Posted by sigismund on May 3, 2010, at 0:46:04
In reply to Re: Shell » sigismund, posted by emilyp on May 2, 2010, at 21:05:53
Well, of course I disagree, to the extent that public transport (such as they have in Japan) is what you would replace the car with. The Japanese have not spent money on roads. I saw no freeways, certainly not from Osaka to Kyoto. And all the cars in Kyoto seemed old. I kept an eye out for Mercs and BMWs. Just a couple in a month. Well, that's a cultural difference too, about the taste involved in ostentation.
And of course the price of electricity should reflect the cost of it, including the environmental cost. When that happens, renewables will be competitive. But we have exactly the same problem here. Maybe the science is wrong. I hope so.
On a different note, an American called John Francis was here recently. He was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge more than 20 years ago when he could smell the oil from the latest spill. His response was to stop driving cars. Then he ended up having all these conversations about it that were pretty crappy. So he stopped talking and walked around the planet. God knows how he survived without speaking. Anyway, he stopped speaking for SEVENTEEN years. (Won my heart with that!) Then one day he decides his silence and walking were a variety of egotism, so he caught a bus and started talking again.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/142620275X/?tag=xiak-20
poster:sigismund
thread:945934
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20100417/msgs/946074.html