No doubt about it, America is a car culture.
The automobile is sung about, celebrated in movies and in art. One of the most followed sports in America, NASCAR, involves racing cars rather than human athletes.
Americans have embraced the concept of private transportation. Public transportation systems like the railroad network and street cars, which were once found in every American city and town, were largely dismantled a long time ago. The mantra was, what was good for General Motors was good for America.
To many Americans, the private automobile represents freedom. The freedom of the open road. Freedom to live in the suburbs where you can build a gigantic house and live the American dream in 5000 square feet of luxury. The freedom to be able to go anywhere on a moments notice, as long as you have a full tank of gas,
Except for the very poor and newly arrived immigrants from south of the border, every adult American has their own private automobile. There are about 250 million autos in the U.S, a country with a population of 300 million. Most Americans get their own personal transportation when they reach the age of 16 and pass a driver’s education course in high school.
Today, owning a personal automobile is not convenience but a necessity. Because of the way the built environment has been developed in the U.S., driving a car is mandatory. Try commuting to work in a city like Houston using public transportation and you will agree that a car is a required.
But thirsty cars need an ever-increasing amount of gasoline fuel. Americans burn something like 19 million barrels of oil every day. Unfortunately, the world supply of oil from which gasoline is refined is ever-diminishing. There is only a finite amount of oil underground and it is getting more difficult and expensive to find. Oil companies like Exxon and BP have to drill in deep water and other difficult places to find the oil.
Now tragedy has struck in the Gulf of Mexico and we can start to see the true cost of the ubiquitous automobile. And no doubt about it, that price is high. So far, the cost of the cleanup to British Petroleum exceeds 1.6 Billion U.S. dollars.
But the damage is far greater than that. The entire fishing industry in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida are shut down. There are fears that soiled beaches will ruin the tourist industry which employs hundreds of thousands of workers and is worth tens of billions of dollars.
The collateral damage extends to numerous small businesses like restaurants, machine shops and real estate agencies. See This New York Times article As businesses collapse, claimants still waiting for checks from BP
Don’t overlook the cost of obtaining oil from unstable parts of the world, like the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela. Wars have been fought over access to the world’s dwindling oil supplies. A big part of the reason for World War II was Japan’s desire to gain access to oil supplies, which it needed to run its huge military. Armies and air forces run on oil.
In the past 20 years the U.S. has been in two wars in wars in the Persian Gulf to ensure that we have access to the oil there. The cost of the Iraq war and occupation is estimated at about 2 trillion dollars and many thousands of American and countless innocent Iraqi lives.
Environmental damage, wars, death and destruction. Our “happy motoring” culture in America sure costs a lot to maintain. The question Americans need to answer is: “Is it worth it?”
