It would certainly buy us some time. I don't know how much of an impact it would make, but when part of the reason that fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables is that the government is making sure of that fact...it could radically alter the economic calculus. Once renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, it won't even take much effort. We would start switching to renewables because of sheer economics alone.
Kinda. It's a start. In any other country, they might ask how it is that we don't have high-speed rail between two of our largest cities that are so close to each other. For comparison sake, China and Russia are building high-speed rail between Moscow and Beijing, which is a bit more ambitious, in that it is the distance equivalent of high-speed rail from New York to Los Angeles, twice.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/business...uilds_moscow_to_beijing_high_speed_train.html
Japan has their Shinkansen, France their TGV, and really there are a bunch of others. It kinda puts our efforts to connect the two largest cities in the largest state in the country into humbling perspective, don't you think? Especially since the projection is that it won't even meet the definition of high speed rail in a lot of places.
The argument that we can't afford to stop global warming.
Tesla is a great company, and I think they are doing some very important innovating. However, they have this one important downside. Because people are focusing on their efforts, we aren't paying attention to the efforts of incumbent manufacturers. I drive a Fiat (i.e. Chrysler) 500e most days. I have a 2-year lease, and I pay $136/month for it. It's cheap, for a brand new car. It only has about a 75 mile range, but I never have to buy gas, and it works for probably 90% of what I need to do. At this moment, all Teslas are luxury cars. I wish I could afford one. But we shouldn't let the desire for the perfect stop us from opting for the better.
China is facing an ecological crisis and a public health crisis. Already, they've had to ban cars from their major cities at times, and that problem is only going to get worse as time goes on and their economy develops further. An electric car may seem impractical to some, but what if it was the only type of car allowed in a city? It would have to become really practical, really fast. And the Chinese are going to probably face a situation where they are forced to adopt a policy like that at least part of the time, not because of global warming, but for basic public health reasons. India, which is even more densely populated, is going to face the same problem if they reach the same level of economic development as China. You simply can't have a city of 24 million people, all of whom drive cars that give off smog on a daily basis.
Of course, the other solution that is already in place in a lot of countries is just less reliance on the automobile. But we're decades from that situation in the US, even if we started working on it today.
