[QatzelOk]

Published on Monday, February 2, 2009 by The Progressive
The Myth of the Efficient Car

by Alec Dubro

Let's get something straight about green industry: in its basic form it means we all have to buy new stuff ... lots of it. As an industrial policy that will create jobs and increase spending, it's pretty sound. As an environmental policy, it's largely a fraud.

Nowhere is it more disingenuous than the pursuit of the fuel-efficient car. In their effort to stave off collapse of their industry, auto executives have continually cited their efforts are building the high-efficiency cars of the future. The problem is, there are no cars of the future, and the looming catastrophe of global pollution, including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars - efficient or otherwise.

We'd desperately like to believe that there is a way to preserve our car-centered civilization, while simultaneously placating the gods of atmospheric warming. Even the president-elect believes it, and Obama made fuel-efficient cars a central part of his energy policy. He promised a $7,000 tax credit to hybrid car buyers, aiming for a million plug-in hybrids, getting 150 mpg, by 2015. He wants to put an additional million completely plug-in vehicles by the same year. And he's willing to federal funds up for research, or at least he was before we lost all our money.

Even on its face, this seems like a tepid response to climate change. At the moment there are upward of 250,000,000 registered vehicles in the United States - more than there are licensed drivers. Converting one percent or so of them to greater fuel efficiency is not likely to do very much in the time needed to act. Nevertheless, the hope is that introduction of a new generation of electric and semi-electric will eventually lead to a replacement of our entire fleet of gas-guzzlers. Maybe. But the bigger problem is that increasing fuel efficiency has never led to an overall reduction in pollutants. In fact, efficiency has always led to more production and consumption.

...

rest of article

According to the article, the "search for an efficient car" is a form of stagnation and denial. The very definition of "car" means it is inefficient because cars are heavy. Cars use their fuel (and brake fluid, and chemical coolers, and metal alloys, and a huge road network, and police surveillance, and several layers of bureaucracy, and contaminate air, water and ground) to move themselves. The people inside them are an afterthought.

I couldn't agree more.

Is it time we grew out of our dinosaur-sized dinkees?

[Thunderhawk]

People will continue to drive cars. However much you hate it, that wont change the situation.
So would you rather everyone continue buying and driving SUVs or buying and driving minis?

Saying neither/nothing is a utopian fantasy that doesnt actually change or improve the current situation into that fantasy.

[Adrien]

It's pointless Thunderhawk, you'll never get anywhere with him on this subject..

Cars were invented because we needed them, the fact that they then evolved to be works of art doesn't change that fact, it merely adds the possibility to choose your car beyond the fact that you need one. Even today you can get basic, cheap, utilitarian cars and trucks.

Now, as of today's technology, cars need to burn fossil fuels. Most of them do anyway, and this technology being just at its beginnings, it's gonna take a while for it to achieve a popular price. But the technology is there, and it's thrilling, I mean Neil Young converted his '64 Lincoln to electric power to achieve 84MPG with this amazingly big and heavy sculpture on wheels.

In the mean time, and while it's fair to call this electric car of the future 'the' efficient car, we can achieve today different levels of efficiency. Again, some people need trucks to accomodate their work or their environment, some need bigger sedans to accomodate a family, or a bigger engine because they travel long distances and small engines prove to be counter-productive on the highway. But also some want or need small cars too.

But for each of these niches, manufacturers today work on ways to improve efficiency, fuel efficiency. Aerodynamics, transmissions, weight, etc.

And for all these reasons, yes there are efficient cars for real. They're not a myth.

[QatzelOk]

People will continue to drive cars. However much you hate it, that wont change the situation.

My "hating it" has nothing to do with whether people will continue to drive cars.

It is scientific knowledge that car consumption is destroying the earth's environment. And it is economic fact that humans will soon have to choose between driving and eating. A small handful of rich people might decide to let the masses starve to death so they can drive for a few more years, but in the end, there will be no means to waste this much resources on a large scale.

The author says that "efficient" cars are like "efficient" dinosaurs. A stage in denial, not a technological cure for a psychological problem. The problem of power-mad ignoramuses trying to dominate the world so they can get a few kicks tearing around corners and colonizing large swaths of humanity.

The author is saying that this "fun" is over, and we will either grow up, or we will suffer a lot more in the next few decades.

they then evolved to be works of art

After they stopped being science, there was no other direction for the industry to go. But now that the entire earth is becoming a work of art (Heating and Starving Still Life with Extinctions), it might be time to limit the number of canvasses that our heroic industrial artists are allowed to soil.

[Adrien]

It is scientific knowledge that car consumption is destroying the earth's environment. And it is economic fact that humans will soon have to choose between driving and eating. A small handful of rich people might decide to let the masses starve to death so they can drive for a few more years, but in the end, there will be no means to waste this much resources on a large scale.

Come on, it's not scientific knowledge! Studies show that the part of greenhouse gases released by personnal transportation is minimal in the grand scheme of climate change, most come from gas-powered mass transportation like planes, and from freight (via trucks, diesel trains, planes, boats). That *is* a fact.

Now if you stop being hypocritical and ill-faithed, you'll admit that the personnal transportation category is the only one that actually improves its efficiency actively. While planes only put more passengers in one shot, which in turns requires more fuel, and while boats do nothing at all. Cars are the only one who reduce both their consumption of fuel and their emissions.

Instead of pointing the finger at cars, which is very easy as you show everytime you get Klaxon on us, people should start changing our infrastructures to make sure freight gets there by train, people should start thinking that Chinese-made products that you have to import may save you a dollar but will cost you more in the long run since they have to be brought for over the world, they have to think that buying fruits off-season or also from around the world means more greenhouse gases are released, etc.

People don't have to choose between driving and eating. They have to choose between doing things reasonnably and doing them not reasonnably.

The author says that "efficient" cars are like "efficient" dinosaurs. A stage in denial, not a technological cure for a psychological problem. The problem of power-mad ignoramuses trying to dominate the world so they can get a few kicks tearing around corners and colonizing large swaths of humanity.

The author is a tree-hugging twat. That's all. Cars are not a fad like platform shoes, a fad that serves no purpose. Cars serve a purpose, they get us moving, they get our societies moving, they bring us goods and services that otherwise one just could not access, they break isolation. Being a good extremist, you largely use strawmen to justify your unfounded arguments, but if you stop and open your eyes you'll see that rich people driving supercars are a fraction that doesn't matter much except for the symbol and shock you build your rhetoric on, and even racing sports today put the focus on fuel economy, from Nascar to Formula One.

I'm sorry but we shouldn't have to apologize for racing sports either anyway. They're about the challenge, pushing our limits in technology and human skills, there's nothing more natural than that.

After they stopped being science, there was no other direction for the industry to go. But now that the entire earth is becoming a work of art (Heating and Starving Still Life with Extinctions), it might be time to limit the number of canvasses that our heroic industrial artists are allowed to soil.

For crying out loud! Cars never stopped being science! Since the very first steam and then combustion engines, engineers have been working their asses off to come up with new ideas, sometimes in big breakthroughs like Diesel engines, the ill-fated Turbine engine, or the now unavoidable hybrid engine, sometimes in small breakthroughs like direct and controlled fuel injection, turbocharging, electronics. Even beyond the engine, our cars keep getting safer, more precise. That's all thanks to science!

If there is one thing car enthusiasts would complain about today, it's precisely that science took away from the mere driving in the name of efficiency. That's cars being technical works of art, in addition to be sculptures.

Jeez.

[Eauz]

Cars were invented because we needed them

This is far from true, since nations in Europe and Asia developed trains and other forms of mass transit before vehicles came into play. Japan had a ton of train tracks laid before cars even came to the nation. What was wrong with developing mass transit systems to aid the citizens that make up the city. I'm not saying there should be a ban on vehicles, but there was no need, as if it was the only solution.

[Thunderhawk]

The early need of cars was not soley that of people moving, but of moving people quickly and with versatility as the start, intermediate and end points of a journey and to do so with some storage/cargo space. Most people then and now are rarely along rail tracks, its why horse and wagon was popular and necessary. The car was a logical evolution of the horse and wagon.

[QatzelOk]

Studies show that the part of greenhouse gases released by personal transportation is minimal in the grand scheme of climate change

Is your use of the word "minimal" scientific in this sentence, or is it being used as a marketing tool?

Because "minimal" in scientific terms would mean there's simply no way to get around without making the same amount of greenhouse gases as cars do. And this is very weak science since it can be easily falsified by a 7-year old.

[Adrien]

This is far from true, since nations in Europe and Asia developed trains and other forms of mass transit before vehicles came into play. Japan had a ton of train tracks laid before cars even came to the nation. What was wrong with developing mass transit systems to aid the citizens that make up the city. I'm not saying there should be a ban on vehicles, but there was no need, as if it was the only solution.

I totally disagree with you, and agree with Thunderhawk. Trains are limited in terms of where you can go, how, and when. Buses also are, though not as much. And both require huge investments that all communities cannot provide. Sure, the intrinsical need for a car that I was underlining has greatly faded away, as needs sometimes do, in big cities like Paris for instance where the wealth and density allowed a very extensive and complete mass transit system, and did so a long time ago. One could even argue that only professionals truly need a vehicle in Paris these days.

It is also true that the exponential development of the city and its activity overwhelmed the mass transit system and made lots of people fall back on cars because the system has probably reached its critical mass of travelers. It requires more investment if one wants to truly decongestion Paris, for example.

But everybody doesn't live in a big city! In the countryside, or in the greater outskirts of every agglomeration people *need* their cars to access their work, commodities, services like hospitals. For having visited, or lived, in this situation in four different countries, I can assure you there is a need for cars. Of course eco-warrior Qatz will blame suburbia, sprawl, etc. But again if you asked these inhabitants they would tell you they'd like to have an alternative. But that's how it evolved. Populations points and settlements were driven by a different kind of activity, a long time ago, that was local, both in production and consumption.

The increasing needs, beyond the wants, in food and goods from population in different places required the interconnection of all the different socio-economic units that existed on all our territories. A web was woven, and now it works like that. Culprits are elsewhere, and going unchallenged while car manufacturers take all the heat.

Like I said, society got carried away thanks to capitalism and now to save a few dollars for the consumer, and gain more than a few for the producer, we produce across the world and import everything we could be doing ourselves at a reassonably local scale. That creates more pollution and waste for the transportation of the goods, but also because overseas plants are way less advanced than ours in terms of pollution control. That is also a fact, be it for the agriculture (which is already disastrously polluting in the West, but even more so in India or China through the use of chemicals in a Green Revolution), industry (I don't even need to detail that), energy (as they can't afford renewable energies or nuclear energy, developping or stagnating countries use fossil fuels) and waste treatment (see the scandal of the recycling of computer parts in China, or the state of rivers in many places around the world).

This is the repartition of CO2 for China in 2004, one culprit media don't care about.


This is the same graph for the USA, an easy target.


(they're both in French but it's pretty transparent)

Point is that at the end of the line, our poor infrastructures for freight, our lopsided and inneficient system of production, as well as capitalism's interest to prevent the development of third world countries, is what is precipitating our planet to a climatic crisis.

The car industry, which once again answers a need for many, many people, at least is working to become more efficient. All these other sectors don't.

Is your use of the word "minimal" scientific in this sentence, or is it being used as a marketing tool?

Because "minimal" in scientific terms would mean there's simply no way to get around without making the same amount of greenhouse gases as cars do. And this is very weak science since it can be easily falsified by a 7-year old.

Minimal in scientific terms means that it is in no way the main cause of emission of greenhouse gases. Period. Let's get some figures then shall we?



Numbers are from the GIEC, I am sure you won't contest them. Note that this is for the entire world, and is for CO2 *only*. Which means that you have to put the Transportation sector's number in perspective within the global picture of all the greenhouse gases, knowing that most of the other ones are coming from 'Industries' of all sorts, chemicals used for treatments and such, as well as Agriculture (lots of methane) as well as deforastation. I'll come back to that later.

You'll notice it's from 2004, but since then while more cars were put on the roads in China and India, in the West technology has progressed, old cars have been taken off the roads through incentives, so if anything the share would roughly in the same 'ordre de grandeur'.

So we see transportation is rated for 2004 at 17%. It is usually acknowledged that freight conveyed by trucks alone makes a third of that share. That would leave 12ish% I say. And this is a very diverse share. It is I am convinced very unevenly spread if we take a 'per population' basis. To take the main poles, Europe's share must be rather low given the urban density and availability of effective mass transit. Japan's share would be lowish given the law on Kei cars and density and mass transit systems. China and India's shares would be high because they use cars and bikes of very *old* conception in the majority of cases. As to the US.. well let's check this graph.



This one is from the US EPA. Which is not known to go easy on cars. It goes to the broader scale of greenhouse gases, so numbers are a bit different, CO2 being spread out in several categories and being a bit more recent.

All US cars and light trucks subject to CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards represent only 1.5% of worldwide man-made greenhouse gases. If proposed legislation to require a 40% increase in CAFE standards is enacted into law, the reduction in the car and light truck portion of global greenhouse gases would be virtually undetectable - only 0.4%, and not until 2010.

That is what I call minimal. True, all of the vehicles cruising the US are not CAFE-certified vehicles, and that lots are old, but that is a situation that can easily be corrected through incentives (dealer-made and government-made). The essence of the use and presence of the car is not questioned. Knowing that while EPA standards are a bit misguided in that they focus on fuel efficiency and not directly emissions, imagine how efficient the EURO standards must be. And what a high percentage of European cars working by EURO 3, 4 and 5 standards would mean in that greater picture of emissions. It would be, again, minimal.

Now when checking that graph for the US, let's bring back to our minds that the US is not dense at all, spread out over a continent, has (due to a clear capitalist orientation since forever) very little public investment for mass transit including trains, which means people and freight, who both need to get around, do so through the highways. If in addition to CAFE the US had an effective railroad system for passengers and freight the situation would be even better. I don't mention air travel because it is actually very polluting.

My point is, again, that the car is a need, isn't evil, and is a work of scientific and aesthetic art. It is one of the sciences in which our engineers accomplish themselves and serve our standards of living and in the past years our quality of life.

I don't say cities aren't all polluted sometimes. But stop focusing on a tiny but obvious cause of what drives you insane, and be honest and face the greater picture. Cars are not the main cause of emissions, and they're working on getting better. There *are* efficient cars. There are more and more of them. And when people like you come to their senses, they'll realise they wasted a lot of time fighting the wrong ennemy.

[Eauz]

The car was a logical evolution of the horse and wagon.

This is a reply to both Thunderhawk and Adrien, it seems to sum up the argument they are making here. In terms of my thought in this discussion, I'm not making the claim that cars in general are bad and we should get rid of them. That being said, it is a cop-out to say that it was a logical evolution between horse to car. What is missed in your argument is the lack of vision or planning with regard to cities, that helped develop the supposed need for vehicles to be used by individuals. If planning had been in place, the existing networks of rail for industrial use could have been converted into usable transit systems. If planning had been in place, we wouldn't have had the need to have someone living 2 km away from the closest transit stop.

In Winnipeg, they completely destroyed the existing rail lines inside the downtown core, to provide for more vehicle use. This completely destroyed the downtown core and it is now a place to drive through, rather than walk through. There is nothing natural or logical about moving from a means of transportation for the 18th centry (horses) to vehicles, when we are living in a world with a lot of technological development that COULD have been used to developing extensive lines of transit, reducing the need for said vehicles.

[U184]

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Combustion technology is only still in effect because big oil companies WANT it that way. We have been past the point of having to use the internal combustion engines for over 50 years.

New and innovative technologies are bought and kept away from development because the "TAR-PEOPLE" (Oil Companies) know once they lose their grip its all over for them.

They should concentrate on getting the government to pay them incentives to turn their production wheels over to soybean derived fuel and plastics but they wont.

Besides for hydrogen and electric/solar there is compressed-air engines. We have gone way past the point where oil is needed for anything other then heavy war machines and we may not even need it for that anymore.

At this point oil is like that old nasty blanket a toddler is lack to give up from childhood, sure it's old and it stinks but it gives comfort.

[Thunderhawk]

That being said, it is a cop-out to say that it was a logical evolution between horse to car.

Horse and wagon -> car.
If I left out "and wagon" when comparing to cars, then it was a slip.

Early trucks were cars with large rear cabins.
Cars were treated, and desired, as horse-and-wagon alternatives. They were 'horseless wagon' to the masses first, 'automobile' later.

The horse by itself is more of a convenience. I dont believe there is linear upgrade from horse to something else, especially not directly to a car, but if I had to choose something I would point towards the motor/bi -cycle.

What is missed in your argument is the lack of vision or planning with regard to cities, that helped develop the supposed need for vehicles to be used by individuals. If planning had been in place, the existing networks of rail for industrial use could have been converted into usable transit systems. If planning had been in place, we wouldn't have had the need to have someone living 2 km away from the closest transit stop.

I agree that cities were poorly planned for million+ populations. The traditional methods of building on the outskirts resulted in such expansion and distances that conventional methods of transit, walking/biking/etc., were become less feasible and less reliable, especially during heavy snow fall or extremely hot summers. Cars were a stop gap measure IMO, allowing cities to continue expanding in the traditional means. That those methods continued to cause and create more infrastructure problems is definately a problem of short sighted urban plannings.

There is nothing natural or logical about moving from a means of transportation for the 18th centry (horses) to vehicles, when we are living in a world with a lot of technological development that COULD have been used to developing extensive lines of transit, reducing the need for said vehicles.

The problem as I see it, is that we have 21st Century cities and their associated problems (huge populations, large distances) are being developed and fixed with mid 20th Century technology and thinking (more cars and roads). Cars were and remain good options for moving people and goods in small cities. That large cities are at a stage that personal cars are no longer feasible requires, once again, a new method of moving people. Unlike the past where technology allowed the individual to surmount the problem, I suspect the future solution will involve a lot of urban planning.

[Adrien]

If planning had been in place, we wouldn't have had the need to have someone living 2 km away from the closest transit stop.

I'm actually not saying otherwise. There will always be a need for individual means of transportation, for a public mass transit system (let alone a private one) cannot have lines and stops in every nook and cranny of a country or a whole country-continent. Take the case of countries that are dense otherwise, like France or England. Their countrysides are always sparse in mass transit because it's impossible to connect all the tiny dots over there. And around big cities, though Paris is an exception, major financial and economic poles have workers that live in the surrounding areas for a ton of reasons, and these people usually have no choice, even if the planning wasn't too bad otherwise, to take their car.

My first point is that while it's true planning could have improved the situation in terms of convenience and mass efficiency, the way humans organized themselves created a need for a versatile means of individual transportation. Otherwise we'd need to connect every single city with every single city.

Now if you take countries that are way way spread out, let's say Canada or the USA, then the situation is even more resistant to urban planning. True on the East coast, as well as on the West coast, cities are densely populated and organized. But in the Midwest, communities of all sorts were founded where the immigrants arrived, that's where there was land available, which in turn supposes a place far from other settlements. And you don't suppress points of settlement that are 200 or 300 years old with the signature at the bottom of an urban planning contract or law.

People there have no choice, and my second point is that planning cannot be replanned all the time. The point of planning is that it shapes very precisely an environment, and if conditions change then the outdated planning does more harm than good (see ghettos in the northern suburbs of Paris for instance). As time evolved, the agricultural activity in these communities declined, as people started getting jobs in services and secondary sector companies in the big cities nearby. If they had planned mass transit systems back then (which would have been difficult anyway given the lack of experience or technology) everything would be obsolete today.

They could plan it today, but how expensive would it be? And how soon would it be obsolete as the railroad industry is on the verge of important breakthroughs in magnetic rail and the likes?

In Winnipeg, they completely destroyed the existing rail lines inside the downtown core, to provide for more vehicle use. This completely destroyed the downtown core and it is now a place to drive through, rather than walk through. There is nothing natural or logical about moving from a means of transportation for the 18th centry (horses) to vehicles, when we are living in a world with a lot of technological development that COULD have been used to developing extensive lines of transit, reducing the need for said vehicles.

Okay now that's retarded hehe. If you have the infrastrutures, I'd say preserve them, they're expensive enough to build especially inside a downtown area. Or at least turn it into a pedestrian area. Oh by the way I am in favour of downtown congestion fees ala London to avoid tight downtoan areas being overwhelmed by people who actually could use the other means of transportation more sensibly.

That having been said, we have the technology for better train engines and things like that, but we do not have the technology to really change how long, how costly, and how messy it is to build underground trains, or even regular railroad tracks on the surface, or also to organise traffic lanes to suit buses. They tried it in Paris, but given the medieval/modern layout of the city (as opposed to a contemporary one) it merely amounted to dividing the existing streets in two, a part for buses, a part for cars, with concrete dividers. I can tell you it is far from efficient...

Combustion technology is only still in effect because big oil companies WANT it that way. We have been past the point of having to use the internal combustion engines for over 50 years.

When I saw that I was like "oh another conspiracy theorist"...

They should concentrate on getting the government to pay them incentives to turn their production wheels over to soybean derived fuel and plastics but they wont.

Besides for hydrogen and electric/solar there is compressed-air engines. We have gone way past the point where oil is needed for anything other then heavy war machines and we may not even need it for that anymore.

But when I saw that I had was like "facepalm". First, while it's true the prospect of the change to hybrid / electric / whatever vehicles isn't a good one for oil companies, don't worry about them they are cash pumps and always have been, they'll make the change too. Who do you think will provide the charging stations for plug-in hybrids? Who do you think would, in some hypothetical future, provide the hydrogen stations? Who do you think will throw in the game the insane ammounts of money that research takes, especially in these days of weakened global automobile makers?

Second. At the manufacturers' proper, there is already a trend to make cars that are either highly recyclable, already using recycled materials, or both. Lots of manufacturers, I'm thinking of Ford from the top of my head, already use natural fibers and materials to replace petroleum-based materials to stuff their cars' seats, as well as build the dashboards and things like that. And even in the production of the cars, they use more and more extensively renewable energies to power the assembly lines and offset their global energy and pollution costs.

Third. Soybean is far from being viable. Just *far* from it. Just like most of the plant-based fuels have failed in the past. Why? Because it being a new technology one has to develop from the grounds up (from cultivation, to refinery, to engines), which means a lot of investment, which means expensive cars, that people won't buy. Also, you forget to take into account that producing gigantic amount of crops just to replace fuel takes a *LOT* of ressources, water, chemicals, electricity. That's the immense scam that is the buzz around ethanol, more often than not (but not all the time it is totally true) the costs of production of the crops annihilate the advantage gained by giving up fossil fuels in cars. It is, incidentally, the same for hydrogen. The production of it is very, very costly in ressources.

Fourth. The compressed air engine is a joke! It's been another buzzword in the mouth of eco-warriors for about ten years now, every big motor show announces that this or that entrepreneur and philantropic industrialist will unveil the revolutionary compressed air car. We're still waiting. Why? Because it cannot work. Sure you can have a compressed-air hammer or drill, or even a model Chevy V8 that's about five inches long as I saw last week in a magazine, but that's about it.

So face the facts. This is not the 23rd century, and we don't have the technology to cast away the internal combustion engine in the wink of an eye.

[QatzelOk]

I've never seen so much denial in one thread in my life.

"My dinosaur is going on a diet" in 5000 words or more.

Obviously, there is something very emotional about the science of automobile fabrication. But personally, I prefer survival over denial.

[Oxymoron]

That Sienfeld Avatar is disturbing your Flow.

[Thunderhawk]

When a person is ill they ask a person who knows about illnesses for advice.
When a person wants to home built they ask people who know about building.


But when discussing about efficiency, greenwashing and transportation, those who know about the subjects are ignored in favour of those who are ignorant in thsoe fields and happen to live in a make believe green fairyland?

[QatzelOk]

But when discussing about efficiency, greenwashing and transportation, those who know about the subjects are ignored in favour of those who are ignorant in thsoe fields and happen to live in a make believe green fairyland?

Thund, people who fetishize machines aren't "experts" on the future of technology. They are just obsessed with futurist technology. Not the same thing at all.

The fascists were obsessed with technology as well. And propaganda is probably the most important techne of all. It actually leads otherwise smart people to try to explain how we can "techne" our way out of our other technological nightmares.

Yes, the elites have all the answers to climate change. The elite shareholders at the car companies are just like Jesus and Spiderman; when mankind needs these superheroes to save us from our sins (global warming), all we have to do is whimper loudly (as we run out of food) and they will save us with their PR superpowers.

Look, Spiderman just invented a green engine that runs on kelp!

[Thunderhawk]

Thund, people who fetishize machines aren't "experts" on the future of technology.

There are several people here on pofo who are well informed, if not experts, on some pieces of technology.

The fascists were obsessed with technology as well.

As are some socialists. Most ideologies that look positively to what could be are often obsessed with technology.

It actually leads otherwise smart people to try to explain how we can "techne" our way out of our other technological nightmares.

The alternative is to do nothing or to regress. Regression wont be allowed by those in power as it diminishes their power in our competitive world. Furthermore regression is not safe nor necessarily healthy/safe/green either. Humanity has always "techne" its way over problems. If we cannot adapt and develop technology to overcome environmental problems before they are fatal, then perhaps we deserve it to be fatal.

Yes, the elites have all the answers to climate change. The elite shareholders at the car companies are just like Jesus and Spiderman; when mankind needs these superheroes to save us from our sins (global warming), all we have to do is whimper loudly (as we run out of food) and they will save us with their PR superpowers.

Hyperbole.

[Adrien]

Thund, people who fetishize machines aren't "experts" on the future of technology. They are just obsessed with futurist technology. Not the same thing at all.

You are obsessed with the destruction of this specific area of technology, so you are in the wrong place to accuse other people of extremism. Plus, many of these people are actually experts, as they are engineers who develop this technology and do their best to push the limits of technology to meet antagonistic demands from activists, governments, buyers, professionals.

The fascists were obsessed with technology as well. And propaganda is probably the most important techne of all. It actually leads otherwise smart people to try to explain how we can "techne" our way out of our other technological nightmares.

This is a ridiculous use of Godwin's law almost. I won't even respond to that.

Yes, the elites have all the answers to climate change. The elite shareholders at the car companies are just like Jesus and Spiderman; when mankind needs these superheroes to save us from our sins (global warming), all we have to do is whimper loudly (as we run out of food) and they will save us with their PR superpowers.

You twist the facts. Right now the shareholders of the Big Three, as well as those of the big Japanese groups, are quiet and if anything seeing that their thirst for immediate money against investment in R&D means if anything a drying out of the money well in the long term.

The elites at the car companies are not the shareholders, they are the engineers. Do you think the Chevy Volt was left on their doorstep one morning by people like you? Do you think that the continous increase in MPG in our cars happened because you yelled at the numbers? Do you think that the breakthroughs in battery cells happened after people chained themselves in front of congress or whatever?

The next generation of Escalade-based SUVs has been canceled. As well as the Pontiac G8 ST. The Aspen/Durango have been canceled. The Viper and Hummer brands are for sale. V8s are being replaced by technologically advanced V6s. Ford is introducing the Fiesta, Chevy has a new generation of Aveo coming. Etc. Etc. Etc.

These people know what they can do, they do it, and things are moving. This is not PR.

Like Thunderhawk said, stop living in your green fairyland. Take into account people's needs, professionals' needs, the way our societies are laid out and work. You're not even fighting in the name of the people, you're leading an egocentric snobby fight.

[Eauz]

There will always be a need for individual means of transportation, for a public mass transit system (let alone a private one) cannot have lines and stops in every nook and cranny of a country or a whole country-continent. Take the case of countries that are dense otherwise, like France or England. Their countrysides are always sparse in mass transit because it's impossible to connect all the tiny dots over there. And around big cities, though Paris is an exception, major financial and economic poles have workers that live in the surrounding areas for a ton of reasons, and these people usually have no choice, even if the planning wasn't too bad otherwise, to take their car.

I have no problem with you wanting to live so far away from civilization, my problem is that cities today are continuing to develop the same way they have always in North America, my just spreading further and further out into areas, without any actual consideration of the development and the lack of need for said vehicles. If you ask a lot of people who ride the bus, they are usually of low income and will desire to purchase a vehicle when they can (even a cheap one), just to get off the transit system because it is extremely weak and mostly useless. When I was in Belgium and Japan, although smaller in terms of a country, very few people that I asked said they actually needed a vehicle, since cities were planned with the ability to walk to places you needed to shop and transit that moved you far distanced that you needed to go. At least attempt to develop cities so that people can live there, rather than cars living there. With the lack of development in cities in the past, we've only created a need for said vehicles and since a large number of people are moving to cities, why not develop cities properly, so that these people can actually LIVE here, rather than live 20 minutes from downtown by car? Just look at Canada, 80% of Canada’s population, live in cities, so why do we create cities for vehicles, when the cities are for the large majority of the population?

Now if you take countries that are way way spread out, let's say Canada or the USA, then the situation is even more resistant to urban planning. True on the East coast, as well as on the West coast, cities are densely populated and organized. But in the Midwest, communities of all sorts were founded where the immigrants arrived, that's where there was land available, which in turn supposes a place far from other settlements. And you don't suppress points of settlement that are 200 or 300 years old with the signature at the bottom of an urban planning contract or law.

I don't see why it couldn't be done, since even Germany destroyed villages and forced people to move to the cities after WWII. However, even if these communities want to exist, it doesn't mean that the actual cities have to suffer for the fact that a few villages with populations of 100 or less want to have vehicles. Again, cities are where people in the modern world end up living, it's just part of modern society and preventing any development of planning that would help improve the ability of a person to live in a city without a vehicle is of great importance for the development of our society.

If they had planned mass transit systems back then (which would have been difficult anyway given the lack of experience or technology) everything would be obsolete today.

Which is why you develop and change with time. Companies that existed in the 20's and continue to exist today don't keep the exact same practice going that they did in the 20's. This is obvious, why would we do the same with planning? Why not ADD onto the existing planning?

I'll add more later...