Kicking the Petroleum Habit: Ending Auto-dominationBy Jane Holtz Kay As the globe simmers and ecosystems succumb, more and more Americans unite in their disdain of the biggest of the big. Endorsing small-is beautiful and enough-is-enough, the green-minded set their sights on the heavies of environmental gluttony. SUVs are up for scorn, McMansions for maligning. Those who care about the last-chance landscape wring their hands at Big Macs and humongous Home Depot Expos. Americans are dismayed by the nation's behemoths of consumption. Large enough to be singled out by an orbiting satellite camera, the Hummer hugging two lanes and the Wal-Mart wrapped with parking lots are the usual suspects. And why shouldn't environmentally-minded consumers cast aspersions on the Big Box Store drawing 10,000 sprawl-breeding car trips a day, jamming first-growth-forest planks on its shelves and Amazon forest-razed cattle sitting as slabs of beef in superscale freezers. These spongers and soilers of land and water and energy are, indeed, our most destructive footprint. And, measuring and criticizing that massive imprint is, indeed, a first step to reducing it. A New Take on 'Small is Beautiful' And yet ... and yet ... for all the distaste these objects inspire in conservationists and careful consumers, there is a problem with focusing on the super bigand that is overlooking the fact that it is not simply these biggest consumers that are damaging the environment. It is not the biggest in the flood of products and byproducts that wreck havoc on our surroundings, not the oversized but the overdose of the little that, in the end, erodes the earth and pollutes the planet. Now, as the pace of ecological destruction seems to multiply and global warming threatens, it seems to me that it is time to dust off the old ŒSmall is Beautiful' ethos; that we should pause in our preoccupation with Big as Bad and recall Pogo's words of an older ethos: that Œwe have met the enemy and it is us.' ŒUs,' meaning the smaller practices that combined one by one, replicate the singularly more injurious habits of the nation. For all the deserved disdain for the looming intruders, the facts and figures tell us that it is not the SUV alone, not the mega-buildings swallowing land, but the everyday expansion of the small that is doing the most harm. It is the automobile times 220 million of them rolling across the land. It is the home heating and energy use everywhere. It is the 953,000 homes constructed last year, sprawling at the end of the highway rather than in the compact urban communities that are so much more energy-efficient and gentler to the land. One by one, as automobiles accumulate faster than drivers, it is that multitude that sends 30 percent of our CO2 emissions skyward accelerating global warming. It is the mid-sized cars that swallow most of the nation's 7.7 million barrels of gasoline a day, roughly a third more than two decades ago. It is the production of 16,000,000 vehicles a year that consumes yet another one-third of their energy and resources in production: the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Likewise, in our built environment, it is not simply the starter mansion but the sprawl bred by subdivision after subdivision of small single homes on the fringes. Unplanned and uncontrolled by our communities, their construction consumes another third of our energy, covers 62,000 acres of wetlands and destroys l.2 million acres of farmland a year, and now, consumes six times as much physical space per person as at the last census count. Certainly, there is no question that in our many small exertions we have become a deeper shade of green. We recycle more, we buy green, we turn out the lights and lower the thermostat.. In harmony with these sustainable gestures, many focus on our own small and singular decisions that sidetrack environmental efforts; they tally the cost of putting the pedal to the metal instead of public transportation; they work on the political scale that produces good land use and planning, and think about sustainable mobility. But we need to see that focusing on consumer excesses doesn't lead to neglecting everyday consumer expansion. Beyond Motown and MPG It is not just the ordinary Janes or Joes who need to keep an eye trained on the bigger picture. From his post along the Potomac, the Sierra Club's Dan Becker told Reuters that, ³the single biggest step to curbing global warming is making cars go further on a gallon of gas.² Becker, the head of the Club's global warming campaign, praised Ford Motor Company's announcement to cut gas consumption in new cars. ³Ford is a big part of the problem,² he noted. ³They're trying to become part of the solution, and they deserve credit for that,² he said barely a New York (or Detroit) minute before the company came out against better fuel efficiency for trucks. Becker's comments had some merit, but his focus was unfair to the organization which has focused on the real solution: controlling sprawl and creating better public transportation in local groups across the nation and looking at small, but cumulatively enriching acts of community. Suppose, instead of signing on for 40 or 60-mile per gallon Œclean cars' now making automakers' back order lists swell, drivers shed a car and join a car-sharing club, help create safe routes to school so kids can walk and parents can cut trips to school. Get bike paths, get political. Study the deeper problems of auto-dependency‹from the toxic chemicals to manufacture them, to the highways that hold them, to the runoff, the disruption of habitat, the erosion of urban spaces, and the harassed life of a car- based societyand it is clear that it will take more than good mileage to wean America from its oil-dependency. To do so there are many ways‹personal and political, local and nationalto shift a federal budget of $59.5 billion, which sends $31.6 billion to highways, $13 billion to aviation, a scant $6.6 billion for transit, and invisible sums for bike paths or walkable sidewalks. And the fight goes on to get Amtrak a mere $12 billion for 10 years. Criticism of the biggest should be accompanied by positive action for the small and incrementalfor transportation alternatives: for support for rail transport, for transit-oriented development, for good land use planning and zoning at home. Sweat the small stuff and you begin to see how 4 percent of the world's population can use up 24 percent of the world's energy and emit 25 percent of all greenhouse gases. For myself, I have begun to realize that it is time not just to be circumspect in my consumptionnot just to Œreuse, reduce, recycle' in my household habitat and work and play artifacts, but to consider one more word‹reject. ŒReject' not just in everyday taking, making, wasting of household goods but in the largest single energy-and resource consumers: the car and the spatial gluttony of car- based communities. For myself, I sold my car and reexamined the world I live in. Is that possible? ³We can see,² notes the Consumer's guide to Effective Environmental Choices, put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists, ³that individual consumer action works best when it does not require significant consumer sacrifice.² CFCs were quickly removed from suntan oil, but CFC-carrying air conditioners in cars and trucks linger on, they observed. And they are right. Kicking the car addiction is not easy. But car-dependency is not only an addiction. It is also the result of economic and political decisions to construct a society dependent on a ton or two of wheel and steel to do the most mundane daily chores and chauffeuring. By working to stop planning practices that permit sprawl, by fighting to get more than a paltry share of our local budgets for public transportation; by advocating good zoning, and moving developers to revive Main Street, we can traverse with a far smaller, human footprint. Walking the Talk Consider, for one statistic, that a third of the average American's mileage is spent on shopping, another third on chauffeuring (with only 8 percent for trips and 22 for the commute)‹and try for new choices to shrink hours behind the wheel. Bunch your trips. Do the math and calculate the cost of your first (or second) car at $8000 a year, according to Runzheimer International. That money might buy you cabs, senior citizen vans and other para- transit. No way to get groceries? Deliveries come easily in a denser place. Push for multi-family compact neighborhoods, for transit-oriented communities Live on the fringes? Then package your errands. Share services. Make a personal commitment to reduce your 12,000 miles a year (that's a pound of carbon dioxide heaved for each mile you drive). Pick your percentage of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases. Analyze your lifestyle and do as Cities for Climate Protection does in communities from New York to Los Angeles: weatherize, support renewable energy, buy green on the small scale that becomes big in the best way. Don't buy at all. Expand your green values to larger planning causes. Push for alternate transportation. Work towards saving and filling in town and city centers and x-ing out sprawl. Push zoning boards and master plans to follow these principles. Get busy with your community. Get political. Do your representatives take campaign funds from developers to build bad buildings in bad places? Vote them out. Fight highway departments stuck in the Dark Ages. Go to meetings of Metropolitan Planning Councils (MPOs) or Councils of Government (COGs) who the make decisions. Fight more widenings and extensions, too. ŒIf you build them they (more cars) will come' and with them a rush hour of even longer than the six hours a day recently reported by the Texas Transportation Institute. Let Œno more roads to nowhere' and Œlots more help to Main Street' be your guide. ŒYes' to infill building and reclaimed brownfields in older neighborhoods. ŒNo' to subdivisions in exurban greenfields. In short: it is time to battle for a positive agenda to begin the process of weaning ourselves from the petroleum habit. Sure, we need to fight not-so-green gigantism and super-scale consumption. But, an army of one charging in the right direction, supporting personal and political environmental advances, is truly the most beautiful of all. This essay appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of Green Guide.
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