All posts tagged: premature deaths

Joe Biden and Donald Trump Have Thoughts About Your Next Car

Joe Biden and Donald Trump Have Thoughts About Your Next Car

Published by skeptic

Get ready for the EV election. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux March 20, 2024, 6:32 PM ET The Biden administration earlier today issued a major new rule intended to spur the country’s electric-vehicle industry and slash future sales of new gas-powered cars. The rule is not a ban on gas cars, nor does it mandate electric-vehicle sales. It is a new emissions standard, requiring automakers to cut the average carbon emission of their fleets by nearly 50 percent by 2032. It would speed up the transformation of the car industry: The simplest way for automakers to cut emissions will likely be to shift more of their fleets to electric and hybrid models, and the Biden administration estimates that the rule would result in electric vehicles making up as much as half of all new cars sold by 2032. It also gives the country more of a chance of meeting the administration’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050. The final rule is a less …

Air Pollution Is a Creeping Tax on American Life

Air Pollution Is a Creeping Tax on American Life

Published by skeptic

It feels like a sin against the sanctitude of being alive to put a dollar value on one year of a human life. A year spent living instead of dead is obviously priceless, beyond the measure of something so unprofound as money. But it gets a price tag in the world of economic models. Different agencies and organizations use different estimates—no one can seem to agree on the precise going rate. But according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a statistical lifetime is valued at about $11.5 million in 2024 dollars. By one new analysis, that translates to about $250,000 per year of living. That’s important to know, because the EPA is in the business of calculating how much money is lost or saved by preventing people’s early demise through various environmental regulations. Making contaminated water safer and dirty air cleaner costs money, but the country also benefits financially by keeping people alive. In the EPA’s own language, the agency simply estimates how much people are willing to pay to reduce their risk of dying from …

The Real Cost of Driving Into Manhattan

The Real Cost of Driving Into Manhattan

Published by skeptic

Next year, congestion pricing is coming to New York City. And maybe, just maybe, the toll for motor vehicles entering the lower half of Manhattan should be set at $100. That number comes from Charles Komanoff, an environmental activist, a transit analyst, and a local political fixture. It represents neither the amount that would maximize revenue nor the amount that would minimize traffic. Rather, it is an estimate of how much it really costs for a single vehicle to take a trip into the congestion zone—in economists’ terminology, the unpriced externality associated with driving into one of the most financially productive and eternally gridlocked places on Earth. To be clear, Komanoff does not actually think that the state should charge each car, pickup, and box truck $100. He doesn’t think the toll should be anywhere near that amount. “At heart, I’m very much a radical,” he told me as we sat outside a stylish coffee shop in SoHo, to which Komanoff had brought his own coffee in a thermos. He has been detained numerous times …