Our planet, but not yours

Tata Motors's plan to produce a $2,500 car (see article in Forbes magazine) has launched many op-eds. The most comprehensive of these is probably Mira Kamdar's in today's Washington Post. After many paragraphs of predictable hand-wringing about how, if millions of Indians and Chinese start to own cars, the planet is doomed, she ends with:

As one college student told me last year: "Just when we can finally start to enjoy the things you people have had for decades -- cars, air conditioners -- you tell us, 'Sorry, too late, you can't now.' I mean, you created this mess. You won't reduce your consumption, but you tell us we can't increase ours."

She has a point.

Sure, she does. (See Mira Kamdar's entire op-ed in the Washington Post.) The question is, what are we going to do about it? Mira Kamdar says,

We can only hope that India and other Asian countries emulate our good new habits rather than our bad old ones.

What "good" habits would these be? She mentions that New York city is planning to tax cars and make bicycles more convenient, but maybe we should wait until these plans are converted to reality, before prescribing them for India. In fact, all of the environmental problems of the globe are here already, whereas India's billion cars aren't going to be here until years from now and are a marginally relevant distraction from what we need to do today.

But Kamdar is promoting her new book.

Ah, now it all becomes much clearer...