Our car culture

Every time I get stuck in a traffic jam, I wonder why.

Were it not for the car, we would not be able to function.  Yet even with cars we waste large amounts of resources just getting to and from wherever it is that we desperately need to go.

We have engineered our society to be dependent on cars.  Vast shopping malls could not exist unless we were prepared to drive to them.  And because we can we do.  Vast forests of suburban residences could not exist unless we were prepared and able to drive to them.  Between the acres of homes and the acres of shopping malls and other acres of entertainment complexes, there are vast ribbons of roads.

Acres and acres of land consumed irretrievably in homage to the car.

A prime issue is of course that our dedication to driving has polluted our atmosphere to the point of serious global warming.  Since there are so many of us increasingly dependent on oil and gas for our travel, and the movement of the wonderful goods we all desire, it is no wonder that CO2 concentrations have increased to a dangerous level.

One solution proposed is to go electric.  The result would be a dramatic reduction in tailpipe emissions.  It would not be an elimination of tailpipe emissions, as in any case the building of roads and the building of the electric cars themselves would remain an intensive oil consuming process.

It would solve the one problem, in time at least, reducing our pollution.  But it would not stop the other problem, that of the proliferation of cars.  It could even exacerbate it.

We can mitigate one problem, not solve them all.  As Boulding is quoted as saying, "The name of the devil is sub-optimization."