Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: Well, there is a couple of different ways we are approaching this question. The reality is, I think we have to expose that the dominant way that this question is asked is in a racist way, which is premised on the idea that, well, it’s okay for us -- first of all, it’s okay for us in the United States to have developed a certain form of irrational public -- privatized transportation, which involved a systematic destruction of public transportation and more environmentally and also socially sustainable forms of transportation by arranging collective public transportation. Instead we have a privatized system of transportation, which was established very consciously by the auto industry, by the rubber industry, by the steel industry, and by people who had an economic stake in developing a model of privatized auto purchase and use, and it has created a whole political, economic framework to sustain and drive that economy. That economy is utterly irrational. It leads to such overproduction that the world auto industry produces as many cars as -- are bought each year twice over, and is creating tremendous unnecessary waste because of their lack of planning, a further example of the absurdities of the capitalist system. And now, you see the encouragement of a similar process in China. And the consequences are quite frightening, but they have to be seen in the context of [audio ends].

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: I noticed that if they all want car I think it is a good thing that everybody has a car but how to maintain it, how to, you know -- how can you afford [the kind of car you want] to buy and I think it will be better off than anything. That day when everybody has a car it will be, the country will be -- we have to hope the country will be most economically independent.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: I think my question would be that is it correct for people and the societies, which are built on everyone having a car, the latest model of SUVs, the latest models of hummers, are we really in a position to ask the question what if all Chinese or all Indians wanted a car? The question needs to be “Do we as humanity knowing what’s happening with these climate change and other problems that we have, do we really each one of us want a car?” So, it is not just about the Chinese or the Indians or some other part of the world. It is a question that I ask myself, “Do I need a car?” “Why can’t I have a decent public transport system?” “How come money that, resources that are spent on, say wars, just because of oil in other nations, why they are not used to build decent public infrastructure systems?” “Why they are not used to build public economies and local economies?” We will not be needing cars in these modes of transportation.”

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: What I am hearing in this question is, of course everyone, we would think, would want a car. Why should not all Chinese people or all people around the world want a car? What's behind the question I think is, the thought experiment that, given the number of Chinese people there are in the Chinese population, that if every Chinese person were to have a car, what will be the consequences of that? And just to expand the question, not just for China, for India, for Africa, for all of the peoples of the world, what if everyone wanted a car? What kind of world would it be? Would that be sustainable? That’s the question. So, it’s clear that what's behind the question is not so much the Chinese people, but a metaphor for a situation in which it’s unsustainable, clearly. And I think what it’s pointing to is the need to rethink and reconsider our lifestyle and our way of being in the world. And to ask, are there alternative ways of living, where we can live in high standards and high quality of life that’s sustainable and that can be maintained? That is the question. And that’s a question that we have to think about especially in the United States, where it’s known that the Western world and the United States is using a disproportionately large amount of resources compared to the other populations of the world. So I will bring it home to America and ask, must we not now, all people of this planet, all global citizens, reexamine their lifestyles. And see if there is not a more sacred way to be in harmony with our environment and with each other and to share the resources in a new way, in a higher way, from abundance rather than scarcity. And that really opens new questions for us.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: It may be the case already that all Chinese people want a car. The question is what would happen if every Chinese person actually owns a car, drives a car? Then it's going to add to the huge emission problems that we have, to the environmental pollution, to the greater consumption of fossil fuel. However, I think this is going to compel the Chinese people as well as people all over the world to be able to look at alternative forms of transportation, whether it be mass transit, whether it be use of the bicycles, which the Chinese originally had as their form of transportation, bicycles, which they're giving up, but I also see other countries becoming more and more willing to use the bicycle as a way of transportation. So we really need to see how we all have to become more creative in seeing alternative ways that we can use transportation other than, as a car, and there really is no reason why each person in the family ought to have a car. So we have a family of four in the U.S., and you have four cars. A car for each member of the family, and in some families each member owns more than a car, one car. So it's really the excess use of transportation that we are concerned about.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: I say that’s marvellous: They should not only want it, but also should have it! The richer all the people in the world get, the better they live. So, the world community will live better. It cannot be right that there some having a high level of life and the others have a lower level of life. We all should have a high level. So, they are saying: But the demography! The demography! The Chinese will attack us, overflow us! That’s not right. When the Chinese will get better, when the Chinese will get richer, when the Chinese will live in a modern way like the Europeans like the Americans, their demography will be exactly as balanced out as happened in Europe and in America. So, of course, we have to care for to take the environment into account because of the many cars in China. We have to care for that the resources will get saved. But that each Chinese as each European and each American will have a car is a luck itself, a good thing, we should look forward to.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: If all Chinese people want a car, so the children want a car, or the baby wants a car. It’s all about the conditionment in which, why do they want a car? In my understanding, I’ve never been to China but just from what I’ve read and witnessed is that, through to rapid industrialization to get what the western world has, where people in America maybe have two cars, three cars. In China, if everyone wants a car that will be really sad because in this development there’s a huge opportunity to design in a sustainable way, rapid mass transit and more efficient ways of getting around than a car. Designing cities in this evolution, if the cities could be design, not for the car but for people and for bicycles, and for trains, and then how are those forms of transportation fueled? And oil is towards the end of its glory days, and so looking to the solar, to the sun, to the winds, to the microhydro, the small systems as well to help fuel this development and the human power. The cars is being transformed into walking, biking. Why people want a car? That do exhibit compassion for their lack of foresight and design, and foresight in lessons learned from the tragedy that we have now, which is a huge consumption of the individualistic society. In China, I don’t know, it maybe different. It’s communist. It has more of community, everyone contributing.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: What if all Americans want a car? It's not a matter of having or wanting a car. It's a matter of getting the appropriate car. A car that really can use, be more efficient in the use of fuel, or have alternative use of energy as a way to prevent the impacts on the environment. So, another perspective of this then is how can we make better or improved collective transportation system to be able to find answers to the way people moves, and this solution will really help us to transport, lower the transport cost, of transporting few amount people with a certain amount of energy. We should try and find solution that'll allow us to transport the majority of people with the same unit of energy. So it's not a matter of wanting a car, it's a matter of how efficient can we be of using energy. As a first step towards in the future to finds better alternative or more efficient energy sources that can substitute sources that in sometime or moment in history would be completely depleted, as the case of oil, or petroleum.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Bora Cosic: Why Chinese? Maybe all Bulgarian or all Albanian wish a car. However if all German wish a car this seems normal to the young man from Frankfurt, if that wishes a person from numerous nation in the world it seems threatening. We are all Chinese; we all have numerous wishes car is just one of the brands of nowadays. Maybe all Chinese wish to get education, to travel, to meat other people, were those also threatening to our young man from Germany?

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Brian J. Weller: Well, let’s see. If all the Chinese want a car, then all of us are in trouble, but it’s true that many of us have got more than one car. The Western world is a very poor example for China and certainly India to follow. But basically, we are reaching this tipping point, if not already having reached it, and unless we shift vehicle production from gasoline to certainly electric vehicles and we can power electric vehicles in a much fuel efficient ways and we have the batteries to do it. In fact, there’s a recent movie called, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” If you haven’t seen it, go and see it. It tells a story at the end of the ‘70s when the first oil shocks occurred in the States when President Carter was really declaring we had to be much more energy efficient. There was this whole development of electric vehicles and these, of course, were then blocked and actually crushed and the program was ended by the very corporations that were being asked to create them and there’s a number of reasons why that happened. But basically, if China one day has three cars for every four people, which is the current rate of the U.S. style, it will have 1.1 billion cars. The world today has 800,000 million. Okay? So, think of all the roads, the highways and the parking lots and the land area that will be required to deal with 1.1 billion cars. That would actually equal the area that China now has for planting rice. It would need 99,000,000 million barrels of oil per day. The current world production or consumption is about 84,000,000 million barrels per day. The Western economic model which is fossil fuel based, auto control throwaway society, it just won’t work for China. In a nutshell, the American dream is actually becoming the world’s nightmare.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Catherine David: This question is a bit eurocentric or egocentric. Why should the Chinese not have the right to have a car if a lot of families in the western world could offer themselves even two or three? So I think the question does not concern the Chinese, it is to be seen globally: How many cars can we have at most in the world? How can they be distributed? But the “unhappy” Chinese, they have the right to wish for cars and if having cars is called into question, it should be put globally. We are not going to forbid the Chinese suddenly to have cars, only because they are numerous and to the Indians too, because they are also very numerous and because there will be more pollution, particularly not at a time when the USA that clearly pollute are amazingly very few worried for the damages they create in the world. So once again, not “them” and “the others” which is always a sort of bipolar argumentation, a bit artificial and passably racist to a certain point and if there are too many cars, they are limited and after that there are evidently reasons of applicability. But it seems to me very estimated, very human and to say it with other words, it is no surprise that the Chinese fancy cars. So if they must have not so many cars or none at all, I think that this implies that we should also look at our transport systems and at our relation to cars but not only the Chinese should.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: Answertext will be available soon.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: The idea that all Chinese people want a car is understandable, and the car industry of the US and Europe is making dramatic investments here. The company Volkswagen and the US industry only see markets, and China is considered the market of the future, without thinking of the humanitarian or ecological consequences. It is alarming that the non-democratic government in China is subordinating everything to the economy and is only allowing any ecological steps very reluctantly. If one thinks of the fact that a few years ago there were almost no studied lawyers in China, and no culture of justice. Nowadays there is a reluctantly growing small culture of justice with a few thousand studied lawyers. There is a lack of the civil society that could act as a balance in an ecological counter movement. And anyway, it is being oppressed. If there are steps of the public against plans to build yet another embankment dam, the people are arrested and put into prison. The Chinese government does not tolerate any criticism on its economic growth, and in case ecological regulations are suggested, they are considered as threat to the system and to the government and are brutally oppressed with prison sentences, especially again in the last months. There are arrests as well of members of civil rights movements who dared speaking in favour of ecological regulations. To think of this is threatening, both in India and China, and the markets of the future lack an ecological basis.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: Of course, we know very well that Chinese has the biggest population in this world, and you can just imagine if all of them will have a car; you can just imagine the pollution, the pollution that the cars will give to our environment. And this question is actually not leading to the Chinese only. It leads actually of what if everybody in this world wants a car and you can just imagine the volume of the pollution that the car gives to our air that destroys the ozone layer; and then definitely if everybody wants a car, we will be having global warming at the moment. And, therefore, those manufacturers who are selling cars should design, should come up with a design where emissions of polluted residues which comes from the cars could be controlled in such a way that even if a lot of people will buy from their companies and they are making profit of it, at least they will be in a way profiting and not destroying our environment. Because if they do not design those things, I tell you that global warming will be -- it will be heightened and everybody will be affected. Look at the climate now. It’s becoming abnormal. It’s because of global warming and nobody is exception for this, poor and rich, Third World or First World. All of us are affected with global warming.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: Hello, Andrew. Well, I don’t think that Chinese are the problem right now. I think the problems are the United States for example who stand for at least 25% of the world’s pollution, the consumption. I think it’s our duty or it's somehow necessary to find other ways to create energy that actually substitute the oil we use today for example, and we better find that other source of energy before the Chinese decide to have a car. Because then, I think it will be unsustainable. That’s why I think there is a responsibility of great economies that consume a lot and stand for the bigger part of today’s pollution. It’s their responsibility to find alternative energy sources because they also have the resources for that. In the other hand, I'm very confident that if there is any place that will start with finding alternative ways to have energy, it will be China because I think the awareness there about the ecologies, about the nature and the resources are bigger than we actually want to admit today.

by Dritëro Kasapi