It will take a fair few Prius's to offset that lot.

It is a pity the Chinese don't adopt a European style taxation system to get people into smaller cars before they get hooked on large ones (like the US).

The real pity is that China made the fateful decision to emulate the West's auto-based transportation system and sprawl-based development paradigm.

Bad as this is, it's not like the U.S.

When China gets tired of choking on its own fumes, the government can change policy on a dime. It doesn't have to worry about peeving the voters like here. Let's hope this happens very soon with their energy policy.

@Nick,

Amazing, if y'all hate living in the western advanced world so much, why don't you consider moving to a civilization that more fits your ideal?

I would think you would be much happier.

But after a very short time, I suspect that you'd discover that the Noble Savage lifestyle that you so admire, is short, brutish, and hard. butmaybe not. Perhaps you would remain and be happy.

@Stan

Depends on what you define as advanced. It's becoming fairly obvious that the paradigm on which we call "advanced" is changing from what it presently is, to something different. It's also fairly obvious from present mainstream science that our present developement is defficient. The fact that the more populous developing countries wish to implement identical schemes of developement is alarming. That's all that the other posts say.

Look closely at the other posts and they aren't advocating the removal of cars or of going backwards. You are intrepreting it as such but it isn't there in the other posts. Europe isn't developed or is developing? Infrastructure like the Eurostar between London and Paris bely such views.

This site is the GCC, I would think that it is obvious that the kind of developement that I and others would have liked to see would be in greener vehicles and not increases in the SUV sector, which most likely is not for construction but for personal use.

@BlackSun:

Unfortunately China's government is not even inclined enforce the few environmental regulations they already have. And the price controls are creating some severe fuel shortages in places.

Stan--

You apparently infer that I'm against development. Quite the contrary: I just wish that China had chosen to emphasize public transit and greener, smart growth land development policies. I'm all in favor of China's development, but I find it ironic (and tragic for the planet) that they chose to build their economy by emulating many of the same transportation policies that we developed during the era of cheap oil and are now stuck with. The tragic part of it all is that unlike us, they had a choice at a time when the consequences could be forseen, and did not choose wisely, I'm afraid.

Nick:

Many posters will agree with you. There are other development ways than the one we used.

Three and four large ICE vehicles per home may still be a NA dream but can we afford such unrestrainted extravagance much longer.

If every human do like us and produce 20 to 25 tonnes of CO2 per year, what would happen to planet earth? How long would it take to run out of fossil and agrofuel?

How can we stop others to do the same mistakes? It seems that we should start changing our ways towards what we would like others to do!

We've have a very long way to go from 20+ tonnes to 3.5 tonnes of CO2 per capita per year (China's level) before we can brag about our ways.

Everyone should use small 2 and 4-seaters, 50-mpg cars for daily commute, and join a car ownership club to share the ownership of larger vehicles for occasional use and for vacation. With a rapid, automated acquisition system in place, one can simply park the small daily-commute car and acquire the big vehicle in a few minutes when the occasional need for large carrying capacity arises. This will allow tremendous saving in liquid fuels while preserving maximum personal transportation convenience and flexibility.