Sale of Petrol Cars Should Soon Be Banned

Introduction

With electric cars on the rise and the realisation that CO2 emission is seriously becoming a problem. More and more people are starting to get concerned, and asking the question: Should there be a ban for the sale of fossil fuelled cars? The Rotterdam port company wants to reduce the amount of CO2 emission by 85 to 90 percent by 2050 and in Amsterdam they have plans to ban scooters from the city centre. The Netherlands has pledged for a law that prohibits the sale of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars after 2030. Great Britain is also concerned about their air quality and has pledged to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars to by 2040. Great Britain has produced this plan in Juli 2017, and plans to ban the sale of any vehicles unless they emit next to no CO2. They have decided to make this move because there are yearly 40,000 premature deaths because of the high level of air pollution, 9,000 of these people are living in London and they therefore plan to have extra measures for London. So I am going to write from different perspectives about the plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars, and how they will influence different people, a bit like portrayed above.

The governments of many countries are thinking about or already planning their way to reduce CO2 gas emissions in the future. They’re doing this, because it slows down the warming up of the planet and therefore also the melting of the icecaps and also mainly because of health concerns, that lead to monetary concerns. These monetary concerns are things such as for example: people getting sick more often because of bad air quality. What does shell think about this? The moving forward of the electric car industry has been stopped and slowed down for the longest time by big corporations as Shell and BP. Since it is not in their interest to promote these developments in the industry, if the electric car branch starts taking over the fuel powered vehicle branch it would be a disaster for shell. They are somewhat off a nemesis of car brands such as Tesla with electric motors and therefore not be dependable on the gas prices and gas at all. With the upcoming of electric cars and the upcoming of laws that are going to forbid fuel powered cars doomsday is coming closer for big gasoline companies.

So how would it influence them? Guy Outen who is Head of Strategy & Portfolio for Shell has commented on this. “Put a price on carbon, stand back and watch the rush of technology to find the cheapest solution,” said Mr Outen. He is convinced that we really should not be looking into banning fossil fuel cars, but instead focus on trapping the gasses emitted by, freight transportation and aviation, more that cars. Since these are not as likely as cars to be replaced soon, because these are multimillion dollars vessels, and are not as easily replaced or customised to be not emitting as much CO2 gasses. Shell seems to not be as worried about this change as you would expect because they have already greatly invested in things such as wind mill farms and other green energy initiatives. They have been investing so big in these things because they saw this coming and have people on these kind of things 24/7 and therefore have come up with the idea to go with the flow of green energy. What are the health benefits of lowering the amount of CO2 gasses emitted?

According to the guardian this could potentially prevent the premature deaths of 40,000 Brittons. So this could have a dramatic impact on other countries as well. When the output of CO2 gasses from power plants and fossil fuel powered vehicles is seriously lessened other co-pollutants will also be reduced some of the most important examples are sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) they play a big role in the formation of airborne fine particulate matter (PM2. 5) and ozone, these are both particularly harmful to health. PM2. 5 and ozone cause premature death and other negative effects on your health such as chronic bronchitis; non-fatal heart attacks; hospitalisations for cardiopulmonary disease, asthma or cardiovascular events. It has been calculated and estimated that if the CO2 emissions from US power plants alone are reduced by 24% that this would reduce NOx and SO2 emissions by 26-28% and by 2030 prevent:

• 2,700 – 6,300 premature deaths
• 140,000 asthma exacerbations in children
• 1,600 emergency department visits for asthma
• 290,000 lost work days
• 180,000 missed school days; and,
• 2,400 hospital admissions for cardiovascular or respiratory symptoms

The estimated monetary value of these health co-benefits in 2030 alone is between $25-59 billion (2011$). Reducing CO2 emissions not only significantly and quickly reduces harmful co-pollutants, saves lives and avoids other adverse health impacts, but also saves the economy more billions of dollars in health costs than it costs to reduce emissions. Given these co-benefits, urgently and significantly reducing CO2 emissions makes sense. If we were to reduce our CO2 emissions in general drastically we could potentially even stop the heating up of the earth or at least slow it down a whole lot. The stopping or slowing down of climate change is of huge effect, it’ll help us preserve lots of animal species and stop them from dying out because of something not of a natural kind.

Reducing CO2 emission for mother nature

The effect of climate change is already noticeable on a global level. Glaciers are melting until there is almost nothing of them left, lakes and river beds don’t have ice on them anymore during the winter, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner. The effects that scientists linked to climate change have finally come into play, they had predicted the: decrease of ocean ice, therefore higher sea levels and even hotter heat waves during summer. These scientists are almost sure that temperatures all across the world will keep peaking and continue increasing, mainly a consequence of human gas emission. The IPCC, predicts a rise in temperature of 2. 5-10º Fahrenheit in the following 100 years. “The IPCC predicts that increases in global mean temperature of less than 1. 8 to 5. 4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) above 1990 levels will become a real problem and have significant impact in some regions and dangerous ones in others. ” Some of the said to be long term effects climate change will have on the US are:

Varying

The magnitude of the damage of climate change is mostly determined by the amount of heat trapping gasses emitted. Because the amount of heat emitted by humans is layed up upon a varying climate, temperature rises will not be smooth rising, and neither will the effects be.

Warmer

The length of the frost-free season (and the corresponding growing season) has been increasingnationally since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western United Statesaffecting ecosystems and agriculture. Across the United States, the growing season is projected tocontinue to lengthen. This will change again if emissions are reduced.

Rain and downfall

The average downfall in the U. S. has increased since 1900, but while some areas have hadincreases bigger that the national averages, others have had decreases. The total averageprecipitation is expected to increase, but in regions as the south-west are expected to decrease.

Temperature riseIn the entire United States it is predicted to heat up, it is expected that there are more oftendroughts and heat waves and that these will be more intense, this will occur everywhere. The temperatures during the summer are expected to continue to rise, for that reason will the soils lose it’s moisture, which worsens the effect of heatwaves that are expected in most of the western and central US during summer and also seen in Europe with almost record breaking temperatures. Summer temperatures are projected to continue rising, and a reduction of soil moisture, whichexacerbates heat waves, is projected for much of the western and central U. S. in summer. By the end of this century, what have been once-in-20-year extreme heat days (one-day events) are projected to occur every two or three years over most of the nation. The temperatures during summing will continue to increase and the soil will be less moist, and thiswill only promote heat waves, much of the western and central U. S will have to deal with this by theend of the century. And what are now to be considered rare events, such as heat days that wouldonly occur once per 20 years, will now happen every two or three years, and affect most of the U. S

Hurricanes

The amount of hurricanes and the intensity of them has overall increased, but not only that, thestrongest types of hurricanes (category 4 & 5), have increased to happen since the 80’s. Theinfluence of humans on these events are still uncertain, but they believe the increase in warmth certainly has an effect on this.

Sea level on the rise

All around the world the Global water level has risen about 20cm since 1880 when they started accurately measuring this They are expecting it to at least rise another 33-140cm. This is a result of all the meltedice ending up in the ocean and the expansion of ocean-water when you warm it up. Within 10-30 years storms, high tides could in combination with the rise in ocean water increase yearly flooding in many places. The water level will continue rising even after 2100 because of the oceans slowly heating up, it will take time before they respond to a warmer Earth.

Therefore the ocean won’t stop heating up, the ocean doesn’t only slowly respond to heating up, it also takes a lot of time to cool it down, it won’t stop heating up that easily and if we don’t do anything it will at the same pace or quicker continue to heat up. For exactly this reason do scientists think expect the Arctic Ocean to be practically ice free before 2050.

Conclusion

After having done my research I’ve come to find that now, more than ever is the time we should do something about climate change. We should all do our part of ‘saving’ the planet and keeping it a good place to live. After what I have found I am even more convinced that we should ban the sale of fossil fuel powered cars in the future and instead drive ev’s (electrically powered vehicles). The CO2 that our cars, power plants, freight transportation, airplanes and so on emit is getting too much, and with the population on the rise this really seems like the best solution in my opinion. I have found that this really is a problem that you couldn’t deny and say it’s fake news or whatsoever and that we really need to address this as soon as possible.