A bit disappointing, and echoes the light truck exemption that the US has had for many years, although at least this one gets more strict over time. And I feel like when buying a “light commercial” vehicle the buyer should be required to prove that they need them for work. Many of them are still necessarily big and impractical even for work purposes but at least it would reduce the number of these monstrosities.
Indeed, better than nothing.
“Better than nothing” may as well be the new motto of the center-left the world over.
It’s all just neoliberalism. You can vote center-left and their platform of “crumbs for everybody” or center-right and their platform of “keep every crumb for yourself”. Either way, there’s no genuine threat to the wealth of corporations and the people at the top of them, no matter how greedy and immoral they get.
Getting genuine progressives into power would fix more issues in a year than we’ve fixed in a decade but mountain of bullshit they would need to overcome grows taller by the day. A lot of the “left vs right” we see is either theatrics about social issues or bikeshedding about how to turn public funds into private profits. The moment there’s an actual progressive looking to fix major systemic issues, politicians and media empires from both sides of the political spectrum unite in undermining them.
In Australia specifically, I think the Rudd/Gillard clusterfuck was the end of Labor having any ambition.
Sure, but what’s the alternative? I’d prefer someone does something, rather than we just thrown our collective hands up at the apparent pointlessness of it all and declare it all impossible. I’ll take a slight nudge of the needle over fuck all any day of the week.
The alternative would be the Greens. Even if they don’t get a majority, voting and supporting the Greens is important in showing Labor that they have a serious threat facing them from the left.
Sure, a nudge of the needle is better than nothing, but it’s not even close to enough to save us. You may as well be arguing “sure everyone is starving but eating old newspapers is better than nothing, even if the wealthy are still throwing lavish banquets every day”.
With preferential voting, there’s simply no excuse for putting such mediocrity at the top. All you’re doing is propping up their system that simply teeters between “more greed for the wealthy” and “slightly less greed foemen the wealthy” until it finds the maximum amount of psycopathic neoliberalism that the public will tolerate.
OK, sure, but what’s your solution? What should we be doing instead of these new efficiency standards that can’t be done in addition to them? I don’t disagree with your frustrations, but it’s easy to say something is not good enough without also providing something that is.
I don’t disagree with your frustrations, but it’s easy to say something is not good enough without also providing something that is.
I’m not a politician and it’s not my job to write environmental policy.
Even if I were to write you a policy that was flawless in every way, what good will that do 3 levels deep, on a small community, on an obscure social media platform? I don’t have the power to enact it nor the platform to promote it.
What I can do is call out policy that isn’t good enough, both publicly and privately to the parties and representatives, letting them know that I’m simply not going to vote for them if that’s all they’ve got. Without people grovelling around their feet and thanking them for crumbs, their choices are to either do better or never hold power again.
And like I said, with preferential voting there is no excuse. You’re not going to waste your vote if your first choice doesn’t get in. You don’t need to run damage control for Labor to save us all from Liberals. So why celebrate “slightly better” just because it’s not slightly worse?
the Rudd/Gillard clusterfuck was the end of Labor having any ambition
Nah, that would be the ambitious 2019 election platform where the lost an unlosable election.
The government also announced changes to the credits system. These mean companies whose emissions averages across their fleet come in below the cap will gain credits that can be traded with other manufacturers who will be penalised for exceeding the cap.
What value does this possibly provide, other than giving inefficient companies a loophole that prevents the country from overachieving our limp dick “goals” which already doom future generations to a (highly conservative) 50% chance of 2-3c.
This whole thing is unsurprising; Labor are neoliberals owned by oligarchs — far better for the future than any conservative party — but that doesn’t make this corporate subsidy any less shit than it is.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Albanese government has watered down flagship new laws aimed at disincentivising the use of high-polluting cars and hastening the importation of cleaner vehicles amid pressure from the auto industry.
Australia’s proposed fuel standard will place a cap on the emissions from new cars to incentivise carmakers to supply low- and zero-emissions vehicles as part of their fleet.
The changes also recategorise a raft of Australia’s most popular SUVs – including the Toyota LandCruiser, Ford Everest, Isuzu MUX, Nissan Patrol and Mitsubishi Pajero Sport – from passenger vehicles to the light commercial category.
Callachor said Toyota supported the amended scheme as a positive step, though he added: “We shouldn’t be under any illusions that there still remains a very big challenge in achieving those ambitious numbers.”
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries had called for the scheme to be watered down, a position that led to Tesla and Polestar quitting the group in protest.
The changes follow the Biden administration last week announcing it would ease its rules – a scheme that the Albanese government had claimed it was basing its local standard on.
The original article contains 785 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
