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for the sustainability ridazz and bicycle advocates...
if you want to participate in the webcast and send in your questions, you can also do that (hoping someone would bring up the point of bicycling as alternative mode of transportation... the firewalls at work won't allow me to connect)
"Two Billion Cars!
(Is this Sustainable?)
Daniel Sperling, Ph.D.
Board Member, Air Resources Board
Director, Institute of Transportation Studies
Acting Director, Energy Efficiency Center
Professor, Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy
University of California, Davis
The world is headed toward two billion vehicles...
Is this sustainable?
Not without transforming vehicles, fuels, and mobility—not only in the United States, but virtually everywhere in the world. The roots of the problem will be examined:
- resistant auto industry
- dysfunctional oil markets
- shortsighted government policies
- unmotivated consumers
Dr. Sperling will focus on the role of innovation and policy in bringing about low carbon fuels, electric-drive vehicles, socially-responsible behavior, enhanced mobility services, and low-carbon cities."
*Chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize, said last month that "I am having nightmares" about the prospect of the low-cost car.
*The Nano could become the basis for other similar super-cheap models in developing markets around the world.
God forbid those people in the third world get to enjoy the type of independence, increased mobility, and economic opportunity the automobile has made possible for the developed world.
If only some enlightened dictators that know what's best for them could force them to use trains and bicycles instead.
Oh wait, that's exactly what happened for the past 50 years, and now they're buying cars as fast as they can.
Maybe in another 50 years they'll be so rich and spoiled that bicycles will look like a fun and environmentally sound means of transport again.
Well, at least the people who drive vehicles with modified exhausts are being cracked down hard upon up here.
From mutilated Civics with fart-cannons, to ridiculously raised bruh-trucks with glass-packs, CHP's telling them to either "toss the pipes", or crush the car.
As far as bruh-trucks go, a lift of that size is only viable if you plan on fording something, otherwise, you'll just roll your ass over a berm that was designed for a Baja!!!
God forbid those people in the third world get to enjoy the type of independence, increased mobility, and economic opportunity the automobile has made possible for the developed world.
If only some enlightened dictators that know what's best for them could force them to use trains and bicycles instead.
Oh wait, that's exactly what happened for the past 50 years, and now they're buying cars as fast as they can.
"Honey, I'm home!"
"Oh, hi, sweetheart. What did you do today?"
"The usual. Walked to the well, brought back some filthy water for our pitiful subsistence garden, walked back out to the road, sat down, tried to sell dolls made out of burlap and monkey dung to passing aid workers. Then I went to the marketplace, where the other men and I spent the rest of the day chewing angokwat'l, a bitter leaf preparation that we use here in the Third World to induce mild euphoria, tingling in the arms and legs, dry mouth, and terrifying visual hallucinations. Then I buried another one of the kids, and then I came home. How about you?"
"I spent most of the day on the Internet. Did you know that according to some guy on a message board, if it weren't for our country's dictators and their utopian schemes we could purchase an automobile?"
"Really? That's...oh God...OH MY GOD! OH GOD! THE HORROR! MAKE IT STOP!"
"Please, Bo'loko. I know it's disturbing, but--"
"No, I was reacting to the gigantic seventy-headed maggot that just hatched from your eyeball."
"Oh. Well, anyway, this person on the Internet says that the reason we've never been able to buy a car is because the government of our generic Third World country has been deliberately suppressing what would otherwise be a viable automotive industry, in order to force us onto public transportation."
"Huh. And I thought it was because we live in a hopelessly corrupt, inefficient kleptocratic backwater with crumbling colonial infrastructure and no manufacturing base or market mechanisms to support any but the most rudimentary industry."
"Yeah, that's what I thought. But the Internet guy says differently, and...well, it's on the Internet. It has to be true, right? Oh, just imagine the things we could do if we had a car!"
"Oh, yes! Why, we could...we could...what could we do exactly?"
"Well, you could drive to another village and see if any of the aid workers over there want to buy your monkeyshit dolls. And I guess we could drink the antifreeze if we ever get tired of losing our children to cholera."
"Good point. Ah, who are we kidding? It'll never happen, as long as spoiled Westerners like Rajendra Kumar Pachauri keep imposing those old collectivist fantasies on us here in the Third World. Wanna buy a monkey dung doll?"
"If only some enlightened dictators that know what's best for them could force them to use trains and bicycles instead.
Oh wait, that's exactly what happened for the past 50 years, and now they're buying cars as fast as they can. "
actually it should read like this:
If only some enlightened cabal of business interests that know "what's best for the people" could use dreamy high budget marketing hype and media tactics, congressional big money lobbying, legal loopholes and general greed and disregard for the common good to hijack the federal government (read: the taxpayer) into funding inefficient highway systems at the behest of eco friendly and convenient public transportation systems..
Oh wait, that's exactly what happened for the past 50 years, and now a growing number of enlightened citizenry is realizing it was all a mistake..."
too bad the peeps in the 3rd world dont have non corrupt consumer and environmental protection agencies like we didn't
I WISH we had an actual free market. you know, the one that would let money interests die when they screw up instead of robbing the tax payer for a bailout like a bunch of cowards
we have a worse free market. Where if a Money Interest get so big, they squeeze everybody else out and you have no choice of a free market, just their product.
just wondering.
is there such thing as a "true free market" that takes into account the true costs of finite resources, and the true costs of managing harmful wastes and pollution?
thanks sexy!
who do i start charging? because someone owes me a lot of money. i get reminded of this every time i choke on diesel PM and smog on my bike commute to work.
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