Why green car subsidies won't work

Moving to cars that use cleaner-burning fuel will make carbon emissions drop, right?

Wrong, according to Maryland Institute College of Art professor Firmin DeBrabander.

Writing in the Baltimore Sun, DeBrabander writes of the curious case of Sweden, which successfully transitioned its population away from gasoline-burning vehicles and toward hybrids, clean diesels and ethanol-equipped models -- only to find that greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector increased.

Sweden's government managed to accomplish the fear through generous trade-in subsidies. Aside from the carbon impact of everyone suddenly getting a new car, though, it was supposed to reduce emissions for the sector. It didn't.

Why? It's all in the mind, DeBrabander writes:

What do you expect when you put people in cars they feel good (or at least less guilty) about driving, which are also cheap to buy and run? Naturally, they drive them more. So much more, in fact, that they obliterate energy gains made by increased fuel efficiency.

DeBrabander warns that this phenomenon could easily repeat itself Stateside as GM rolls out the hybrid Chevrolet Volt and Nissan rolls out its Leaf plug-in electric car.

The problem, it seems, is that we rely on cars when we really shouldn't have to. You might say it's akin to picking which type of soda is healthier, when the reality is maybe you just need less soda to begin with.

The scary part, DeBrabander writes, is that America is already hooked on cars, long commutes and the McMansion-powered suburban ideal. There's no distance too great for an American in a big comfy touring sedan, and that's precisely the problem.

He writes:

The thinking seems to be that through this gradual exchange, we can reduce our collective carbon footprint. Clearly, however, this approach is doomed if we don't reform our absurd consumption habits, which risk undoing any environmental gains we might make. Indeed, we are such ardent, addicted consumers that we take efficiency gains as license to consume even more.

And what's more, China is quickly rising to match America's middle class. And that's a big problem, because at that scale, even super-efficient cars driven by new Chinese consumers means a significant increase in emissions, "more than the planet can handle," he writes.

Sustainability, it seems, isn't just a more efficient node in a system -- it's a fundamentally more efficient system. Which translates to a need for more support for long-term, radical change and less support for an expensive, difficult transition that may not move the needle.

[via Common Dreams; Planetizen]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com