Natural gas is now getting in the way; US carbon emissions increase by 3.4%

Power sector emissions increased, jet fuel use more-than-offset gas reduction.

Read the whole story

 

[lohphat]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Hardly.

I sold my home, gave away my car (and 90% of my possessions I hardly ever used), moved to a smaller housing situation, walk/bike/subway where I need to go.

The problem is the market determines the choices, not the consumer. Big, top heavy SUVs were a marketing phenomenon at the exclusion of saner models based upon "safety" fear mongering.

 

[DouglasFir]

In other news, nuclear driven France has one of the lowest carbon emissions in Europe..
Go nuclear!

Wouldn't that be great.

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated. Today nearly all reactors are Generation 2 (1950s technology). There is huge potential for increased efficiency which will reduce waste. The Gates Foundation was working on this, but recently stopped due to Trump's trade war with China.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... tes-trump/

Improvements in reactor design can't eliminate the waste or the risks, but, it can reduce them significantly. A combination of nuclear, wind, solar, and pumped storage could create a very reliable and green electric utility.

 

[Bernardo Verda]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Almost the true definition of unobtanium with an increasing world population. As much as we need renewables we need a change in our behaviors first. But where's the fun in that? It's maddening that people won't admit it they don't want to impact their lives. It's all talk.

While not the ideal solution, at least I got a heat pump, 9500wp of solar panels and an electric motorbike and if you tell people they are looking like you're from Mars..even when they have three kids while I got none. You would think they would be the ones worrying about the future because of the kids.

The world is a strange place.

Rightly or wrongly, expecting people to cut their living standards to save the planet is a non-starter. If that is what we need to save the planet, we are all going to die.

But then you go on to contradict yourself - you got a heat pump, solar panels and an electric motorbike to maintain your living standards, didn't you? This is the only real solution going forward - creating options to reduce our carbon footprint whilst maintaining or improving living standards.

Our whole technological-societal organization (at least in N. America) is essentially structured around fossil-fueled options -- choosing any other options is still going against the grain.

Even our most concerned climate scientists, climate activists and climate/sustainability governmental actors are still flying halfway across the world to attend important conferences, because we don't yet have satisfactory means to replace them effectively (though that too is being worked on https://www.transitionengineering.org/conference).

People are restricted to personal scale choices that may help but won't suffice even if every one of their neighbors and colleagues do the same. This is a structural problem, and individual initiative, while important, can only make a dent, if the wider scale, structural problems aren't addressed.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

I prefer prosperity. Which has always been fueled by energy consumption. That will continue and only the mix will change. There is no dire need of forcing functions outside of economics.

Then you are continuing to live on borrowed time. It's going to catch up with all of us.

 

[Triarius]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Almost the true definition of unobtanium with an increasing world population. As much as we need renewables we need a change in our behaviors first. But where's the fun in that? It's maddening that people won't admit it they don't want to impact their lives. It's all talk.

While not the ideal solution, at least I got a heat pump, 9500wp of solar panels and an electric motorbike and if you tell people they are looking like you're from Mars..even when they have three kids while I got none. You would think they would be the ones worrying about the future because of the kids.

The world is a strange place.

yup. last time I remarked here that individual behavior had an impact, I was roundly put back in my place by someone arguing it was out of our hands and government/regulating corporations was the only way.

elective jet travel is _highly_ under each individual’s control and is the quickest way to emit lots. smaller cars. minimizing leccy use.

lots of this _saves_ $ too.

but, no, all everyone else’s fault.

 

[efbrazil]

We signed up with Puget Sound Energy carbon offsets after attenborough’s speech at the UN. Here is the PSE link:
https://www.pse.com/green-options/Renew ... e-for-home

While I realize a monster like Trump undoes all the good I can accomplish in my lifetime with a fraction of an ignorant tweet, that’s not an excuse to do nothing on a personal level.

 

[jlredford]

The 3.4% increase matches what the Energy Information Agency forecast. From their Short Term Outlook

After declining by 0.8% in 2017, EIA forecasts that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will rise by 3.0% in 2018. This increase largely reflects more natural gas consumption in 2018 for heating during a colder winter and for electric generation to support more cooling during a warmer summer than in 2017. EIA expects emissions to decline by 1.2% in 2019 because it forecasts that temperatures will return to near normal. Energy-related CO2 emissions are sensitive to changes in weather, economic growth, energy prices, and fuel mix.

Better luck next year! At least gasoline use is going down.

 

[spitz!!]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Almost the true definition of unobtanium with an increasing world population. As much as we need renewables we need a change in our behaviors first. But where's the fun in that? It's maddening that people won't admit it they don't want to impact their lives. It's all talk.

While not the ideal solution, at least I got a heat pump, 9500wp of solar panels and an electric motorbike and if you tell people they are looking like you're from Mars..even when they have three kids while I got none. You would think they would be the ones worrying about the future because of the kids.

The world is a strange place.

yup. last time I remarked here that individual behavior had an impact, I was roundly put back in my place by someone arguing it was out of our hands and government/regulating corporations was the only way.

elective jet travel is _highly_ under each individual’s control and is the quickest way to emit lots. smaller cars. minimizing leccy use.

lots of this _saves_ $ too.

but, no, all everyone else’s fault.

Look at the reaction even the most ardent environmentalist will elicit when you suggest to cut back on eating beef. It's easier to tell other people how to behave than making small changes with themselves.

 

[Deleted member 388703]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

 

[Chemical Tribe]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

The map you linked to shows only history for the past.....few months. Ice is getting bigger as winter comes...shocker.

 

[Bernardo Verda]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

It would probably help your argument, if your own reference didn't contradict you.
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-ic ... c-sea-ice/

.

edit: removed enclosing quote, for clarity re whom I was addressing

 

[XavierItzmann]

While there have been movements to decarbonize trucking, either with electric trucks or with fuel-cell vehicles, electric semis are not currently widely available.

At least for the long-distance travel, in ancient times a lot of these things used to move over twin strips of iron laid throughout the country, with no direct emissions if electrified. If only we still had the business and organizational structure under which we could still readily use such technology instead of most of the trucks you see on the long-haul interstates today....

The US is pretty good at rail freight transport, the split is about 2.9 trillion tonnes-km by road vs 2.3 trillion tonnes-km by rail.

https://www.bts.gov/content/us-tonne-ki ... tabulation

The EU-28 by comparison is about 1.9 trillion tonnes-km by road vs 0.4 trillion tonnes-km by rail.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistic ... utive_year

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistic ... statistics

Correct. The U.S.A. is about three times better than Europe at using rail for cargo.

 

[Deleted member 388703]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

The map you linked to shows only history for the past.....few months. Ice is getting bigger as winter comes...shocker.

"Arctic ice is growing" is just the latest debunked talking point the shills have come up with. I think I've seen it rise from the grave at least three times just this past month or two.

 

[Ushio]

I think that air travel is somewhere where companies can make a big impact. My current employer will fly all the salespeople from all over the country to our HQ several times a year. In fact every sales organization I have worked with does this.

The thing is with these conferences, which are typically modelled as "sales training" or something like that, are generally a huge waste of everyone's time. None of the salespeople want to go, no one enjoys it, sales workshops are usually pointless and focused on the lowest common denominator, so few people learn anything of value.

Stop pointless conferences: save time, money, aggravation, and the planet all at once. Everyone wins.

Do they charter planes for these or are they using scheduled flights that would happen anyway just a little emptier?

 

[XavierItzmann]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

 

[spitz!!]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

Nuclear's time is over, for now. There isn't a compelling reason to build new plants with billion dollar cost over runs and all the regulatory red tape.

Maybe someplace like France or China can pull this off, but it's practically impossible to build something like a new plant in the US even if the will was there.

 

[RoninX]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Almost the true definition of unobtanium with an increasing world population. As much as we need renewables we need a change in our behaviors first. But where's the fun in that? It's maddening that people won't admit it they don't want to impact their lives. It's all talk.

While not the ideal solution, at least I got a heat pump, 9500wp of solar panels and an electric motorbike and if you tell people they are looking like you're from Mars..even when they have three kids while I got none. You would think they would be the ones worrying about the future because of the kids.

The world is a strange place.

Carbon tax is probably the best answer.

Logically sure. If they don't care make a financial incentive to make them care. That approach has been proven wildly successful.

But carbon tax got turned into a political dog whistle. If it were to be implemented it'd need to be renamed. Preferably something not 'taxes'.

Call them something 'merican like "freedom incentives" or the like.

Today's GOP is opposed to even a revenue-neutral carbon tax (which means it's not going to get through the Senate even if the Democrats win the White House).

But what about a revenue-negative carbon tax? Tax carbon and then return double the amount collected as tax refunds.

Sure, it would increase the deficit, but both parties have made it blindingly obvious that they don't care about that...

 

[The_Motarp]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

I would consider the green movement at least partly to blame, but the government also shares a major chunk of responsibility for lying repeatedly about how much radioactivity was being released by weapons programs and how dangerous it was. If the government had been honest the first several times questions were raised they might not have had so much trouble getting people to believe them when they started actually telling the truth.

 

[Veritas super omens]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

I would consider the green movement at least partly to blame, but the government also shares a major chunk of responsibility for lying repeatedly about how much radioactivity was being released by weapons programs and how dangerous it was. If the government had been honest the first several times questions were raised they might not have had so much trouble getting people to believe themIF they started actually telling the truth.

FTFY

 

[XavierItzmann]

I would consider the green movement at least partly to blame, but the government also shares a major chunk of responsibility for lying repeatedly about how much radioactivity was being released by weapons programs and how dangerous it was. If the government had been honest the first several times questions were raised they might not have had so much trouble getting people to believe them when they started actually telling the truth.

I hear what you are saying, but the mistake there is that commercial power generation in the U.S. has nothing to do with weapons.

It is like banning airliners because, hey!, they use the same fuel and same engine technology as military bombers!

The very mistake of mixing up peaceful nuclear power generation with nuclear weaponry is the result of the environmentalist movement's rhetoric, purposeful deception, and propaganda.

 

[Onyx Spartan II]

I think that air travel is somewhere where companies can make a big impact. My current employer will fly all the salespeople from all over the country to our HQ several times a year. In fact every sales organization I have worked with does this.

The thing is with these conferences, which are typically modelled as "sales training" or something like that, are generally a huge waste of everyone's time. None of the salespeople want to go, no one enjoys it, sales workshops are usually pointless and focused on the lowest common denominator, so few people learn anything of value.

Stop pointless conferences: save time, money, aggravation, and the planet all at once. Everyone wins.

Do they charter planes for these or are they using scheduled flights that would happen anyway just a little emptier?

Airlines would not schedule flights if there was no demand. If there is less demand, there are fewer flights.

 

[joncaplan]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

While many environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, and reduced the number of plants that were built, nuclear power has failed largely on economic grounds. The plants are very capital intensive to build and take a decade to construct. These days other generating options are simply much cheaper. These cheaper options include natural gas as well as wind, which tend to compliment each other well.

 

[Luddite Curmudgeon]

While there have been movements to decarbonize trucking, either with electric trucks or with fuel-cell vehicles, electric semis are not currently widely available.

At least for the long-distance travel, in ancient times a lot of these things used to move over twin strips of iron laid throughout the country, with no direct emissions if electrified. If only we still had the business and organizational structure under which we could still readily use such technology instead of most of the trucks you see on the long-haul interstates today....

What's really shocking is that our railways aren't even electrified. Still diesel electric locomotives pulling freight trains in year 2019, plus like you said diesel long haul trucks. Yes USA is big compared to countries that have electrified their railways. But come on we've had a 100 years to get it done!

Electrification of the railroads was the most expensive option to move freight on the tracks. Most of the electrification started out as smoke abatement initiatives in the cities. The Pennsy electrified due to smoke abatement in the NY, NJ, DC areas and they extended it to Harrisburg as it was a major operations center where they could swap out the electric locos. The Milwaukee Rd electrified due to the mountains and cold in the winter which made generating steam in their locos. They had a chance to close off the gap between the Rockies and the Cascades, but it was too expensive to electrify. Which is the real reason as the railroads don't get any kind of subsidy for capital improvements (they spend about $4-5B/yr on this), while the only cost I've seen to electrify the country's railroad system is about $2.3M per route mile. This was 15yrs ago and based on the Boston to New Haven electrification.

Here is another view on electrification. It doesn't cite any costs to do so, but it also states that Europe has an easier time of it because the RRs there are state owned.

https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/elec ... istic-goal

 

[Triarius]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

I don't want to sacrifice just so someone else can enjoy. Individual action for climate change can only do marginal improvement. The scale of the problem and the solution means we have to have regulation to share the burden.

how is you foregoing elective consumption being “taken advantage of” by someone else? absent regulation, that’s your choice, sure. and no one is forcing you to do anything. but dressing it up as “shucks, someone else would do it” is disingenuous. each ton less is a ton less, sophistry aside.

just say that you can’t / don’t care that much and it’s inconvenient.

more honest.

reminds me of our standard Canadian shrug about emissions: “we only emit 2% of global CO2”.

yes, but we Canadians do 2% with <0.5% of population.

btw, I don’t vote Green, not vegan and do enjoy my comforts. When possible, and convenient, I do try to lessen my emissions. not forcing _you_ to, but a bit more candor is appreciated ;-)

 

[TehRoot]

While there have been movements to decarbonize trucking, either with electric trucks or with fuel-cell vehicles, electric semis are not currently widely available.

At least for the long-distance travel, in ancient times a lot of these things used to move over twin strips of iron laid throughout the country, with no direct emissions if electrified. If only we still had the business and organizational structure under which we could still readily use such technology instead of most of the trucks you see on the long-haul interstates today....

What's really shocking is that our railways aren't even electrified. Still diesel electric locomotives pulling freight trains in year 2019, plus like you said diesel long haul trucks. Yes USA is big compared to countries that have electrified their railways. But come on we've had a 100 years to get it done!

There was no incentive to electrify when Diesel-electric locomotives started existing. The trend now is liquified petroleum powered locomotives(i.e., natural gas powered) but you're never going to get widespread electrification of all freight track in America. You could argue for the electrification of high use corridors, but that would cost a massive amount of capital to do.

We're talking tens of billions of dollars here just for the infrastructure, not to mention new locomotives, and the fact that we'd need to re-design the way we run trains now. You can't run 2.5+ mile trains using traditional electric locomotives like they do in the U.S. and Australia. You'd need many more electric locomotives to get the same tractive effort that we do out of the current diesels right now.

Remember, the only reason the NE corridor is electrified at all is because of efforts done in the 1920s-1950s basically born out of the anti-smoke/exhaust efforts.

 

[Biceps]

Everyone is talking how they want to do better, but nobody seems to be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Everybody wants their cheap airplane tickets, large cars and no effects on their living standards.

Hardly.

I sold my home, gave away my car (and 90% of my possessions I hardly ever used), moved to a smaller housing situation, walk/bike/subway where I need to go.

The problem is the market determines the choices, not the consumer. Big, top heavy SUVs were a marketing phenomenon at the exclusion of saner models based upon "safety" fear mongering.

I see this as an opportunity for a quick public PSA: if you are a man under 5'6", and you drive a massive jacked up truck or SUV to your office job every day, everyone knows you are (unsuccessfully) compensating for something else. And they are laughing at you. Daily.

 

[Biceps]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

The map you linked to shows only history for the past.....few months. Ice is getting bigger as winter comes...shocker.

Incorrect. Read the DMI site. It is graphing the arctic ice volume level for a given day but you can put any of the past 10 plus years for the graph. I think it only plots 2 years vs. averaged data line but you can plot which ever years you choose. I chose the last two years as these years would have the highest CO2 concentrations.

You can cherry pick data all you want (the Ars community sees through that bullshit pretty well), but the fact is that CO2 is gas that traps heat. It's physics. Releasing more and more CO2 is not going suddenly result in a cooler planet, it will result in something that progressively begins to look more like Venus. But you do you.

 

[Onyx Spartan II]

While many environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, and reduced the number of plants that were built, nuclear power has failed largely on economic grounds. The plants are very capital intensive to build and take a decade to construct. These days other generating options are simply much cheaper. These cheaper options include natural gas as well as wind, which tend to compliment each other well.

I agree that nuclear is not now cheap.

Have you considered that over-regulation (driven by scare tactics) might have something to do with it?

It was only in the late 1970's that a long distance call was expensive enough that many people thought twice about it and that airline travel was a luxury much of the population saw as a dream.

Now these are free or very affordable. Maybe these two were over-regulated at some point?

It was only in the late 1970's that personal computing devices were so expensive they were scarcely a dream, let alone having multiple computers for every worker.

Now these are extremely affordable and thousands of times more powerful. I have a dozen computers more powerful than massive mainframes that fit in my pocket or a backpack, and 3 more at my workplace!. Maybe computers were over-regulated at some point!

Wait...

You've got a lot of motivated reasoning here, mate. Start with articulating which regulations are overly burdensome, and why. No hand-wavium here about "the environmentalists", just actual regulations. It wasn't lawsuits or NIMBYism or scare tactics that killed Vogtle and Summer.

 

[Faanchou]

The zombie apocalypse is real, just not in the way we imagined. Instead, it's in the form of humanity-attacking, comes-back-from the dead brainless lies, like the science denial disease Jackyl3 is attempting to transmit.

Look at the data and prove me wrong.

The map you linked to shows only history for the past.....few months. Ice is getting bigger as winter comes...shocker.

Incorrect. Read the DMI site. It is graphing the arctic ice volume level for a given day but you can put any of the past 10 plus years for the graph. I think it only plots 2 years vs. averaged data line but you can plot which ever years you choose. I chose the last two years as these years would have the highest CO2 concentrations.

You can cherry pick data all you want (the Ars community sees through that bullshit pretty well), but the fact is that CO2 is gas that traps heat. It's physics. Releasing more and more CO2 is not going suddenly result in a cooler planet, it will result in something that progressively begins to look more like Venus. But you do you.

Yep. If you melt more icepacks, you get more sea ice. That means you are running hotter, not colder.

We also aren't getting record amounts of wet snowfall in Mid-Europe and fricking Greece because winters are colder, we are getting record amounts of wet snowfall in Mid-Europe and fricking Greece because warm air carries more moisture than cold air.

 

[jevandezande]

Natural gas is not the problem in this case, so much as increased electricity usage. If all this new power coming online had been coal plants we would have been even farther behind.

Of course, switching to natural gas is not enough, but it is a step in the right direction. Ironically, it is being done purely for economic reasons. This just means that we need to price the externalities of carbon emissions properly (carbon tax anyone?), and then we can harness the power of markets to further decrease our emissions.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Burning wood can be considered carbon-neutral depending on your POV, and I know that's an unpopular opinion. And I'm going to say it, but a modern coal-burning stove with emissions equipment is cleaner than a diesel fueled furnace. That sounds backward but it's reality.

Burning wood (and coal) have terrible particulate emissions, extremely unhealthy.

Citation on your "coal burning stove" claims. Not that diesel is a clean choice either.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

Suuuuure. Nothing to do with the nuclear industry in the West being incapable of building a reactor without going at least 200% over budget on both dollars and timeline. If they complete the reactors at all.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

I'm not saying this is the main cause, but it's worth looking at electric cars. Instead of ICE running directly on fossil fuels, we're plugging them into the power grid. That energy has to come from somewhere.

The volume of electrics has grown considerably in the last few years, and all we've done is relocate where the GHG are coming from.

Nope. Wrong on two counts.

1) In the vast majority of the USA, BEVs powered on grid electricity are noticeably lower GHG than an equivalent fossil vehicle.

2) That BEV's allocated GHG emissions get reduced as the grid gets cleaner. Keep shutting down coal, add more wind and solar.

 

[Faanchou]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

Suuuuure. Nothing to do with the nuclear industry in the West being incapable of building a reactor without going at least 200% over budget on both dollars and timeline. If they complete the reactors at all.

i'm sure Areva and Siemens will get OL3 running one of these decades.

 

[Triarius]

Unfortunately most people have a negative view of nuclear power because the reactor designs have stagnated.

Nahh, actually, nuclear was ground to a halt in the U.S.A. because of the Green movement's scare tactics and propaganda.

Suuuuure. Nothing to do with the nuclear industry in the West being incapable of building a reactor without going at least 200% over budget on both dollars and timeline. If they complete the reactors at all.

Sure, but the Greens bear a big chunk of blame too.

Germany’s reactors were already built. but, noooo, had to shut them down and replace w brown coal.

Ditto France’s recent announcement of less nuclear.

any new reactor would get challenged in the US. IIRC they even shot down a high power transmission line in desert (just where scale solar is best). endangered turtles and no blood signature that it would never carry fossil leccy.

In BC these morons have been trying to shut down a major hydro dam project for decades. Same thing with run of river microdams. We haven’t built any wind turbines here, partially due to endless environmental assessments.

Global warming is just too dangerous to leave romantic and numerically illiterate Greens in charge to push a model of economy and consumption that no voter majority will ever support.

We had a referendum on voting reform here, strongly supported by the Greens to move to PR which would have given them disproportionate say in policy. Defeated 61% to 39, thank God