The automobile is undeniably the most significant invention of the past century and a half. It has completely rewritten our sense of time and distance, to the point that what used to take the better part of six months, you can travel from Independence, MO., to Portland, OR. in a mere 17 hours. However, the automobile is not without fault– it has created generations of sedentary people and has made the expansion of corporate retail possible, as well as energy motivated wars around the planet. Is it possible to continue using this essential technology as we move into the 21st century? Or must we take drastic measures and completely revolutionize the way we live?
The automobile problem is a complex one. It involves nearly all corners of American life and society in some way or another. From manufacture of cars, transportation of cars, transportation using cars, the logistics and shipping industries, and even getting to an office job in the morning, these things are all a large part of what automobiles have done to our society. So what, then, can we do to end our dependence on an outmoded form of transportation? Should it be an alternative fuel? Perhaps a completely different way to design our communities? Maybe we should invest large amounts of money into public transportation? A reversion to rail transport? The complex question of automobiles has an equally complex answer.
Certainly the most important thing to consider when examining the problem of automobiles is the question of sustainability. With the sharply declining oil reserves in the world, the automobile is becoming more than just a carbon dioxide factory. It is quickly becoming an ecological nightmare. The influence of the auto industry leads governments to approve massive drilling projects in Alaska, ruining the pristine nature of one of the few Earth locations untouched by human hands. Oil-fueled initiatives to deface the Earth are undeniably perpetuated by automobile technology. We can be sure, then, that if we fail to make more economic cars or innovate alternative fuel options, the problems with the automobile will continue to get worse.
So if we cannot continue down the path of oil, what should we do? Many scientist are proposing hydrogen as a means to fuel cars. In a short answer, hydrogen is not a viable solution to end our dependence on fossil fuels. Hydrogen uses electrolysis to extract hydrogen from a source like water. This process requires large amounts of electricity to accomplish, and a massive majority of the electricity that is generated comes from sources like oil, coal, and natural gas. This means that the electric car is, too, an unrealistic suggestion. In order to completely eliminate the harmful effects of the automobile, we would need a better way to generate electricity first and foremost; then discover a better way to power the engines of our automobiles.
Reducing the impact of the automobile should be a primary goal of any community. However, they continue to zone structures and locations that are less conducive to this goal. Strip malls are unreachable by any other means besides automobile. The same goes for suburbs outside major cities. These places are rarely linked up with any kind of public transportation of the cities they surround, once more perpetuating the problem. Many suburbs are mazes of concrete, Starbucks’ and Wal-Marts dotting the cookie-cutter wastelands. These communities are built for convenience and access instead of sustainability or environmentality. This problem with the middle-American psyche is the very base of the car problem itself. If we cannot give up cars that get merely 8 miles to the gallon simply so we have something that resembles safety, then we are resigning our Earth’s fate to a dark future.
It seems so ironic that a group of individuals (i.e. Mothers) that are so infatuated with the idea of safety for them and for their children would drive devices that are completely opposite to the idea of the “children’s future”. Without dipping into a tangent of parent psychology, these desires really represent a need for power, for independence in a dependent family situation. Drivers of large, pollutant vehicles don’t care about the environment all that much, despite what they say, and justify their driving by half-heartedly tossing things into a recycling bin and planting a sapling at the park on Earth Day. But these same individuals perpetuate the automobile industry by buying corporate goods and services that come from miles and miles away. This, too, is a major problem with automobiles– logistics.
Most of the shipping industry is serviced by tractor-trailer semis, especially within the United States. Raw goods travel from around the world to processing plants in the continental U.S. and are then made into processed goods like, for example, a bottle of soda. The soda is loaded onto a semi and travels from a plant in Wisconsin to a distribution center in New York City. Then, a fleet of trucks travels all over the city and loads the bottles into coolers and machines so you, the consumer, can buy these items, day after day. This is the central problem with the dependency issue– not being able to give things up that we don’t want or need. Until we as a culture can overcome the bourgeois, we can never overcome a dependence on anything.
“Technology as magic” is a concerning concept. We look at technologies that represent this fad– worshiping technology and using it as a magic fix, an instant liberator from the forces of boredom. Many ad campaigns show SUV’s climbing mountain terrain, glistening in the sun as their fresh paint and unscuffed tires as if it had rolled right off the lot and into the Sierra Nevadas. This kind of imagery preys upon people– the companies will even admit to as much. The marketers know that people are insecure and bored and whimsical, so they build and market a car directly toward these kinds of people, and that car becomes the sport utility vehicle. A magic pill in our increasingly magical world.
So what, then, would we have to do to eliminate cars? We would have to rethink as a culture what we value in terms of material possessions and branding. We would need to once again realize what the concepts of distance are. We need to outlaw strip malls and become more locally focused instead of forever keeping our interests set on sights far away. We need to extend city public transportation further into the suburbs, allowing more and more people to take advantage of the services offered by the public trust.
The personal automobile needs to become a thing of the past if we are to secure a brighter future for our society. We need to find more sustainable energies if we are to power cars in electric or hydrogen means, and it is simply not possible to generate enough power to sustain an entire society based on electric or hydrogen-powered cars as well as all the current power needs, as pretty and idealistic as the ideas seem to us.
