SAN FRANCISCO - After over two decades, I am no longer a driver. Facing spiking gas prices and much-needed repairs, I donated my Toyota Corolla to an organization that takes care of orphans.
It's an odd feeling to be on this side of being green. Without a car, my sense of time and space has been immediately altered. What was once a matter of expediency is now an effortful navigation.
"I'll be there in 15 minutes!" I used to tell a good friend who once lived nearby but who now resides, without a car, at an inconvenient distance. Going to my favorite Asian food market suddenly has turned into another arduous chore: Once a 30 minute event, it has become a two-hour ordeal, with bags in hands, and bus transfers.
Indeed when I came to San Francisco from Vietnam with my family at the end of the Vietnam War, I remember such delight when my older brother bought his first car. We were still sharing an apartment with my aunt and her children, but as we cruised the streets at night, it felt as if we were becoming Americans.
The automobile, after all, is intrinsically American, and owning one largely determines how we arrange our daily lives; it is as essential to us as the train and metro are to the Japanese or Europeans. Indeed, a car is the first thing an American teenager of driving age desires -- to drive away from home is an established American rite of passage. Even the working poor are drivers here.
For immigrants, the car is the first thing we buy before the house. Vietnamese in Vietnam marvel at the BMWs and Mercedez Benzes that their relatives drive in America, and no doubt the sleek photos sent home cause many to dream of a life of luxury in the United States. It seems a natural progression that the housing crisis should quickly lend itself to a car crisis. Both were readily available at one time, with easy loans and cheap gas. But now, with skyrocketing gas prices and faltering mortgages, many have had to give up one in order to keep the other.
Not surprisingly, the car is often the last thing that downtrodden Americans let go. "I can see losing my house, but I can't imagine losing my van," one unemployed friend told me. "I can live in my van. But not being able to get where I need to go would be worse than not having a house."Mobility defines us far more than sedentary life, thus the car is arguably more important than the house. Americans, despite accepting global warming as de facto, are still very much in love with the automobile. On average, we own 2.28 vehicles per household.
Our addiction to the automobile is as much a symptom of our nomadic culture as it is a matter of necessity: urban sprawl, combined with little public transportation, makes the car essential. A job seems almost always to require it. The distance between here and there is daunting without a vehicle at one's command.
The car, culturally speaking, is mobility and individualism combined. It is sex, freedom and danger. Thelma and Louise escaped from urban ennui by hitting the freeway with the wind in their hair, the horizon shimmering chimerically ahead. They found romance on the road. Indeed, their final moment approaches the mythic, as the blue Thunderbird Convertible flies across the Grand Canyon, taking the notion of freedom beyond any open road.
Our civilization, too, is driving toward an abyss. The covetous American way of life in the age of climate change and dwindling energy resources has become unsustainable.
Former Vice President turned eco-activist Al Gore called for a radical change in our collective behavior a few years back. He wanted us to completely replace fossil fuel-generated electricity with carbon-free energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal by 2018. "The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," he said. "The future of human civilization is at stake." We are now being called upon, the Nobel Prize winner told us, "to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes."
I wish he were exaggerating, but my gut tells me that the green guru is pointing us in the right direction. How and if we'll ever get there, how we'll find a collective will to act, I have no idea. But I do know this: Humanity has arrived at a historic juncture and it now seems that a drastic shift in the collective behavior is called for. If this means finding the will to be frugal and give up certain luxuries, then so be it.
America was built on the premise of progress and expansion. Yet our vision of a future of unimpeded opportunities and comfort is now in conflict with the health of the planet. The consumer culture requires continuous acquisition, and it is built on the concept of disposable goods. And it's unfortunate that consumer culture now that defines much of the world. Our way of life has created an unprecedented crisis on a planetary scale.
I can tell you from experience, however, that being on the right side of the green divide is not easy. Even in San Francisco where public transportation is aplenty, it's still a struggle. As I trudged to work this morning, a 40-minute trek, I dearly missed my car. As I budget my time and memorize bus routes and timetables, it seems as if I am returning to my humble immigrant beginnings, repudiating some notion of being an American. But I'm not. Because I can, giving up the car is my new American responsibility.
New America Media editor, Andrew Lam, is author of East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres and Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora. His next book, Birds of Paradise, is due out in March, 2013.
Follow Andrew Lam on Twitter: www.twitter.com/andrewqlam
Fossil fuel is a renewable resource. “Thermal Depolymerization”, developed in the USA, turns almost any organic based refuse (plastic, rubber, lawn clippings, meat processing waste, etc.) into water, minerals and high quality fossil fuel. It mimics the earth’s natural process in an accelerated time. “Thermal Depolymerization” pilot plants have been profitably running in the USA for over eight years.
YouTube – “Thermal Depolymerization”
Recently some have claimed that man made CO2 will cause the oceans to become acidic and kill all shellfish. 0.008% of the atmospheric CO2 is man made. Most of the terrestrial CO2 has always been stored in the ocean. Far stronger acid is constantly contributed to the oceans by benthic thermal vents with no affect other than supporting a few unusual life forms. The vast buffering minerals accessible to the ocean maintains balance.
CO2 is not the global warming culprit that we were led to believe. The below theories provide more accurate climate predictions than the IPCC claims and are significantly independent of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The periodic nature of the VOSTOK ice core graph also supports these theories. These theories also predict planetary cooling in the near future.
Dr Habibullo I. Abdussamatov - "Total Solar Irradiance"
Henrik Svensmark – "global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning"
Piers Corbyn - "The Solar Weather Technique"
YouTube – “The great global warming swindle”
Dr Habibullo I. Abdussamatov - "Total Solar Irradiance"
Piers Corbyn - "The Solar Weather Technique"
YouTube – “The great global warming swindle”
The only argument in favor of the IPCC theories then becomes the claimed list of prestigious supporters. Nicolaus Copernicus was encouraged by the Spanish Inquisition to publicly denounce his beliefs and agree with a conflicting theory that also had a large list of prestigious scientific supporters. Though in present times, ridicule replaces torture, the IPCC-Global-Warming supporter’s list is analogous to the list presented to Copernicus. A large supportive list usually indicates a lack of supporting evidence.
Perhaps there is more to be considered.
You must also consider the work of:
Dr Habibullo I. Abdussamatov - "Total Solar Irradiance"
Henrik Svensmark - "global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning"
In many European cities it is almost insane and incredibly inconvenient not to use public transport. With less traffic the cities become even more livable. Sometimes I'm on the brink of crying, when I have to look at how streets, parking areas and, of course, cars spoil what were once historic centres and beautiful places. Average cities could be pretty close to paradises, if we could only get rid of this darn metal insects on wheels for good. Getting shot of cars and the lifestyle that goes with them is not a duty, it's a liberation, it's something, we should be happy about. Imagine all those then redundant traffic infrastructure turned into parks. All it takes for an enjoyable, car-free urban experience is the political will to invest in rail systems, which need less space than automobiles and the infrastructure for them. According to surveys people like rail-based public transport a lot better than busses and experience shows wherever there is a bus line replaced with a rail-based system the numbers of passengers increases dramatically.
Since it's emergence the car has turned the world into an ugly wasteland, it's worse than any other plague in history. There are not only tremendous environmental damages to consider but also those of an aesthetic nature. Cars are incredibly ugly things, and their "habitats" like streets, parking spaces and garages are yet more unsightly. Still worse is the psychological effect of being enclosed in some kind of a tin capsule instead of interacting with one's surroundings.
As a tram passenger you can read a book or a newspaper, you can do some sightseeing on your way to work or, observe other human beings, feel a part of your city. I've seen people flirting. All it takes to create a car-free world are some rails. And especially the Americans were once proud builders of railroads.
Already today there are cities with an extensive and excellent public transport system. It certainly comes cheaper than individual motorized mobility. What it all boils down to: A car-free world is not some distant utopian dream, but a matter of adamant public will.
To me, with land in Brasil, leaving would be the better choice, as greed, laziness, apathy, and ignorance will end this empire.
Diesels are where its at. Better mileage than hybrids, better performance. No expensive battery pack to replace.