Dare to dream? Dream a Sustainable Private Transportation Sector !

Dare to dream? Dream a Sustainable Private Transportation Sector !

GangaPrasad G. Rao

Energy, Environmental and Mineral Economist

gprasadrao@hotmail.com

gprao64.blogspot.com

gprasadrao.blogspot.com

Disclaimer: The proposal below is made in good faith, but there can be no assurances of obtaining the indicated outcomes.

Introduction

That the global economy has leaned toward a per-capita LQ Nominal paradigm is self-evident. As technological efficiency advanced and productivity-linked incomes grew, private transport penetrated the upwardly-mobile middle-classes. With the advent of globalization of societies and capital market, the culture of private commuting automobiles, private family sedans, and private recreational SUVs, that took birth in Western nations, particularly the US, spread to the developing nations of the world. Unlike Western nations with small, stabilizing populations governed by mature democratic governments, the rest of world suffers the scourge of populist governments voted in by the electoral frenzy of mass democratic delusion. Pressured on one hand by Voters for job-creating economic growth and subsidies, and on the other, by Capitalists for early and large returns in Equity markets, such governments resort to populist strategies, and adopt a business-friendly, right-leaning, nominal paradigm to sustain the economy, oblivious of its environmental and social fallouts – local, regional and global. To compound these mal-incentives, resource interests – within and without of nations, have sought to maximize the consumption of environmentally-unsustainable resources in raising the lifestyles of the masses, again, with little concern for the environment. In the context of road transport, this implies, predictably, an expansion of private vehicles – in number and size, and their more intensive on-road use, ie, higher VMT and concomitant expansion of carbon-intensive fuel consumption and associated externalities¹. To make matters worse, Governments, whether of the Right or Left, have found it opportune to rally around public infrastructure, ostensibly to contain oil imports and offer the public an alternative to private transportation. Massive government-sponsored public infrastructural investments worldwide, associated with dubious benefits, likely, have measurably exacerbated global warming across decades. Is it any wonder that due these and other mis-directed incentives and policies, the global environment as measured by ambient greenhouse gas concentrations, now delicately poised at 409ppm, is teetering at the brink of a climate catastrophe?

No one can claim to have all the answers to such a geographically widespread, socially pervasive, and personally-invaluable and economically indispensable phenomenon that transportation is. What then is this blog about? This blog explores a transitory opportunity, perhaps even a pareto window, in which to leverage a strategic Automobile Buyback/Trade-In facilitated Tax Credit-Voucher policy, through an Env.Sustainability-PQ Cause Bond, to obtain a significant overhaul of the Private auto fleet from Fossil fuel-Internal Combustion Engine to Green-renewable technologies such as Fuel Cells, simultaneous with a broad-based reconstitution of Automobile Sectoral Capital - from unsustainable ‘ZSPV Nominal Equity’ Capital to environmentally-sustainable ‘PQ Bond FV’ Capital (and Aural PQ Equity FV Capital), and thus shrink the global transportation sector back to environmental sustainability at an expedited pace while avoiding knee-jerk Investor and market reactions.

An Environmental Sustainability-Automobile Product Quality Cause Bond?

Consider then..........

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A 'Blogworm' (or an Environmental Economist Taskmaster) who actually wants this document in pdf? Here it is.

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Put it all together, and ....

Humanity stands at the cross-roads of evolution that, if we choose environmental sustainability, could expand Earth-based life in to the galaxies, else nip our galactic aspirations in the bud by reducing the very air we breathe, and the plant and animal life with it. The Climate disaster engendered by the Nominal paradigm is all too evident. It has no answers to the Climate catastrophe that we approach inexorably in our quest for economic growth, employment stability and expanded profits. The externality-exacerbating Nominal Bubble continues its expansion until it pricks itself strategically to cause a ZS Gold-hedged global equity meltdown, leaving Environment and the Real sections of the society, in deep lurch.

The strategy outlined above, might seem grandiose, but is modest relative the scale of externality engendered by the transportation sector, and the impending risk of tripping the Climate Tipping point. The design, timely in the context of US withdrawal from the Paris agreement, takes cognizance of the externality-exacerbating incentives that pervade the nominal capital markets – particularly as concerns automobile ownership, driving and fuel consumption, and proposes a solution that is likely to stand up to both environmental and economic scrutiny. A dual-goal Sustainability-PQ Cause bond, with goal-conducive incentives offered auto manufacturers, dealers, lessors, fleet operators, and motorists, ensures a symphony of incentives and actions, and achieves environmental goals at an expedited pace in consonance with PQ-based economic growth. The re-constitution of ZSPV Nominal capital in to Sus.PQ Auto sector Bond- and Equity FV Capital, critically, preserves the value of Investor Capital in the sector, and re-aligns incentives automobile manufacturers and motorists face in a manner conducive to environmental sustainability and ESH-conformable Automobile PQ advancements. The proposed strategy would attenuate the nominal per-capita incentives that enlarge auto-firm profits unsustainably, contain its environmental externality as the on-road vehicle fleet turns green at a Bond-expedited rate, and, in consonance with similar strategies directed at Fossil-fuel refining and thermal generation, offer the global environment a chance to avert the Climate Catastrophe.

The proposal above, when clubbed with similar proposals made in earlier blogs, potentially offers a policy antidote to the environmental doom that the Nominal Pied Piper is leading us all in to. It is for every motorist, and every business to shoulder their responsibility in averting a monumental environmental blunder that affects all Earth-life beyond humanity. This Transportation-centric, and other related Cause Bond-focussed proposals offer a half-chance to avert it, albeit if acted upon in time. If the choice is clear, and ours to make, what stops us?