I will admit it: Warren Brown is my favorite WaPo columnist.
In both his “On Wheels” and “Car Culture” columns, Brown makes a lot of sense concerning private vehicles and their impact on human settlement patterns. His observations illuminate issues related to mobility and access far better than the pontificators found on the Editorial and Op Ed pages or in the Outlook Section. It is a shame that Warren’s columns often appear on the first or second page of the Sunday autonomobile classified section.
For proof of Brown’s ability to summarize reality, check out today’s “Car Culture” column “There Ought to Be a Law” on Page G 2. We will not try to summarize the column, doing it justice would require reprinting. Warren scores point after point about the stupidity of the current congressional pursuit of less pollution and more fuel efficience as well as the role of contemporary Mass Over-Consumption.
Having praised Warren Brown, let me also say he sometimes misses a point.
In stories filed from (and following) the Geneva International Autonomobile Show that were printed on 7 and 11 March in WaPo, Warren swallows far too much of the line from Robert Lutz, Vice Chairman for Global Product Development at General Motors. Lutz told Brown, and Brown repeats the view, that the reason small, efficient cars are not sold in the United States is that no one would buy them here. We view this issue differently:
The basic reason that small, efficient private vehicles are not sold in the United States is that all autonomobile manufactures would make less money per unit than they would if they continued to design, promote, build advertise and sell only big, inefficient vehicles.
Yes, there are federal, state and municipal regulations that make it hard to import or drive small vehicles… did someone say “lobbyist?”
If small, efficient private vehicle were sold in the United States, the Big Three (and the Big Importers) would face competition from small, regional firms. (Full disclosure: my Grandfather made a lot of money selling his company to General Motors in the 20s. Further disclosure: My parents and I never say a dime of that money.)
Small, efficient cars could be made by regional manufactures. In fact small builders, egged on by X Prize Foundation are way ahead in the race to build 100 mpg cars according to Billy Baker in Popular Science (9 March 2007.)
GM’s Lutz says what will sell in Europa and not in North American reflects the fact that they are “two different worlds.” He is right; One controlled by big manufacturers one controlled by market forces reflecting a rational price for gasoline and more intelligent agency action. After all, Euro’s love their cars too.
As to the market for tiny vehicles, we admit we would not buy (or ride in) three and four wheeled mini-vans and pickups we have seen on expressways in Europe. These vehicles were built to reflect gas prices after Oct 1973. We also would not ride in or drive one of the Second-World / Soviet Era stink bombs we saw in Praha, Dresden or Berlin in 1989. For starters at 6 foot 4, we would not fit.
However, when we first recall seeing a Mercedes Smart Car in Kobenhavn in 1991 we had the money and the interest. That was 16 years ago come May. To this day a lot of alternative vehicles are not available here that are deemed safe in the “over-regulated” European Union.
Warren Brown’s column focused on the hearings last Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and air quality. In today’s Business Section of WaPo, Lutz’s boss G. Richard Wagoner Jr. is quoted as saying:
“Many of the recent legislative proposals to increase [mileage standards] … would be extraordinarily expensive and technically challenging to implement – all with little to show for actually reducing oil consumption or emissions.”
Rep John D. Dingell responded: “Inaction and telling us what doesn’t work is … no longer sufficient.”
What did Warren Brown say again?
He said a core problem is that consumers do not want efficiency as individual drivers and consumers. They would desperately want efficiency in Autonomobiles if they understood the consequences of Business-As-Usual. Now, if those politicians were honest with those who they were elected to represent…
What did Wagoner say again?
“Many of the recent legislative proposals to increase [mileage standards] … would be extraordinarily expensive and technically challenging to implement – all with little to show for actually reducing oil consumption or emissions.”
In fact, Wagoner, Lutz, GM and the rest of the Autonomobile crowd are correct: The legislative proposals will not work.
There are two choices to make private vehicles more fuel efficient and less polluting:
Make private vehicles much more costly
Make private vehicles much lighter and much slower
The first option widens The Wealth Gap so that access and mobility in large New Urban Regions leads to the Sao Paulo Condition outlined in “The Whale on the Beach” 28 August 2006 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com Oh yes, as Wagoner et. al. know, this option would destroy the North American Autonomobile industry as we know it.
The second option does not meet the current consumer “demand.” It would also tank the North American autonomobile industry. Most important, it would not provide mobility and access for most citizens.
Small, light, inexpensive, fuel efficient private vehicles are unsafe a high speeds and at low speeds they do not serve the disaggregated human settlement pattern which has evolved in the US of A.
Light, small vehicles require half the space to park and provide significant savings in the paved area devoted to driving. They could be part of a comprehensive solution for small urban agglomerations but are not much help in large New Urban Regions where most citizens live and work. It is a matter of physics, not policy:
The disaggregation of human habitation required to accommodate Autonomobiles is a dead end just as “urban horses” were a dead end. When it come to space required to drive and park, smaller is better but not solution. The cost of energy and the impact of internal combustion engines can be used as a catalyst to move to more functional human settlement patterns. Free, non-polluting energy for private vehicles given dysfunctional human settlement patterns is not a solution.
What to do?
Rep. Dingell and the rest of those who have relied on Politics-As-Usual need to read Warren Brown’s column and then go to the microphone and announce:
“In the long term, Autonomobility is not sustainable.”
The only way to reduce oil consumption at all and carbon emissions significantly is to change human settlement patterns.
However, even if the cost of energy and the carbon emissions were not an economic, social and physical drag on civilization, Autonomobility doe not provide access and mobility for most citizens in large New Urban Regions. It is physics, no philosophy.
EMR
Comparing human settlement patterns on the luxury liner Westerdam with towns and cities in Virginia, as I’ve done in my most recent column, “Earthship Westerdam,” may seem a bit of a stretch. I certainly don’t advocate modeling Virginia communities on a cruise liner with midtown-Manhattan levels of density. I regard the article as more of a brain bender. Sometimes it helps to take a look at familiar problems from radically different perspectives.
