You are exaggerating. The difference between 2005 and 2007 does not support your arbitrary "low demand" and selling like hot cakes. Yes, there was an uptick as gas prices rose. And yes, Toyota didn't have enough supply to meet demand in the early years. This simply means their internal projections were wrong, that or they didn't have the logistics set up to enable them to deliver enough. You forget to mention that as these countries get modernized birth rates tend to go down. While per capita energy use goes up, birth rates go down. Hopefully as countries get more modernized their societies will be smarter than ours has been and stress renewable energy more.
Agreed. The renewables will be more widely accepted when they are seen as better. That may simply be cost, or it could be better environmentally if enough people realize that is a big part of cost. China is stressing renewables because they are facing incredible local pollution. But the are not swearing off coal and such, just relying less on it than they would if it were not creating so much pollution. But while we external ice many of the costs of fossil fuels (health costs, military costs, trade deficit costs of oil) the price appears low to people, when it is really quite high. One of my favorite quotes is "when a solar farm has a spill it's called a nice day".
Presently, exploitation of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge has been on hold since 1977. Arctic Refuge drilling controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia At least it is an attempt to protect the environment from damage. (Now whether that is permanent or temporary remains to be seen.) However, I totally agree with your underlying point. The only permanent solution to environmental preservation has to also be a economic based solution.
Toyota's strategy had more to do with profit than market manipulation. The 2001-2003 were expensive cars to make with little to no profit for some time. It was also not clear if some technical shortcoming could show up with 8 year battery and hybrid warranties. Better to limit the market and make sure we can make money. Meanwhile, the 2004 Version has a LOT of cost reduction aspects incorporated (Smaller battery, stamped parts vs. machined parts, motor redesigns, ABS interiors vs. foam padded linings, etc.) and even more mpg improvements. No question that supply was limited early on to test the market and make sure the whole "Hybrid" introduction did not backfire. However, it became extremely clear to Toyota that the Prius could be a real money maker in the American market with the incorporation of all the lesson learned on the early models. While sustainability is not austerity, it is also not utopia. If we don't get population growth decelerated and reversed, then sustainability is a lost cause. However, as Zythryn mentioned, the most powerful effect on reducing birth rates was to increase the standard of living. Huh? That sure is non-intuitive, but shows us the light at the end of the tunnel. Sustainability can be self sustaining!
That is an oft-quoted conclusion but it is more spin than real. The result is based on western country's non-immigrant population, while a more honest data would be worldwide growth. So while true that rich, urban people tend to have less kids, there is always a huge reservoir of poor people that not only keep up a high rural birth rate, they make extra for the urban affluency sink.
You could be right about birth rates tend to go down after modernization. However, birth rate may stay the same if religion infests those countries. I'm not going to say which religion, the only thing I could say is I'm surrounded by them. My kids go to their school. Those families like to make babies, they keep making them even though they couldn't really afford more of them. I know this because the women often complain about not having enough money to spend so they would go get part-time jobs. The religious leaders praise them for having a lot of babies, they said the family is blessed by God. So don't assume that modernization will reduce birth rate.
Boy you are full of all kinds of information aren't you? Feel free to indicate which religion, and perhaps there could be further discussion.
Teen birth rates highest in most religious states - Health - Children's health | NBC News Some bad news for both sides.
Horny teenagers are everywhere with or without religion. So teen sex should be pretty much the same for all states. I agree with some of the points that the article made. Teenagers in less religious states may just go get abortion.
Or you might be able to conclude that teens from better educated cities and states, typically with more affluence tend to understand and use contraceptives, regardless of the religious tenants against doing so. They may also have a better understnding of basic biology, and actually understnd where babies come from, and are less predisposed to believe weird myths about sex, sexuality and birth control. Icarus
Decided to do some homework to find out the factors. Here is best analysis I found for the drop in use: Why is US Oil Consumption Lower? Better Gasoline Mileage? | Our Finite World The short summary is 23% of the reduction is due to more efficient vehicles and the remaining 77% is driving fewer miles. The analysis reveals some interesting things and is worth a read.
You like to give credit to more efficient cars. But the source of better mpg is high oil price. This somewhat support the theory that when people have more money to spend, they'll pollute more. The opposite is true, less money in consumers' hand, less pollution. As oil price moves up, people either drive less or drive more efficient cars. That makes sense. In a bad economy, people tends to go out less and spend more time either at home or locally. Many people also delay marriage. No weddings = no parties = less oil consumed. A friend of mine flew across the country to California to attend a wedding a couple of weeks ago. I wonder how much pollution this couple had created by just getting married. I heard it was a huge party.
There is not a disagreement between us that pollution is an extremely serious problem to be solved. Another point where there is no disagreement is that most folks will not care about the pollution results of their lifestyles. The difference in opinion was if anything could be done at all. My reply was yes, history shows a lot has been done previously. The fuel consumption example was to show a rather long term bend has occurred. This was just an example of how increasing fuel consumption is not given, but shows the country can still function will less fuel consumption. I'm going to list a lot of examples of past pollution issues and what was done: CFC Pollution (Ozone destroying chemical dumping) => Totally reversed with International Montreal Protocols. Acid Rain (Sulfur in Coal Burning Power Plants) => Virtual elimination with legislation requiring scrubbers on power plants. Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone (Fertilizer Runnoff on Miss. River) => Limitations being put in place for fertilizer control. This one has a local effect of Lawn Fertilizers being banned in FL during the Rainy season. Long way to go, but first steps being implemented. Auto Pollution (presently everything other than CO2) => Engine emission control technologies. Look at the Prius for the most advanced of these....and how it also gives the highest mpg. Massive improvement in air quality. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find a pollution problem that has been ignored or given up solving. What remains are the pollution problems that are extremely difficult to solve. Can they be solved? This is where I was supporting you researching some. You might find some reason for a sliver of optimism.
FL_Prius_Driver - I actually believe that there's a chance that the planet could be saved. That's the good news. The bad news is that it will require a worldwide economy collapse. When people have less or no money to spend, they wouldn't be able to do any damage. It is a well known fact that during a bad economy, pollution level goes down and birth rate goes down at least in the industrialized countries. BTW, pollution is only part of the problem. We haven't even touch on GMO.
Let's see how economic collapse affected my examples: 1) CFC restrictions => Predicted collapse of the Air Conditioning and Foam Industry - Didn't happen 2) Acid Rain => Predicted explosion in power bills - Didn't happen 3) Gulf of Mexico => Claimed injury to farmer - Has not happened yet 4) Auto Pollution controls => Expensive cars with poor performance - We get the Prius (hardly a step down.) I still cannot find a history example where pollution solutions required the "sacrifice" of anything significant. Why the need for an economic collapse? Can we have one - of course. Would it improve pollution - debatable (some of the most polluted places are the poorest places). Is it required for less pollution? - History keeps showing the opposite lesson over and over!!!! Please bring up an example where economic collapse permanently improved any pollution situation and it would make for an interesting discussion. I can bring up many more examples of where improved economics reduced pollution. (How many Telsa's would be purchased if the economy was strong?)
Seems to be a very well done article. A big question will be future price of oil. There seems to be one school of thought among analysts that the price of oil is "artificially" high reflecting mid East uncertainty rather than economic pressures, given the slow-down in China etc. There is a possibility of a spike down in oil price, which of course would be unexpected, but is one possibility. Interesting point in the article comments: US tax code has SUV tax preference for small business requested by US autos some years ago. Too many SUVs being a hot button item for Prius Chat often times.
I think you must have some preferences against certain races or religions, or did not understand the article I gave you. The article clearly stated that those in more religious states had more teenage pregnancies (including the abortions). We can't really tell anything about how many teenagers are having sex (religious teenagers often lie when abstinence only education is used). We can tell though that in these states a higher proportion are having unprotected sex. I am completely in favor of parents doing the job of sex education, but many parents do an extremely poor job, and these teenage pregnancies are the ones most likely to end up with children in poverty. I would draw more of a conclusion that there is a link between lack of sex education in the schools and children brought up in poverty. No matter what your political or religious beliefs are unwanted children that go into poverty is a bad thing. Why do I bring it up? You jumped to a very wrong conclusion about birth rate. The birth rate in this country is about flat, women have 2.06 children in the latest statistics. That means that other than life expectancy going up, and immigration, the US population is stable. I don't think any one really wants to deny medical care to old people, so we should not think of longer life expectancy as a bad thing, its a good thing. Immigration is a hot potato issue, but IMHO some legal immigration is a good thing for this country. It really doesn't use any more resources, it simply shifts this use from other countries to the US. Some statistics from my state, which is religious but not in the top 10 most religious. Texas is number 1 in population of Evangelical Christens and Muslims and number 3 in Catholics behind California and New York. Unfortunately many in these religious groups do not like sex education and half the school districts in the state do not teach it. This causes a problem in the state of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Instead of addressing the educational problem to give these girls knowledge, the state in special session this summer voted to add new restrictions on family planning clinics that will likely close all but 6 of them. I expect the number of unwanted children and the number of abortions, including those done in back rooms instead of clinics to increase. Just for sad demographic in Texas tends towards Hispanics, especially those families that are new to texas. 64% of teanage pregnacies in the state are hispanics (not sure the number of unwanted which is more important) while the population makes up only 38% of my state.
