Op-Ed Contributors

End of automotive mobility not far off

By Brian Ladd (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-29 07:50

Those days may be over. The global economic crash came on the heels of the 2008 oil-price explosion, which proved to be short-lived but is likely to return as global oil supplies are stretched to the limit. New technologies like lithium batteries and hydrogen cars promise to free us from dependence on fossil fuels without separating us from our cars, but even the most remarkable breakthroughs cannot replace our automotive fleet anytime soon. By the time something comes along to supplant the cars that we know - and something will, eventually - we may have had the chance to rethink our dependence on them.

Few of us will voluntarily renounce our modern mobility. Yet the end of cheap oil - along with the recession - invites us to escape the burden of car loans, sell the second car, drive less, car-share, choose smaller vehicles, mass transit, bicycles or our feet, or move to walkable, transit-linked neighborhoods.

Economists, who blithely assume that pre-2008 automobile sales are "normal", because Americans "need" their cars, misunderstand the nature of the automobile market. Enormous cars, long commutes and vast parking lots do have their advantages, but we could manage to live without them.

And yet other countries' growing middle classes want to emulate the American dream - to be able to drive to the country and seal themselves off from city streets, just like Westerners. Most governments, too, are eagerly building highways and promoting domestic car industries.

Still, if trend-setting Westerners are increasingly bicycling, walking, and riding trains, perhaps wealthy Asians will follow suit, and perhaps their governments will begin to doubt that cars are the way of the future. It is difficult to imagine a world in which cars, and driving, are out of fashion. But it is bound to happen someday, and perhaps that day is not far off.

The author is writer of Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age, and was a visiting professor of urban studies at the University of Oregon in 2009.

Project Syndicate.

(China Daily 07/29/2010 page9)