Imagine — as Ian Roberts tells us in the British Guardian below — the global auto industry is now the world’s main industrial employer and cars are responsible for a staggering two-thirds of American oil use. Sometimes someone writes the obvious exceedingly well. You can — and should — read the Roberts piece and be staggered by the shape of the gas-guzzling world he describes, the world we live in. And yet, you also know it all. You, me — every American, I think — senses that we’re tanking on oil, that it comes from somewhere, that it’s price has been artificially low, that we’re not the only society that has organized itself so that we’re desperate for it. Everyone in America, to one degree or another, however little it’s actually discussed, however little it’s written about knows that there has to be a connection between our imperial urges, our potential war in Iraq, and our gas tanks. However complicated the world is, this is not so complicated. Not really.
And in such a desperate situation what are we dreaming about? I include a piece on the Detroit auto show from the throwaway “Automobile” section of last Sunday’s New York Times (at least I toss it instantly). I’m afraid I’ve never felt the magnetism of cars. Fortunately, a friend pointed this piece out to me. It gives us a channel into the dream designs of the auto industry. How about that Cadillac Sixteen with 1,000 horsepower? How about those “wistful visions of big American cars, like prewar limousines and the full-size sedan that until recently was almost written off as extinct”? How about a society in massive denial? Tom
Car wars
The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin – and Iraq will supply its next fix
By Ian Roberts
January 18, 2003
The GuardianWar in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.
The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.
Ian Roberts is professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
To read more Roberts click here
War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.
The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.
Ian Roberts is professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
To read more Roberts click here
Wistful Visions of Muscular American Cars
By Phil Patton
The New York Times
January 12, 2003Detroit — Concept cars are the dream machines of auto shows, unattainable flashes of show-biz glamour among vehicles that come with easy-payment plans, extended warranties and Scotchgard fabric protection. Concept cars are not for sale, and they may say more about the state of mind of the industry than about the state of the art of engineering.
At this year’s Detroit show, which opened yesterday after a week of previews and media events, gee-whiz future technologies are less in evidence than powerful but wistful visions of big American cars, like prewar limousines and the full-size sedan that until recently was almost written off as extinct.
The two most striking concepts wear names that are numbers. The Cadillac Sixteen was theatrically unveiled onstage at the Detroit Opera House, upstaging the simultaneous showing – in a nondescript industrial building across town – of BMW’s long-expected Rolls-Royce Phantom.