lolwhat

[solarbird]

Data from Yahoo! Finance, chart from The Mess that Greenspan Made,
pointed out to me by cow

Comments

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be my first choice, since people are still driving afterwards, but it's looking to be one of the simplest, fastest, and most voter-friendly carbon reduction schemes ever tried on a mass scale.

I guess this depends on whether you look at the carbon necessary to produce a new car as a sunk cost or not. I heard a bit on NPR the other day suggesting that the amount of time it would take for fuel efficiency gains to make up for production carbon cost would in the majority cases exceed the lifetime of the car, making the program a net CO2 emitter.

It seems to me that those cars would have been produced regardless (car inventories were already high) but I'm not sure whether that's the way to look at it.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Eh, I've mostly decided to worry about issues like that when we finally come up with a standard way of measuring them. But we can't even come up with a solid number for the carbon footprint of cheese, much less something as complicated as a car. Until then, I'm going to say getting people into more fuel efficient cars is a win.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[solarbird]

CARBON FOOTPRINT OF CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

CO2 isn't the sole environmental issue, either. You're also reducing fuel consumption, and significantly reducing emissions of NOX and particulates, levels of which are major issues for a lot of cities. Obviously one could also achieve similar ends by things like improving mass transit options, thus getting people out of their individual cars altogether, but this is a step, and one that's short-term effective instead of just long-term effective.