I wonder if you realize that the climate problems we have don't wait around for recessions.

We don't have the luxury of only doing the right thing when times are good.

But perhaps if peoples' mentalities change and they do things to help out regardless, it would help a lot. Otherwise, we're screwed and the economy will be the least of our problems.

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Maybe I was a bit unclear.
I didn't say anywhere that getting off fossil fuels and reducing harmful emissions isn't important, even though we probably have differing opinions on the topic of climate change.
Focusing on fixing the economy while ignoring everything else -including environmental concerns- is clearly not the way to go, I agree. But the other extreme, trying to enact green legislation while ignoring economic realities is just as bad, and to me it seems that that's exactly the attitude of CARB.
I mean, it ought to be possible to get your emissions legislation coherent on a national level so that it doesn't put car makers at a disadvantage. Even the EU has managed to do it, somehow.

Of course it'd be even more awesome if we could get -global- standards going, at least between the EU, North America and Japan. Instant economy boost.

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If anything green legislation has taken the back-burner for far too long. Any longer and whatever we do will be pointless for us. We're playing with fire when it comes to the environment. Never shit where you live they say...and that's what we're doing. The economy can no longer be used as a excuse to not do anything.

I agree with you that we can't ultimately stop trying to help people but far too long we've ignored a problem that, while FAR more important than any individual's issues, is far easier to overlook because it doesn't affect us on a micro scale every day. But it will soon and has in some parts of the world already.

As far as your point, perhaps the change to smaller cars was due to economy but that mentality has to change. It's only a part of the mentality change required for people to make a serious adjustment to their lifestyles if they want any future at all for their offspring, if not for themselves. But it's already been quite clearly established for me how little people care...even for their own kids.

As far as CARB goes, CARB has function it needs to focus on...which is set tough limits for emissions. If it can't do that because people are going to get in its way because of individual economic needs, then those people need to revamp their lifestyles.

In all honesty, the whining people do about having change their lifestyles is probably as easy as giving up their stupid SUVs and not having a $400/month fuel payment and instead pay into a cleaner, healthier future.

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@DasBoese - You're 100% right - they are idiots to think they can change consumer behavior by regulating supply instead of demand. Total fools, and the worst thing about it is that it won't benefit the environment for many years. Even if cleaner cars were available tomorrow, the majority of the current fleet of cars on the roads will still be on the road ten years from now, and the majority of those ten years from now will still last well into the following decade.

If they really want to positively effect the environment in a much shorter period of time, they need to make all the commercial power utilities much more efficient than they are now. Currently, all power utilities that burn some kind of fuel to make electricity waste two thirds of the heat generated. If they just double the efficiency (which Japan and Denmark already have with existing technology - what I'm talking about here is nothing radical), which is to say waste a third of the heat energy instead of two-thirds, the effect on the environment would be equal to removing every car and truck form the road.

Will they do this? Probably not. It's more politically expedient to make the auto industry a whipping boy, rather than go after the power utilities.

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So what are you saying? People demanded 8 passenger, 5000lb SUVs to sit in alone everyday for 2 hours in traffic and get 10 miles per gallon on the 405 freeway?

When you give people a better choice, people generally take it.

Some are pretty stupid and will blame the lack of choices on something else as a scapegoat. But when all you see all day are SUV ads, ads about how to put your whole non-existent family in a car the size of a living room, coupled with a selection of other cars that have been pitched as unsafe, too small, and death traps....and push fear into idiots who are too stupid to think for themselves...then you get a mass hysteria of people buying stupidly large cars that they don't need and drive around like morons.

On top of that, make them cheap, crap quality, and purposefully perceived lower priced than smaller cars, and you have an idiot's guide to buying their next car.

And then the auto industry turns around and says it's because people demanded it.

And as far as reducing pollution by modifying utilities, etc....that's great. But factor in the production, lifecycle of waste produced, tires, oil, other liquids, and final disposal of each and every vehicle, then compare the levels of waste and pollution...not simply what comes out the tailpipe.

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It'd be hard for America to get rid of me seeing as I'm a citizen of the EU, living in Europe. But I do plan on going to the US at some point, maybe you can convince your authorities to not let me in.

Perhaps I should have made myself a bit clearer, you kind of illustrate my point for me quite nicely though:
The market shift from SUVs and such to more fuel efficient cars was because of the rise in gas prices, a factor which modified consumer demand for these vehicles.
Not because someone forced automakers to sell more small cars and less SUVs, i.e. restricting the supply.

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Don't mix up CO2 taxes with CO2 emission limits.

CO2 limits will become mandatory in 2012, but the situation is different from the US. For one the legislation is coherent throughout Europe, and secondly most car companies are near the 130g/km limit already because our small car market is very well developed. So the impact won't be especially large, no.

CO2 taxes are a whole different story, in most countries they're part of the gas tax, but I think you mean the idea of car taxes or road taxes or whatever you call them based on CO2. I don't like the idea because well, gas taxes.
I'd be willing to accept it if it replaced outdated forms of car taxation such as displacement-based like is the case here in Germany, but unfortunately the government failed to go through with it and now it looks like we'll get a completely retarded hybrid taxation system that does nothing but create unnecessary bureaucracy.

As for the "freedom fighters", well, they just need someone to explain to them that roads and infrastructure don't pay for themselves. Next time you get into that argument, point out the irony that because they refused to raise fuel taxes, the money for that now comes from -every- taxpayer, and watch them explode ;D

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Roads do pay for themselves.
There has been plenty of money taken in the last fifty years via the CAFR scheme to have the interest on that money pay for perpetual upkeep of the road system.
All the extra money via the gas tax can go to making new roads and higher quality upgrades.

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I agree

But the naysayers here who think demand is from consumers and not from what they are forced to use will disagree. Not to mention they'll get their g-strings in a twist because their "rights" are being violated and they'd feel they are living in a communist country all of a sudden.

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