Biden’s promise to electrify the federal government’s fleet of 645,000 vehicles: Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic writes that the policy ought to be judged less by its direct effects on emissions, which will be very modest, than by the signal it sends to the auto market, which to meet Biden’s goals would have to transition to selling mostly electric cars by 2030. On Thursday, General Motors announced that it would stop selling vehicles with tailpipe emissions by 2035.
“If Biden were to replace, say, the entire federal fleet over five years, the government would buy about 129,000 new cars every year — a huge total, equivalent to about a quarter of Tesla’s worldwide production last year,” he explains. “But if the fleet isn’t fully replaced until 2035, the policy will make a much smaller dent.”
Reactions were also mixed to Biden’s plan to halt and review new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. While those regions account for nearly a quarter of the country’s carbon emissions, the order is a pause, not a ban, as some advocates had hoped for, and applies only to future leases. Even if the halt on new leases became permanent, Morgan Stanley expects that large, diversified companies could simply move their drilling elsewhere.
The New York Times
Me: A world without petrol and diesel engined cars. Wonderful – clean, no emissions except for industry. My petrol engined cars will be a thing of the past, along with those guys, who like me have their “big boys toys” parked in the garage.