Indiantiger24 wrote:Wow, great number of responses. After reading the thread I tend to agree that giving money away to buy more cars is not the answer. After greater reflection the main themes of my post were:
1) Old cars are generally less efficient than newer, lighter small cars with CVT, smaller more efficient engines, etc.
2) Small changes in demand or a program that aims to reduce total oil use will have a great psychological effect on oil prices. This will cause a beneficial cycle of extra dollars in the US that could be used for other purposes, including continuing the cycle
3) Older cars cause lots more pollution than newer cars and should serve as another reason to get older cars out of the market.
With scrap steel and other commodity prices going through the roof, I am sure that folks would love the chance to dismantle these cars.
My general feeling is that scaring people into caring about Peak Oil isn't going to have the desired effect. We have to figure out ways of switching people to a lower petroleum use lifecycle without saying that the "world will come to an end"
Indiantiger24, I'm glad you agree that a car buyback by the government would not be a good idea.
Old cars & inefficient cars aren't so bad if we drive very little. I Reduced my driving from 14,000 to 500 miles a year. Now do you really think it matters what kind of car I use for that 500 miles? Would it be better if I bought a hybrid and still drove 14,000 miles per year? The moral of the story is we in America have to begin to end car dependency. No fleet replacement will make our energy consumption go down much if we don't drastically reduce driving. And if we reduce driving greatly then we don't need new cars.
It is time people forget about the vehicle stock in our nation. It is irrelevant to what we need to do in this nation.
