Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Bill Joy: I think it’s okay to want a car but it’s sad if given what’s happening in the world which is half the people are going to live in cities soon that people have to drive so much. And I’m very glad to see that the Chinese have been creating some, with people like Bill McDonough and others, have been creating cities which are more pedestrian friendly. It’s sad that so much of America is pedestrian unfriendly. I find life much more pleasant if I can walk places, occasionally take a taxi, take some mass transit, be out on the street in the life of the city. This is a much better state than living in suburbia and driving cars. I just hope that, and I’m encouraged that Chinese auto makers are looking at the ecological impacts of the cars and working very hard and thinking about electric cars because I think small electric cars are much more efficient of a much smaller ecological footprint than traditional gasoline or diesel cars and are much more appropriate for development because they don’t take as much space to park, they don’t make a lot of smell pollution, inefficient use of fuel.

by Bill Joy

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

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Eddie Glaude: What if all Chinese people want a car, Brother Andrew? Well it would hasten the crises that we are currently confronted. It seems to me that part of the problem involves how we imagine our choices. It is the case that if the Chinese population finds itself gripped by the desire to purchase automobiles we can’t sustain it environmentally. So the issue becomes; can we make the sorts of choices given our consumer orientated ethos that can sustain the world or will we make choices that will hasten its destruction? So it seems to me that part of the answer to the question involves coming to terms with whether or not we want to hasten the energy crises that we are literally standing at the precipice. In terms of we are literally about to experience a challenge in relation to whether or not we will have the energy to sustain our needs. So that’s not helpful, that’s not really clear. It just seems to me that if everyone wants – if the Chinese population wants a car given the U.S. pattern of consumption, given the world pattern of consumption we will find ourselves in a crises that will simply lead to our ruin and destruction. So it’s the kind of choices we make, this is what I think we need to address.

by Eddie Glaude

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Eliot Weinberger: Let’s hope they want a very small car. I think that one of the problems in China is that they are tending to make all of the mistakes that the West has already made. And that, China, with it incredible booming economy, which will be the major economic force clearly in the 21st century is not developing alternate ways of thinking about what technological advancement should be. It was a society that existed, functioned extremely well without private ownership of cars for its first little less than 50 years, 40 year or so, 45 years or so, a society where people rode bicycles, where they took mass transit. Of course, now in its capitalist boom, they have the -- you have the -– sorry, I am being distracted here, with the boom of individual ownership and individual wealth, of course, everybody wants their own car. But, I think that the China has to be in the forefront of thinking about alternate forms of energy. Otherwise, the sheer numbers are going to lead to serious conflicts, energy wars that may be economic wars and that could conceivably also be military wars.

by Eliot Weinberger

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: Exactly. If all Chinese people want a car like Americans have then of course the good side is that China already has more stringent pollution requirements for their cars than we do. And actually all the Chinese could have cars if they would make the cars from renewable resources, from plant material which can be done, and make them very lightweight, then you have to use less material to build your roads and there are less dangers in driving them because even a woman could turn her car back up if it were knocked over, if it rolled over into the ditch or something. And then you have to use fuels that are renewable as well. And there are possibilities now for using water as fuel. So I like to say to young people who are technologically minded get really creative, do technology that has no toxics and is 100% recyclable and then there won’t be any limits to what you can create because it won’t drain the earth’s resources and it won’t pollute. So it’s possible to do very benign technologies. Whether we want individual ownership cars or rather share cars or have little bubbles that punch together in chains and go down tracks or whatever. I don’t know what the transportation of the future will be like. It’s up to the people who are young today to invent new ways of doing transportation. If we make a really sustainable world it will also be more fun to stay home so people won’t be so eager to go away all the time. And we can use the internet and teleconferencing so that we don’t have to burn airplane fuel to get around the world as we still do today. So many possibilities for doing things more lightly on the earth.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Ervin Laszlo: They certainly want a car; if not all, most Chinese people seem to want a car. But, if they could all have a car, they would all acquire a car. The resources on which -- all the resources, for example, that present car technologies are using would be depleted very fast. The air would be polluted extremely rapidly given the current forms of emission. And, the cities in China would be jammed even more than elsewhere because they are really -- the population is, of course, enormous. So, they want a car – I mean Chinese people -- but they cannot have a car except at the very high cost, a cost that they would pay but a cost that the whole human population on this planet will also pay.

by Ervin Laszlo

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Esther Mwaura-Muiru: And what if all Indians want a car? What if all Africans want a car? What all if Canadians want a car? What all if European and Australians want a car? I think this kind of attitude that we must all have because other people are having, and it’s not because it helps us, isn’t the best trait to take. I feel where we should invest energy is not play bad for bad, but play good where bad has happened. We do all believe that the amount of vehicles that we are using, the amount of oil the expenditure on energy we are using with our cars and industrialization, it’s actually having a great impact on our environment. The responsibility is amongst all of us to be able to develop strategies how we can reduce the amount of natural resources that we are using to have energy. So I feel the answer is not for all the Chinese to have the car, if they wish to have, because I believe all Chinese can have the cars if they wish, maybe. All Africans can decide to put all the resources they have to each own a car, because every other American has a car. But is that – does that help us? Of course, it will only increase the negative impact on the environment. And it does – it will – it’s not the Americans who will suffer, it’s all of us. It will actually accelerate the amount of pollution we’ll be generating into the air. And so that kind of idea may not work. I believe the best would be we must be able to know that if, then, each American has a car, the idea is not to buy. In fact, it’s to reduce, so that we cannot [audio ends]

by Esther Mwaura-Muiru

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Fernando Solanas: I think it is a disaster, but it is not a disaster if the Chinese wanted a car. Rather the conception of the consumer society and a society based on the autocar is a disaster. The human community has to face these dilemmas, it has to defend the ecosystem and nature and life for us and for the generations to come, or otherwise we find ourselves in front a a cataclysm. It is not only the Chinese, it is the Indians and all the other inhabitants of the earth that each demand to have a car for themselves. It is impossible to imagine what the world would be like with five or six billion cars running on oil. There is not enough oil for this and evidentially it would be a formidable ecological disaster. Humanity must look for new forms of communication and new forms of transport. They are researching and we are at a doorway. If we do not have means of transport running on hydrogen it is because there are interests that impede it – the electric car, hydrogen, and new forms of communication as well as the development of electric means of transportation and of subterranean transport, and the advance of the bicycle whenever it can be used.

by Fernando Solanas

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Fred Matser: Many of us in the Western society, we already have our cars and until so far amongst others by the use of the car, those cars and the production of the cars and everything around cars and transportations has already had a very damaging effect on nature. We see, of course, the Chinese people coming too, and why cannot we allow them if we think we can allow it ourselves. So, if that is going to happen, I think it needs to go hand-in-hand with really fast development of different use of energy. We have to develop different sources of energy to run our cars. We already have in Brazil biomass. We may even get solar power or a cheaper way to feed into our electrical systems to run cars, and that is one way. So, that is the technological development that might help us to cope with the situation. On the other hand, we also have to question ourselves if we all the time need these cars. For what reason do we have cars? I am self in a weak position because I even own two cars but, anyway, it is one difficult question to answer. But, I think definitely that in the West, we have to consider reduction of the use of these means of transportation. And in the meantime, if the Chinese market is a kind of new market, it might be a great opportunity to really introduce there, those new more efficient ways of using energy.

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Galsan Tschinag: This would have disastrous consequences for our planet, but it will not happen. First of all, in the next decades it is going to be simply impossible out of financial reasons that every Chinese can afford a car even if they really wanted to. Second, even in the awakening and feverish China, people will see very soon that owning a car is not leading to the affluence they aim for and that even achieved affluence is no guarantee for personal bliss. Additionally, the Chinese people are altogether decent people who think practically.

by Galsan Tschinag

Sep 9, 2006 2:20:00 PM cite

Geert Lovink: What if all German people want a car? Maybe they already have one. The question, is it a racist question or what is the intention here? First of all, we have passed the point about this question; all Chinese people want a car and should be given a car. There is no doubt about that, but it's also irrelevant because [any of] that, if China might go down and this high-growth period will come to an end, the economy will slip into recession. We will sit there and discuss what will happen if so many Chinese will again face hunger and starvation. In my view, that's more likely to happen than them getting -- all getting a car at the same time. We are not going to see that happen within our lifetime. And I am confident enough that there will be an ecological solution of some sort for this. Mobility is not going to go down. So, I wish them all the best with their cars and I [audio ends].

by Geert Lovink