That [saying that I am unconcerned with changing people's minds] is a really lame cope-out, Dwayne. The two are highly correlated, one is virtually impossible without another. One cannot help but to change human behavior to introduce new technologies. It is not the question whether but how. The history of capitalism was to impose technological changes on people from above to boost profits. When it comes to transportation, we are talking about changes from below - changing human behavior to induce changes in technology which seems to be more democratic. So when you say that you do not care about changing about human minds, what is the alternative that you propose?
The old capitalist way of forcing new technologies down people's throats?
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Sorry, but I don't think you've been sufficiently attentive to the actual points being made.
In much the same way that the presence of federally required seat belts - long part of the standard equipment of vehicles - is not a matter of personal belief (people do not walk into showrooms hoping to buy the seat belt free version of the Passat: there is no such animal) I'm proposing that increased efficiency and eventual super ultra low emission outputs be made mandatory.
You are looking in the wrong place: your assumption is that the current environment - in which we choose between a hybrid and a conventional IC power plant using our individual level of anthro climate change awareness, moral concerns and other variables as a guide - will persist. This is why you're fixated on changing people's minds; you're worried about encouraging (or coercing via taxation) the behavior you want to see.
This is not the way forward. All motors must be improved from an efficiency and carbon output POV. If all motors are improved, the issue of persuasion is far less important because everyone will be making the *right* choice.
Even if they buy the SUVs you and Joanna so extravagantly despise.
Mass persuasion (for example, the agitprop of "An Inconvenient Truth") has a larger role to play, beyond the scope of the almost entirely technical problem of engine re-design.
To make the point even more bluntly: on this issue, we don't have the time luxury to muck around with social engineering projects and debating salons.
.d.