Brickbat: Baby, You Can't Drive Your Car

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing has warned lawmakers he will ban driving on weekends if they cannot agree to a planned amendment to the nation's Climate Protection Act. Wissing said that is the only way to meet the emissions goals called for in the law. Negotiations over the amendment have stalled over whether the government should look at overall carbon dioxide emissions and allow the government to decide what actions to take if they don't meet targets for two years in a row or whether it should set individual standards for each sector of the economy. Julia Verlinden of the Green Party said that rather than ban weekend driving if an agreement can't be reached, Wissing could reduce the speed limit.

Comments

[Vernon Depner]

The mask is slipping off: the real goal behind this "carbon" stuff is to deprive Westerners of personal and economic mobility. You will stay where we put you. You will not leave your 15-minute Neighborhood without permission.

[Longtobefree]

You are almost there.
Not just personal and economic mobility; all freedoms.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

You will own nothing AND you will go nowhere. And you will pretend to be happy or you will re reeducated.

[MatthewSlyfield]

You will own nothing AND you will go nowhere. And you will be happy about it, or you will re reeducated.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Look, if the Soviet Union taught us anything, it's that pretense is essential for a successful socialist nation.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

How would reducing the speed limit do that?

[Mickey Rat]

On The Road to Serfdom: Are we there yet? Soon.

[Ajsloss]

On The Road to Serfdom

But not on the weekends!

[Seamus]

No exceptions, I presume, allowing people.to drive to church or synagogue? (Orthodox Jews would say you shouldn't be driving on shabbas anyway, so I guess they'd be OK.)

[Fist of Etiquette]

You know who else wanted to force people onto trains?

[MatthewSlyfield]

Amtrak?

[Vernon Depner]

Sir Topham Hatt?

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Every fucking new urbanist?

[Longtobefree]

Of course, there is NO possibility the lawmakers will get the minister off their backs by repealing the law instead of amending it.

[mad.casual]

Sure, no one can drive anything anywhere 2 days a week, but their cabotage laws are fantastic!

[Narrator voice: It turns out that Germany and Europe’s cabotage laws are not, in fact, fantastic.]

[Rossami]

So much stupid.

By the way, lowering the speed limits will not reduce emissions. The optimal speed for emissions is the same as the optimal speed for fuel efficiency. While that optimal speed varies by car (generally, lighter more aerodynamic cars are higher while heavy boxy cars are lower), the average is around 55 mph or 90 kph. The default German speed limits are already 50 kph inside built-up areas and 100 kph outside.

So, okay, lowering the 100 kph limit would improve fuel efficiency for some cars but it would degrade it for all the fun cars that peole like to drive - the cars actually being targetted by this regulation.

So the rule is stupid, the minister's proposed means to compliance is stupid and the counter-proposal is stupider.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Quit it! Do you want to bring back the US national 55 mph speed limit?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I think they may be referring to motorway speed limits. Which are, in unrestricted areas of Germany, well, unrestricted.

It would be a shame if they did that, but the "advisory" German motorway speed limit of 130 kph is decently fast (same as France).

[edbeau99]

Germany, closely followed by the UK, is the epitome of green stupidity. Also worth a read (so far only on WUWT, though it really should be mentioned on Reason) is the expose of how the German green bureaucrats took an expert study showing it was safe to continue using nuclear power plants for several years, and rewrote it to say the plants had to be shut down immediately. Bureaucrats who previously had worked for the "green energy" industry.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Graft is color blind.

[TJJ2000]

That WAR on plant sustenance and naming the WAR Green...
LMAO....
It really doesn't get much more stupid than this.

Never-mind CO2 what about DiHydrogen Monoxide!
https://dhmo.org/facts.html
That ?science? is even MORE clear and undeniable.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Or they could repeal the stupid law.

Madness.

[Aspiring Statesman]

If the Germans really wanted to prioritize climate carbon reduction, they'd restart their idle nukes, build more nukes, and then mandate plug-in hybrid vehicles featuring regenerative braking.

If Germany went nuclear, then Europe could tell Mr Putin that he can keep all of his fossil fuels under the Russian tundra, solving not just global warming but (a facet of) a geopolitical problem as well.

[Vernon Depner]

Your error is thinking that our rulers want to solve problems.

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

I don't think they're "idle". I think they turned them off and dismantled them.

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

They were very serious about fucking themselves.

[Bill Falcon]

round up the people and force them to live in cosmo land where the elites control everything...need food..well public transport can only provide enough food you can carry (for a day or two). You will be spending most of your time trying to obtain the necessities and depending on govt and the nonprofit bolshies.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Just stop it..we have much higher PPM of CO2 and the planet was lush with plants and a larger biodiversity than today. CO2 is good.