White paper: Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
"The clean cars of the future can help speed the world toward a more sensible approach to transportation."
Just imagine a world without cars. Suddenly, it might seem that three great evils widely associated with automobiles--environmental harm, economic pain, and geopolitical insecurity--would vanish. But realistically, a world without cars would be a joyless place with much diminished freedom, mobility, and prosperity. Inspired by the American example, such developing giants as China and India are now taking to the road. Soon, we will be a world of a billion cars--and that, say many, is as good a reason as any to abolish the automobile.
But if we are to tackle the serious problems posed by the world's inefficient use of fossil fuels, we need to go beyond platitudes and conventional wisdom. We must reinvent the automobile. The clean cars of the future can help speed the world toward a more sensible approach to transportation.
The good news is that a powerful global grassroots movement is sparking a race to fuel the car of the future. People power is at last coming to the fore, and the world is finally having a proper conversation about energy and climate policies.
The world is at an energy crossroads, and the decisions made about energy use over the next decade will set the course for the coming century. That is because energy infrastructure can last for decades, and the carbon emitted can last even longer. If we are to set our energy system on the right course before the real crisis hits, we need to start that transition now.
How, exactly? Techno-utopians argue that new technologies will save us, while market fundamentalists say that the invisible hand will do the trick. Well-intentioned corporations make the argument that corporate social responsibility, not public policy, is the key. And small-government types are suspicious of bureaucrats.
All of these groups are wrong. When it comes to the thorny geopolitical, environmental, and economic complications involved with cars and oil, government policies matter. The heady mix of subsidies for fossil fuels and the absence of proper "externalities" taxation of gasoline guarantees continued petro-addiction. This will not change unless the incentives facing entrepreneurs and innovators change: clean technologies will not get their rewards in the marketplace, and new markets for carbon-free energy will not take off, unless we fix what's wrong with energy policy.
After all, the business of business is business -- as it should be. There is nothing inherently evil about oil companies pumping oil or car makers selling cars. That is, in fact, their job -- and for decades, it was socially acceptable for them to do so. The difference today is that society's expectations are changing: a richer, greener, better-informed world is demanding much more from its energy and transportation industries.
That is why government still matters. Only sensible and courageous action by government to take account of the external costs of burning oil can set things on the right course. Only if governments the world over spur change, either through market-based regulation or better yet through carbon taxes, will we level the playing field and give clean cars and carbon-free energy a fighting chance.
That will happen only if everyone is ready to abandon the myth of cheap
energy and pay an honest price for fossil fuels.
What do you think?
Somehow there seems to be more hype and interest in popularising Solar Thermal and PV by persons who have no hands on experience or knowledge of the issues involved. For example, rarely one finds mention that real cost of PV Electricity is in the battery or that energy spent in making in LED is wasted if the power supply driving LED is not of correct specifications. I can list a number of such things which are ignored because commercially and politically they are inconvenient or the writers can find a scapegoat that this is a matter of details to be attended to by tech minions.
