Tata is planning hybrid, EV, and hydrogen versions for the Tata Nano, their newly announced $2500 ultra low cost car for India. Good! Low cost, low/no emission vehicles is precisely what the planet needs.

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That would be the Tata Nano, just introduced in India for the ultra low price of just $2500. Environmentalists are shrieking about how horrible it that affordable cars have come to the Third World because, gasp, then people will be driving them.

The environmentalists’ hypocrisy is breathtaking. How can anything be criticized simply for being affordable? Tomorrow, if college education is made more accessible and affordable in India, will the New York Times denounce it on the grounds that college graduates tend to earn more and buy more consumer goods and hence enlarge their environmental “footprint”? The attitude of many environmentalists today is not unlike that of the Duke of Wellington at the dawn of the railroad era, who criticized the railways on the grounds that they would “only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.”

Goodness, we can’t have all those tacky Third World people enjoying the luxuries that we in industrialized countries have had for generations, now can we? Besides, they’ll be much happier long-term if they remain as peasants and abstain from materialism. As for solving global warming, well, we all need repent for our profligate ways and live in yurts, burning wood for heat and not use motorized transportation. That should solve things.

Oh wait, maybe there’s a better way. Massive research and development in renewable energy and clean transportation could create new industries and economies thus raising the living standard for all. Several billion people in China and India are currently raising their standard of living. They want electricity, cars, appliances, and the Internet. They will either power their new lifestyles with coal and the internal combustion engine or with clean energy and transportation.

What many environmentalists do not seem to understand is that if global warming is ever to be solved, it will be solved by human ingenuity, by technological innovation, by further human progress. The idea that the environment should be saved by severely curbing human ingenuity and human initiative is fundamentally flawed. While we should certainly seek to mitigate the negative side-effects of development, the emphasis must be on moving forward, on further human progress. Human civilization and development have been wonderful. People today live longer, fuller, lives, with more prosperity, freedom, opportunity, and choice, than ever before. How can this be a bad thing? The world needs more progress and development, not less.

Precisely. And here’s an example of how people are working towards solutions. The Systems, Cities & Sustainable Mobility conference starts tomorrow in Pasadena, CA.

Sustainability: Designing for the masses

Within the next 20 years, five billion people—representing 60 percent of the world’s population—will reside in cities. To meet the needs and aspirations of an increasingly urban society, design will play a crucial role in helping to anticipate and create the solutions which will enable these complex systems to function sustainably.

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The Tata Nano has just been released in India. It’s the world’s cheapest car, just $2500, and it expected to revolutionize transportation in India, where people are already lining up to buy it.

Environmentalists in western countries seem are horrified by it, saying it’s not totally clean and will add to carbon being produced. This, I think, totally misses the point. India is developing fast. Their populace needs and wants transportation. And will get it, regardless of whether environmentalists think it harmful or not. The Third World response is often the obvious one, that it is hypocritical for the West to preach to the Third World about not driving when the West does so much of it.

The Tata Nano is a microcosm and instructive example of the very real growth and poverty problems facing India and China and the reaction of environmentalists who want to restrict their growth in the name of global warming.

Cut to the chase. The Third World is not going to restrict their growth. Nor should they. A much better solution is for the West to develop technology that will enable developing countries to grow using affordable renewable power and clean transportation. Then everyone wins. And really, there is no other solution.

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