Distancing ourselves from one another to avoid an infectious disease may engender some unexpected side benefits. Perhaps it will afford us the opportunity to approach delicate subjects wearing gloves and wary of infection.
I’ve tried hard to keep partisan politics out of this blog. My effort to reduce by one the number of cars in the world seems to me less a political stance than a personal decision. But friends have told me that the act of renouncing car ownership in 21st-century Maine makes me an activist.
To which I say: nonsense. Thousands of people don’t own cars because they can’t afford one. But it doesn’t follow that they all want to own a car, or that the rest of us should support a status quo in which car ownership is preferable to all possible alternatives. I do know that I was a lot more broke when I owned cars than I am now. If more people can find encouragement and reward in this chosen lifestyle, well, I think Maine, the United States, and the world would be happier and better places to live.
Most of my friends own cars. If I constantly castigated them for it, many of them would not be my friends for much longer. Twenty-four hour availability of a motor vehicle seems like a necessity to them. I know. I was there once.
What makes me an activist is that I write about the Late Automobile Age, and I sometimes show up at City Hall to lobby for policies that will make it easier for people to shed their cars: later bus hours, bicycle infrastructure, location of essential services in central areas or along bus routes. Why must we fight political battles over such sensible goals?
But if you want to stir up political passion in an otherwise apathetic population, challenge their perceived right to widespread free parking and cheap gas. The howls of protest will be heard from here to Venezuela.
Something like fifty percent of carbon emissions in the United States come from motor vehicles. Electric cars and hybrids mitigate the problem, but even they help to perpetuate a culture of driving that encourages consumptive land-use practices. A parking lot is still more damaging to the ecosystem than a bus.
It makes sense, for many reasons, to reduce the number of cars on American roads. But that means that some individuals must give up their cars. Fourteen years ago, I made the decision to be one of them. I was in a decent position to do so: my kids were grown, and I had a job that I could get to and from by bus. I was used to doing certain things by car, but I could make adjustments. Still, I wasn’t sure I could do it, and there was a period of transition. I rented a car from time to time, and still do. I accepted rides from friends who admired my new lifestyle but were unable to adopt it themselves.
Appeals to altruism only go so far. Economic self-interest is also a good reason to question the conventional wisdom that we all need cars. The upsides of renouncing individual car ownership become apparent within a few months. That’s how long it took me to realize the financial savings, the health benefits of walking and bicycling, and the absence of aggravations, from trolling for parking to rude behavior of other drivers.
My environmentalism is more instinctive than systematic. I’m appalled by wanton littering, and by industrial pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink. I don’t want to look out at Penobscot Bay and see oil platforms. But I use oil to heat my house. In ordinary times, I’m an ardent advocate for public transportation. But now that we’re all self-quarantining to slow the spread of the coronavirus, I’m a little leery about getting on a public bus. I hope this is temporary.
I should be a vegetarian. The carbon footprint of industrial meat is at least as bad as that of motor vehicles. But I still have my driver’s license, and I’ve been known to eat a burger from time to time. One thing I don’t do is use the drive thru windows at fast-food restaurants. I avoid those eateries in the same way I avoid cars. But that doesn’t make me morally superior to anyone else.
I distrust politicians who take absolutist positions on complicated issues. We yearn for simple answers, as we prefer creation myths to more plausible explanations of gradual evolution. Baseball wasn’t invented by Abner Doubleday on a sunny spring afternoon in Cooperstown, New York; it evolved from British stick and ball games played by working class people who didn’t have the leisure time for cricket. The modern car culture evolved from a desire for privacy in public and the freedom to travel on one’s own schedule, along with government subsidies for the manufacture and sales of cars.
It’s not a perfect world, but it’s the one we’ve got. Changing it requires time, patience, and the willingness to accept partial victories and build on them.
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