Re: Embedded Energy: Should I replace my car? my boiler? my freezer?

On Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:04:12 +0100, John Beardmore wrote:

(in response to Barry Bingham who wrote:)
If that's right we can forget the
whole "embedded energy" argument altogether and simply replace our cars as
soon as a "greener" model becomes available: even if that's every six
months or so....

Well you can if you like though it seems moronic to me in terms of
depreciation.

Well changing cars every 2-3 years is also pretty stupid for average
mileage users if depreciation is the only issue. I think you
underestimate the power of car culture.


You may be right.But that feels like driving still faster the engine
of rapid obsolescence and car consumption,

Not really. Cars are purchased and maintained by consumers to deliver
transport. Most consumers couldn't give a monkeys about obsolescence.

I think you exaggerate here, John. Many consumers don't
care, but very many do: for millions of car buyers a car is far more than
a means of transport. If it were simply that, there would be far fewer
large cars, 4X4s, sports cars etc., etc. A car for many is a item of
attire, a personal statement, a status symbol, a source of dynamic
pleasure, even a piece of Art... as well as a means of transport. That's
one reason, over and above convenience, why its so difficult to get rid
of. Few environmentally aware people identify with this "petrolhead" view
but it is the reality of the relationship that millions have with their
cars...

and thus economic
growth: which is what has got us here in the first place with or without
the motor car.

:) Seems a bit of a simplistic analysis, but you managed to get it into
a couple of lines of text which isn't bad !


Only reduced consumption and reduced economic activity,
reduced wealth, reduced incomes, etc etc... would I suspect ever be
likely to have a meaningful impact on long term climate change

That's one view, though I'm not sure that I share it.


(adverse in the
short term if the global dimmers are correct, but beneficial in the
longer term).

Yes.


And the industry's short term response to a significant
number of regular punters deferring purchase might just be to try
harder: to make "green" the new satnav as satnav was the new aircon,
aircon the new electric sunroof and so on back to the dawn of the mass
motor industry.

Well, it's inevitable really, but it's not so much a fashion as a market
constraint.


It's really hard to know the right thing to do.

With numeric certainty anyway.


Use the car as
little as possible is about the only thing on which I see clarity.

Actually, it seems to me that there are frequently obvious things that
can be done in the home and by industry, but transport is a real
conundrum. Skype is perhaps one of the best things you can do...

Yes a lot of transport could theoretically be replaced by remote
exchange. Don't think you can really social work someone over a web cam
though... And I'm sure businessmen would also say that you can't get the
right outcome without touching the flesh..

when replacement time comes (by an immediate embedded energy irrelevant
eco-choice or through eventual mechanical necessity) keep the CO2 as low
as possible.

If you can measure it at all.


I increasingly suspect that its all "deckchairs on the
Titanic anyway"..... but it would still be good to push our individual
deckchairs in vaguely the right direction!

You may be right. One meeting of grass roots environmentalists I went
to a couple of years ago stumbled on the notion that that it might be

"less to do with saving the planet"

and

"more to do with going down with dignity",

though my personal view is that the more effort we put into reaching a
sustainable combination of ecosystem, population and technology, the
more people survive the process.

Hopefully you will be proved right. But capitalism really has no way of
dealing with contraction and restraint. Without a technological and,
crucially, money making, silver bullet it will probably just implode....

Cheers, J/.

.

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