Solid Truth
I’ve been thinking more (and more [and more]) about the approach to transportation in the U.S. It’s no secret that we’ve invested very heavily in the personal automobile as the preferred solution. This decision is often treated as a forgone conclusion–how could we possibly live any other way?
I stumbled upon this quote today :
“If there is one message writ large within the annals of anthropology, it is to beware the solid truths of one’s own culture. If we contrast our views with those of others, we find that what we take to be ‘reliable knowledge’ is more properly considered a form of folklore.”
From Kenneth J. Gergen’s often quite interesting The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.
If the U.S. is to flourish in this new century, we have to challenge even the most solid of truths. We just might discover that–dare I say–automobile infrastructure may not the best investment choice for our hard-earned tax dollars. We might even discover that–here comes the heresy–mass transportation and rail is a better option than personal cars and airplanes.
I know I’m not in line with the majority on this one, (as @b_samic told me last time I called for the end of cars, “be reasonable”) but to some degree the writing is on the wall. Cheap oil is over and we’re going broke. It’s time to invest what’s left in a sustainable future.
Filed under culture, energy : Comments (10) : Jul 18th, 2008 by tadfad
July 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am
You’ve been reading Clusterfuck Nation again, haven’t you? Peak oil and all that. I guess I don’t see why personal transportation and energy efficiency and green are all mutually exclusive concepts. Technology which produces a green personal transportation system of some sort that is carbon neutral and gives people the freedom they’re used to.
Innovation which serves both the needs of the community and the needs of the individual is what’s needed here. Assuming you can eradicate the affection American’s have for their cars through pain and suffering makes you as naive as the CIA interrogation teams who believe waterboarding will produce useful information.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I don’t think I need to make the case–the price of gasoline speaks for itself. Add to that the massive hemorrhage of mortgages from the automobile-powered suburbs, exurbs, and zeburbs, and it seems that “the market” is making a pretty powerful case on its own.
My fear is that we’ll try to prop up a failing infrastructure instead of using those dollars to build a new plan.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Again, you think you’re shooting straight, but you miss the target. Nowhere did I indicate that a personal transportation system has to be based on petrochemicals. I’m advocating working within the framework of American culture (distrust in things socialized, love of personal freedom, love of personal transportation) and seeking to leverage those attributes to drive a new, green personal transportation framework based on green, renewable energy.
Trains are dead. Get over it. We’re never going to have a European-style railway system. But we can have a new approach to personal transportation.
July 18th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Whenever your energy policies resemble those of [still] President Bush, it’s time to take a second look. . .
I’m all for technology and innovation, but the laws of physics are stacked against us. Taking no action for the last decade certainly hasn’t helped, and now we’re in a serious time crunch. Yes, the technology exists, but can we scale it fast enough to prevent a debilitating economic crunch?
Simply put, “technology” can’t be pumped out of the ground, refined, and put in a gas tank. Oil can. It’s not a simple swap.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
This all strikes uncomfortably close to a certain Christmas dinner conversation. When it comes down to the wire, the most durable “solid truth” that needs to be put into question here is a ground level (dare I say) faith in the positivistic advancement of technology and, more generally, science.
Maybe here the anthropology should be put into self-inspection: it seems reasonable to believe that for the (in the early 20th century new technology) automobile provided the nation with a lot of solutions to simple problems: how do you deal with such a big damn country? Make something that transports you around it, most of all, cheaply (relative, of course).
Now, this technology (and the infrastructure around it) has become a burden. I think tadfad is right to caution: “Simply put, “technology” can’t be pumped out of the ground, refined, and put in a gas tank.” Instead, why not look at the way we live, and yes the way other people live and figure out a solution that mediates between the two? Say, some commuter rail, some smaller cars and some admission that maybe the old-fashioned American road trip isn’t the most ecologically viable vacation anymore.
Just because something is the way it is doesn’t mean its right. And just because science has provided us with easy and (back then) cheap solutions at the right times in the past doesn’t mean will in the future.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Correction: And just because science has provided us with easy and (back then) cheap solutions at the right times in the past doesn’t mean it will in the future.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
A couple points:
1) The population health of every species that ever lived on earth is directly proportional to its ability to extract energy from the earth (getting more energy than it expends for getting food, moving around, etc). Think about that, then consider that all energy essentially comes directly or indirectly from the sun. Fossil fuels represent millions of years of the sun’s energy stored up nice and compactly. We humans found ways to tap into that, and our population boomed exponentially. Now we’re depleting a lot of it (in terms of oil anyway), and we’re in for a shock becaues there really is no other viable way to live the way we do, recklessly burning fuel and wastefully throwing stuff away (by the way, most of our ’stuff’ is heavily dependent on oil–the way we produce food, our crap (plastics, vinyl, …everything
2) American culture is about choice. If a large group of us chooses that we want to ride comfortably in a train between major cities instead of driving should have that choice. Not all Americans choose “personal transportation”. Public transportation has always been a major part of our culture.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:07 am
On Jeff’s point two: an idea I’ve thought about lately is the cultural impact of environmental changes, if we believe them to be happening (which we most certainly should). Clearly, American culture is about choice. But what happens when economic/ecological conditions start restricting or changing those structures of choice? It seem Marxist, but one might see a cultural change given shifts in the underlying, natural conditions of existence. Just a thought.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Paul G.
I think you’re right on, except that we have such a large segment of the population keeping their heads in the sand, refusing to believe that humans are impacting the environment. It’s not just a few whackos who refuse to believe the earth is warming: it’s millions & millions of people (and some with influence & power). Most smart people do understand we’re in for an oil shock as supply dwindles and demand increases; however, most of these people believe we can drill drill drill and find more and more (thus, no need to stop consuming). That isn’t going to happen.
Also on my first point in my above comment–perhaps I didn’t make this clear, but the amount of energy compacted into fossil fuels really can’t be replaced, except perhaps by nuclear. So here I agree with Kunstler and others when they say that new technologies in energy really aren’t going to “save” us. Sure we’ll have to replace gas engines with electric ones or hydrogren or whatever, but we’ll still have to drive less and conserve because these other systems just don’t pack the energy punch that fossil fuels do.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Further the electric car as was sorta of alluded t above doesn’t solve the green or cost problem anyhow (an improvement though). As cars require massive amounts of land to park (cost and pollutes are water supply with heavy metals), and 50% of the pollution a car creates is in its construction (this number wouldn’t necessarily change).