Buses and trucks are also regulated and have to adhere to emissions standards, and get tested regularly; at least, in the US, they are regulated more heavily than autos (or, at least have more paperwork and legal obligations involved in driving them, and have a higher tax burden).
People riding a bus are, in aggregate, producing much less waste than if they were all driving automobiles...so, it's OK that a bus produces quite a bit more waste than a single automobile. And, I might even argue we aren't going far enough to incentivize people to take mass transit rather than driving themselves.
The cargo industry is responsible for a tremendous amount of emissions; freight ships account for millions of cars worth of emissions, in fact. That's definitely an area for improvement on a worldwide level. I'm in no way saying there aren't other sources of emissions, or that regulating auto emissions effectively will solve the problem. Merely that ignoring emissions from cars will exacerbate what is already the single biggest problem humanity faces going forward.
Right, but (per parent comment), you misrepresented the basis for the tradeoff behind the regulation -- you justified it by the need to prevent global warming, but the regulation pertained to NO2, not CO2, and satisfying the former typically makes the car less CO2-efficient.
So, you were justifying a GW-worsening regulation by the need to lessen GW.
(Your point about differing limits for buses vs cars is correct though, and the parent is wrong on that issue. But it would frankly be better if they were just charged per emission and each mode decides for itself whether the extra emissions are worth it.)
Sure, there's the argument that we're squeezing the balloon rather than reducing waste; the waste products can be tweaked to produce more or less of one or the other. My point is that as long as diesel continues to be propped up as a "clean" technology, based on fabricated data, we won't see migration to actually cleaner technology. Of course it's cheaper to make vehicles that are either poisonous or cause climate change (both, actually, no matter how you squeeze the balloon).
Diesel, it turns out, isn't all that "clean". I hate that it's so...I drive a modern turbo diesel vehicle, and have been very disappointed to learn about the tradeoffs and negatives of that technology (though I drive a big Ford diesel, which doesn't make some of the compromises that VW was making in its small engines, and does comply with EPA regulations without trickery, to the best of my knowledge).
Burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change and produce dangerous emissions that are toxic for living things. As long as we continue to allow auto makers and the fossil fuel industry to externalize those costs, alternatives won't be competitive and won't be able to replace those fossil fuel burning vehicles.
It is, in the sense that curbing CO2 emissions is the justification de jour for the current arbitrary fuel economy regulations for new cars sold in the US.
Here, it's more like: "you are free to drive the biggest and most fuel inefficient new car you like, that can be built without the government fining the manufacturer into insolvency."
The backdoor efficiency standards cause OEMs to spend more money on making lighter cars with smaller, more complicated engines, which end up being less durable and more expensive to repair.
Buses and trucks are also regulated and have to adhere to emissions standards, and get tested regularly; at least, in the US, they are regulated more heavily than autos (or, at least have more paperwork and legal obligations involved in driving them, and have a higher tax burden).
People riding a bus are, in aggregate, producing much less waste than if they were all driving automobiles...so, it's OK that a bus produces quite a bit more waste than a single automobile. And, I might even argue we aren't going far enough to incentivize people to take mass transit rather than driving themselves.
The cargo industry is responsible for a tremendous amount of emissions; freight ships account for millions of cars worth of emissions, in fact. That's definitely an area for improvement on a worldwide level. I'm in no way saying there aren't other sources of emissions, or that regulating auto emissions effectively will solve the problem. Merely that ignoring emissions from cars will exacerbate what is already the single biggest problem humanity faces going forward.