Sustainable Transportation Blog

Resiliency is being increasingly recognized as an essential factor for a sustainable society. In a paper on Resilience and Sustainable Development delivered to the World Summit on Sustainability in 2002, the authors state that

"Resilience, for social-ecological systems, is related to (a) the magnitude of shock that the system can absorb and remain within a given state, (b) the degree to which the system is capable of self- organization, and (c) the degree to which the system can build capacity for learning and adaptation."

Based on these criteria, it is apparent that our present auto-industrial society meets none of them. It has never been capable of self-organization but has always been driven by powerful elites, as well as being deeply dependent on government subsidies to remain viable. There has also been very little capacity shown by the domestic industry to learn and adapt, in contrast to some off-shore manufacturers. Until recently, the domestic industry -- while selling some smaller vehicles manufactured by off-shore OEMs -- has focused on building gas-guzzling behemoths against all evidence that this was folly, and many of us have been only too willing to buy them. Add to this the massive inheritance of built and legal infrastructure, and it becomes obvious that the auto-industrial society as a whole is very resistant to adaptation.

But clearly, it is concerning the first criteria that our present arrangements are revealed to be hopelessly ill-suited for long-term viablity. As we have seen, the auto-industrial society has been quite incapable of absorbing major shocks, be they from soaring energy prices or the subsequent economic meltdown, and neither government bailouts nor the "stimulus" packages aimed at resuming consumer "confidence" will effect the needed changes. Indeed, as many critics are pointing out, these interventions are little more than misguided -- and probably futile -- efforts to return to "normal."

But such a state may no longer even be possible. Sara Robinson, at the Campaign for America's Future, says that we can't "go back to normal."

"There is no going back. That future was foreclosed on right along with the houses and the banks. You can only believe in the Happy Face story if you willfully ignore the deep structural changes afoot in the way the world works -- the changes that have closed and locked the door back to "normal" behind us for good. There's a small number of overwhelmingly strong global trends that explain why all this stuff is breaking, and why just fixing it isn't even on the table. [W]hen we take full stock of the size and quantity of major moving parts in the machinery that's propelling us on toward the next future, it becomes very, very clear that going back to the 20th Century isn't anywhere among our current options."

Yet this appears to be the philosophy underlying the frantic efforts of the industrialized nations to re-start their economies: to go back to "normal." This is particularly true of the auto industry bailouts,which have effectively made the American and Canadian governments auto industries unto themselves. The two nations' governments have, despite some public opposition, used public money to provide short-term loans to General Motors and Chrysler, and taken the extraordinary steps of actually backing the auto makers' warranties, and in the case of President Obama, ordering GM's former CEO,  Rick Wagoner, out the door.

Konrad Yakabusk, writing in the Globe and Mail, believes that the bailouts undertaken by both the American and Canadian governments are weakened by a "policy paradox" -- that, despite these governments' professed interests in developing a "green" North American auto industry, it may not be possible to both save the industry and have green cars. The Japanese and Chinese auto makers are so far ahead of the "Big Three" that the North American industry will not be able to make electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars in the numbers needed and at a viable price point. The much lauded Chevy Volt, for instance, will be twice the cost of its Chinese counterpart. Yakabusk notes,

"The auto bailouts, for all their expediency, represent a case of government policy at odds with itself... Any move by Americans to smaller cars, much less electric ones, would leave the Canadian industry in straits even more dire than where it is
now."

Emma Rothschild argues in the New York Review of Books that the bailouts can only be justifiable if they were oriented to not boosting a doomed technological model, but rather to ending the "auto-industrial" society altogether:

"An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit, would be different. It would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of 'automotive' freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time."

Such an investment in public transit would be an excellent start. But the auto bailouts are part of a larger problem. Like the Wall Street investment firms whose "toxic assets" interconnected with every aspect of the economy, so too is our auto-centric transportation system a "toxic" force that has distorted the economy, our built environment, and our social relations. We should simply never have become so dependent on a single industry or a single mode of transport.

The reality is that we live in “Motordom”, a car-dominated culture that will take many decades to change significantly, as we build out our public transit and redesign our cities for Active Transportation. While we are doing that, we face an ongoing major cultural shift away from personal vehicles, balanced with the very real need for these vehicles for the many areas that continue to be poorly serviced by other modes. Cars are likely to be here for the foreseeable future and therefore it becomes even more important that they are clean, efficient and appropriate -- even as we pursue policies to minimize and price their use. 

Therefore, instead of the bailout models currently being pursued, what is needed is an outcomes-based approach that would offer support to those businesses who could produce more sustainable personal transportation, rather than simply throwing more money at existing manufacturers who may or may not be able to produce the vehicles of the future. A per-unit subsidy aimed at innovative and smaller-scale manufacturers, or other capable companies such as Magna International, plus subsidies aimed at consumers to purchase the vehicles these companies would produce, would work to both meet "green" vehicle targets and to diversify the economy.

Whatever economy emerges from the present crisis must be one that is far more diverse, and made up of a varied range of entities filling a wider range of functions and connected to each other by more than just ribbons of asphalt. It may not produce profits for a select few, but overall such an economy be a lot healthier and resilient, and would also help to achieve a far more robust and livable transportation system.

Michael Dudley and Arne Elias