If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, an environmental troglodyte is a greenie whose electric car is stranded somewhere without a charger in sight. From Mark P. Mills at realclearwire.com:
This essay is based on the opening remarks delivered at a recent SOHO Forum Debate on electric vehicles.
If we could imagine a time machine bringing to New York City, an American citizen from the 19th century, odds are the one thing that would seem the most amazing about our time would be the proliferation of the personal automobile. Big buildings, big cities, roads, nighttime illumination would all be imaginable, even if different looking and greater in scale. But the one thing radically different about modern daily life is the convenience and freedoms that come from a car.
Yes, that 19th century citizen would probably be puzzled by people staring at glowing rectangles in their hands. In fact, the personal computer and the personal car are co-equal in their transformative impacts. MIT historian Leo Marx put it well when he wrote that: “To speak . . . of the ‘impact’ of … the automobile upon society makes little more sense . . .than to speak of the impact of the bone structure on the human body.”
The centrality of the car in the social and economic structure of society is evidenced by how citizens have voted with their pocketbook. A car is the single most expensive product that 98% of consumers ever purchase. Over 90% of American households own or have access to a car. Average household spending on personal mobility is the second biggest expense after mortgage or rent.
And there’s nothing to the trope that the rising generations will abandon automobiles. A recent MIT analysis found Millennials exhibit no difference in “preferences for vehicle ownership” and in fact drive more miles per year than Boomers. As for Gen Zs, the share of cars bought by that cohort has increased five-fold in the past five years.
