Let me give the short version first: I am for the bailout of the automobile industry using tax dollars. And I am for an auto czar and a lot of oversight. We (all countries) should be producing highly efficient vehicles and at the same time pumping sums into innovative transportation, including shipping on rivers, modular trains, electric buses and bicycle paths. And the taxpayer should be invited to contribute for a simple reason: taxpayers bought the cars, encouraging the industry to build more and more of those gas-guzzlers. Had the user said no, the industry would have had to change its ways. And unless we feel something in our pocket, we are not going to react. That is the way most people seem to tick, alas. So the free market neo-liberal approach doesn’t work in the long run, because the various industries ultimately bump into each other like whales in a small pond... You need government pressure, and that pressure must be put on the auto industry and the consumer equally. And incentives are needed for scientists, researchers, inventors…

Men at work. Really.

As the world turns, the financial crisis grinds on. The figures bandied about in particular in the USA – everything in the USA has to be bigger and more spectacular than elsewhere, the country will not stand for less – are especially attractive to the media and to the couch potato, or whatever the news-gobbler is called today. It's dramatic stuff, the thought of a trillion dollars being thrown at investment bankers without oversight is really astounding. We watch it as we would an entertaining show, it affects us only tangentially, like the reports of the global climate changing anthropogenically or of a few more species biting the dust because of our ridiculous profit-driven system. “We.” That is, the killer gene for much of life on this planet. Anyway, the latest objects of our collective loathing are the CEOs of the “Big 3” from the auto industry. They are down in Washington lobbying for funding to pay their way out of their own mess. And they are feeling some heat, but nowhere near the heat of the people losing their jobs and retirements funds.

Take no prisoners
Let us stick to the car problem. The air is thick with pointed fingers. And yes, the car manufacturers are genuinely responsible for simply ignoring the oil shocks of the 1970s and producing automobiles with very little consideration for the environment or for Realpolitik for that matter. Any request to improve automobiles in some way that would make these tools less dangerous to the drivers or the pedestrians, consume less of a highly poisonous substance has met with prima-donna-like drama, threats of redundancies, of shutting down factories, drastic scenarios indeed, if Wagner had been alive, he would have had material. In the early 70s, Jacques Chaban-Delmas tried to get the French industry to make seatbelts compulsory, you would have thought he had asked them to grind up their CEOs and turn them into pâté. Seatbelts came, the auto industry survived... etc., etc...

CEOs of CO2
In July this year, Daimler and the UN held an environmental forum in Magdeburg where numerous wheels spoke, pun intended, including Mr. Ashok Khosla of the Club of Rome, who was perhaps the only one there who took a long-term and social view of the energy crisis. There were several vocal critics of the auto industry, like Jos Dings, director of the European Foundation for Traffic and Environment, who rightly pointed out that the industry has been merely paying lip service to innovation… Then there was the usual pack of dittoheads and industry yesmen, like Ulrich Karl Becker from the ADAC, Germany’s powerful automobile club. This organization has opposed reforms, speed limits, higher taxation on automobiles, in short anything that would in some way get the Germans to rethink their imbecilic love affair with gasoline. The propaganda arm of the industry is the ADAC’s monthly magazine, which is sent to all purchasers of towing insurance. It continuously rants against any effort to cut back driving. When oil stood at around $145/barrel, it was promoting three-day driving trips and big station wagons with far too powerful engines. And the editor, Michael Ramstetter, was coming out with imbecilities suggesting that the high price of oil was not causing people to switch to public transport or carpool. We can wonder out loud what planet these people live on: I read this bilge on the same days that Reuters was reporting on how Americans were switching to other modes of transportation. And a few weeks earlier, I picked up a report on the radio stating that in 2007, already, the use of cars had dropped 7 percent owing to high prices.
In the latest edition, Mr. Ramstetter writes (using the vague German form “Nun heisst es” “Now the idea is to get customers back to the dealerships.” That was an unwitting confession. And alas, the price of oil is way down again, so the automobile fetichism may proceed as usual.


It’s the addiction
But let us not kid ourselves, the automobile industry, with the Big 3 in the lead, are not the only ones at fault: People bought those cars with eyes wide open. And while oil was cheap and jobs apparently plentiful, no one was complaining. I have had several friends who drove inappropriate vehicles for their daily commute (in a city with excellent public transportation), and both explained in detail how a vermillion Alpha Romeo or one of those GI-Joe make-believe heaps was “necessary” to cross town. “Cheaper” was the explanation given by the AR driver, forgetting the huge price tag to buy the thing and repair it. (His transmission froze up one night well after the end of the warrantee).

Exhaust-pipe fetichism
In fact anyone who did suggest that SUVs and trucks were perhaps not the car of choice on a planet with dwindling resources was checked off as either a tree-hugger or a spoil-joy, a parade-pisser. Gas is cheap, burn it. And it’s ours (meaning Western)… Or is it? That is where America has really slacked off. Here is a conversation I had at a nursing facility in Western Massachusetts in January 2003, when the Busharatchiks were beating the drum for the illegal war in Iraq. The setting was as follows: I was having a smoke in the parking lot, and there was a Buick sedan with its engine running. The weather was relatively warm. 10 minutes later, the car is still running and no one was around. I could have taken it for a joy ride, easily. I went in and asked around if someone had left their car running in the lot. A young nurse came over and said, yes, it was hers:
“You might want to switch it off, idling is bad for the engine,” I said.
“I don’t care, I like to get into a warm car.”
“Ok, I understand, but it’s really bad for the environment.”
“I don’t care,” she answered. (And I knew she just wanted to tell me to mind my own business).
“Well, it’s a waste of oil, and that is after all what we are soon going to be killing thousands of people for.”
“…”
Fill in the blanks. Yes, it was nosey of me, but it really shows the attitude well.

Western supremacy
Our Western society never thought that those funny communists over in China or those cute Indians would ever amount to much on the economic scale, and if they did, they would just continue to use bicycles or mangy old buffalo to move around. They wouldn’t dare claim some oil. Not to speak of all those other people on the planet… The narcissism and the related selfishness won out over any logic. Hence, one can speak of a kind of international pathology here. Driving has become like smoking a cigarette or taking drugs. It has become pathological.

Step one
I am not against the automobile. Very useful tool to get around with kids and luggage, etc… But do they have to go 230 km/h? Do they have to have 300 hp under the bonnet? Do they have to be sold as a penis extension? No.

But it behooves individuals to make better choices, to be reasonable, to keep in mind what automobiles really cost. If that were the case, the industry would have never continued building the huge gas-guzzlers that it can’t sell anymore. In fact, within two or three years, automakers would have probably come up with some very nice designs for high-economy, low carbon-footprint vehicles. Being conscious is crucial. It’s crucial to the environment, social and physical. It’s crucial to democracy.

The first step towards totalitarianism is not a concentration camp. It’s hampering critical thought. And if that is not possible, a diet of dumber-than-rocks television programs will do the trick after a while.

---- More about the addiction and the consequences coming up soon----