want to force them to take public transportation.

It can be argued that these measures ultimately need to happen, but it really seems like the strategy is to make the automobile experience worse and the backlash from ordinary citizens can't be diminished or dismissed.

This ban is scheduled over a decade from now, and is probably too late to effect change. This is incremental change and it is not enough change to solve the problem. Really I find this whole line of reasoning very strange. It's well-documented what we need to do to minimize climate change. We're already overdue to take action. An incremental plan is fine but the increments must be large enough to solve the problem (and this is actually an example of the increment being too small, yet you suggest it is too large and we should be more cautious.)

The voters decide which increments are too big. It's pretty simple -- if they would vote to prevent or roll back a given climate policy, the increment is too big.

Small incremental improvement is better than failed attempts to force through large increments resulting in no improvement or negative improvement.

That seems like disingenuous language. Climate change is akin to an avalanche threatening our town, and we're looking to shore up the retaining wall before the avalanche gets out of control. If the incremental changes do not build a sufficiently sturdy retaining wall we might as well not bother - we will have done a lot of work and the avalanche will still destroy the town. There's no middle ground when you're talking about an existential threat.

It's classic American Right freedom signaling. It's always freedom to. Never freedom from.

Freedom to buy ICE cars. Not freedom from the existential risk of climate change.

You must not have been alive when we moved away leaded petrol. The decision was not left up to the consumer.

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