Mr. Howarth is absolutely correct in his evaluations. The only part he left out is the comparative costs to the consumer of going green.

When the average consumer goes on the lot to buy a new car and the choice is a little sub-compact for $112.00 per month, or this shiny new hybrid that is $277.00 per month, Green be damned!

When the “soccar mom” gets a new car that will haul 5-6 kids and all their gear, will she realistically pay $10-15,000 dollars more to go green? Not hardly!
Until the price difference can be narrowed, the “green” segment will make no noticeable headway in market share.

Like the Guardian I am optimistic about the potential of more efficient cars. However, I am getting “Popular Mechanic’s of the 50’s” flashbacks reading this…people racing around in flying cars, nuclear power making electricity “too cheap to meter”.

Like Gordon suggests, electricity is not clean…its simply a transfer, polluting at the point of production not necessarily at the point of ultimate use. (Then of course you have battery disposal/re-use issues…but don’t get me started) People in general don’t do a good job of considering externalities…out of sight, out of mind. People’s reliance on technology to solve problems would be humorous if it wasn’t so pathetic. Self-reliance is dead apparently…if not sucking on the tit of foreign oil then hoping and praying that some propeller head will preserve our ability to drive through the “big breakthrough”.

Reality: no technological fix can skirt the laws of physics which is the problem we are facing…moving our fat a**es around while powering the AC, heating seats, watching movies, etc. etc. I believe the two most efficient (in terms of energy used per unit of work performed) forms of transportation are 1)train and 2)the bicycle.

You want bang for your transportation $? Make those two forms of travel easy and convenient to use by building bike lanes/paths and by building more houses vertically where you can run a train to make rail or bus transportation efficient.

An alternative answer is to live near your workplace and ride a bike or to work from home.

Gee, Ya’ll sound so pious and intelligent! The only problem is the 4 of you will be the only ones out there practising what you have preached.
Do you really think you will ever see a significant number of young professional men and women working their way up the corporate ladder all “bunched” up in the bike lane at 7:30 on a February morning? Didn’t think so. So ya’ll get busy tellin’ the wind which way to blow! (You have just about the same chance getting the populace to change)

Dream on Dog! take a look at the web-cast of Black Friday at the mall and tell me if you see more than 3 or 4 of those people that would have ridden a bike down there. More importantly, how many hybrids did you see in the parking lot?
My point is that it won’t matter when gas goes to 6-7 bucks a gallon. Sure, we will bitch about it, but we will still drive.

You keep wanting to compare us with Europe. Why? Unless you want to populate the entire country like an inner city burrough, we have nothing in common with Europe!(unless you want to say we both walk upright).

You keep harping about “mass transit”. At the very best, you will enlist 3-6% of the population to use it. That means that 94-97% of the people will not use it! When you figure out how to reverse that percentage, give me a call. Until then, you would be better served trying to get to the moon. I hear there isn’t much traffic there.

I’ve been keeping and eye on the trend towards more eco-friendly cars for quite awhile but the manufactures so far have followed the desire of the consumers to go green with more hype than substance. One of my biggest gripes is about the so called Hybrids. More here: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A2154

A lot has been said about shifting pollution from individual cars to more coal fired power plants.

Yes, the electrical capacity will have to increase if there are more electric cars on the road and yes those power plants will be coal/nuclear but there are great increasing returns to scale for the power plants. On a per car basis the pollution will be significantly lower. The numbers I have seen in Popular Science/Mechanics and other sources say that the elctricity cost is somewhere in the pennies/nickles/dimes per gallon range.

It may not be an end all solution but it is sure better than doing nothing for 30 more years waiting for something else to come along.

BTW: Trains are only shown to be a viable, cost/environment saving measures in densely populated areas like the East coast/Europe/Japan. They work well for moving large volumes of people/cargo but when 2-5% ride you must have a huge population base to fill a good sized train. That said I’d love to see a wider spread use of mag-lev trains and GE’s newest hybrid train. GE claims that if all US based locomotives were as efficient as their new one it would cut the equivalent of over 1 million cars off the road.

I agree with #5 and #6!

And who cares what the “young professional men and women working their way up the corporate ladder” are doing? When they’re not engaging in Black Friday at the mall? LOSERS!!

Cars are for the crippled and the weak! Bikes rule!

(Yeah… I’m being deliberately provocative, so there’s really no point in composing a terse reply. But I gave car-transportation up, pretty much entirely, 20+ years ago, and I’d NEVER go back to that expensive, stress-laden, smelly mode of transportation. I agree with the author that ever-increasing gas prices will result in more efficient vehicles, and hopefully more socially-responsible vehicle use, as well.)

Poor folk shouldn’t be on the public roads, anyway, ‘cept with their oxcarts and wheelbarrows!
(-;

At some point, the cost of fuel WILL have an impact on transportation choices. Obviously that point isn’t $3, at least for the general populace.

(The economic talking-heads say that so far, holiday spending is holding steady or going up, especially in electronics, clothes, etc. However, the “bling” industry – jewelry and the like – is struggling. So people are making tough choices – choosing the necessities, like the new-model iPod, HDTV and Old Navy, over the luxuries like tennis bracelets.)

Will people have to choose between fuel and food when gas is $4? $5? (As long as people are willing to keep paying whatever the oil companies decide to charge for their product, why would Big Oil EVER decide to hold their prices steady?)

I pity the fool who lives on Heaven’s Half Acre out there in Kuna or Greenleaf, and commutes to Boise every day in his 12MPG Dodge Durango. But I’m glad to live in a country where fools can make such choices.

I applaud those of you who can ride a bike to work. When I was in my 40’s I thought I would be healthy forever. At that time I could run uphill for three miles without getting out of breath. Surprise! I now have trouble walking to my mailbox. I hope you all retain your good health until you are 100. Many times people have no choice over what happens to them.

I am old and have only owned 4 cars in my life. One of them I drove, lightly, for 14 years. The car I have now is 15 years old and has 57000 miles on it. My rule of working was that I never worked more than a mile and a half from my home. That was so I could look after my children and parents. This was never a problem for me, although my house was old and shabby by today’s standards.

I hope you folks will find a solution to the pollution problem – the bad air is an instant headache for many of us.

Let’s think about this. Big tax breaks for the smaller less poluting car’s? High tax’s for the big SUV’s like the one Butch drive’s. That alone might make someone pay attention. Butch you out there? Let this be something to consider this year to fight for.