[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] What Car Do You Drive?

[Bill Totten]

by Richard Heinberg

The Ecologist (May 2008)


The question inevitably arises soon after readers or lecture audiences
first become acquainted with global oil depletion and climate change. I
must be asked it at least once a week. Sometimes I reply by reciting how
I didn't buy my first car till age forty, how I later drove an old
diesel Mercedes while belonging to a local biodiesel co-operative, how I
scrapped that fume-belching heap of metal and replaced it with a Toyota
Yaris to protest the Brontosaurian dimensions of the typical American
SUV, and how I now often get around town on an electric scooter. But
that answer, while respecting the query's intent, fails to advance the
conversation. The question presumes a continuation of car-centered
culture, and that is precisely what must be called into doubt.

In many parts of the world (especially North America), automobile
ownership is a given. Throughout the last century, the petroleum,
automotive, and road-building industries amassed and exerted enormous
political power, systematically foreclosing all other transport options
through efforts either to starve rail and public transit infrastructure
of funds, or to buy them up and dismantle them. Bucking the current
massive system of highways and short-lived personal dream machines often
requires courage, dedication, and planning. Very few individuals are
sufficiently motivated.

Thus it's understandable that the first policy response to depleting
petroleum reserves and the climate threat has been a rush toward
biofuels and coal-to-liquids technologies - rather than a questioning of
the auto-centric system itself. Yet if either of these alternative fuel
sources is expanded enough to replace oil, the car (rather than the atom
bomb) may end up being the invention that destroys the world.

Our transition away from fossil fuels will require a societal effort at
a scale and speed never before seen; given the limits on our time and
money, we cannot afford to waste both investment capital and precious
years pursuing false solutions like alternative fuels. Electric cars may
be a better idea, since there are lots of promising renewable sources of
electricity. But when we step back and compare auto-based transport
systems with rail-based options, even electric cars come out looking
like resource gluttons. We don't need alternative cars; we need
alternatives to cars, starting with ways to reduce our need for travel
in the first place.

Perhaps those of us who have arrived at this conclusion may be forgiven
a less-than-joyous response to the recent unveiling of Tata Motor
Company's $2500 Nano, an auto being marketed to tens of millions of
previously car-free Asians who can now afford a scaled-down version of
the object that half-a-billion inhabitants of wealthier countries take
for granted.

Doesn't everyone deserve the comfort and convenience enjoyed by
Americans and Europeans?

It's an insidious question. Like the title of this essay, it presupposes
a great deal. Only by unpacking and ruthlessly picking apart our
assumptions about the future of transportation can we hope to overcome
the sinister logic of universal car ownership - a logic that leads to
universal destruction. Are biofuels a bad idea in every single instance?
Probably not. Should car owners be demonized? That's neither polite nor
helpful. But until we collectively, through coordinated policies,
reverse course and stop both building roads and looking to alternative
fuels for a solution to environmental problems, we're all on a highway
to hell.

__________________

It's Happening

by Richard Heinberg

from MuseLetter #193 / May 2008

There is a surreal quality to the experience of seeing the unfolding of
unpleasant events that one has predicted. Plenty of times over the past
few years I've said, "I want to be proven wrong!" Who in their right
mind would wish to see economic collapse and famine? But it was obvious
that, given the direction our society is headed, these must be the
consequences. Now, with oil at $117 a barrel, the US economy teetering,
and food riots erupting in Haiti, Egypt, and Asia, one could perhaps
gain some satisfaction in saying "I told you so". But what faint
compensation that would be. We are all going to have to share the bitter
fruits of our society's century-long growth binge, whether we have
criticized it or participated wholeheartedly. The only silver lining is
the possibility that now, at last, as the trends (Peak Oil, the failure
of growth-based economics, the failure of industrial agriculture,
climate chaos, and so on) are becoming so starkly clear, policy makers
will begin seriously to contemplate a Plan B (or C, as Pat Murphy
insists). For those of us who have been lobbying in that latter
direction for some while, this is no time to let up, but rather the
ideal moment to redouble our efforts.
_____

Read more about Richard's book, Peak Everything at
http://www.richardheinberg.com/books

Post Carbon Institute - 6971 Sebastopol Avenue - Sebastopol - California
- 95472 - USA

http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/193


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