Cliffs Notes: Not a chance dude.. that would mean I would have to figure out what the hell I just wrote
I am curious about this and perhaps someone could offer their insight. Since it seems to me that since the law of supply and demand regulates R&D inasmuch as the first units of any kind of new technology are prohibitively expensive, what exactly could cause a paradigm shift in how we use energy sources?
If the government is not subsidizing and regulating alternative technologies, why would anyone adopt them? For example, even if gasoline goes up to $5 a gallon, most people with fast cars or big cars are not going to trade them in for a Toyota Echo (or whatever compact fuel efficient car you prefer). Instead they will bitch about prices, and if they need to, shift their budgeting to properly pay for their Chrysler LeBehemoth (props to Berke Breathed).
In other words, the only way to reduce consumption will be to reduce many people to a poverty level where they can no longer afford gasoline - which of course will be the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.
I look at it like this: I am personally concerned about our natural resources. One of my concerns is the fresh water supply. I think that the government should subsidize and mandate water recycling in the household. But I haven't (and won't) spend the $$$ on the equipment to do it for myself (disregarding the fact I am an apartment dweller), and I will continue to take 20+ minute showers, because dammit that's just how long my showers take.
It's not that I'm a bad guy (well, I know some of you disagree with that by now), but I am accustomed to certain standards, and as a spoon fed american, I feel - at some level - that I have the
right to do this. Mostly I just look at my surroundings and realize that even if I personally conserved water, it wouldn't even be a drop in the proverbial bucket.
I drive a 4wd vehicle. It's a small vehicle, but with my lead foot, I get about 14mpg around town (though I can hit 22 highway). About 2(I think?) years ago, I got a boner for the Subie WRX. I really don't make enough to safely afford it. My current vehicle is fully paid, so I decided that I would try to convince myself to buy it based on fuel efficiency. I calculated that even with my 13 mpg, I'm only spending $600 a year on gas. This was probably at $1.20/gal prices. Disregarding the fact that the WRX requires premium ($.30 gal more) and pretending that it gets 26mpg around town (when that is highway mileage), I've managed to allot a whopping $25/mo toward potential car payments. Double the price of gasoline, and I "save" $50 a month, although I'm spending the same amount of money on gas as before.
Let's be honest. I probably wouldn't drive a Volkswagen UberBioDieselFuelCellSuperCompactFitsInYourPocket eco car if someone gave it to me, assuming I could still afford the gasoline to power my current vehicle. Sure if I lived in some socialized country and everyone drove the same thing, and public transportation was fast, clean, and readily available .. I could handle that. Reality check: half the population of this country would fight the vision I've just described until their last breath - or until the chew ran out.
Now I'm trying not to be pessimistic, as according to the death clock it takes 20 years off my lifespan, but I would consider myself more environmentally aware than at least 90% of the American population - considering the illiteracy rate, that number is probably closer to 96% or higher.
At the end of the day I still drive an SUV, and can't rationally forsee anything that would change that.
The real irony, of course, is that the only thing that would change the SUV driving habits of Americans - massive economic and social chaos - is the very fear which causes many people to purchase the pacifier/safety blanket of SUV's in the first place("Not that you would. But you could").
I have totally lost where I was coming from or going, but I think the point I was trying to make is that the only way - short of massive sociopoliticoeconomic failure (and we [mostly] don't want that) - that the consumption habits of Americans can be regulated only by the introduction of an alternate technology that either surpasses the current technology by leaps and bounds, and/or does so more cheaply. IOW, when they make an electric vehicle that performs on the level of the Subaru WRX and costs the same or less, only then will they have someone to purchase that car who has been stolen away from the gasoline demographic. (The above is used as illustration: you could substitute any make/model of vehicle, as long as you could match the salient qualities and the sticker)
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