Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Cars. . . And the Trouble With Them

Cars.  Boy do we Americans love them! Personally, I'm not a big fan of driving. To me, being stuck in traffic is like taking crazy pills and parallel parking makes me break out in a sweat.  But on long stretches of road, say out in Eastern Oregon - with the wind in my hair and my favorite tunes on the radio - well there is definitely an appeal.  But like many things that give us that warm fuzzy feeling, driving isn't very good for us or our planet.  And though folks have been telling us for decades that our addiction to cars and oil would be our undoing, the love affair was too strong.  Now we are starting to get it, and because of this, an entire industry is hurting big time.  In July 2008, Automotive News reported that sales for the first half of 2008 were the worst the U.S. auto industry had seen since 1993.  Sales totaled $7,414,295, down 10.1 percent from 2007.* So, the big tree (Ford, GM and Chrysler) went to Washington asking for help back in November and again on Tuesday, this time offering to sell their corporate jets and take a pay cut from what was millions in 2007 to just $1 a year, if Congress was willing to help out.  How will this all play out?  Will U.S. automakers start to make the fuel-efficient cars we need?  What happens when the oil runs out?  We've got years of these issues ahead of us, and I can't help but wonder what kind of vehicles our children's children will be driving someday.

But in the meantime, there is a lot of great work out there on the auto industry, the environment, and the future of cars.  One excellent example is the book Zoom, written by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.  Carson and Vaitheeswaran are both correspondents for The Economist, and they have written this surprisingly enjoyable and ultimately timely book arguing for U.S. energy independence by weaning cars off oil.  Their book is far from the doom and gloom outlook we've been hearing about from the auto industry, instead it's very optimistic about the future of cars.  In fact, they contend it isn't the cars at all that are at fault, it's the oil that's the problem and more drilling is not the answer.  And with the great minds out there in the world, they believe there are many viable, earth-friendly solutions available for our crazy, car-loving culture!

In Auto Mania, Tom McCarthy discusses the history of the automotive industry and specifically the connection between the car, the consumer, and the environment.  McCarthy's book is well researched (with 65 pages of notes!) and looks deep into the seedy underbelly of the auto industry.  He goes into detail about the automobiles immense draw on the earth's natural resources, including the ill-effects on air and water, not to mention the junkyards.  He also talks about the reasons behind the industry's resistance to change and basically about what got us into this mess!  Plus, it's got some fun pictures and photographs.

And there is a fascinating (and honestly, pretty upsetting) documentary titled Who Killed the Electric Car? written and directed by Chris Paine.  To get you interested, here is the tagline from the film, "In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline...........Ten years later, these cars were destroyed."  Interested?  Definitely check it out.  Though prepare yourself, I found myself getting pretty angry!

*Article found in the library's ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry database available from anywhere with a valid Multnomah County Library card.  You can read the entire article by clicking here - from outside the library, you will need your library card number and PIN.