ABG reader writes a rebuttal to our Indian car growth post
AutoblogGreen reader Manu Sharma dropped us a line to let us know about a rebuttal he's written to my post the other day on the potential problems related to the growth of the car population in India. Manu makes some excellent points about some areas that I neglected to mention. First of all, most of the cars being sold in India are much smaller than what we typically drive here and that is certainly a good thing. Also the Indian government has adopted Euro emissions standards and that certainly helps with the pollution issue. However, I just want to clarify a little of what I said. As I said, it would be unfair limit development potential in other countries, but I think it would certainly be prudent for people in places like India and China to learn from us. In retrospect, many of the decisions about transportation and urban development in North America - and to a lesser degree in Europe - are clearly not sustainable over the long term. I never meant to imply that developing countries should address climate change before the developed countries do.
We all need to work to address the issues now. The economic development curve in India is still in the relatively early stages and it's still possible to change the path they are on. It will be a lot easier to think about how cities develop from a transportation perspective now than it will be twenty or thirty years from now. If the Indians and Chinese can learn from our mistakes and do things right, maybe we can learn something from them. You can find Manu's response here.
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[Source: OrangeHues.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
George Krpan 10:14PM (7/03/2007)
American's may produce more CO2 than Indians or Chinese but there is still far more environmental destruction in those countries.
It's OK. India and China will get automobiles. The remaining oil will get used up faster and CO2 from automobiles will cease to be a problem.
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Manu Sharma 1:17AM (7/04/2007)
Sam, I'm continually amazed at how open and approachable ABG is, even to criticism. I hope it stays this way.
Thank you for posting this.
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Don 5:00PM (7/05/2007)
He can bitch all he wants...but that doesn't magically make the 1 billion people in India disappear. And when cars become more readily available, that's going to cause some serious environmental problems.
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Manu Sharma 4:00AM (7/06/2007)
Don, I have no idea which 1 billion are you talking about.
In case you didn't know India's per capita GDP is about 1/50th of US. There are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really are extraordinarily well off.
But over 700 million of India's population is either poor or extremely poor. It will be many many decades when they can afford anything resembling a car.
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BKT 12:04AM (7/09/2007)
Thanks very much Manu for pointing out the population differences in India. Just goes to show how *most* Americans are readily pointing fingers at others -- not realizing just how hypocritical they are.
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