handofdave, it's not an exaggeration to say that I think pretty much every single thing you've just said about the private car is wrong. On top of that, I suspect that you will feel exactly the same about any detailed reponse I provide. The more I think and write about sustainability, the further I find myself from the mainstream opinion. And when I say "mainstream", I'm talking about the liberal, concerned, environmental mainstream... as it were; the mainstream as defined by the U-Know! folks. As far as the other mainstream goes; the free-market, capitalist, pro-economic growth mainstream... I'm not sure I'm even on the same planet as those people any more. And it's something that concerns me more than a little.

We don't know each other personally, and the anonymity of the internet being what it is, for all I know you could be George W. Bush himself posting under an alias. For all you know, I could be. Well, OK, that's a bit far fetched. Both of us appear to have a half-decent command of the English language, so we're unlikely to be Dubya Bush. But you get the general point.

Nonetheless, if I assume that your messages here are a fair reflection of you as a person, then I'd say you were one of the good guys. If we ever take to the barricades, I suspect we'd be on the same side of them. I feel certain that we share a basic belief in social justice and in protecting the planet from the excesses of human greed. So it saddens me that on so many issues our positions are so far apart that any search for a middle-ground would find us both uncomfortably far from home.

It's like when you say:

Yes, almost everyone can agree on that. But I'm not one of them. I honestly feel that the whole idea of the electric car is as far from "progress" (or at least 'positive progress') as you can get. I believe it's a dangerous misguided attempt to convince western consumers that their lifestyle is in some way sustainable.

You claim that because US society is highly dependent upon the private car, that the private car must somehow be retained. I find that view extremely difficult to process. I believe modern western civilisation to be literally psychotic and needs to be radically restructured if it is to survive (being the good Batesonian that I am, I define unsustainability as a group psychosis).

And I don't think this can be done in "slow, practical steps". The required changes need to be dramatic, need to be immediate, and need to be enforced.

I don't for a moment think this is going to happen. I think we are sleepwalking into complete collapse and phrases like "hydrogen economy" and "electric car" are lilting lullabys preventing us waking up.