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Manohar Lal Baharani

Jun 17, 2014
05:24

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The Governance system is expected to create certain incentives for using products up to its "designated life cycle" else the market driven economic forces shall prevail.

Neil Harrison

Jun 17, 2014
11:09

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The best way to implement your idea is to engineer a recession! This happened during the recent Great Recession and tended to lengthen it. By 2011 the average length of ownership of care purchase new was 71 months. A slow growth economy with less income growth of most of us will naturally make us keep our cars longer. Aside from a depression or a long deflationary cycle, car purchases may be reduced by: -limiting car company advertising much as cigarette ads are limited. Not likely to pass Congress -charging higher fees for their usage. But I note that the federal gas tax has not changed in decades. Another way to raise the cost of owning cars is to charge more for their use either through ownership (perhaps geared to vehicle size or carbon emissions in production and use) or sales taxes or with a congestion charge in the major cities (where most are bought and used). Congestions charges have been effective in London to reduce traffic and speed commutes (which uses less gas) and reduce GHG emissions. -giving legal priority to bicycles and pedestrians, making cars less attractive -supporting technological innovations that make cars last longer and hold their value better. Individual producers have mixed incentives here. Toyota grew large selling reliability but generally a producer of indestructible products is more likely to go out of business. I expect that you can come up some more ways to lengthen ownership short of legal regulation that is not likely to happen in my lifetime.

Climate Colab

Aug 5, 2014
08:43

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We agree that the way to reduce GHG emissions from consumption is to reduce consumption. Your proposal goes in exactly the right direction, but unfortunately it does not explain how it could be implemented. In fact, the proposal seems to be sceptical that it's even possible or likely to ever happen.