Renewable Energy

It strikes me as funny that the U.S. auto industry got a bailout while we're trying to attain better mileage for vehicles and create more jobs. Selling more cars to people who have less money seems counterintuitive.

I'm not saying it's stupid, ignorant or idiotic. Just counterintuitive.

Anyone can see that the majority of cars in the United States - in fact, the world - are used vehicles. Old cars. Somewhere, someone has some statistics that provide hard facts on this - but the average person can just go outside and look. Most cars on the road are not new.

Wouldn't it make sense to retrofit used cars with better parts to keep them running (1) longer, (2) more economically and (3) with less impact on the environment?

I'm not saying that I know how to do it - I don't - but it seems at a very meta level, companies could be making money making older vehicles more efficient. More reliable. Etc.

And in the interim, couldn't auto companies do the same with the newer cars - perhaps even following open standards with the onboard computers so it costs less for them to be diagnosed and repaired?

Sure. You will always sell less new cars. But it's like computer printers and computer printer cartridges. No, bad model, those printer cartridges are a ripoff... but I'm sure that idea will catch the attention of someone out there.

This morning, as I was considering writing something for KnowProSE.com (which I probably will still write), I ran across Trinidad and Tobago's Energy Minister's dispute with local economists:

Energy Minister Conrad Enill disputes statements that this country could encounter hard times in the fallout from the energy policies of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama...

Intuitively, I disagree with the Minister - but in trying to find information to discuss this intelligently, I came to realize that the data is not to be found, or found easily. The idea is simple enough, and is flawed because it would make a broad assumption - but if we were to take historical global oil usage statistics and plot them against the world population, we might have a broad brush with which to paint a picture so as to discuss this intelligently. Alas, alack, that information doesn't seem to be available anywhere - if it is, I'd love to plot that history of oil use against the world's population increases. Why?

If the World population increases at a rate higher than oil usage could potentially decrease per person, it means that the demand for oil could remain constant. And with oil supplies decreasing globally (they have to be, we've run out of dinosaurs), this would mean that oil prices would increase - thereby driving less and less use of oil. Optimistic perspectives see this as a way for a market to balance itself, but in the context of something that the planet will eventually run out of the oil market cannot balance itself in the long term.