Reply #2: More efficiency will bring more cars

[The2ndWheel]

80 miles to a gallon will bring more travel, longer travel, and more people traveling more often and longer distances. Then we'll need to build more roads. Then we'll have to build more places for those roads to take us while we're traveling more often and further each day. Then we'll need more efficiency. That will create more cars, more travel, longer travel, more roads, more places.

What is needed is fewer cars and less efficiency. However, that would never sit too well. Only the elite and wealthy could travel then, and the middle class has as much right to travel as the top class. The lower class(must exist with a "middle" class by definition) has to be pulled along, because they have as much right to a middle class lifestyle, which has the right to a top class lifestyle.

The question that needs to be asked; has efficiency led to a decrease or increase in overall energy use? The answer to that question explains why efficiency will not help. Well, depending on what the goal of efficiency is.