On killer commutes, cheap cars, big fridges, lonely souls & ethanol...

by Janet A. Ginsburg

If only getting there were half the fun. Instead, according to “There and Back,” Nick Paumgarten’s brilliant article in the April 16 issue of The New Yorker, driving is an increasingly slow, costly, and certain road to loneliness, depression, and misery. For hours upon hours each day, millions of us are not where we mean to be and not one bit happy about it. There isn’t a luxury car on the planet that can make a person want to be in it for that long, that often. Which is, of course, why cars in television ads so rarely appear in real traffic, creeping along bumper-to-bumper, swerving around pot holes, construction sites, and puffs of semi-truck soot. Why ruin a perfectly good fantasy?

Different places have adapted better than others. In Mexico City, where I regularly gave up and out-walked my cab to wherever I was going, some streets, especially near the city center, were like driving through an unusually colorful and quirky Wal-Mart, complete with curbside service. The vastness of selection was impressive. Here in the U.S., street commerce is pretty much limited to newspapers, kids selling m&m’s to support school sports teams, cult members hawking wilted flowers, and the occasional window-washer. But as driving continues to devolve into more stop than go, enterprising merchants are bound to figure out how to make the most of this consumer-on-the-wheel opportunity. The Interstate as Drive-thru.

At least we’re doing better than Mumbai where trains are so overcrowded, the Wall Street Journal reports they’ve got an official name for it: “Super-Dense Crush Load.” Train cars built for 200 people regularly pack in 550, with predictable if still stunningly disastrous results: An average of 13 people die each day from “scrambling across the tracks, tumbling off packed trains, slipping off platforms, or sticking their heads out open doors and windows for air.” Well over 3,000 casualties just last year. So be nicer the next time you find yourself on the phone with someone from an Indian call bank.  The person on the on the other end of the line may have risked life and limb to rescue you from Vista’s latest glitch.

Not even a $2 billion upgrade to increase the number of trains by almost 75% and the rail network by 113 miles is expected to help much. The dark side of the Indian Dream, like its flawed American role model, includes a ferocious commute.

Which is why the “no frills” auto business in India and in China is booming, spurred on by India’s own Tata Motors’ planned introduction next year of a $2,500 small wonder described by BusinessWeek as “a real car with four doors, a 33-horsepower engine, and a top speed of 80 mph.” Wheeeee! 

(The only time I was ever frightened in Mexico City traffic was during a pre-dawn dash to the airport when there was no traffic. With nothing to keep the primal urge to move forward in check, the driver of my lime green VW-bug taxi, with the obligatory crucifix dangling from the rear view mirror and Madonna on the dashboard, shot through the darkened streets at a Nascar clip. The gritty crowded reality of India’s roads may turn out to be a deeply disguised blessing, keeping the Tata’s speedy boast the stuff of Bollywood dreams. According to a new study released by the World Health Organization, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24 worldwide, accounting for 400,000 fatalities, millions more injuries, with a total cost estimated at more than a half-trillion dollars annually.)

Although barely big enough to qualify as a Hummer hors de’oeuvre, the tiny Tata’s design and production costs have been so pared to the bone, it could easily generate Hummer-size profits from volume sales. At least that’s the hope. And lots of other auto-makers faced with stagnant sales elsewhere are ready to join in for slice a market predicted to enjoy annual double-digit growth for years to come. 

Still, even if these car-ettes were to get 100 miles per gallon (they don’t), there will be so darn many of them, global demand for oil will inevitably increase, along with global competition for who gets it. Even if there were more than enough oil to go around, biofuels were bountiful, and fuel prices returned to 2005 levels (there isn’t, they aren’t, and they won’t), we would still be headed in the wrong direction on climate change. And we would will still be stuck in traffic.

Tail pipe emissions of CO2, the greenhouse-gas-and-newly-Supreme-Court-certified pollutant, are only marginally less using ethanol compared to gasoline when measured by unit of energy output (it takes about 1.5 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy output of 1 gallon gas). Burning one gallon of gas releases 19.6 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, while burning 1.5 gallons of ethanol releases 18.9 pounds. Mandating even slightly higher mpg standards and adopting hybrid engine technology would make a much bigger difference, much more quickly.

As for the biofuel industry’s claim of carbon-neutrality – that the CO2 released when a biofuel  burns fuel zeros out what the plant from which it was made stored while growing – well, yes, but... The “fossils” in fossil fuels were also photosynthesizing, CO-2-absorbing plants and algae that sequestered carbon from the atmosphere, but they kept it stored for millions of years. By contrast, biofuel crops store carbon for only a matter of months. The only real difference is time. If the goal is reducing CO2 levels by 50% or more, carbon-neutral is at best running-in-place. At worst, it’s slick marketing. In the meantime, overall emissions are increasing with overall demand.

So let’s review: Longer commutes. Lonely drivers. Suburban sprawl. Killer trains. More cars. Higher fuel prices. Increased emissions. Hotter planet. It takes a really determined species to tie a knot this tight. Either we need to start thinking a lot more creatively, or embrace our auto-nomadic destiny and learn to love the crawl.