The end of the car system is coming, like it or not
June 27th, 2009Kingsley Dennis and John Urry in their new book After the Car argue the car system is absolutely batty:
The car system gives the illusion of freedom while glueing users into a dependence on traffic management, oil, and money to pay for oil. Meanwhile, the local administrator of the system in question – your government, in other words – is forced to spend most of its own time and money maintaining good relations with suppliers of oil, in order to sustain that illusion in the name of economic growth.
That’s how Lynsley Hanley sums it up in a review in the U.K. Guardian. More than a million people worldwide are killed every year by cars – yet there’s no outrage. Cars are a major contributor to global warming, which is even now leading to the end of the Earth as we know it. Yet we refuse to entertain giving it up.
The authors foresee the end of the car system as resources become increasingly scarce and the threat of climate change induces policy responses. They present several possible future scenarios:
The most frightening, for its depressing plausibility, is that of “regional warlordism”, based on the fight for post-peak oil. We may already be living in this period.
A more enlightened outcome would be the model of “local sustainability”, in which all travel, but especially car travel, is reduced hugely and people return to living in compact urban neighborhoods and getting around on foot.
But don’t bet on that coming to pass. That would require we act boldly and wisely.