tata nano and the environment

Tata Nano, the cheap Indian car

This is the new car, available in April in India for $2000.

This is half the price of the next cheapest car and until production is ramped up, potential customers will be entered in a prize draw. The prize is: the right to BUY the car. That is how much demand there is. This is going to change people life; families will be able to travel together in a way they couldn’t do on a motor bike.

I have travelled in India and the subcontinent. Public transport can be very poor; dirty, cramped and unreliable. Now many millions of people have another choice.

Environment

The Nano has again bought up the debate about millions of poor people trading a motorbike for a car and the consequent environmental ‘damage’.

This fitted well with another story I read about overpopulation in the UK. Due to the energy usage of the average British person, the UK would need to cut half its population to make it sustainable in the long term. And by extension, the USA would need even greater reduction.

So essentially it doesn’t matter so much if Indians are moving up to a new car. Since Asians and Africans use so much less of the worlds resources, they can afford it.

End of the road for the Dollar?

The Chinese are looking to move their massive foreign reserve to a new currency which they want the IMF to set up. They will then shed the dollar, which is losing value. They’ll need to do it very slowly otherwise the dollar will collapse together with their investment.

If I was China, I would move out of the dollar and buy assets at rock bottom prices –they could practically buy the world at prices today.

The question is: will they (or anyone else) buy more debt which US (and UK) governments are creating by the bucket load.

Oil from a plant

Exxon are developing a very fast growing plant which yields oil. Something like this would change the world. The whole debate would change – these plants eat co2, so the oil would be co2 neutral. Energy security and reliance on the Middle East would change. And environmentalists, the anti-car lobby etc would all have to be quiet. It would open up a new ways to generate money, with lots of new opportunities. It would kill the hybrid car, battery powered cars and stall the hydrogen car –because hydrogen isn’t anywhere near widely available, is produced from oil (otherwise costs too much energy), and is awkward to store & transport. I look forward to this becoming reality.

Green shoots of recovery?

The stock market is at last rising. Obama has finally unveiled a way to bring confidence to the financial sector – buy toxic assets. This has been called for, for some time, but is hugely expensive.

Now, with some private money, he plans to bring it about.

And with some surprising good house price data, is the recession starting to bottom out? Can we look a year into the future and see a little sunshine? Wouldn’t it be great to have a time-travel machine?

I would probably go to the 70’s and stay there. Not that I enjoyed my time in the 70’s. I was too young to enjoy it. I liked the music, the distinctiveness of the time. Example: the massive barge-like cars in the US. Do you see cars like that now? I wouldn’t buy one, but I love looking at them.