The second biggest complaint is that the e-bikes can reach significant speed, and when they do impact a bike, a pedestrian, or anyother object bigger than a breadbox, they can kill it. The biggest complaint, though, seems to be – as one interviewee noted – that e-bikers are  ”totally devoid of conscience and respect for the law,” and barrel through intersections with little concern for other traffic or people.

Technologies, particularly those that move us from point-a to point-b, can be enormously disruptive bumping up as they do against existing infrastructures, laws, and practices. However, as early work in our new, soon-to-be-announced research stream on mobility and the future demonstrates, even more important is a recognition on behalf of transportation planners that cultural change and educational initiatives have to be included in any rapid development plan. China’s on-going experience with e-bikes is a superb example of this. The issue is less the speed or size of the e-bikes, but the practices of their drivers – something that has to be addressed at the outset, and then nurtured.

This gives us a starting point for looking at how to reduce emissions – and the picture is already complicated. In its Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, the IPCC estimated that limiting temperature rise to something between 2.4 and 2.8 °C requires reducing global CO2 emissions by something between 30% and 60% from year 2000 levels (or between about 35% and 65% below 2004 levels) by 2050. For the sake of argument, let’s assume we need to reduce emissions by 50% from 2004 levels by 2050.

But the top 4 countries together account for about 50% of global emissions on their own. So if we eliminated the emissions of the top 4 global emitters (and, by the way, kept the rest of the world from increasing their emissions), we might have a shot at keeping global temperature rise to something in the neighborhood of 2.5 °C. That seems unlikely on the face of it …

But start to dig further in the data and the picture quickly gets even more complicated. Figure 2 shows the per capita emissions by country for the top 10 emitters. The most obvious observation from this figure: the average person in the US is responsible for more than 10 times as much CO2 emissions every year as the average person in India – and more than 5 times as much as those in China. In other words, if every person in the United States cut their emissions by 80%, we’d still emit more on average than the average person in China and more than twice as much as the average person in India. Ask yourself: What’s the likelihood that China and India will buy into any emissions reductions if the United States only commits to reducing emissions by 80%?

More to the point, though: what should global per capita emissions be if we want to reduce total emissions by 50%? To answer than, note that we’ve also added a line for the global average per capita emissions in Figure 2 (which is about 4¼ tonnes of CO2 per year). The first thing to notice is that neither China nor India even emits as much per capita as the global average – and, even so, they account for 23% of global CO2 emissions. But more importantly: if we assume that, in the end, we should expect global average per capita emissions to be similar and we shoot for a 50% reduction, then the U.S. needs to reduce emissions by 90%. China only needs to shoot for a 45% reduction, though, and India’s per capita emissions could actually increase by about 75%.

In a prior post I estimated that the economic cost to the US of achieving a 50% reduction was more than $300 billion per year. It’s safe to assume that the cost to achieve a 90% reduction will be much higher. We’ll take a look at some of the technologies for achieving these reductions in future posts.

Note that coal is cheaper than every other profiled source of power in every region except the EU (and it appears that is only because of the $30 per tonne of CO2 that they’ve added into the price). Significantly, while the cost of coal is close to that of wind in the US, coal is substantially cheaper than its closest competitor in both India and China.

The cost issue is huge and needs real attention. While the US and other developed nations may be able to absorb the extra cost of switching away from carbon based energy, it will be substantially harder to make the case for India and China, in particular, to switch to higher cost energy technologies given their imperative for economic growth. In short, in order to be successful, any serious attempt to deal with climate change on a global basis (and it’s important to remember that this must be solved globally) must clearly and transparently address the issue of cost. We’ll continue to look at these issues and potential solutions in upcoming blog posts.

In a pre-globalized market it was easy enough to seek incremental gains during troubling periods because the stakes were similar among most players, or groups of players.  There was a shared sense of situation, and a determined desire to get through it and then back to the business of doing business, of competing.  There were price wars, new features, and the like, but the focus was on survival.

Globalism introduced the common goal of trade and growth.  The point of a globalised economy was the search to connect goods and services with buyers at the best possible price point.  But here’s the catch: the stakes between the players are vastly different.  Developing countries can’t afford to hunker down.  Nobody is going to retreat; the stakes are too high.  This is a lesson that developed nations have to learn.

According to OECD, only the US government spends more on innovation than the Chinese.  Chinese nanotech parks, solar research facilities, and even US funded R&D projects may slow down, but China understands that it can’t afford to ‘wait it out’. Likewise, India, with both its indigenous innovation programs and those it supports from abroad, isn’t in a position to see what happens.  Elsewhere?  Much the same.  In a globalized market, regardless of the economic situation, the innovation imperative holds sway.

The challenge for developed nations is two-fold: first, recognizing the overwhelming need to grow the economy, it’s important to resist the urge to sit it out and wait for things to get better, and second, absent the more immediate requirements of energy security – particularly with petroleum around $50/barrel – assuming that there are more important things on which to spend any limited available funds is false.   This challenge, then, is ultimately about leadership.

Only strong leadership from government or industry can provide the incentive for citizens and shareholders to accept that it is not enough to just survive.   As developed nations and their leaders look forward to the new year, one that’s not likely to see an economic uptick until sometime Q3 or Q4, they must keep one eye on where they need to be, and one eye on a market that’s not likely to tolerate their half-hearted participation.