[sustran] "When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

eric.britton eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Mon Oct 29 03:36:04 JST 2007


[If you have comments kindly send to NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com. Thank
you.]

 

Dear World Wide Colleagues,

 

You are all very knowledgeable about this, so let me try the following harsh
statement in quick summary form on you for size and comment.  Please tell me
if and where I am wrong!

 

There are three things we have to do to get the needed huge reduction of
greenhouse gasses coming out of the transportation sector (in general and of
course in the cities):

 

1.     A carbon tax. (Yes, yes. I know all the reasons why this "can't be
done". But hey! this is the one of the most powerful instruments at our
disposal .. and not only that, all the rest are some well-dressed
gentleman's favorite and sweetly profitable playthings)



2.     A strong sharpening of CAFE standards. (We have to squeeze until the
pips squeak. That is to say that our objective is not to drive the sources
of innovation out of business, but radically to overhaul the nature of their
products and businesses, and this as quickly as they can under almost
wartime conditions manage.  They will NOT like it, but we will chose the
levels that they can with great effort and genius achieve.)



3.     Taking at least half of all the cars off the road. Forever.  (And
almost all the cars out of the cities. and for sure all SOVs).

 

The best public policy would combine all three of these powerful motors.
The second best (which might be good enough) would combine two of the three.

 

And that's all there is to it!

 

Am I wrong in this?  Please show me.

 

Eric Britton

 

 



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