One of the fundamental causes that made this country great was its development of a mass transportation system. Yes, mass transportation:
Henry Ford put a whole nation on wheels, while the masses in the Old World were still herded into trains and other collective transportation -- the type contemporary reactionaries would like us to return to.
Few Americans have Katharine Graham's freedom of the press, because they don't own one; fewer still have Walter Cronkite's freedom of speech, because their speech is not heard by 50 million listeners; but their freedom to travel is guaranteed by their cars which take them where they want when they want.
And that is not all. In the Old World, raw materials had to be brought into the cities where the labor force was (even though in the early industrial revolution, the new cities grew where the coal was¾as in England's Black Country or the German Ruhr). But in North America, the cities grew where the resources were, because the labor force rolled in on wheels. First campers, then trailers, then Uranium City, Saskatchewan.
And still more: In the Old World, things got built because they were needed; and even today, in the Soviet Empire, they get built only when the need is so urgent that disaster threatens.(*) But the American mass transportation system opened a new concept in human development: to build not by need, but for opportunity. A road was built to nowhere to make it a road to somewhere. There are countless examples of US cities that boomed after a freeway connected them to a larger city; and to the contrary, there are also examples of regions whose development was stymied by environmentalists obstructing highway construction; economic growth was stifled, not by voluntary withdrawal of consumers' dollar support, but by coercive legislation.
America has now hesitated to continue along the route that made it great. Will it go back to collective transportation, and perhaps to total immobility? With oil prices soaring faster than gold, and pollution levels threatening to increase with the number of car owners in a growing population, there is no other way but to retreat from individual transportation, says conventional wisdom.
But conventional wisdom is conventional, not wise. Of course there is a way: The electric car powered by non-polluting, potentially abundant nuclear power. The trouble is not with the technology, but with the anti-technologists.
About half of the oil consumed by the US is imported; and about half of it is used for transportation. So the electric vehicle could mean energy independence, resource conservation (uranium and thorium are good for little else but fuel and breeding more fuel), and elimination of automobile emissions (even of CO2!).
Too good to be true?
In the short run, yes.
See "The Soviet Energy Policy" by Prof. L. Dienes, vol.1 of Soviet Economy in a Time of Change, Joint Economic Committee, US Congress, 10 Oct. 1979; US Govt. Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402.
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Vol. 7, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 7 Issue/No.: Vol. 7, No. 6 Date: February 01, 1980 03:08 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: Energy and Civilization
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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