Unsafe at Any Price: Building the New ‘People’s Car’
On January 10th, 2008 Tata Motors of India unveiled its new low-cost Nano, touted by auto experts as a visionary “People’s Car.” Expected to retail for as little as $2500, Tata hopes to market its new car to the millions of consumers throughout the developing world that are expected to hit the road in the next decades.
Tata remains out ahead of its competitors with plans to manufacture the Nano in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, but other car companies such as the French-Japanese alliance Renault-Nissan and the Indian-Japanese joint venture Maruti-Suzuki are racing to figure out how to make their own ultra-cheap cars for the emerging middle classes of China, India and elsewhere. And it’s no wonder. Car sales in India are growing by more than 20 percent a year, compared with 3 percent globally. A recent survey by Invest India Market Solutions shows that as many as 12.8 million Indian households can be potential buyers for entry-level cars in the years to come, 1.6 million of them in 2008 alone. Sales are also booming in China: car ownership is up 300 percent over the last six years and the country’s total number of cars is expected to top 140 million in little more than a decade.
Meanwhile, car sales in the developed countries are plummeting. In 2007, U.S. car sales dropped to their lowest point in a decade, and analysts are expecting 2008 to mark the third straight year of shrinkage in domestic car sales. And according to Maryann Keller, an auto consultant, `It’s not just the United States that’s going down, it’s western Europe. Everybody is aiming at Russia, China and India.”
As a result of slumping sales, struggling Western car companies are, according to the New York Times, “looking to see where the cost-obsessed ethos of the developing world can help their bottom line.” On the same day Tata unveiled its new Nano, Ford Motors announced plans to more than double its investment in India–raising its total stake to $875 million–to make the country a regional hub for small-car manufacturing, compete for the fast-growing local low-cost market, and to build a new engine manufacturing plant.
Such plans have are keeping some in the environmental community awake at night. Transportation has the fastest growing carbon emissions of any economic sector and automobiles are largely to blame with more than 600 million passenger vehicles now cruising the world’s roads. The prospect of millions of new cars spells an exponential rise in carbon emissions as well as other kinds of pollutants. The top U.N. climate scientist and chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri, recently told the Washington Post that he is already “having nightmares” about precisely this scenario.
It’s not just the number of new cars rolling out of manufacturing plants, companies like Tata cut costs by avoiding the use of expensive emissions-cutting and modern safety technologies. According to the New York Times, the Nano:
would most likely fail emission and safety standards on any Western road, and, perhaps, in India in a few years, when the country imposes tougher environmental standards. Unlike cars in the United States, Indian vehicles do not have to come in for regular inspections after they are on real roads, which often batter the systems that curb emissions. Michael Walsh, a pollution consultant and former United States Environmental Protection Agency regulator, said that a car so cheap was likely to lack the complex technology to maintain its initial level of emissions and that without such technology cars could soon be producing four to five times their initial pollution level. “It strikes me as impossible that such a vehicle will be a very clean vehicle over the life of the vehicle,” Mr. Walsh said.
The prospect of the Nano becoming a household name like BMW or Ford provoked the German weekly Der Spiegel to declare Tata’s innovation an “eco-disaster.” Many see the Nano as far from “visionary.” As one commentator based in India wrote:
The last thing India’s choked roads need is more cars on them. India ignores the considerable advantages of its belated development: it enjoys up-to-the-minute technology and more than half a century of hindsight on the successes and failures of other industrialized societies. Instead of creating a new vision, India is content to copy mid-20th-century Western patterns of unplanned, unsustainable, highly consumptive development, even though these proved deeply flawed long ago.
Last week the New York Times editorial board chastised Tata’s CEO for his short-sightedness:
We know now that gas-driven automobiles do terrible damage to the environment, and the notion of loosing millions upon millions of new carbon emitters on our planet is not something to celebrate. So while we admire Mr. Tata’s business and engineering acumen in creating the Nano, we ardently wish that he would focus his talents elsewhere: creating transportation that is both affordable and doesn’t emit ever more greenhouse gases. That would be something for the whole world to celebrate and buy.
Of course there is deep hypocrisy in developed countries criticizing the driving habits of the developing world. As Michael Renner of Worldwatch Institute recently wrote, let’s all:
remember who has driven the planet to the edge of the climate abyss. People in Western countries and Japan–less than 15 percent of the world’s population–own two-thirds of all passenger and commercial motor vehicles in the world. Although they are rapidly expanding their fleets, India and China, with a third of the world’s population, so far account for only about 5 percent of vehicles. In 2005, China’s ratio of motor vehicles to population was at about the level the United States had reached some 90 years earlier. India’s ratio is less than half that of China.
Developed countries’ environmental critiques and campaigns need to start at home. Politicians, labor unions and environmental activists have a responsibility not to brandish global warming as a stick to bash workers and consumers in India or China. Instead the argument for progressive global warming policy must begin with the acknowledgment of the destructive policies of our home governments and corporations; this includes taking responsibility for developed countries majority contribution to the climate crisis.
At the same time we need to publicly denounce US and EU based multinational companies for compensating for decades of poor investment and design decisions by now roaming the globe in search of opportunities to profit on lower emissions standards in developing countries. The advantage of such campaigns is that many of these multinational companies are headquartered in the cities where we live, presenting concrete opportunities for action. The environmental and labor movements might demand, for example, that US and EU based companies be penalized unless they agree to meet uniform global fuel standards in all countries where their cars are manufactured and sold. For at minimum, companies like Ford and Renault should not be reaping rewards for developing cheap polluting vehicles abroad and driving the world nearer to the brink of environmental disaster.
But our efforts should not stop at our borders. Global warming is a global problem spanning oceans and borders alike. Citizens from every country retain a fundamental right to fight carbon emitters wherever they are located. Ordinary people–whether in India, US, China, Europe or elsewhere–have a direct interest in Tata’s new Nano and Ford’s destructive investment decisions. Much like global labor rights, global warming begs for global solutions.
Today, the real task is not to create a “people’s car” but a “people’s transport system”. Addressing the climate crisis requires entirely new approaches to moving people and goods–one not based on cars and trucks. The US created an automobile culture during the 20th century at enormous long term costs. The automobile brings with it not just greenhouse gas emissions but an entire infrastructure that is devastating to the social and natural environment–roads, the oil industry, urban congestion, and suburban sprawl. It’s a system the US and other rich countries now must transform and one which the developing world can still avoid.
Public policies and new technologies should be directed at developing the least polluting mode of transport at each scale of distance. That means promoting walking and biking, especially in cities; building new and better public transit systems; and revitalizing intercity rail for both passengers and freight. And since, for the foreseeable future, automobiles and trucks will continue to play a major transportation role, developing and mandating low emission vehicles remains a key goal.
Shifting to a climate friendly transportation system is daunting task. But there is a big payoff and not just in cleaner air: in a world in need of decent jobs, it is a challenge that can provide millions of people throughout the world with employment for decades to come.
– Brendan Smith, Tim Costello and Jeremy Brecher
As I understood it was going to meet eco standards and have extremely high mileage. Personally I see no reason for cars to exist at all.
Those grapes were probably sour anyway!
Perhaps American commuters should switch from SUVs and Hummers to elephants. Watch your step.
Imagine 8-billion living as Americans-do.
Imagine all paying 9. per gallon for gas (worth, maybe, 0.34).
Imagine the PROFIT if there were a monopolized/Globalist Energy-Consortium!
Imagine…
[Imagine why India, who were THE leading-Innovators in the retro-fitting of LPG-conversions for a FAR-cleaner fuel-cycle and lessened-expenses, are now in the clutches of the ‘Same Old Farce’ from Energy/Manufacturing…]
An economic collapse might force us to ‘power down’ and thereby avert environmental catastrophe. But the ‘business acumen’ of companies like Tata Motors seem to signify that the rate of environmental destruction will increase fast and soon. Thus we might destroy the planet before capitalism self destructs from its other contradictions. It’s a race between two destructive fates, but which of the two arrives first can be key to the survival of humankind. In this context, this article is very bad news.
I want to buy a smart car, electric, no gas. They are really cute, high-tech looking and get great mileage. I know it will use electricity which is a demand in itself, but besides that it is non polluting. I havent heard anything better except for the fuel made from old french fry oil. That requires more accessibility, that is lacking in my area. SO that is where I am at: electric car or french fry oil car. Any better solutions?
barksnotbites writes: “I want to buy a smart car, electric, no gas… I know it will use electricity which is a demand in itself, but besides that it is non polluting.”
Electric cars do pollute — just not where you drive them.
That can be a considerable disadvantage toward cleaning things up. For example, it’s got you thinking an electric car would be “non polluting” when you’ve just shifted the pollution elsewhere. By the time all the transmission and conversion losses are factored in, an electric car may well cause more CO2 pollution than a comparably-sized internal combustion car!
“I havent heard anything better except for the fuel made from old french fry oil. That requires more accessibility, that is lacking in my area.”
Making your own biodiesel isn’t for everyone, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t any in your area. You just need to seek it out.
We currently collect waste vegetable oil from five restaurants and make 120 liters of biodiesel a week, which we share with the local community in exchange for voluntary contributions.
“SO that is where I am at: electric car or french fry oil car. Any better solutions?”
Yes! Stop driving! (I didn’t say it was going to be even as easy as making biodiesel!)
Move closer to work, preferably walking/biking distance. You’ll be healthier, too!
For those times you really must drive, how about joining a car-sharing co-op? Or forming a small one yourself, with a few neighbors?
We currently drive less than a hundred kilometers a month, except for occasional longer trips to visit relatives. It can be done.
—————-
Back on topic: what are we thinking, pointing at the speck in India’s eye while we drive about with a log in our own? How can the 1/6th of the world’s population that does 90% of the polluting deny 5/6ths of the world’s population the right to own a car?
We can’t, at least without hypocrisy. The only right we have to complain about things like the Tata is if we give up our own cars, and how many are willing to do that?
Anyone who’s been to India would know that the country’s cities are collapsing underneath the influx of cars onto the roads. Cheap accessible financing and an increasingly materialist and consumerist middle class is driving the country to the brink of an eco-catastrophe of epic proportions. Even smaller secondary cities are being flooded by cars, leading to rising air pollution, motor vehicle accidents and a complete evisceration of the public sphere.
You won’t know this from the increasingly corporate English language press from India which caters to the elite classes and has a vested interest in pushing forward economic growth at all costs. Billionaires are the new gods.
Electric, diesel, bio-diesel, gas, LPG — name your Poison.
Why do most otherwise-intelligent people fail to see how we all have been ’so-profitably fooled’ (since JDR, and the 1800’s)?
Yes, Diesel’s motor was designed for the cleaner-burning and higher-torque and ‘cleaner’-outputs of surplus/wasted-veggie oils (kitchen-grease, grass-clippings, recycled-garbage, etc. — THAT sort of ‘bio-fuel’, NOT foodstuffs) — that’s exactly why JDR had him killed, and his engine/purloined-patent ’suppressed’ until a ‘petrol-diesel’ could be hoaxed/foisted upon the gullible Anglo/American-Consumer. [Worked great, too — one more subsidiary-family adding to the overall Rothschild-wealth — ask Gore’s new-friend, Nathanial De Rothschild, the great ‘carbon-tax’ Environmentalist, or ask Putin about the Rothschild’s!]
Electric-cars/trucks just ‘burn oil, remotely’ AND result in huge-concerns re: batteries/etc. And, Nuclear-power is just yet-MORE profitable for the Rothschild’s [who control 90% of uranium-mines] and the Energy/Defense-Concerns — who of-course are the ONLY beneficiaries/practitioners of the ‘Nuclear-Genie’ Disney used to draw for us [fission, not fusion — of-course]. And, even LPG would have been a sensible/large ’step-up’ from Gasoline — lengthening motor-life [unlike the counter-productive and now-mandated ‘ethanol from food’ joke-’solution’] while greatly reducing pollutants, refining/operating-costs, etc.
WAKE UP!
There simply IS no ‘energy shortage’ (just BS to produce higher-profiteering for a shared/globalist/privatized-monopoly in control of production, refinement, and ‘marketing’/manufacturing) AND there is no ‘environmental threat’ in the foreseeable-Future, either (just natural-warming and HAARP/nuke-induced ‘weather’ since ‘92).
Don’t you ’see’ both the wealthy-Right and the wealthy-Left squeezing out your lifeblood — the same damn way these Corporate/Globalist-Vipers squeeze all real-Wealth out of the world’s-Poor, here and elsewhere (soon to be joined by America’s so-called ‘middle-class’)?
Bush isn’t ’stupid’, neither is Gore — nor are their ‘backers/base’. WE are Stupid…
All these wars, all ‘religious-BS’, all ‘concerns’/fears/Threats, ‘population-controls’, Ideologies, dissonance, insanities, fanaticisms, diseases, ‘cures’…ALL OF IT. It’s almost-all BS and Crap (except our fuels/fertilizers), and most of it, like this GWofT, ‘highly profitable’ for the same-Interests always involved. Always…
“You’ve naught to fear but fear-itself” — and the wealthy-assholes laughing at you.
Just to correct some misinformation:
battery electric vehicles are way more efficient in terms of energy used to travel a given distance when compared to internal combustion engines. Also, it is much cheaper and easier to control emissions of a million cars from a single smokestack than a million exhaust pipes. Even if an electric vehicle is charged with electricity generated at a coal-fired power plant, there is less pollution per mile, including CO2, than a similar sized gas or diesel vehicle. Besides that, electric vehicles have the option of being charged with wind and solar. Lithium ion batteries are capable of giving electric vehicles adequate driving range, especially when auto designers get their heads out of their asses and make an effort to make vehicles lighter through use of strong, lightweight materials such as carbon fiber. evuk.co.uk is a good site to start to get a feel for what is possible.
having said that, I still believe the transportation solution lies more in intelligent planning of human settlements and economic relocalization that will curtail the need for cars and trucks….not to mention the hundreds of other side benefits
it comes down to this: If you hear a proposal for a solution to a problem, ask yourself, “does this solution cause more problems or does it cause more solutions?”
The authors of this article appear to be apologists for the US auto-industry.
After years of selling us Model-Ts, behemoths of the 1960s, the car as self-image, etc, the US auto industry is now crying when other foreign industries play the same game in their own countries. I sense in this a ploy to create additional protectionism for the US auto industry.
greensolutions wrote: If you hear a proposal for a solution to a problem, ask yourself, “does this solution cause more problems or does it cause more solutions?”
I believe this is a profoundly dangerous methodology and symptomatic of most that ails the US.
Clearly, a solution to a problem should not exacerbate what we are trying to solve. On the other hand, generating choice is a no-win situation. E.g., in business, a solution is a product, service, or combination of both which is said to solve a business or consumer’s problem. But having choices of products imposes environmental strains on manufacturing, distribution, and confusion in the consumer. Having a choice of competing similar products entails that there no closure. And the art (and deceit) of advertizing is that choice brings us freedom and contentment.
The term “global warming” simply is too weak to motivate us silly humans to reach enlightenment. How about… Catastrophic Climate Mutation? Or Imminent Worldwide Meltoff? Mother Of All Weather Disasters?
Global warming doesn’t work on the poster anymore…
Capice, GreenSolutions. I agree that electric vehicles can be more efficient than internal combustion ones. I agree that point-source pollution from large power plants can be easier to clean up than distributed pollution from millions of cars. I agree that wind or solar powered cars make more sense than combustion-powered ones.
But that is not necessarily the way it works now. I personally favour waste-vegoil biodiesel over electric cars, but acknowledge that the the real differences between the two are slight.
Rather than arguing over which technology is better in a global sense, it should come down to what is locally appropriate. If your only electricity comes from coal, but you can harvest waste grease from restaurants, I submit that home-brew biodiesel is a much better solution. If your electricity comes from hydropower, and you’re in the boonies and would have to drive all over to collect waste vegoil, then certainly electric transportation makes more sense.
My main point — which I believe you share — is that nothing is going to preserve the present way of life in North America. Neither waste oil nor electric cars are going to preserve that horrible, wasteful daily commute in places like Los Angeles or Atlanta.
People’s behaviours must change — either voluntarily, or involuntarily, imposed by nature. Guess which way will be more unpleasant?
Jan Steinman wrote: Electric cars do pollute — just not where you drive them.
Correct. They are even more polluting than maintaining that wreck of an SUV you drive now for another 10-20 years. Ever thought of how big a hole was dug in the earth to build that cute new electric car? Ever thought about what will happen to the toxic batteries in 5 years when they die?
The biggest gift we could give the planet is to maintain the investments that we have already made. It does not matter whether those investments were “good” or “bad”, but creating a whole new industry in another half-assed idea is throwing good money after bad, and creating more of an environmental disaster.
Treat cars like a family heirloom and pass it down through the generations. It may end up like the old axe that has been in my family for 5 generations (it’s had 6 new handles and 2 new axe heads), but I think you will agree that it is better for the environment and my pocket than a spankin’ new chainsaw.
Jan-Agreed
WTF-I don’t understand what is dangerous about proposing to bring about solutions that create more solutions as opposed to solutions that create more problems.
There was report not too long ago on Common Dreams.
It detailed that one of the leading causes of deaths in third world countries was automobile accidents, and people once harmed in this way, the victims had no recourse. Unlike this country, where insurance sometimes helps out.
Hey what a great way to balance the population explosion in India and China.
Less Yellows and Browns to deal with
Yippeee!!!!
Jan,
Actually, as an active EV experimenter, I have researched the issue, and performed my own calculation based on real-world use of two electric motor scooters. My conclusion is that EV’s do pollute much less, than an equivalent gasoline IC-fueled vehicle, assuming a typical US mix of electricty sources. This is because the efficiency of electric motors, and the batteries and chargers is much, much, higher than an IC engine (80-90% vs. maybe 15%).
Also, the electricity can and hopefully in the near future will be coming increasingly from non-dirty sources, but petroleum or coal based lequid fuel is innately dirty. but I agree, getting rid of cars altogether is better (more below).
The issue of the Tata Nano is a difficult one. For most Indians the really-existing choice is carrying ones children on a motorcycle or scooter in dangerous traffic conditions, or an affordable small car. BUT, they wouldn’t be forced into this choice if big cities in the developing world had good public transportation. But in our globally neoliberal era where the very word ‘public” is forbidden, there is no movement in this direction.
We can’t and shouldn’t be trying to hypocritically preach to India or other developing countries. The most important thing her in the US is to set a good exqample for the rest of the world, by getting rid of this association of cars with the middle class lifestyle. Car ownership should not, and should have to be, a measure of living standard. We should be pursue car-free living and car-free communities. There are neighborhoods in most cities where a car isn’t needed for most commuting, shoppping and most entertainment, and the quality of life is superior in all ways. We need a movement to associate the often-stressful time spent behind a wheel as time that is completely wasted from our lives.
We need to work vigorously for improved public transportation in our communities, and intercity rail. It is not rocket science to design a system and urban layout where public transportaton is more convienient than driving. By far, the most energy efficient vehicle in the world is still the 120 year old electric trolley, followed by heavy-rail metro systems. But even an ordinary diesel bus can get about 350 passenger miles per gallon.
Is hemp outlawed in China and India? If not, get them to fill their cars with hemp oil instead of petroleum. That will significantly cut down on global warming and maybe the US will be forced to follow suit.
Working from home or walking to work may be necessary soon. The cost of a barrel of oil is expected to rise to $250.00 in the not too distant future.
Since the U.S. has been an environmental drag on the planet and shows little political interest in changing, I see no reason to criticize other cultures until we change ours.
I would like to see a serious transformational effort in the basic areas of affordable food, clothing, shelter and transportation in the U.S. Although the government remains obstructionist the American people are moving ahead. The elites are not likely to participate because the effort will require decentralized applications and are not profitable and controllable as centralized applications are. So we are on our own.
@greensolutions
I must have worked too closely with military think tanks. A classic example is the firm SAIC. When asked to “solve a problem”, SAIC would spend millions preparing an idea that would need to be studied further (with additional funding, of course). And SAIC would repeat this, until eventually the military would award the project to another company. SAIC would not solve the problem. This is not finding a solution. A solution is an end to a means. Solutions are not an open-ended discussion that may or may not result in problem solved.
Lets consider the automobile. The automobile is (was) a solution to the problem of designing personal and privately-owned autonomous travel from point A to point B. Thats the solution: The Model T, any color you want as long as it’s black. However, someone had the bright idea to market it as something other than transport. That precipitated the whole idea of the automobile as being a consumer item, creating solutions for marketing and mind-control. Today’s automobile does not solve the original problem any differently than the Model T, but it does solve Joe and Mary Consumer’s need for a new model every year that is 1 mph faster than last years model, and painted in this year’s color.
The solution that was the Model T opened Pandora’s box of other “solutions”. And that is why accepting the mindset of “solutions leading to other solutions” is dangerous.
One way to make Electric cars less “Polluting” is to recharge the batteries from solar panels.
The StreetCar Conspiracy
How General Motors Deliberately Destroyed Public Transit
by Bradford Snell
The electric streetcar, contrary to Van Wilkin’s incredible naïve whitewash, did not die a natural death: General Motors killed it. GM killed it by employing a host of anti-competitive devices which, like National City Lines, debased rail transit and promoted auto sales.
Read more at:
http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
How about the compressed air engine?
This is probably the best part of the article:
“At the same time we need to publicly denounce US and EU based multinational companies for compensating for decades of poor investment and design decisions by now roaming the globe in search of opportunities to profit on lower emissions standards in developing countries.”
“It’s a system the US and other rich countries now must transform and one which the developing world can still avoid.”
Until this happens - and I don’t hold my breath - I absolutely refuse to chastise people in India for wanting a Tata. Why is it those struggling the most are always the ones expected to change their ways and make sacrifices the first? I don’t see Americans changing their transportation habits in meaningful ways, and yet so many of them are ready to tisk-tisk the rest of the world (especially the Third World) for their environmental “irresponsibility.” Americans - the most overweight people in the world and the most responsibile for greenhouse emissions - drive their cars everyday and avoid public transportation because they WANT. People in India and the rest of the Third World take public transportation and seek other methods of getting where they have to go because they NEED! The ability to choose what you WANT rather than what you need is determined by POWER.
Tonkatsu: As someone who grew up in Los Angeles , I remember riding the Electric Street cars
from the Venice area to downtown LA back in the late 50’s and maybe into the early 60’s. If
I am correct, it was General Motors, Firestone Rubber and Chevron Oil who conspired to put
them out of business. People tend to think that large corporations trying to set political
policys is a recent event, but it goes way back.
I also grew up near LA and remember the smog in the inland valleys to be unbearable, unbelievable and deadly.Its better now. Emission controls really work!!Yes maybe were past the tipping point. We should just give up? We could be defeatist, predestined to failure.Or we could make intelligent choices.Used veggie oil is a great idea but surely there isn’t enough to power more than a few vehicles. Electric ,biodiesel ,higher mileage , conservation, public transportation, all aid to reduced oil use and carbon exhaust.Many of us enjoy the benefits of private transportation.We don’t have to drive Hummers . I’m currently working on a project to put a 1hp Honda motor on a bicycle. Go ahead ,blame the corporations for brainwashing us to hold the private car as a extension of our personalities. We are responsible for the mess were in ,we should fix it.
Henry Ford’s Model T was offered in only one color, black, and the Nano comes only in brown. Putting more conventional cars on the roads is the last thing our planet needs. However, I have a problem with Americans and Europeans continuing to ride around in their large, gas guzzling cars while condemning third worlders who want more modest automobiles. It seems that everyone considers global warming someone else’s responsibility. And if it’s not our responsibility, it’s no one’s. And, for the record, I do not own a car and do most of my travel by foot.
Everybody wants to get rich, buy a place in the country and get away from traffic jams. People who live in the country want to go to the city to get rich and buy cars so they can get into traffic jams. So make up your mind already.
“So while we admire Mr. Tata’s business and engineering acumen in creating the Nano, we ardently wish that he would focus his talents elsewhere: creating transportation that is both affordable and doesn’t emit ever more greenhouse gases. That would be something for the whole world to celebrate and buy.”
The NY Times outdoes itself in smug, self-centered, back-patting, holier-than-thou attitude. This above statement coming from a major daily of the most polluting, eco-unfriendly country in the world is in itself unworthy of any comments but , oh my god !!
As usual PJD gets it …
“For most Indians the really-existing choice is carrying ones children on a motorcycle or scooter in dangerous traffic conditions, or an affordable small car. BUT, they wouldn’t be forced into this choice if big cities in the developing world had good public transportation”
The West should completely cut its emissions to reach that of the ‘third world’ before it can even attempt to offer solutions. If not we should shut the hell up and focus on addressing the problems our mass consumption causes to the environment.
If the ‘left’ means sourly yelling at poor countries to stop growing, count me out.
And any alternative transportation system proposal should put front and center that a growing portion of the population in the US and elsewhere is not able to rely primarily on walking or biking as means of transport.
I find the notion of getting rid of personal transportation laughable. Why? First, because people want it. Second, because governments are too paralyzed by politics and corruption to ever implement a reasonable alternative (which, by the way, hasn’t been invented yet).
Every time I hear about bio-diesel, or burning hemp oil, or cellulose-based ethanol (switchgrass?), I smell something burning. That burning will release carbon dioxide. Will someone explain to me why that is an improvement over the carbon-dioxide we make burning petroleum (including explaining how fuels with less energy–e.g. ethanol–help out when one has to burn more of the stuff to provide the same oomph)?
As for India and Tata, yeah, could be a disaster, but saying “do as I say not as I do (and have done)” ain’t gonna help a bit.
And, by the way, I don’t drive a gas-guzzling SUV, I drive a car which so far (7500 miles) has averaged 45.5 mph).
ezeflyer . . . well said! but he puts the right comment in the a place that unfortuneately does not reach enough people. look for a wider audience! But. . .it is something.
Lickety wrote: “How about the compressed air engine?”
The problem is efficiency. They are horribly inefficient. You lose about half the energy put into the compressor through heat losses.
Compressing a working fluid (air) causes a temperature rise, which is dissipated, resulting in a loss. Upon decompression, cooling results, which condenses the working fluid, resulting in another loss. Some complicated designs attempt to recover the heat of compression, which detracts from one of the big advantages touted by backers: simplicity. And they gloss over the second problem by saying, “Hey, free air conditioning!”
The primary advantage of air engines is cost.
twoblueday wrote: “I find the notion of getting rid of personal transportation laughable. Why? First, because people want it.”
Don’t know about you, but I was taught as a child that I can’t have everything I want. Humanity is on the verge of wanting itself into oblivion!
What ever happened to seemly restraint? What happened to thrift and frugality? These are values that need to be restored and cherished.
Only when a large majority of people — not just a few progressive greenies — sneer at the Hummer crowd will things start to change.
Before the NY Times and others in the developed countries criticize India for building cars, they should call on people in the developed countries to give up theirs. This is like someone who is obese criticizing the starving for increasing their caloric intake, thus driving up the cost of food for the obese. Have they no shame?
Ya know, one thing that’s really interesting in all this is that currently the US defence department uses more oil than anyone else. People are bitching about tiny cars… when are people going to bitch about Apache helicopters and M1A1 Abrams tanks? I’d be willing to bet that running an apache for five minutes probably makes about as much pollution as one of those cars will produce in a day.
Oh, and Twoblueday, it’s because of where the CO2 came from; one is CO2 taken from the atmosphere within the lifetime of the plant you’re burning, while the other is CO2 that was taken from the atmosphere millions of years ago, when conditions were such that human beings could not have survived. If you exploit the current vegetative carbon cycle, you will not change the overall balance of CO2 in the atmosphere, just so long as you ensure that you keep enough plants growing. When you reintroduce elements and compounds that were removed from the atmosphere tens and hundreds of millions of years ago, you are basically restoring the atmosphere of that far back time… and when you look back far enough, you find an atmosphere that is lethal to mammals, but not to plants… because of course it was the biological revolution of photosynthesis that permitted the conditions to arrive that made us possible.
Re: A General Principle: Solutions that create more solutions as opposed to solutions that create more problems
WTF, you said,
“I must have worked too closely with military think tanks.”
It appears that way. Thus far, people engaged in military think tanks have continued to come up with supreme examples of solutions that create more problems, ie: depleted uranium-tipped munitions.
I understand how you could spend too much time with these people and have difficulty generating and/or recognizing solutions founded upon love, compassion and deep insight.
Here’s an article that beautifully illustrates what I mean by “solutions that create more solutions.”
“My Other Car is a Bright Green City”
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007800.html
As much as I love commondreams, I sometimes get a little overwhelmed and irritated by the number and severity of the problems we face. That’s when I visit worldchanging.