When the price of a barrel of oil first reached $110, in early 2008, National Public Radio ran a news story in which a reporter spoke with a young woman who owned a Chevrolet Tahoe, which she said she used mainly to drive (alone) between home, work, and school. “I kind of regret getting me an SUV,” she said, and added that she hoped the price of gas wouldn’t rise above $3.50 because, if it did, “I’m just going to have to go on the bus, I think.” She laughed when she said that, as though it were an amusing absurdity, but she had pinpointed the dilemma. Moving her from a car to a bus would be a good outcome for the environment, not only because it would shrink her personal fuel consumption and reduce, by one car, the outward pressure that causes inefficient suburbs to metastasize, but also because it would help to supply the critical mass of users on which successful, cost-effective transit systems depend. By contrast, moving her from her current gas guzzler to a more sensible car would be a relative environmental loss, because her reduced fuel cost would merely relieve the economic discomfort that had caused her to think about public transit in the first place.
Making automobiles more fuel-efficient isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it won’t solve the world’s energy and environmental dilemmas. The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles to the gallon; it’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging. Most so-called environmental initiatives concerning automobiles are actually counterproductive, because their effect is to make driving less expensive (by reducing the need for fuel) and to make car travel more agreeable (by eliminating congestion). What we really need, from the point of both energy conservation and environmental protection, is to make driving costlier and less pleasant—the way it is in New York City, which is probably the only place in America where you are likely to hear someone say, “We’d better take the subway; we don’t have time for a cab.” And that’s as true for cars that are powered by recycled cooking oil as it is for cars that are powered by gasoline. (It’s also true for electric cars, which, in most parts of the United States, could more accurately be described as coal-burning cars.) In terms of the automobile’s true environmental impact, fuel gauges are less important than odometers. In the long run, miles matter more than miles per gallon. Increases in the efficiency of cars, if they are to be good for the environment, must be more than offset by cost increases, tax hikes, or policy measures that lead consumers to feel they have no choice but to find or create alternatives to solo automobile use.
