Worldwatch throws its weight behind Nano

The Nano, the Rs 1 lakh vehicle from the Tata Motors stable, has found an unexpected champion - the environmental group, Worldwatch.

In a hard-hitting piece, a Worldwatch researcher has raised questions on whether the global environment groups are not following double standards by idolising a vehicle like the Toyota Prius and condemning the Nano.

The Prius did 46 miles a gallon, had fancy accessories, sported two engines with a combined 145 horsepower, and yet was a darling of the environmentally conscious.

In contrast, the Nano would reportedly run 54 miles on a gallon, using a 30-horsepower engine and was spartan in its interior trimmings.

Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner said while the Prius was acceptable to the environmentally conscious, the same people reviled the Nano as a climate wrecker despite being a "people's car."

Renner appeared to be backing the Nano because breathable air was every bit as important as climate stability.

Renner said that for residents of many Indian cities who are exposed to a lethal brew of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, particulates and toxics from old motor vehicles of all stripes, the Nano's leaner engine and lower emissions would offer a cleaner option than the highly polluting motorcycles, motor rickshaws and diesel buses (and many Western-designed cars) clogging the India's roads.

However, the mass market of the Tata car could render putative gains ephemeral.

Critics of the Nano included Malini Mehra, founder of the Centre for Social Markets, who questioned those who regard car ownership a right, and Sunita Narain, head of the Centre for Science and Environment, who said that as private motor vehicles provided transport only to 20 per cent of Delhiites, Tata should provide solutions for public transport.

According to Renner, the issue was more than just technology: it required questioning shortsighted personal choices by consumers who bought unnecessarily large or powerful vehicles, as well as confronting the auto and oil companies that derived enormous profit from the status quo.

Renner admitted that the no-frills Nano meant affordable transport for millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of people newly joining the middle class in India and elsewhere in the developing world and that such mass sales could overwhelm halting efforts to ward off catastrophic climate change.

The Nano had deeply upset many in the West, so much so that the German weekly Der Spiegel termed the Nano an "eco-disaster."

Transportation was behind the fastest growing carbon emissions of any economic sector as automobile sales had surged, leading to more than 600 million passenger cars now plying on the world's roads, and some 67 million new ones rolling off the manufacturing lines each year.

People in Western countries and Japan, representing less than 15 per cent of the world's population, owned two-thirds of all passenger and commercial motor vehicles in the world.

In contrast, India and China, with a third of the world's population, accounted for only about 5 per cent of the vehicles.

In 2005, China's ratio of motor vehicles to population was about the level the United States reached some 90 years earlier. India's ratio was less than half that of China.

Renner said westerners not only had far more cars, but the distances covered were also three or four times longer on an average than those of Indians and Chinese.

The United States alone accounted for about 44 per cent of the world's gasoline consumption as cars grew larger, heavier and more muscular.

In New York, a Nano could be mistaken for a golf cart, Renner quips. Many in the developed world expected buyers in Asia, Latin America and Africa to shun the reckless habits of westerners.

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GREEN SIGNAL

A Worldwatch researcher has raised questions on the double standards of environment groups that have idolised Toyota's Prius and condemned the Nano

The Prius did 46 miles a gallon, with two engines having a combined 145-HP. The Nano would run 54 miles using a 30-HP engine

A Worldwatch researcher says the Nano's leaner engine and lower emissions would offer a cleaner option