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Annihilation of Auto: Kunstler on Cars: ''All of them contribute to make my everyday world a worse pla
Posted on Wednesday, November 27 @ 23:23:16 EST by zverina
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Re: Kunstler on Cars: ''All of them contribute to make my everyday world a worse pla (Score: 1)
by varmint on Monday, December 16 @ 19:08:28 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) | People who've looked at the numbers aren't necessarily lead to the conclusion of "big-cars-bad, little-cars-good." Since such simplicity is presumably the result of quantification, Kunstler's alternative assessment approach, whatever it may be, is superior by implication. However, numbers, history, and political realities do exist, and it is clearly flawed advice to dismiss quantitative distictions. Whether cars are good, bad, or indifferent, the clear quantitatively based conclusion is that the substitution of SUVs for any sizes of cars is bad for society. It is both repugnant and a discredit to the car-free cause to say that, for the purity of the cause, one should pay no special attention to the thousands of excess deaths and substantially accelerated environmental degradation caused by SUVs.
For his example of how "[e]nvironmentalists are keen on the culture of quantification" Kunstler points to environmentalists' campaigns to reduce CO2 emmissions, a priciple greenhouse gas. Reducing emmissions through any achievable means could have global benefit, but because the proposals don't lead to what Kunstler considers to be walkable neighborhoods, he derides them.
According to Keith Bradsher, in his book "High and Mighty," the 1984 Cherokee started the SUV boom. By 1989 SUVs had 6.49% of the automobile market. Cheap gasoline combined with fuel efficiency standards, which were more stringent for cars than trucks (including SUVs), helped contribute to the rising popularity of this class of vehicle. They were being used as substitutes for family cars even though their truck frames and souped up suspensions were better suited for hauling and off-road use. They struck a chord with aging baby boomers' discomforts with parenthood and membership in the responsible adult community of their parents. According to Bradsher, environmentalists were also prone to embrace the image of being equiped for the great outdoors, though they were largely no different from most other SUV owners in that they would never take their vehicle off the road.
Not until 1998, following Ford's plans to introduce the 3.59 +/- 0.5 ton Excursion luxury SUV, did many environmentalists begin to pay attention to SUVs. Compared to the 20 years of egregous regulatory laxness which continues this day, 5 years of growing awareness doesn't seem like a long time to me. Yet according to Kunstler, "For quite a while now it's been fashionable among the environmentally-minded to decry the ownership of SUVs." Kunstler doesn't say whether he also thinks it is also overly fashionable to try to close the tax, safety, and environmental loopholes that have helped make it more lucrative for auto makers to push their most inferior products, SUVs. The resounding lack of success at regulation suggests that it might not been fashionable enough.
Maintaining the status quo of encouraging the substitution of truck based vehicles for passenger cars is to give the automobile and oil companies exactly what they want. This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It is bad for human health and the environment. It also serves to enrich and maintain the political strength of auto centered interests who would be no friends of the car-free movement.
Bill Carr |
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