Discussions
The More Hybrid Drivers the Better?
Posted by timethief • 7/16/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: environment, honda-insight, hybrid-vehicles, pollution
- "Theoretically, it seats 6.75 billion," the ad for the new Honda Insight hybrid car states in TIME magazine.
Yet even a fuel-efficient hybrid car could be disastrous for the planet.
"The more hybrid drivers, the better," the ad declares unambiguously. "For all of us."
Really?
If 6.75 billion people drive vehicles that get 42 miles per gallon 10,000 miles a year, what happens to oil supplies and energy prices? To roads and open space? More importantly, what happens to the atmosphere? Honda might be more responsible spreading the message that those who feel they must drive should downshift to a more efficient model, maybe an Insight."
Read the rest of the Op-Ed piece here -> www.enn.com/top_stories/article/40209
Discussion questions:
(1) Do you have a hybrid or are you planning to but one?
(2) Do you think more hybrids are THE solution to the pollution problem? Or do you think it's only part of the solution and that more emphasis ought to be placed on public transit use?
(3) What did you think of the OP-Ed piece?
User Comments
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The greenest car available in the United States is a clean VW Diesel, a Passat. Hybrids are a novelty: there is an environmental cost in the assembly, and the batteries put into them. What is really needed is less driving and more public transport.
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What is really needed is less driving and more public transport.
- I agree with you about public transport use but how will we convince drivers, most particulalry, males to give up their status symbols?
I find the hybrid advertising to be off-base. Only some of us can afford to purchase vehicles, and those who purchase hybrids are purchasing the lesser of two polluters. -
When I was living in San Diego, public transportation costed the same as me driving my car. It's hard to convince someone to switch when they are spending the same amount of money driving their own vehicle while not having to transfer from bus to bus, sometimes taking hours, to get somewhere that would take only minutes in a car. -
OMG. Public transportation is so much cheaper for me that I cannot even compare the two! I moved to Chicago from the suburbs just over a year ago. I had lived in the city previously, but my most recent move was the first I did entirely on my own.
I figured out that the cost of living in the suburbs, owning a car, commuting to work in the city was costing me a fortune! The car payment, insurance and gas was over 500 a month, plus the cost of commuter rail was 130 a month. If I drove into the city instead of taking the train, my gas costs would have quadrupled and cost of garage parking would be easily 400 a month.
Now, I live in the city and spend less than 80 a month for public transportation. I sold the car and canceled the insurance. Now I have also saved myself the cost of city licensing and city street parking permit, about 400 a year. No more throwing my money away on gasoline either! -
- I don't think that money is the only motivator in this world. I'm also tired of hearing people saying: "There's no advantage to ME, so why bother?
Hello! We are all capable of being good for goodness sake. We are capable of choosing to make changes simply based on a deep desire to leave a better, greener legacy for the generations to come.
I don't even have any kids but I care enough about the future to make changes, without expecting any reward or benefit of any kind. If I can make that mental shift then I sincerely believe that others can do likewise. -
To cover American cities with a suitable rail grid would cost more money then America could pay back. In Seattle alone they've already racked up about 10 billion in expenditures against a 2 million person metropolitan area for a grand total of 2 lines covering maybe 2% of the area and a (rosilly) estimated 20,000 passengers. You could do busses, but that has it's own cost in terms of lost time and the opportunity cost of waiting around for a bus every day.
The real solution for cars would be a safe, effective, and high-capacity electric battery partnered with a C02-free power grid, which can be achieved using nuclear & wind in conjunction (the nuclear, being entirely free-market, can pay for the wind mills.) They have a concept for one, the Aluminum-Air, that looks solid so far but is still in the development stages.
In the meantime, I think it would be far more intelligent to focus on eliminating coal power (creates twice as much CO2 as cars, even in America, and would lower the cost of steel, carbon-fibers, and some plastics) and modernizing manufacturing processes, which can be done at a much lower expense and involves fewer people. It also doesn't involve attempting to redraw the layout of American cities. It boils down to the old maxim that the less complicated a scheme is the more likely it is to work. -
@TT: I appreciate your sentiment, but the fact of the matter is the "no-benefit to me" translates not only to you but the entire rest of society. People (including both you and others) use personal transport because it saves time and is more effective for getting around the kind of cities we live in, and the cost of attempting to build a mass-transit system right now would bankrupt the US for sure and I'm guessing wouldn't be too hot on Canada's finances either, as your cities are very similar. I do not believe that this transformation would be good for anyone. Even in Seattle, a city with great pedestrian access and the best layout of possibly any American city for a railroad, the cost has been enormous and a lot of people are going to be hurt.
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I am pro public transportation. Actually, currently VW Diesels are not available in the US due to changes in emission standards. I know that VW Diesels are among the hottest, most sought after used cars. Many are selling far, far above blue book value due to the fact that new diesels are not being imported.
I looked for a VW diesel a couple of years ago and came up empty.-
- I'm also pro-public transportation and I think rather than building apartment towers and condos with underground parking lots in high density areas, the parking lots ought to be eliminated.
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TT, that would only increase pollution as people drive around and around and around looking for a place to park. It will tie up on-street parking so that non-residents who have to come into the city to conduct business also drive around and around and around looking for parking.
Try finding a parking place in San Francisco...which has an excellent public transport system, BTW. Many of those gorgeous old Vics don't have parking, so the owners park on the street and it can be a nightmare trying to find a place to put your car while you conduct business like picking up the dry cleaning or running into a pharmacy. It is so bad that cars double park, adding to the congestion...and cars sitting at idle or cruising slowly around the block fill the air with exhaust fumes. Better they should park as soon as possible and turn off those engines!
I think a better solution is something they are doing here in Cape Town: many old office towers in the centre of town are being converted into condos. These places have limited underground parking (from when they were office buildings) and if you want a parking bay or two, you have to buy them. In some of the more desirable towers in town, a parking bay will cost you up to 50% of the cost of your pricey high-rise condo! The cost of the parking bays seriously cuts down on the number of cars that reside in the cities. -
I disagree. I'd like to see all high density city core areas made made into "personal vehicle free zones". In cities where this has been done the use of public transport skyrocketed. The businesses were still able to get deliveries and send out shipments. And the street life grew into a wonderfully vibrant example of community living at it's best. Four older couples I know sold their suburban homes and vehicles and moved into complexes situated there. They love it.
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Public transport doesn't work particularly well outside of vertical cities. When I lived in Silicon Valley I decided to give our public transit a try when I took a new job. I lasted a week.
First of all, I had to drive to a "park and ride" lot because there were no bus stops within reasonable walking distance of my house. I lived in an established neighbourhood that was 40 years old, not a new or sparsely populated area.
It took exactly twice as long for the bus to get me to work as driving the commute traffic...and then I had to walk three blocks to my office in the street as the industrial parks have no sidewalks. On the flip side, the last express bus to my area left at 5:20...which meant I had to leave work early. And the ride home was 2 hours long, after which I had to walk through a dark parking lot in a less-than-savoury area (park and ride lots aren't situated in prime real estate).
Bottom line: it took twice as long, cost just as much, exposed me to danger, aggravated my boss...not to mention my fellow passengers, many of whom were obviously not well acquainted with soap, showers, or deodorant. I never again complained about the commute traffic, knowing public transport in a sprawling horizontal city to be a curse, not the blessing it is believed to be.
Hybrids? I think it is pointless and wasteful to buy a vehicle that doesn't meet your needs. When they come up with a hybrid that is as solid and long-lasting as a Mercedes, carries 5 people plus all their luggage, gets 480km on a fill up (while running the a/c full time), has sufficient horsepower to climb steep hills while fully laden and has 4WD, it will meet my needs and I'll consider buying one. Until then, I'll pass.-
Ah, that is part of what LEED and the US Green Building council is trying to address. Bringing industry and jobs to people, rather than the other way around. One of the biggest things that the green building industry is trying to do is convince developers, owners and tenants to place their businesses in areas where there is easy access to public transportation and alternatives to car based transportation.
The future of green building is to stop urban sprawl and encourage community development. -
You'd have to start with city zoning ordinances because they prevent such a thing from happening.
Then you would have to convince the public transport systems to put bus stops closer than half a mile apart. Not every body is 20 years old and can hike half a mile in all kinds of weather to catch a bus.
I know you live in Chicago and you mention "urban sprawl." Have you ever been to California, where the houses are all one story and the suburbs are vast? Public transport does NOT work in these areas. Trust me, I lived in San Diego and Silicon Valley most of my life and it just is not like vertical cities like Boston, San Francisco or Chicago.
Believe me, after my experience trying out the bus, I'll never do it again. Ever. Public transportation in the burbs is NOT user friendly and is not likely to be any time in the near future.
One of the problems I see...and one of the reasons going green gets so little traction, I think...is that the proposed solutions don't actually address the problems vis a vis the human factor. It is human nature to say "how will this affect me?" and if the effect will be negative, it gets rejected. Enough rejected proposals and pretty soon people just roll their eyes at any new ideas, even ones with actual merit. Take diamond lanes, for example...they stand empty while vehicles crawl along in the adjacent lanes, each minute they spend stuck in traffic adding pollutants to the atmosphere. One of the stupidest ideas ever to hit the roadways. Busses and diesels are allowed to pour tons of black smoke into the air, but car drivers are penalized...counterproductive.
And what about aircraft? Jet aircraft are the single biggest contributors to air pollution...why not pick on the big polluters instead of trying to pry some poor woman out of her car, leaving her with no way to get her kids to day care or bring home the groceries?
There's nothing wrong with going green, but I really wish some common sense and basic human psychology was added to the movement! -
Green building isn't just for big cities. Suburban towns are also enacting green building ordinances. When I say bringing industry and jobs to the people, I mean it. LEED encourages developers, tenants, and owners to build in suburban areas and create actual communities.
I know all about urban sprawl. I grew up in Schaumburg, the prototypical post war suburb of preplanned developments. No public transportation, no walking or bike friendly sidewalks, no town center. Just wide busy streets lined with shopping centers. No sense of community either. LEED is striving to make these towns more community oriented. By creating town centers that attract business and moving large business out to the suburbs, the goal is to help people towards a goal of working where they live.
Green building is gaining traction here in the US, especially since the new presidential administration. Also, zoning and building regulators are being educated in green building and community development.
Don't be so quick to discount it. -
The future of green building is to stop urban sprawl and encourage community development.
- It's the same here. Here in BC LEED, is rapidly being adopted by towns, cities and regional districts as well and incorporated into zoning bylaws. Were the zoning requirements and legislation for building codes has been changed builders have to comply with LEED requirements and standards.
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*sigh* This is what I mean...you have a point and it is deafening you.
MILLIONS of Americans live in places like LA...sprawling suburbs. That is not going to change. Hooray for LEEDS and that stuff but that is going forward. What about addressing today, the infrastructure of today, the people of today? Because if you don't, the "green" movement will continue to struggle with people who will, as humans do, address their own needs first.
The idea of placing businesses where people live is a good one...up to a point. But how are you going to get a business that employs hundreds of people to locate where those hundreds of people live? Is the green movement going to buy up vast tracts of suburban homes, knock them down and erect "ideal" communities in their places? And even if they do, how will this help people who can't afford to live in these showplace communities and must commute from less stellar locations to the jobs that are there? They still need cars and roads and busses and trains to get from where they can afford to live to where they were able to find a job.
It's good to put into place things that will prevent today's problems from recurring, but not at the expense of solving today's problems. Do you think I really wanted to commute 22 miles each way through bumper-to-bumper traffic for a job? It was the only job I could get in a down economy. Have you ever tried to get to job interviews in a sprawling California city on public transportation? Colour yourself late...later...missing the appointment.
It's too complicated to analyze here, but the problem is more than public transport or where the jobs are located vis a vis the housing. And as long as public transport is less attractive than taking the car (costs too much, takes too long, doesn't pick up from/go to the places people need it), it will remain the last choice, not the first. -
I am a commercial architect and I can tell you that it's not as difficult to get a big company to move as you may think it is. Not many companies get locked into leases longer than 10 years now for their company offices. Most will use the end of the lease to either remodel their existing offices or look for cheaper, business friendly towns to relocate to. Money wise, it costs them the same.
Much of the redevelopment is happening in places that desperately need the boost of commercial business to lift the sagging face of their business districts. What ends up happening is that dying retail centers, warehouses, and horrid business parks within the boundaries of a township are cleared away for new mixed use communities comprised of a careful combination of single unit housing, multi-unit housing, retail shops, community gathering space, entertainment, restaurants (and cafes) and office space. In some communities, yes, some houses may end up getting torn down. In most cases, however, most of the community remains intact.
There are several examples of these new mixed use communities here in Illinois built out of older communities which had dying town centers. With careful urban planning with regard to sustainable communities, its entirely possible to contain urban sprawl and ease people away from car dependence. Also, many of these communities receive federal grants which require them to provide affordable housing within the community. These are not housing projects either. These low income units are mixed in and identical with their higher income neighbors. None of your neighbors will know that you are living in a federally subsidized unit.
SV, I think what you are not seeing is that none of these sustainable building measures are meant to be quick fixes. No one is running around tearing down entire subdivisions.
I have heard of unscrupulous developers in cahoots with officials in other states who will confiscate land using legislation meant to built public infrastructure like highways and airports and turn it into high end developments. That is the wrong way to go about it and the Supreme court should address abuses like that.
Just one additional comment before I go to sleep, these new urbanism communities were among the most resilient to the real estate collapse. The added value of living within a high quality, well planned area buffered these townships from suffering the same loss of market value that neighboring towns experienced.
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I agree with SV that it's hard to use public transit outside of a major metro area. there is no way I could depend on the San Antonio bus system to get me where I need to go on a continuous basis; it's just too difficult.
I did try riding my bike to work one day, but it's friggin hot here. Maybe when it cools down a bit I'll try again, or when I toughen up a little
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- There is no public transit in the small place where I live and probably won't be for many years to come. However, we do bicycle and we do car pool here. When I'm in the city I love the fact that I don't have to take a vehicle I can use bus systems and rapid transit as well.
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Walking/taking public transport when possible and driving when walking/riding is not practical would be a "hybrid driver" in my book -
hahahaalways have and allways will...use public transit. avoids traffic and gets rid too much carbon monoxide. -
- The concept of each and every adult owning their own car and having the fuel to fill it with so they can commute daily to work hours away from home is fast becoming a pipe dream.
I believe we have no alternative other than to rethink and redesign the urban and suburban centers we have now. IMO we need to make a shift to creating walkable neighborhoods where the majority basic goods and services we require are within walking distance. That means we need to focus on large and small cities, neighborhoods, school districts, parks and roadway corridors to improve transportation efficiency and to create whole, healthy, happy lives. For, without doubt increased walkability also helps improve resource responsibility, safety, physical fitness and social interaction.
To connect neighborhoods to neighborhoods and other areas we need to travel to we will need to increase public transit service buses and light rapid transit as well.-
If this should happen, the urban centers would look exactly like the ones we see in science fiction movies.
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- We need to make a transition. As older homes in single family subdivisions require replacing, we need to pursue more livable and sustainable community village style designs and put the zoning in place to achieve it. This will involve changing the suburban wastelands (rows of single family residences without access to shopping and services) that led to the two car family, into vibrant, walkable, small full service satellite communities. And we also need to develop rapid transit lines and public transit routes to interconnect them.
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TT: As older homes in single family subdivisions require replacing, we need to pursue more livable and sustainable community village style designs and put the zoning in place to achieve it.
Ain't gonna happen. In the absence of a natural disaster like a hurricane or massive fire, vast tracts of home do not "require replacing" all at the same time. The land they are on is individually owned so a monolithic change like you suggest is just not gonna happen. Better to address what IS rather than what "ought to be."
Village-style designs are great for the future. We have them here in SA, new developments built three and four stories high surrounding shopping areas, with pedestrian friendly walkways. Guess what? Everybody has a two-car garage or two parking bays in the bottom of their building because you have to get the purchases home, you have to get the kids to their appointments, you have to get to work (and his job and her job are in different parts of the city).
Your model is ok, going forward, but what we need right now is a way to make the existing model work better. And the place to begin is to make public transport more accessible to more people, make it safer, cheaper, more convenient than taking the car. And then business has to get on board and not demand that people stay late for a meeting or dock them for being late or ask "do you have your own transportation to work" on job applications. Those are the first steps to making our existing model work better and without them, things will remained stalled. -
I disagree.
I drive an SUV because, among other reasons, I "bulk" shop. Once a month I go to our local CostCo clone and fill...and I mean FILL...the back of that beast with consumables that I will use in the upcoming month. It saves me a sizable chunk of money to shop this way...and I would never, ever be able to get all that home if I had to walk, even if I bought it at a store within walking distance.
Shop every day? That makes no sense at all. First of all, it uses too much time, something I cannot recoup when lost by reinventing the wheel. Secondly, supermarkets are not equipped for that...they don't restock daily so I must go shortly after stocking or I don't get what I need. And what if I come at the wrong time of day...do I walk home and walk back hours later, hoping the bread or meat I wanted has been put out on the shelves...and others haven't cleaned them out before I get back?
Time is something most of us have too little of. We don't want to double our commute times because we want to be home with our families. We don't want to add to those commute times by stopping at the store and shopping for dinner every night. We can't live where we work because we take jobs where they are available and we can't uproot our families every time we get a new job.
Personal transport is here to stay. In one form or another, we will continue to have it and use it. And as long as public transport does not meet the needs of the people who use their cars, people will not be willing to give them up.
Dreams of the future are fine, but unless we address the reality of today's problems and why people resist buying into the dreams, they can never come to fruition. -
Ain't gonna happen. In the absence of a natural disaster like a hurricane or massive fire, vast tracts of home do not "require replacing" all at the same time. The land they are on is individually owned so a monolithic change like you suggest is just not gonna happen.
- FWIW zoning in the region I live in has been changed to allow for village style developments in formerly single family residential zones in municipalities, and the same has also taken place other regional districts and municipalities in the province I live in.
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Do you have a hybrid or are you planning to but one?
No.
Do you think more hybrids are THE solution to the pollution problem?
No. The solution is hydrogen or other alternative energy powered modes of transport which we'll never get for as long as governments are running their oil cartel. Same with tobacco and alcohol, the price will increase and they will claim to combat this social problem with more legislation and more infringement of our liberty, but with very little effect on the actual problems at hand. They try to make themselves appear legitimate by making things illegal and controlling their use.
Or do you think it's only part of the solution and that more emphasis ought to be placed on public transit use?
Public transit use would obviously take off if there is something to be gained. It's not going to take off if the governments of the world are controlling public transit. If this is the case, public transit would always be less than sufficient because of lack of competition. The same problem occurred with roads - you get roads that the government is supposed to build with fuel taxes, then you get toll roads that are also partially ran by governments, which are supposedly paid for by toll fees, after they've already supposedly been paid for by fuel taxes. They're not exactly bringing prices down. Once again, lack of competition.
What did you think of the OP-Ed piece?
It's an opinion piece and food for thought but it's not going to convince Honda or General Motors who have vested interests in keeping the fuel-market alive.
They have to look like they care for our environment because that dupes the slow eco-fascists to vote them into power, but they can't get rid of fuel because that keeps governments afloat. Cars are luxury items and in times of economic crisis, they go off the shopping list. One way to survive is to convince your friends in government to throw lots of money at your problems (read:bail-out).
Governments in turn can use carbon-emissions as an excuse to control industry with the consent of the public. Ultimately, it's not about the environment though but about favours for friends.
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