I was talking about this with my wife just now and thought of another way to put this...

Warren Buffet has gone on record saying that he pays a lower marginal tax rate than his secretary and that is wrong. He as proposed that wealthy people pay no less than 20% of their income in taxes, regardless of deductions.

To which many people have said, "Mr. Buffet, you can write a check to the US Treasury any time you like, put your money where your mouth is".

If Mr. Buffet wrote a check for $10 billion dollars to the US Treasury tomorrow, would it matter? Would it change the US Budget deficit? Would it balance the budget? Would it make any noticeable difference to the current US Debt?

The answer of course, is no, it wouldn't do any of those things. In fact, lets put those numbers into terms you can understand.

The current US Debt is over $18 Trillion dollars. Lets cut that down to normal people numbers. Lets take someone who works at Walmart for $9/hr. If they work full time, 40 hours a week, they make about $19,000 a year. That is about $1 per billion dollars of debt.

Mr. Buffet's $10 Billion dollar check, works out to just $10 at the same scale. Does $10 to a Walmart worker help? Sure, everything helps. Does it make a substantial difference to their life? No, it really doesn't.

Since there aren't likely a lot of Walmart workers here, add a zero and scale it up to a nice lead developers pay, $190,000 a year... $10 Billion dollars turns into $100.

Does $100 one way or another make a difference that is noticeable to someone making $190K a year?

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Mr. Buffet's point is that he alone can't make any difference to the outcome, it has to be a collective effort. The same is true with resource consumption.

I have seen that before, a great video that everyone should watch...

Of course, the question becomes, now what? Is our current rate of oil consumption growth sustainable? Sure, for a few years... Forever? Of course not...

I would submit that the single biggest problem we have is our population growth rate... You cannot conserve your way to success if you don't do something about the population growth...

A simple example is China and coal. The US could shut down all our coal plants tomorrow, turn them all off, regardless of the consequences. By 2020, China will have replaced it all. Right now China is burning 5 billion tons of coal a year. The US is burning about 1 billion tons. China is expected to hit 6 billion tons of coal in the next 5 years or so.

It is easy to say, "well, we all have to do our part", and "every little bit helps". But the truth is, it doesn't. Nothing I do one way or another will make any difference in the end. There are much larger changes that need to be made for the outcome to be changed by enough to matter.

I actually agree that we need to change our path, we can't keep adding a billion tons of coal every 5 years and have that be sustainable. But those changes have to happen at a worldwide scale. Nothing I do, nothing even the US does, matter, if everyone else isn't on board.

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As a side note, I posted in another reply that I've just spent about $400 buying LED bulbs to replace every bulb in my house. The payback period is, overall, about a year. It is a very logical decision that makes financial sense and also happens to reduce my carbon footprint. That is $400 worth of coal power that won't have to be produced in the next year.

The irony is that there are many people who don't like change, who are upset that incandescent bulbs are going away. CFLs do indeed suck, they have a flicker, aren't instant full brightness, etc. LEDs fix those problems. I had a few CFLs in my home, but never liked them, LEDs are very nice.

I rather feel that EVs are much like CFLs, the Chevy Volt technology is more like LEDs. EVs have a problem, in that people don't really want them. They sound nice, right up until people have to live with them. If EVs had 500 miles of range and recharged in 15 min and cost no more than a normal car, then sure, people would like them, but that isn't like to happen any time soon.

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The other issue is, just replacing gas cars with EVs doesn't solve anything long term. Yes, power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines are, some of that power can come from wind and solar, but if we don't stop the growth rate of car and people production, it won't matter. Cutting your emissions in half per vehicle mile doesn't help if you double the number of vehicle miles driven.

Solar and wind are growing nicely, but won't replace coal, oil, or natural gas any time soon. Nuclear could, if we could get over our "oh my god the nuclears!" nonsense. But we won't, because we're largely stupid emotional creatures that do not make logical decisions.

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TL;DR - I am happy to make some changes to my carbon footprint that make economic sense and do not impact my lifestyle too much, but anything much beyond that requires action at the international level, since this is a global problem and can only be solved if everyone gets on board.

That is a nice, meaningless statement that says nothing...

You probably think you driving a crappy car somehow helps other people. I doubt it, but if it makes you feel better, more power to you.

No, it isn't... you can think it is, you're welcome to that opinion, but you're not welcome to state it as an outright fact...

Sure, but when you're starting from almost nothing, doubling sales isn't hard...

When you're at a very large number, growing will be very hard...

But it is worth pointing out that overall vehicle sales go up and down each yet more than the total EV sales.

Last year they were at 0.7%, they might break 1% this year, or maybe not with cheap gas. I don't see 5% happening within 10 years, but I could be surprised. Depends on how fast prices come down and how fast gas price goes up.

Two things:

1. Does California count the emissions from power produced in another state against that total? If a coal plant in Arizona sends power to California, does that count in the number?

2. I am not at all convinced global warming is real, however I would agree there are good non-global warming reasons to reduce the amount of dead dinos that we burn, so I'm all for reducing it within reason.

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As a side note, I am totally for reducing our carbon footprint, where it makes sense. Regardless if CO2 is a threat or not, the pollution from burning stuff is bad, I think we all agree on that point.

This past month I've spent about $400 replacing every light bulb in my house with LED lights. My master bathroom alone was nuts, I had 10 of those G25 globe bulbs using 40w each. I replaced them with 5w LED bulbs. There is more light in there now and I've cut my power use by a factor of 8.

That is just common sense. I'll get my $400 back in about a year, maybe less. With that kind of payback, there is no excuse to not replace level incandescent bulb in every house in America. I even went ahead and replaced the lessor used bulbs, the payback on those might be a bit longer, but even 2 or 3 years still makes them worth doing, and it reduces my carbon footprint at the same time.

Rather than provide $7,500 tax credits for EVs, why not provide $7,500 worth of LED bulbs? I'll be willing to bet that you could just give away LED bulbs to everyone for how much is being spent to push EVs, and it would likely make more of a difference.

And I would welcome it... get the cost down and the majority of my issue with EVs goes away.

Range remains an issue, but for a second car and a lot of other people, that one is less important than the cost.

Sure, I could always find something less expensive, but a Caddy is on my bucket list... :)

http://www.windingroad.com/art...

For less money, but with most of the technology, a new 2015 Mustang GT Premium would do the trick. About $20K less money, but a much less refined vehicle...

It is a fair question...

I would have to say that a bunch of the time, it indeed has 1 or 2 people in it, but equally so, it has 4 to 5 people in it.

Just today I took the kids to an event that was about 30 min each way, total distance was 46 miles, I averaged exactly 17 MPG on that trip, thus burning about 3 gallons of gas, give or take.

Could I have taken my 3 kids in something smaller? Sure, I could have, but I wouldn't want to. They have room to spread out and have their own space, have their stuff, and enjoy the ride. Which is of course the other part, that truck is made for highway cursing, it is quite comfortable at 75 mph with the cruise control set and the music playing.

Tomorrow afternoon I am driving to the bike shop, my son's rear tire blew last weekend and broke the rim, so we're having it fixed. It is handy to be able to toss it in the back of the truck, it wouldn't fit in a small car like a Prius. Of course, it would fit in a minivan as well, but that actually doesn't accomplish anything, a Toyota Sienna Limited AWD gets a mixed MPG of 19 MPG, just 2 MPG worse than my truck, and it sucks to drive.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg...

I use the cargo space in the back of my truck every week, I haul my 3 kids every day, and sometimes 1 or 2 more kids as well.

That is why I own it.

You got modded up, but that is no surprise, lots of tech people from California are on this web site, bunch of idiots who would bankrupt the USA if allowed to.

If you think you're so good, why don't you form your own country, it would be amusing to watch.

I could say the same thing to you. You're an idiot, plain and simple.

It would be a very sad day indeed if our desire to have nicer things went away.

There is nothing "to get over", nice things are... nice...

You're mistaken, you really are...

:) Oh yes, I'm a horrible person for wanting leather seats... you probably think I'm just evil for wanting them air conditioned as well.

4WD isn't for slowing down, but you know that... you're assuming that I don't... and we all know what assuming makes you...

I get it just fine, you're jealous... you can't afford nice things so you don't want anyone else to have them either...

My wants do not take away anyone else's needs, that is all in your head...

The same can be said for you... your beliefs would also get you killed in other places, so that door swings both ways...

Yes, it is.

I feel the same way about you, so what's your point?

The sales numbers of EVs would seem to indicate that it is...

http://insideevs.com/monthly-p...

For 2014, 123,049 plug in EVs were sold in the US and this is a decent rise over the sales rate in 2013.

That sounds good, until you consider that ALL car sales in 2014 went up, it was a good year.

How good? Honda, all by itself, in the MONTH of December, sold 137,281 vehicles. EVs are a rounding error in vehicle sales.

How much so? 16.5 million new vehicles were sold in the US in 2014. EV sales were less than 1% of new vehicles sold.

How about this... Ford sold more F-150 Pickup trucks... In CANADA, in 2014, than all the plug in EVs sold in the US all year.

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I get it, tech people and eco people love EVs, but it would seem that no one else does. The sales don't lie.

I suspect too many people on sites like this sit down and do math on specs, features, and what they think needs to be in a vehicle, without understanding how people actually buy cars.

The majority of vehicles (this is backed up by a LOT of industry research) are purchased emotionally. People go to the dealer and say, "oh, that blue one looks nice, how much is that one?"

Yes, a subset of customers now shop on Edmunds.com and know everything about the car, more than the sales people generally do, but they aren't the majority.

No, one doesn't need to know that, if they did, Ford would have no market for the Mustang, a vehicle which makes zero sense from ANY numbers point of view. It is purely about the fun.

A fully loaded Toyota Sienna, which is as close as you can come to my truck, gets 19 MPG average, or just 2 MPG better than my truck. It is a really close wash and frankly anyone buying either one doesn't care about 2 or 3 MPG. That is like saying people are buying a Tesla Model S to save on gas. :) Maybe a Leaf, sure... but not a Model S...

It is a shame that Stow-n-go is only on those really crappy Dodge minivans. Have you seen the offset crash test results? Really, really bad.

As for the machismo thing, you're playing into stereo types, my wife doesn't like minivans either. Give them 4WD and a small block V8 and actually make them fun to drive and she'd be more interested.

Don't misunderstand me, I respect the space and ease of use of a minivan, we used to own a 2009 Honda Odyssey, nice vehicle. But it isn't fun to drive, it is boring.