Americans find emissions addiction hard to quit

• Source: Global Times
• [23:13 December 14 2009]
• Comments

California has recognized this problem. The Los Angeles government has joined hands with surrounding cities and auto suppliers to produce electric cars and provide an infrastructure of charging equipment by the fall of 2010.

But will people used to driving for fun be willing to make the switch?

Nobody wants to see global warming cause the kind of worldspanning disasters depicted in science fiction.

However, when people need to choose between reducing emissions and keeping their existing quality of life, they rarely make the first choice.

Emission reduction, for the developed world, is a problem of the quality of life. Yet for many developing countries, it is a problem of survival.

We cannot be blindly optimistic about the prospects of lowering emissions.

For ordinary life, there is still a long way to go before we reach a "low carbon economy."

The author is a US-based Chinese journalist. globaltimesopinion@yahoo.com