| Smartest Cars are Pretty Stupid |
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| Written by Joshua Liberles | |||||||||||
| Tuesday, 08 January 2008 | |||||||||||
 In a recent article, Eco Chick nailed one of the most common pitfalls of “environmentalists” – the practice of buying a greener product, assuming the purchase will help to solve global warming and our environmental predicament.The debate is over how green a Smart Car really is once manufacturing and materials become part of the equation. It’s similar to the recent explosion of chatter over whether a Prius is actually more environmental than a Hummer when intensive elements like the hybrid’s batteries are included.
From Eco Chick:
Buying a Smart Car is kind of like putting a band aid on a giant gash- technically, at a minuscule level, it’s helping- but if your concern stops at your purchase, you’re still going to bleed to death… and worse, you may begin to confuse consumerism with activism. Often, trying to change the world by buying things isn’t really creating the change that companies convince us it is. Of course if you’re going to drive a car, buy the most fuel efficient and least polluting model you can find, and cram as many passengers in there as possible. The end message is largely a redux of Carectomy’s central message: The greenest car is the one you don’t drive. Or better yet, the one you don’t buy.
Photo via flickr by Brad Pennock & s,B - Michael Brenton
Comments (5)
Lloyd Alter
said:
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well they have been running around Toronto for a quite a few years now and even though I am on a bike most of the time, they still make me smile. The roads would be a lot less crowded, safer for us on bikes (they are so narrow) and if people are going to drive, this is a lot better. |
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The thing I like about the Canadian models is that there's a diesel option. If these little suckers could run on biodiesel here in the states, I'd feel a lot better about them... |
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i was biking around one day last summer, and was relaxing with my hands off the handlebars as I approached a red light when I received a few honks behind me. Back then I was still in the habit of responding to ornery motorists, and to my surprise it was a driver of a Prius yelling at me to "get off the road!" I think South Park had it right: Prius drivers don't create smog, they create smug! |
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I’d like to challenge a couple of assumptions that run through this blog and many of the comments that followed it. The first is that a society that depended exclusively on a public transportation system would be a fundamentally more equitable one. Putting aside the likelihood of getting rid of all the personal cars (even the workers paradise couldn’t manage it) we are faced with a system that would be convenient for some and less so --how much less would depend on the efficiency and cost of the system--for others. Those with the most money would have the ability to buy a home, and arrange a job, so that they would spend a minimum amount of time in the system. Let’s be realistic, time driving or riding is a tax. And it is a tax levied increasingly on people who have little choice as to where they live and where they work. This is true today (note the impossibility of securing affordable housing anywhere near an urban center) and would still hold, to a greater or lesser extent, were a universal public transportation system in place. The second assumption is that high-mileage cars would help solve our transportation problem. Even if all cars switched overnight to electricity we would see a substantial long term impact on our pollution problem, but our transportation problems would remain essentially unchanged. The congestion, the unequal commute “tax” described above, the danger, and enormous waste of space created by our present transportation infrastructure would continue. This was not always the case. The fifties, sixties, and seventies, saw fewer cars on an essentially complete national highway system. Since almost everyone who needed a car could get one, and get around the city fairly quickly, it was a golden age. We all miss it. Now we buy a Prius and send the message that there is a serious problem with the emissions the average car creates. That is a logical position. Others buy a Ford F-150 to send the message that public transportation and smaller cars will not solve the inequities growing in our car driven society. That point of view, often voiced by people that lack the resources to compete in either the real or ideal worlds described above, may be somewhat nihilistic, but it is not illogical. We need another paradigm. What is it? Comments, especially skeptical ones, encouraged. Please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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The argument isn't entirely fleshed out, but I think the basic principle to point out is that 60% of the emissions associated with a car stem from its manufacture, and not actually driving it around. So for people who are driving relatively efficient vehicles, it'd be much nicer for the environment to drive them until they fall apart then to 'upgrade' to something that's only marginally more efficient, since this will entail lots of nasty manufacturing. I'm glad to say this principle hasn't stopped me from buying bikes - seven is a nice round number, don't you think? And though I've been car-free for almost ten years, I would consider an all-electric or plugin hybrid, or possibly even a little diesel... I certainly agree that more tiny cars on the streets would make riding feel safer. |
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Cars are the most inconvenient convenience we have. We're required to have them, but increasingly, we dislike them. At Carectomy, we're trying to figure out how to extract cars from people.
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