Thanks to the Daily Show- a phrase I find myself saying a lot- I have a good book to read on my travels through California this week. Daniel Sperling, a Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciene and Policy at University of California, Davis and Director of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies, joined Jon Stewart last week to discuss his new book, Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability. As the above video shows, Sperling spent a few good-natured moments trying to provide some serious answers to some typically irreverent questions. In the book, authors Sperling and Deborah Gordon describe a future, 15 years from now, when the world will have close to 2 billion cars. Given that greenhouse gases are already creating havoc with our climate with an estimated 1 billion cars, the set up for very troubling consequences is obvious.
Sperling and Gordon describe the challenges that we (as a country, the leading emissions culprit, and as a planet) face and the solutions that are most likely to work. The authors reveal our greatest obstacles- “the resistant auto-industry, dysfunctional oil markets, short-sighted government policies, and unmotivated consumers.” The authors look at solutions (mix of advanced bio-fuels, electric vehicles, fuel-cell hybrids), expose some fool’s gold (corn-based ethanol), and point to the role of government as a necessary component- they single out California’s leadership in promoting aggressive emissions standards.
