10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Blue or Gray? Which will we choose ?, November 11, 2008
This review is from: Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability (Hardcover)
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I grew up in L.A. and I didn't know that the blue sky in picture books was a real thing! I am genuinely serious about this. When I was 18 years old, I traveled to Oregon, got off the plane, and saw that the sky was actually blue--I had thought that it was a myth.
This book is really about the reason for those gray L.A. skies I grew up with. It is one of those books that everyone "should" read. It's important and it matters because it explains a huge issue we are going to have to deal with in the near future and beyond. I was fascinated by the interesting details that the authors included about the car industry and the development of different types of engines.
But, this book is so packed with information that you need to press on and wade into the deep end of it and then keep on swimming. It is a textbook. I assumed that it would be much lighter because of Schwarzenegger's contribution, but he only wrote the forward. As a textbook, I give it a very high recommendation. It is a very, very readable textbook. An easy, light read, this book is not.
As opposed to the other readers, I don't feel that the authors focused too much on California. The chapter that discusses California's situation and the actions that its state government has taken was very appropriate to the overall discussion of the book. One thing was not acknowledged in this chapter, though, and that was the horrible lack of public transporation and mass transit in California. I wish that there had been more of a discussion of mass transit in the book.
This book is definitely worth reading. The best comparison I can think of is that if you enjoy reading the magazine the Economist, then this book should be right up your alley.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Is this book dated even before its release?, November 15, 2008
This review is from: Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability (Hardcover)
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Authors Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon have written a book describing their proposals for how we must deal with the energy and climate implications of personal transportation. The title is based on the projection of the number of cars we would expect to see in the coming years, as a number of countries develop their economies, notably India and China. With personal transportation accounting for 30% of US carbon emissions, and some very large percentage of our crude oil consumption, it is clear that the transportation picture must change. In the end, the authors make a case for a number of general solutions, many based on their efforts in California.
The book will be published soon, but its timing is a bit unfortunate; frequently there are sections that refer to the pre-financial-crisis state of the world: high gasoline and oil prices, a regressive Bush administration in place, and a resonable set of assumptions about the availability of capital, car companies that were in bad shape but not near-death, and so on. So much has changed in the last few months that even before being published, in some ways the book seems dated. Of course this is mainly a superficial problem, as the policy proposals and observations in most ways transcend the presumably temporal problems the world economy is undergoing, and the new political landscape in a more enlightened Obama administration. Still, it is hard to read parts of the book only because it is clear that so much that is relevant to the problem has changed.
The book is organized in 9 chapters. The first 6 chapters present the history and current state of what the authors call the automobile monoculture: a world where most forms of transportation have been squeezed out to make room for one form of transit: the car. The 7th chapter describes the policies that have been put into place in California, many through the efforts of the authors. The next chapter describes how the car monoculture of the US is rapidly spreading to China as well as India. The final chapter presents the authors' proposals in this context.
I may be at the edge of the intended audience for the book -- while the forward (written by California governor Arnold Schwartzeneger) describes the book as accessible, I found it a bit dense and perhaps a little less cohesive than I would have preferred. Several times I felt as though a more ruthless editing would have made the content more readable, and more effective at making the point. I also found that the positions on certain policies were unclear, if not directly contradictory. For example, the authors go to some length to detail why cap and trade carbon policies are not a good solution for the problem of controlling automobile usage, yet in the end seem to include that as one of their proposals. In another example, they describe why technology-specific legislation (e.g. corn ethanol incentives) tend to fail compared to legislation that mandates objectives (e.g. carbon emissions), yet then propose how to regulate some specific energy sources, such as tar sands. Again, perhaps my relative lack of expertise in this area prevented me from grasping certain nuances. However, at some level, I think the book could have been far more effective with another round or two of editing.
I do think the authors eventually present a cogent, well-reasoned and broad solution for the problem the book addresses: 2 billion cars. In particular, they describe how future systems of integrated transportation systems could help us move away from the one-size-fits-all solution that personal automobiles have created. For example, we might have on-demand electric vehicles that can be summoned from our smart phone and which take us to a suitable location to pick up a bus or train. Still, this "Futurama III" scenario they describe seems very distant, and a bit dischordant with the specific, far more pragmatic proposals they present. In the end, I was left with a number of questions about how all of these pieces would come together.
My final criticism of the book is that it is presented in a bit of a vacuum, not particularly addressing how transportation solutions fit with equally important policies relating to other energy and climate problems such as heating and cooling of buildings, eletrical grid use (except as it relates to plug-in cars), agriculture, food, and water. These issues are inextricably bound; policies that address one without consideting others have consistently proven to be counter-productive (consider, for example corn ethanol programs; they help with oil independence at several much greater costs). I fully recognize that such a book must necessarily focus on solutions to the specific problem domain, yet almost no mention was made of how these solutions fit into the larger web of highly-related problems (and solutions). It seems that we often try to fix one problem without considering its impact on others (indeed the book itself makes this point).
As a conclusion, I think this book is best as an example of solutions that have worked in California ... and often under less-than-favorable political and policy conditions. Are these solutions relevant in this post-election, intra-financial world?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Change will happen. It must happen.", June 13, 2009
This review is from: Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability (Hardcover)
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Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, is the title of this thought-provoking and timely book by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon. Their premise is simple: "The world is speeding toward two billion vehicles, and there can be no denying that cars and trucks are integral to our lifestyle and our economy. Cars provide mobility and personal freedom while trucks carry the goods that keep our economy humming. But all these vehicles and our near-total dependence on gasoline to fuel them contribute to global warming, deplete our natural resources, and undermine our national security."
And that's just the first paragraph in the preface, written by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Sperling and Gordon go into greater detail on these issues. Here's a sampling of the nuggets you will find [don't assume these snippets summarize the book; there is a LOT more here]:
"One-fourth of all the oil consumed by humans in our entire history will be consumed from 2000 to 2010."
"The principal solution is electric-drive technology. While 97 percent of the vehicles in the world burn petroleum fuels in combustion engines, the next generation of vehicles will almost certainly be propelled by electric motors."
[We have] "...a transportation monoculture that's unsustainable. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a passenger transportation more inefficient, wasteful of resources, and destructive of the global environment than what we now have."
"The future is likely to be different. High oil prices, conflicts in the Middle East, increasing fears of climate change, and intense competition are converging to create a more fertile environment for transformational innovations."
"Electric motors are inherently more efficient than combustion engines, effectively utilizing more than 90 percent of the energy provided, compared to 37 percent for today's conventional car engine. Electric-drive vehicles have two other important efficiency advantages: no energy is consumed while the car is at rest or coasting, and energy normally lost when braking is instead captured and used." However, "When electric vehicles are powered strictly by coal-generated electricity, they cause slightly more greenhouse gas emissions than a gasoline-powered combustion vehicle and thus aren't attractive from a climate change perspective - unless the gases are captured and permanently stored at the coal plant."
"Although the Prius represents only a small fraction of the millions of cars and trucks Toyota has produced, it has generated huge amounts of free advertising and goodwill, motivated untold extra sales of Toyota's many other vehicles, and buffered Toyota from criticism as it expanded sales of large trucks and SUVs."
"The theme of unexpected consequences and indirect innovation emerges again and again with alternative fuels. The lesson is that innovation and change can be swift and unintended consequences can be minimized - if goals are clear, leaders step forward, problems are vetted, and the circumstances are right."
"...the more dire forecasts of oil peaking are simplistic and largely incorrect. Those forecasts usually refer only to conventional oil and are conservative about the use of improved technology to recover additional oil from existing fields and to develop new fields."... "The mount of unconventional oil that can be recovered at $70 per barrel is uncertain but is vast by any measure - far more in volume than all the conventional oil produced in the world to date."
"Consumers in the United States are unresponsive to high fuel prices because they lack viable travel options, while consumers in other rich countries are largely unresponsive because taxes swamp the effect of changing market prices."
"The primary challenge is to awaken an American public largely ignorant of the energy and climate implications of their decisions, and to motive American consumers to align their choices with the greater public good - what U.S. Senator John McCain has repeatedly called `a course greater than self-interest.'"
"Affluent people can afford to buy gas guzzlers that are eventually driven most of their miles by less-affluent people. For various reasons, buyers tend to undervalue the continuing stream of fuel savings from energy-efficient vehicles. The challenge for policy is to nudge car buyers to behave in a way that reflects broader social interest over the entire lifetime of the vehicle they decide to purchase."
"In the end, it's not a question of whether consumer behavior will change. It must."
"...the key to California's pioneering role is strong bipartisan government leadership, cutting-edge research in clean energy, a political and business atmosphere that encourages more innovation and investment in clean energy and efficiency, and consumers who are by choice and necessity on the leading edge of change."
Authors Sperling and Gordon go into greater depth in discussing alternative fuels, California's leading role in affecting change in US transportation policy, the emerging and critical role of China, and (to me) an analysis of consumer behavior.
They conclude "Three sets of changes are needed to realize our vision of the future: vehicles must become far more energy efficient, the carbon content of fuels must be greatly reduced, and consumers and travelers must behave in a more eco-friendly manner. By mid-century, we envision a massive shift under way in all three realms. Electric-drive vehicles will have largely supplanted internal combustion engine vehicles, low-carbon fuels will dominate over petroleum, and the transportation monoculture will be fragmenting, even in car-centric America."
This is an intriguing and informative book that opened my eyes to a variety of transportation issues, and I would call myself fairly sophisticated on these topics. Obviously, I am less sophisticated than I thought, and I appreciate the analysis provided by Sperling and Gordon, as well as their clear writing. Given the current effects of the global recession as well as the restructuring of the American automotive industry because of the recession, I hope an addendum to this book is close behind. I also hope Sperling and Gordon are asked to be transportation advisors for President Obama.
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