Disconnect

The Mitsubishi Stubby..no, no, I'm kidding, the Mitsubishi i MiEV. Tee hee...

In surprising news out of the White House, The Washington Post reports today that President Obama targeted $2.4 billion for electric car investments in the form of domestic battery manufacturing. Though the article notes that electric car and battery production currently exceeds consumer demand, and will for the next several years, industry insiders believe future growth will eventually meet demand, putting the U.S. in a good position to compete for a share of the electric car market going forward.

Businessman and former Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate Terry McCauliffe believes the same thing, hitching his fortune to the MyCar brand in a bid to enter the market and, if possible, bring jobs to Virginia, or another more business-friendly state if he meets opposition here.

But hidden problems shadow both plans.

On the face of it, a fleet of electric cars may seem greener than standard cars, which emit more pollution. However, coal, the dirtiest source of energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, makes up roughly half of all U.S. electricity consumption. It stands to reason then that the electric car hides a dirty secret behind the scenes. In the end, a fleet of coal-fueled electric cars and a fleet of petroleum-fueled combustion engines may shake out roughly the same for their essential dependency on fossil fuel use.

The bigger problem, however, is the myriad other infrastructural pieces undergirding the individual auto paradigm and its unsustainability across several fronts. For too long this blind spot has kept both the government and Americans in general from addressing broader elements in resource use and depletion while perpetuating the illusion that personal cars should remain our central transportation fixture.

Too often an analysis of automobile fuel use remains solely focused on the end user, the driver. When the car is driven, it uses (depletes) fossil fuels and emits troubling pollution (creating a host of externalized costs).

But we have to remember how resource-intensive car manufacturing is in the first place. Car making requires fuel to fashion its parts from raw materials–often petroleum in the form of plastics–and in fuel used to run the plant. Finished cars are shipped, often from across the globe, finally to end up trucked to a final destination where it sits on paved lots or under 24-hour a day spotlights in the showroom. All of this uses fossil fuels, and plenty of it.

And that’s just production. Paving and maintaining the miles of byways, roads, and interstates that make up the lion’s share of the U.S. transportation network eats up enormous resources, relies heavily on petroleum-based products, commandeers land, and, as impervious surface, creates compound pollution conditions for waterways and land in concentrated runoff.

In the face of finite resources, this simply isn’t a workable long term model.

Now, some may maintain that government investment in electric cars serves multiple fronts, including the transition model. Here, they might argue, a _slightly_ cleaner end-use product helps the massive scale auto industry lick some of its wounds, giving auto workers continued work, bringing others back onto the job, while manufacturing a more palatable product for a consumer base increasingly demanding green, more or less green, (or the appearance of green) solutions.

Supporters may also argue that investing in electric cars merely diversifies broader transportation infrastructure strategy—that electric cars do not have to be an either/or as _against_ investment in rail. The case may have some merit when placed in this political and economic context. Such a plan may offer a realistic and temporary measure, though it does so in the face of a longer term and more intractable predicament.

The case has less merit, however, when analyzed within the broader context of resource use and depletion and issues of sustainability. I’m not talking about sustainability as green jargon. This is a business and national security issue as much if not more than consumer demands within changing cultural trends.

To shift in response to resource depletion, to build out vast new infrastructure, calls for decades of planning, manufacture, and deployment, all of which is dependent for its success on the use of existing _nonrenewable_ fossil fuels to supply the needed resources and energy for development. By decades we might actually mean a quarter to a half century. With that in mind, any temporary effort that eats up money, time, attention, and nonrenewable supply becomes a diversion with a measurably negative impact on the development of the new paradigm.

Anyway we cut it, whatever high ride Americans enjoyed with the auto industry, the personal car has a dim future. Whether the impact of this hits in five years or forty-five years, shifting is not something we can wait to do. In an economic crunch, when state and federal revenue, along with private investment, needs to be targeted for the greatest gains, the new model of thinking must include long-term strategy with conservation as its central feature. Conservation, as regards transportation, naturally suggests a shift to rail for both cargo and passengers. Personal autos out, mass transit in.

The cult film Who Killed The Electric Car may arouse sympathy for a cleaner end-burning solution for cars, but it still falls within the road-tripping, wind-in-my-hair, check-my-own-ride auto culture, with all its attendant costs and burdens for society.

At this point, when tight dollars are being dispensed for new transportation projects, investment in rail should be our primary target.

But its just a few bucks..

We in America tend to reference gigantic sums of money like its nothing–”…oh, $2.4 billion here, a couple, three trillion bucks there.” Taking this a step further, if we pit a coupla’ billion against other federal allocations in a hyper-ballooned federal budget, yeah, it doesn’t seem like much to throw a bone to battery makers. In that light, my picking on the electric car looks kind of petty. Besides, batter R & D may lead to other applications for clean energy, so it may be worth it beyond the electric car.

Alth0ugh I still believe that the larger context of automobile production and the attendant infrastructure to support it is not only unsustainable, but actually dying before our eyes, still, worse culprits exist than the electric car with its paltry $2.4 billion in federal backing.

Hell, the military industrial complex, with its focus on excessive centralized security and oil wars, most of which are using up nearly the same amount of fuel to secure access to new oil fields than they will win if those oil fields are secured, are getting far more in federal backing than an electric car or battery factory could hope for in its wildest, most surreal dreams. And, outrageous subsidies to oil, coal, and nuclear power in the United States, from which we all benefit, prop up an illusory economy built on essentially the same house of cards that recently brought down the Wall Street double-dealers. To this, $2.4 billion is like a millionaire flipping a quarter at a panhandler. Its nothing!

For that, forgive me electric car market segment; I don’t mean to be making you the boogey-man here. Far more egregious instances of poor planning, waste, expediency, and industry coddling hold our nation hostage, standing to blight America’s long term arc of success. I hardly think $2.4 billion for you will bring down the Republic.

Nonetheless, there are times when a meandering form of political will and viability allow for a more casual, even touchy-feely fvision, decision making, and action. But, if as many analysts claim, we’re at peak oil now, or roughly  will be very soon, the down side of the slope, even if it gives us say, 30 years that look much like the last 30 years, when seen through the lens of greater global competition, rising prices, and limited access, no longer allows for such a laissez faire mood. In that case, true, we’re on a war footing, but not necessarily one where our first battle plan is balls out, guns-a-blazing.

True tacticians evaluate broad context and respond accordingly. One day a reckoning will come. We will either plan for it, or we wont. I hate to think though, that the path of negligence, in the face of plain geologic fact, became the fate of the nation I love so dearly.

We can do better. So let’s.