Comment by pash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pash | Hacker News Reader

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A poorly written post on a subject that is surprisingly intriguing when better elucidated. A study published in Science [0] several years ago makes for good discussion. That study found a systematic misinterpretation of the miles-per-gallon metric in the sense that participants consistently overvalued vehicles with high MPG ratings. They assigned values linear in MPG rather than linear in its inverse.

The study's authors told participants to "assume you drive 10,000 miles per year for work, and this total amount cannot be changed." The participants were then asked to come up with values for vehicles of varying fuel-efficiencies. That is indeed the sort of optimization problem people face when choosing which car to buy, and clearly a fuel-efficiency metric that puts the amount of fuel in the numerator makes the problem easier to solve [1] because expenditure is proportional to amount of fuel if distance driven is taken as given.

But in reading the article, I was struck by the lack of attention paid to the "miles" part of the equation. I don't fault the authors, but taking distance driven as fixed is surely an enormous detriment to the goal of reducing carbon emissions in America. Yes, reordering your daily life to drive fewer miles is more disruptive than simply buying a more car that goes farther on a gallon of gas. And, granted, once you've chosen your lifestyle, minimizing the amount of gas you burn as you go about your daily routine is the thing to do. All the same, it's ludicrous to ignore the basic inefficiency of the suburban style of life that dominates in this country while we wait for automotive engineers to come up with clever solutions to pricey gas and carbon emissions that are twice as high per capita as in many similarly wealthy countries. Surely living closer to where you work, using mass transit, biking, and walking more must be part of the solution as well.

Maybe houses and apartments should come with a "miles per day" multiplier denoting how far you'd typically travel getting to and from shops, restaurants, entertainment venues, and your place of work each day you live there. ...

0. http://nsm.uh.edu/~dgraur/niv/theMPGIllusion.pdf [PDF]

1. Apparently taking reciprocals is beyond the capabilities of most people. Or at least of the Duke undergrads who participated in the study.

The solution to global warming and pollution does not lie with persuading people to change, but making technological breakthroughs which allow us to carry on enjoying our lifestyles for a much lower cost to our enviroment.

More than that, the key point of contention is the fact that several countries with a total population of billions of people (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and others) are going to transition into developed "first world" economies in the 21st century. Currently there is no known technology that would allow them to avoid heavy reliance on carbon based energy sources while that transformation occurs. It's easy to sit on our 1st world thrones and imagine that if only we drove our cars a bit less everything will be fine, in reality the issue is about holding back people who are living in poverty, who don't have access to modern medicine, who don't all have access to clean water, etc. It puts into perspective the putative hazards of global warming to weigh against the cost of holding half the population of Earth in poverty.

You make a very good point. Taking Brazil in perspective, middle class is growing rapidly and with better credit the automobile industry is heavily targeting these potential car owners. Makes good sense economically and the state has been granting tax isemptions periodically which boosts sales significantly.

However, car models are still pretty much inneficient fuel consumption wise. That I know of, there exists only one hybrid model avaiable and it's very expensive. Ethanol's price also turned it into a non-option for flex fuel models.

Also, collective transportation is decades lagging pretty much everywhere that it's needed. This leads anyone that can afford it to purchase either a car or motorcicle in order to have decent mobility. It also makes it a class distinction thing, as in public transportation is a lower class problem.

On the long run, IMO things look bleak for Brazil in terms of urban mobility and greenhouse emissions.

Let's do both!

All the same, it's ludicrous to ignore the basic inefficiency of the suburban style of life

The trouble is an individual often has little power to do anything about it.

It's not a matter of whether individuals have the power to do something about the inefficiency of suburban living - after all, you can choose to live/work/commute in any manner you wish. The problem is that the balance of incentives and subsidies strongly encourages people to choose suburban living instead of something more sustainable, healthy and fulfilling.

How on earth do you figure that? Sure, as an individual you don't have the power to single-handedly repeal the zoning laws, but there is plenty you can do to eliminate or at least reduce the number of miles you drive.

Walkscore.com

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