Sublime. Now cars are responsible for racism and sexism. Don't Americans know how to take responsibility for anything? 'It was the car that made me do it'. This is, if you don't mind me saying, what Marx meant when he coined the phrase 'commodity fetishism' which I realise that most people confuse with a religious opposition to consumer goods. Yes, cars are the root of all evil, if you abolish the car then human civilisation will flourish.
Doug follows this deranged fantasy with his articles that attribute all human depravity to the car (and here was me foolishly thinking that it was capitalism).
The accountancy here seems to be entirely imaginary. Certainly in Britain car users make a massive payment out to the rest of the country in road and petrol taxes, many times higher than what is spent on roads.
The interminable 'impact' assessments end up attributing all social costs irrespective of whether they really are due to the car or not. I would be fascinated to know how the researchers put a cash value on 'noise pollution'. This is a famously bullshit methodology - I'm surprised that you should give it space in LBO.
Furthermore, many more people are killed in the home, than on the roads. Presumably that does not mean that homes should be abolished.
Most important, it fails to understand that cars are not the cause of, but part and parcel with, the growth of cities and suburbs, and the increased living standards of working people. Doubtless to some embittered green Nazi the fact that so much production is dedicated to working people's lives (as opposed presumably to enriching this petit bourgeois with some foul 19c. mine) is the same thing as "pollution".
The researchers state that roads take up more room than houses. Interesting. In Britain roads take up 0.5 per cent of land. Hardly a great imposition upon this green and pleasant land. But more to the point - how in God's name are you supposed to get houses without roads? People have to go to and from home, they need roads. The roads are financed out of the road taxes paid by drivers. Cyclists don't pay road tax in Britain (I'm glad to say) and I'm sure do not in Germany either. Homes do not get built unless they have road access, any mutt could work that out.
As to Bullshit and Hogwash consultancies "their back-of-the-envelope calculations are" not worth the envelope they are written on.
In message <v0421010bb40eb5c53a98@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>[from Left Business Observer #60, September 1993]
>
>KILLER CARS. Cars do immense damage before they even reach the
>showroom, according to research by a German group reported in the
>Guardian (London), and then they move on for a lifetime of wilding.
>Heidelberg's Umwelt- und Prognose-Institut estimates that each car
>made in Germany, where standards are among the strictest in the
>world, produces 25,000 kilos (28 tons) of waste and pollutes 422
>million cubic meters (552 million cubic yards) of air just in
>manufacture. Add to that, in a 10-year life: 44.3 tonnes (47.7 tons)
>of carbon dioxide; 18,400 grams (40.6 pounds) of tire, road, and
>brake "abrasion products" (grit); and the pollution of 1.02 billion
>cubic meters (1.3 billion cubic yards) of air. Disposing of the
>clunker pollutes another 102 million cubic meters (133 million cubic
>yards) of air. From birth to death, a car pollutes 2.04 billion cubic
>meters (2.7 billion cubic yards) of air, puts out 59.7 tonnes (65.8
>tons) of carbon dioxide, and creates 26.5 tonnes (29.2 tons) of solid
>waste. Or, from another perspective, each car will kill three trees
>and sicken 10; every seventh car injures someone, every 100th
>handicaps someone, and 450th kills someone. One out of every 100
>people are killed in a road accident, and two out of three are hurt.
>
>Counting roads, garages, parking lots, and the rest, cars consume
>about 60% more of the German landscape than housing does. In its
>lifetime, the average car costs outsiders 6,000 DM ($3,752) a year in
>pollution, other physical damage, injury, and noise, after deducting
>vehicle and fuel taxes. This is nothing other than a vast subsidy,
>and one that is almost certainly larger in the U.S. because taxes are
>lower and cars less tightly regulated. In Germany, it is the money
>equivalent of a year's free pass on public transportation, a new bike
>every five years, and 15,000 km (9,321 miles) of first-class rail
>travel. But in standard ideology, cars are the self-reliant
>individualist's way to get around, and public transport is for
>dependent losers.
>
>As the Guardian's author, John Whitelegg, concludes "the car is thus
>revealed as an environmental, fiscal and social disaster that would
>not pass any value-for-money test." But cars are still at the heart
>of our economies, societies, and geographies. Nasty contradiction.
-- Jim heartfield