European car culture:
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.
This is the reason I support petrol taxes. I do fear there\'s a perverse incentive at the moment for the government to maximise petrol tax revenue rather than actually move to an alternative fuel source, but ultimately pollution mitigation is a higher priority.
Carbon accumulation in the atmosphere tends to have a lot of inertia, and you get a compound interest like effect on early reduction. So unless petrol taxes are directly spent on subsidising coal they\'re a better bodge solution than nothing.
I don\'t understand how European car ownership is supposed to translate to price inelasticity. There are plenty of reasons to own a car, but there\'s also a range of options. I lived in London and its outskirts for two years without a car; it was largely pointless driving in and around town. The German (eg) highway system is well engineered, but it\'s not the only option - rail is often cheaper and more convenient. You don\'t get strip malls and drive throughs to anything like the same degree in Europe as Australia or the US. I\'d be surprised if population density wasn\'t also a factor.
There are some point to point medium range journeys where cars are superior, and there are some people that just prefer cars, but since the point is not to eliminate cars, but rather petrol, where\'s the problem?
I agree the external costs of petrol should be more closely tied to the costs of the pollution; it\'s a long long way from there to abolishing petrol taxes. I wonder if consumer carbon credit cards could work. I suspect the government would still have to underwrite them, but they could issue every citizen with (say) $100 of carbon credits for the year, which you can use to buy carbon with. Any credit that lasts the whole year you can have for free. I hate flybuy points though :) This is why most pollutant trading schemes have focused on the industrial side, where the accountants are comfortable with futures and the rest of it.
Hybrid battery waste can be a problem but it\'s much smaller in scale, already has recycling programs to deal with it, and is most importantly not a carbon problem ... all environmental problems aren\'t equal.
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