Taxes arent working though: Europe taxes the crap out of petrol. The world has been taxing petrol for fifty years. We have even gone through petrol price shocks - yet even Europe remains a car culture, reliant on petrol, car infrastructure etc etc etc. Upping the price through taxes to retard consumption has not changed the fact that all nations remain wedded to petrol.
The best we can do after 30 years of the government interfering in the market is small cars in Europe, and hybrids in the US. Hybrids carry their only environmental problems when the batteries have to be retired, which isnt reflected in their cost either.
The disruptive technology need not be an engineering break-through, though it would be better if it was. It could be something as simple as carbon trading, or air-pollution trading.
Petrol is cheap to extract, refine, and distribute. That isnt going to change, even after peak oil, it will continue to be relatively cheap for a long time. The problem with petrol consumption is its pollution. High prices at the petrol pump dont make people aware of that cost, which they are not paying, and which taxes on each litre of petrol dont pay.
The only way to give non combustion engine related technologies a chance is through some external currency system which reflects the pollution aspects of the combustion engine.
cam
Comments