The issue is much more complicated than discussed here. The Nano will average 50 mpg, so it will use less than a third, perhaps a quarter of a US minivan or SUV. In addition, it will drive much less distance than average US cars. It is easily possible that 6 million Nanos will end up emitting less CO2 than 1 million US light trucks.

Getting old cars off the roads, killing light truck use for personal transportation and increasing the mileage of cars, JUST IN THE US, would easily offset 10 or 20 million Nanos. Heck, if the US could make its cars as safe and efficient as those in Europe, there could be room for another 10 or 20 million small, efficient cars.

There is no conflict between the two movements. If anything, the Nano shows that US manufacturers are simply lagging in vision, or in technological prowess. Either way, it's time for them to learn or get out of the way. Both poverty and ecological advocates can agree on that.

Excellent points. I'd drive a Nano if they had them here and I'm already driving a 30mpg car.

<If anything, the Nano shows that US manufacturers are simply lagging in vision, or in technological prowess.> My personal thoughts on this are that it's just a matter of greed. US companies and innovators COULD come up with high-mileage vehicles and technological advances, but it'd cost them money they're not willing to spend now. This is why I'm a believer in a strong government mandate on much higher fuel efficiences. Necessity is the mother of invention and if the car companies want to sell cars, they'll figure out a way.

Assuming that India develops automobile saturation equal to half of the United States, and that they are all as efficient as the Nano, then you have not 20 or 30 million to offset, but 225 million.

If your 6-nanos-equals-one-truck math is correct, then this is equivalent to putting 37.5 million more trucks on the road.

So no, this is not something environmental advocates can also live with. The conundrum is real.

Emissions are already above sustainable levels; no increase is acceptable.

You might want to check your math, 20 million new cars will not be offset by raising our fuel efficiency significantly. You also forget this story is being played out in China too, and they are installing a coal fired plant every week. Anyone who believes we will actuall lower the worlds CO2 output (manmade) is crazy.

As to the US automakers they are making what the customer asks for. If we drop all the safety standards they could make the same car here, I doubt the Nano would survive a 5mph crash with even a Honda CRX. Also consider that the US manufacturers spend $1500 per car on healthcare for thier workers, so imagine making a car for $1000 (with no profit). So let's move all manufacturing outside the US, and put more workers in the unemployment line.

The two movements do collide, and it takes energy to lift the poor out of proverty, and I don't believe the richer nations (including Europe) are ready to become poorer for the sake of the 'world'.

You may really be just another caring person that wants to do the right thing for the planet, but many in the movement are really anti-capitalist and marxist, and they don't give a whit about the poor, other than their desire to make the entire world poor. Every day we see more information that indicates that CO2 is not even the driver of temperature change, if that is true then we will have halted the poors rise without justification.

>many in the movement are really ... marxist

This is a posteriori false.

Marx repeatedly stated that unrestrained, unregulated capitalism is the necessary precursor to socialism.

One cannot be a Marxist while attempting to slow or hinder capitalism, by definition.

efraker--

"Assuming that India develops automobile saturation equal to half of the United States...then this is equivalent to putting 37.5 million more trucks on the road."

In the short term, yes. In the long term, there is the birth rate in developing vs. developed countries to consider. And then there's what will happen to the West as the East catches up to it.

Products like the Nano and the "$100" laptop conserve energy, not just because of the manufacturer's good intentions but because they're made to be used in conditions of scarcity. They are nothing like the 52-cent Hershey bar and the $4.99 organic granola bar from the example because those are both products of wealth: one is made dirt cheap by exploiting poorer parts of the world, the other is a luxury for people who can afford to waste arable land and labor (I think this point was made in a Slate article some months ago). Neither type of product will play a role in making the third world rich enough to pollute like the first, and once it is, neither type of product will be competitive anymore in our own society.

So for all I know, fewer people all driving Nanos may represent a carbon savings big enough to make up for the fuel burned by the Nanos themselves. That or the existence of 225 million new cars in India will set off a catastrophe before the savings kick in: maybe climate change will reach some critical level or there will be an energy crisis we're not technologically prepared to bounce back from. I don't know which is more likely. But the Nano means far more for the environment than 37.5 million more trucks' worth of smog.

Well, for the "conundrumists" out there, I have some good news: You can sleep easy knowing that there's nothing you can do about it. India and China will become prosperous, will put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and will likely see a trajectory of industrial and environmental develoment like Europe and North America, where pollution (other than carbon dioxide, which isn't really pollution in the same sense) goes up, becomes frankly intolerable, and then goes down as the society becomes affluent enough to worry about such things.

We may end up with a richer, but slightly warmer world in the bargain, but it's really out of our hands.

<If anything, the Nano shows that US manufacturers are simply lagging in vision, or in technological prowess.> My personal thoughts on this are that it's just a matter of greed. US companies and innovators COULD come up with high-mileage vehicles and technological advances, but it'd cost them money they're not willing to spend now. This is why I'm a believer in a strong government mandate on much higher fuel efficiences. Necessity is the mother of invention and if the car companies want to sell cars, they'll figure out a way.

If you want to produce a $2,500 car in the United States, you've got to get the materials for free. Just your non-material costs like wages, health care, pensions, insurance and liability costs, etc., are going to eat all of it up. If you want to advertise, you'll have to find somebody to pay you to take the materials off your hands.

Producing a cheap car in India is just a heck of a lot more feasible than doing it in the United States.

"You can sleep easy knowing that there's nothing you can do about it."

You're right that there's nothing we can do about it, even if it would indeed be moral to intervene... though I'm not sure that helps me sleep easy.

"pollution goes up, becomes intolerable, and then goes down"

Yeah, but realistically it goes up by a factor of 10, and comes down by a factor of 5. Which will still be way too high; if current levels of greenhouse gas production is causing climate change, then no increase is sustainable.

"We may end up with a richer, but slightly warmer world in the bargain, but it's really out of our hands."

A few statisticians are in a bar prospecting their odds at dates for the weekend when Bill Gates walks in. One of the statisticians becomes very excited and exclaims, "Hooray! On average, we all just got richer!"

Besides, while average wealth may increase, wealth is for buying things, and in many areas we are running near production maximums because materials for increased rates of production are becoming unfeasibly expensive.

Barring a major revolution in efficiency, food, water, and transportation costs will all soar soon; if I'm making 15% more thanks to a booming world economy, and the price of food, water, and gas goes up an aggregate 50%, I will not be thrilled with my big paycheck

"No increase is sustainable."

That isn't quite fair. The developing world is, unsurprisingly, developing -- and any conceivable plan to cut carbon emissions would take long enough to implement that carbon concentrations are bound to increase in the next few decades. Declaring otherwise seems a little dogmatic.

The question is, how can we make the increase mild rather than catastrophic? The Stern Report says that the dangerous range is around 500 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere. That's floods, droughts, massive migration, potentially 20% of global GDP lost. That's the "business as usual" trajectory. A very serious effort on many fronts (building and appliance efficiency, a carbon tax, alternative energy including nuclear, reforestation, international offsets) could keep us in the 300 ppm range. That's still global warming -- just as today, deserts expand, glaciers melt, species go extinct, sea levels rise -- but the human cost is much less.

One reason to be optimistic, I think, is that as developing countries modernize they skip technological steps. Nigeria went from completely undigitized to conducting business by cell phone; they didn't bother with the intermediate PC stage. The US has had decades of developing and rejecting clunky technologies -- India can start with the newest, cleanest, most efficient version.

I don't think India needs the same amount of cars as the US, but it needs more. The US needs less. With revolutionary thinking such as is displayed by non-American automakers like Tata, Honda, Toyota or even Skoda, this isn't necessarily going to put more carbon in the air. Yes, there will need to be some infrastructure changes too, but those are long overdue.

A 45 mpg car is not rare in Europe or Japan. Only the US thinks that it's difficult to make cars like that. Failure of imagination, or just not enough qualified engineers left?

The funny thing is that I think that the Nano is a good thing because it helps really poor people, but because that might just require the US upper classes to lower their living standard, you say I don't care about the poor.

The Tata will not be up to US crash specs, probably. But there are plenty European cars that do, while costing under 20K and getting over 40mpg.

A paradigm shift from fossil fuels to new green-fuel technology is required to have an effect on the environment. Stuffing fat condescending American leftists into nano-cars will be hilarious. The dilemma is that environmental-Marxists will only shift carbon emissions from developed nations to the developing world. For every one Indian driver, now there will be four. However, seeing Al Gore cram his emotionally engorged body into Tata will delight millions!

"The dilemma is that environmental-Marxists will only shift carbon emissions from developed nations to the developing world."

That is not a dilemma. For poverty advocates (and anyone with even a moderate sense of justice), this is only fair. For ecology advocates it isn't progress, except that greener technologies are going to be thriving. Neither party wants to see the developing world stagnate. Both parties are perfectly aware that this means that the developed world will have to cut down. No dilemma.