I'm sorry to see that there is no response to a good question. I don't have an answer either, but I’m not sure that there really is one. Right now, I feel that we should be in « emergency modus », which simply means to drop CO2 production as fast as possible, even below the sustainable level because we need to see the global level going down. Well, when I see how I live, I might be better than others, but I’m far from the sustainable level, that’s sure.
We also have the question of the « fair share ». When kids where small, we had as first car a VW Caddy (I like to say that this type of car is a little bit the european pickup truck because it rains more often in Paris than in Los Angeles), now that we don’t need a stroller anymore, we have a Peugeot 208 which is much smaller. But this leaves us with an oversided second car than can carry 2 adults, 2 teenages, 2 dogs and the luggages for 2 weeks holidays. We do like everybody else, just with smaller motors, no 4WD, less luxury, prefer the smaller car… and keep the cars longer. Other people like my father in law probably don’t drives more than 1000 km a year In his case, he and his wife are retired and use mainly public transportation, excepted when heavy things have to be carried.
Well, what I wanted to say is that the needs are not the same at every stage of life and I believe that this has to be respected.
I tend to believe that most "climate change" policies are in fact "peak oil" policies, because reducing cars’s power and size is an obvious solution that is never applied, but houses have to be so well insulated that a friend of mine said that he uses more oil for the car than to heat a 4 people family, including sanitary water (20000km x 7liters/100 = 1400 liters). In the peak oil context, you need well insulated houses, and cars are not kept long enough to be an issue.
It's very difficult to go to a sustainable level when you are not alone, even more difficult with teenagers.
