As I Buy a Car

Reforming the Automobile Industry as I Buy a Car

By John Taylor; 2009 Mar 11, 'Ala 10, 165 BE

Our 1991 Ford Escort, though mechanically sound, is increasingly pockmarked with rust; it is clear that we will have to replace it soon. I have been researching the market and we just started test-driving newer cars. In view of the news lately, the personal and social mesh unusually closely now for me. For the next while, I will talk about both my newer car search and the overall solution to the transportation problem. I did this back in '01 when I bought this car, and I would like to gather in the lessons learned since then.

As the close press coverage attests, the auto industry has emerged from its usual behind-the-scenes conniving against the public good and is openly corrupting the public. They dominate the headlines with open begging for handouts. They argue that we need to "stimulate" them with even more subsidies than they are already getting. They are like the rats that jumped out of dark corners as the Titanic sank. Except that, those rats forgot their hunger and scurried out only to save their own skins. Our industrial rats would have us believe that this is a similar crisis situation, but the strange thing is that they are still hungry to profit from the public funds gravy train. As Naomi Klein warns, disaster capitalism thrives by manufacturing an atmosphere of artificial panic, then profiting from desperate reactions.

George Monbiot rips apart some of the auto industry's more specious arguments in his latest column, "Scrap It. Pay drivers to scrap their cars? We might as well burn ten-pound notes in power stations." (Guardian, 10th March 2009, http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/10/scrap-it/). He demolish one canard they like to float, the idea of paying drivers of old cars to buy new ones. He calculates that, from the point of view of a vehicle's cost in emissions vs. the emissions it actually produces itself, its sweet point is nineteen years old. Older than that and it becomes a burden. So rust is making me scrap our old car just before it will start belching more CO2 than it cost in emissions to manufacture it. That is, I think, a good thing.

Amazingly, the emissions cost of greener transport has not even been calculated.

"I would have liked to give you some transport comparisons, but McKinsey does not publish figures for public transport or for promoting walking or cycling... Nor, as far as I can discover, does the government. The carbon payback for other projects - creating better cycle lanes in towns and coach lanes on motorways, helping children to walk to school, better enforcement of speed limits, better timetabling for buses - is likely to be hundreds or thousands of times higher than any returns from the scrappage scam."

Monbiot may be in for a surprise here. He seems to have forgotten about the grossly high emissions costs incurred by human food, especially meat. Ignoring health considerations, it is probably better for the environment to avoid burning up food energy up by walking, running or biking. Save the world, keep on driving that smoking hulk everywhere you need to go. Burn as little human energy as possible.

Monbiot's arguments seem to have filtered through to some car industry lobbyists, though. I heard one on the radio the other day switch from carbon emissions to safety. We should pay people to buy new cars because they are much less likely to kill you than rust buckets like mine. Thus when it is convenient they turn around one of the biggest reasons to choose alternatives to automobiles, safety. The flow of blood from the slaughter on the roads will be slightly less if we pay people to buy new cars. It is a non-sequitor, but at least it is not a preposterous lie.

Having demolished environmental and several other arguments from car makers, Monbiot concludes eloquently and with passion:

"This leaves only the value of preserving the industry for its own sake. It is hard to think of a less deserving cause. The motor companies have repeatedly failed to anticipate trends in demand. They have carried on producing thunderous gas guzzlers long after the market collapsed. Every so often the bosses wring their hands about jobs, put out the begging bowl, get the money then shaft their workers anyway. Like the bankers they have wrecked their own industry. And like the bankers they want the rest of us to pay."

In other words, they behave like rats. Like all living things, rats mean to thrive, and failing that, to survive, come what may. We and all nature want that. But the whole needs to thrive and survive first. That is why we need to think clearly and comprehensively about the whole situation of the entire human race. What serves all has to serve the part too.

Jesus, hardly a sadist or warmonger, told us the principle to apply here: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." He does not say, have pity for the poor eye. He says cut it out without compunction. If a few powerful car companies have brought on their own bankruptcy, then let them go under. Let us learn from their mistakes, not perpetuate them.

Instead, let us broaden our goals and our education. We should react to this crisis by changing the transportation structure, then growing a new crop of businesses on that soil. An Australian business consultant sums it up, as recently quoted in the New York Times,

"We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder... No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply. We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let us grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks." (Paul Gilding, quoted in Thomas Friedman, "The Inflection Is Near?," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html)

In the transportation industry, flow is from point A to point B. We should opt for the best (not necessarily the fastest) travel method from there to here, not the health of any particular company or industry. Net zero, as I understand this fellow to mean it, is calculating energy costs so that there is no loss. But it also has to count aspects of travel that, in our present corruption, are ignored.

For example, there are definite psychological benefits to travel. It is exhilarating to see new horizons. Plus, as Baha'u'llah says, there is a definite spiritual benefit from travel done for God. The Master spoke of the recreational benefit of riding a horse or donkey on an excursion. It is good for us, and for the animals. I heard of a recent study comparing working elephants in Indonesian logging camps and elephants kept in zoos. It found that the working elephants (which also were allowed to live in families) were thinner, healthier and lived much longer than their idle cousins. On the local level, we should make more use not only of foot and bicycle travel, but also excursions with animals, such as dogs, horses, mules and donkeys.

For longer recreational trips, blimps and airships would be a great alternative to the automobile, whose normal range is less than 300 kms per trip.

Plus, why not reward inter-modal transport? We could put a premium on variety in travel priorities by pricing a trip lower according to the proven psychological rewards that gives passengers. For example varied, beautiful scenery on a trip would reduce rates of depression, the most costly illness in developed countries. The insurance rates for a trip by train, boat, car, horse and bicycle should therefore be lower than drearier ones of the same distance that take advantage of only one or two modes. So why not make it cheaper as well as nicer for passengers make use of a route with several travel modes to get to a given place, rather than just one?

As for the car industry, rather than talking about "stimulating" a few huge corporations with more public money, cheap and simple measures could have much greater effect. It would cost very little to end the dominance of the present economic elite, super-rich, predatory corporations.

For example, instead of subsidies, why not simply open up the parts industry? Why not reduce the need for proprietary manufacture of whole vehicles by requiring that all vehicle parts be standard, open and interchangeable? That way, a local firm could assemble the exact car you need, or, better still, you could use any travel method most of the time, and rent, borrow or lease a local car whenever the need arises. This would alleviate many of the problems of car ownership, including car loans, parking and storage. It would allow local artisans and small regional companies to compete with the fat cats in the design and manufacture of every aspect of car and truck manufacture. There would be less state, shock capitalism but far more competitive free enterprise.

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John Taylor

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