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Forwarded by Mike Vandeman:

Published Saturday, January 18, 2003, in The Guardian (London)

Car wars

The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin - and Iraq will
supply its next fix

Ian Roberts

War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by
North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was
decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not
military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of
weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor
because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of
this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.

The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic
infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is
pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of
precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every
year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.

The first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line in 1908 and was a
miracle of mass production. In the first decade of that century, car
registrations in the US increased from 8,000 to almost 500,000. Within
the cities, buses replaced trams, and then cars replaced buses. In
1932, General Motors bought up America's tramways and then closed them
down. But it was the urban planners who really got America hooked. Car
ownership offered the possibility of escape from dirty, crowded cities
to leafy garden suburbs and the urban planners provided the escape
routes.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, America "road built" itself into a
nation of home-owning suburbanites. In the words of Joni Mitchell:
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Cities such as Los
Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix were moulded by the private passenger car
into vast urban sprawls which are so widely spread that it is now
almost impossible to service them economically with public transport.

As the cities sprawled, the motor manufacturing industry consolidated.
Car-making is now the main industrial employer in the world, dominated
by five major groups of which General Motors is the largest. The
livelihood and landscape of North Americans were forged by car-makers.

Motor vehicles are responsible for about one-third of global oil use,
but for nearly two-thirds of US oil use. In the rest of the world,
heating and power generation account for most oil use. The increase in
oil prices during the 1973 Arab oil embargo encouraged the
substitution of other fuels in heating and power generation, but in
the transport sector there is little scope for oil substitution in the
short term.

Due to artificially low oil and gasoline prices that did not reflect
the true social costs of production and use, there was little
incentive to seek alternative energy sources. The Arab oil embargo
temporarily stimulated greater fuel efficiency with the introduction
of gasoline consumption standards, but the increasing popularity of
gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles over the past decade has
substantially reduced the average fuel efficiency of the US car fleet.

The US transportation sector is almost totally dependent on oil, and
supplies are running out. It is estimated that the total amount of oil
that can be pumped out of the earth is about 2,000 billion barrels and
that world oil production will peak in the next 10 to 15 years. Since
even modest reductions in oil production can result in major hikes in
the cost of gasoline, the US administration is well aware of the
importance of ensuring oil supplies. Every major oil price shock of
the past 30 years was followed by a US recession and every major
recession was preceded by an oil price shock.

In 1997, the Carnegie commission on preventing deadly conflict
identified factors that put states at risk. They include rapid
population changes that outstrip the capacity of the state to provide
essential services, and the control of valuable natural resources by a
single group. Both factors are key motivators in the war with
Iraq. Sprawling suburban America needs oil and Saddam Hussein is
sitting on it.

The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin and Iraq has 112
billion barrels, the largest supply in the world outside Saudi
Arabia. Even before the first shot has been fired, there have been
discussions about how Iraq's oil reserves will be carved up. All five
permanent members of the UN security council have international oil
companies that have an interest in "regime change" in Baghdad.

Car dependence is a global public health issue of which gasoline wars
are only one facet. Every day about 3,000 people die and 30,000 people
are seriously injured on the world's roads in traffic crashes. More
than 85% of the deaths are in low and middle-income countries, with
pedestrians, cyclists and bus passengers bearing most of the
burden. Most of the victims will never own a car, and many are
children.

By 2020, road crashes will have moved from ninth to third place in the
world ranking of the burden of disease and injury, and will be in
second place in developing countries. That we accept this carnage as
the collateral damage in a car-based transport system indicates the
strength and pervasiveness of car dependency. Moreover, car travel has
reduced our walking. One-quarter of all car journeys are less than two
miles. A 3km walk uses up about half the energy in a small bar of
chocolate. The same distance by car expends 10 times as much energy
but from the wrong source. We can make chocolate but oil reserves are
finite.

Car use and the corresponding decline in physical activity is an
important cause of the obesity epidemic in the US and UK, and physical
inactivity increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes,
osteoporosis and hypertension. Car-based shopping has turned many
small towns into ghost towns and has severed the supportive social
networks of community interaction.

The first gasoline war was waged in Kuwait and the second will be
waged in Iraq. The world must act now to prevent the third. On the
brink of war with Iraq, Tony Blair is playing the role of tough world
leader. But transport, not Iraq, is the truly tough issue. His deputy,
John Prescott, tried and failed to deal with car dependency and now
the government is in policy retreat. Ken Livingstone, who does not own
a car and has leadership qualities that Blair lacks, may with
congestion charging succeed where others have failed, but his enemies
have the support of powerful lobby groups.

Those who oppose war in Iraq must work together to prevent the
conflicts that will follow if we fail to tackle car dependency. We
must reclaim the streets, promote walking and cycling, strengthen
public transport, oppose new road construction and pay the full social
cost of car use. We must argue for land-use policies that reduce the
need for car travel. We need "urban villages" clustered around public
transport nodes, not sprawling car-dependent conurbations. We can all
play our part and we must act now.

Ian Roberts is professor of public health at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine



   M  A  R  T  I  N     K  R  I  E  G :  "Awake Again" Author
 Bent Since '83, Car Free Since '89, Attacking with Love                
          Coma, Paralysis, Clinical Death Survivor  
      '79  & '86  TransAm Vet - Invites you to:
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