Sacred Headwaters #25: The Intransigence of Auto Policy

In the last issue, we looked at whether simply substituting EVs for ICEs in our existing system could meet emissions goals. The short answer? It can't. So why is that our current trajectory?

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Issue #25: The Intransigence of Auto Policy

Two weeks ago, we looked at the plan to reduce emissions from the transit sector as implied by current global policy: rapidly transition personal transit from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). This issue is going to build on that, so I’d strongly encourage you to read #24 before you dive in. There are a variety of reasons that plan is problematic, but the answer is fairly clear cut: a complete transition to BEVs, no matter how rapid, is not compatible with emissions targets or other facets of the ecological crisis unless it’s accompanied by a radical reduction in personal car ownership.

When we look at issues like this from a scientific or carbon balance perspective, the answers often seem fairly clear, or even indisputable, and it leads to real frustration when we watch public policy going the opposite direction. So it’s worth asking, “Why can’t policy align with reality?” When I’m writing about these kinds of things, I often shortcut the answer to that question, pointing to power structures, the interests of the ruling class, and cultural factors. This isn’t inaccurate, but it understates the complexity, and while there are common threads between issues — notably including industry influence, or more bluntly, the power of money to control democratic governments — there are often historical or physical components to the story that are specific to a sector.

In this issue, we’re going to dive into these questions in the context of the auto industry. It’s a fascinating story that developed over the last hundred years and while the power of wealth and the shareholder profit incentive played a major role in the early days of nearly every factor involved, they developed lives of their own, leaving us in a modern dilemma where the auto industry and its growth pattern have been entrenched by physical infrastructure, financial infrastructure, sociocultural factors, and even the specific technologies involved in car production.

Much of this is unique to the auto industry: the capture of public spaces, the legal structures, the high capital costs and other intricacies of production. But even if you’re not particularly interested in the reasons the auto industry is so deeply entrenched in the Western political economy, I think this story sheds light on the intransigence of many of the issues we face today, and it’s important to view policy decisions through this lens of complexity.

When we look at complex societal issues like the decarbonization of transit from a scientific perspective, many things seem obvious, and of course, the sad reality is that those things are not just obvious but they’re non-negotiable. But non-negotiable is not the same as politically expedient, and so we wind up in this situation where climate scientists and activists are banging their heads against the wall wondering why we can’t make changes that we unequivocally have to make. I’m not writing this to imply that activists need to “accept that the world is complex and change takes time:” we genuinely don’t have time for that. But I do think that, in order to accomplish change, we need to do our best to recognize and work with the complexity inherent in the world so that we can understand where to apply pressure effectively. Looking at the auto industry through this lens yields a complicated picture of interrelated factors, some of which have developed over more than a century. Together, they explain why political change is so hard — and with any luck, inform how we might begin to achieve it.

The political economy of car dependence: A systems of provision approach (60 minutes+)

This is a long paper. I know it can be hard to make time to read the resources here but I really recommend this one. It may say more about me than about the paper or its authors, but despite having no professional or academic involvement in the auto industry, I found this paper really interesting and feel that it provides an important perspective on how we might move forward from here. It’s a sweeping overview of exactly what this issue is focused on: the complex, interrelated, physical, cultural, and economic factors that make it so damn hard for us to make reasonable policy decisions about the role cars will play in a sustainable future. I’m going to try to hit some of the key points in this blurb, but again, I really strongly recommend you read this paper.

We see policy support for the auto industry on a regular basis, whether it’s in the form of highway expansions, fuel subsidies, (electric) vehicle subsidies, bailouts, or whatever else. But the reason for this is not strictly because of lobbying power: it’s because of a complex web of factors that make it very difficult to envision slowing down the car production cycle. At the industry level, there are a number of issues at play: break-even levels of production capacity are around 85% and, in large part because of technical aspects in the manufacturing process, capital investment to change production capacity is very costly. That means, in essence, that car producers must constantly be producing at or near their maximum capacity in order to be solvent. This contributes to the rapid depreciation that we see in the consumer market — “your car loses half its value when you drive off the lot” — and also speaks to the solvency crises that large auto companies face during economic downturns…which in turn, because of their economic significance as major contributors to GDP (“too big to fail”), lead to government bailouts.

Car infrastructure — roads, parking, and more — is another multifaceted piece of the puzzle. From a historical perspective, roads and public spaces weren’t always meant for cars, and it was a struggle for the auto industry to sell that story, a story that was created and has been entrenched through concerted marketing campaigns, capture of school curriculums, and more. Cars gradually took over public spaces and then led to the development of “urban sprawl” throughout the mid-20th century in English-speaking countries, and more globally today. A cited author, George Gonzales, argues that suburban development (sprawl) was an economic stimulus tool during the Great Depression: as we sprawled out and drove more, we consumed more, which allowed the market to deal with the overproduction that was occurring in American industry at the time. As an aside: these same developments can be viewed through a racial capitalism lens as these policies and the general development of white, suburban America entrenched and worsened racial inequities. This move to suburbanization also had political and cultural effects that we can easily see on election maps today, which in turn drives policy, which in turn has additional feedback effects on culture and infrastructure.

This sounds messy and you might be wondering where I’m going with it: but that’s essentially the point. There are many factors at play here, a complex system of social, political, economic, and physical (infrastructural) circumstances that have developed over the last century. Each has affected the development of every other piece, and to try to understand how we can make change, we need an understanding of the terrain on which we’re working. Move one knob and there may be significant and difficult to predict impacts in something seemingly unrelated. This paper is an attempt to look at as many knobs as possible and to map the causal relationships between them.

Exploring the elements of what we have called car-dependent transport systems, and understanding their interconnections, exposes a deeply self-reinforcing system, apparently immune from economic and political pendulum swings, able to bend the forces that sway the rest of the society to its purpose. In some ways, it is a comprehensive (and rather depressing) political economy anatomy of carbon lock-in.

…we believe our contribution will make it easier for alternative transport mode advocates to express their visions: not just as technocratic alternatives involving alternative technologies and healthier lifestyles, but as comprehensive worldviews that challenge an undesirable status-quo. By understanding the chameleon-like ability of pro-car arguments to fit within all economic and political discourses, they become easier to counter.

“Why America’s Love Affair with Cars Is No Accident” (5 minutes)

This is a short piece that expands a little bit on how “car culture” developed in the US and spread around the world. It includes a few tidbits that, in a rather shocking way, illustrate how nefariously the auto industry implanted itself into the zeitgeist. Auto industry marketers invented the term “jaywalking” (as a derogatory term); they created “school safety patrols” to encourage kids to get off the streets; they defined a school “safety curriculum” that spread throughout the country in the 1920s; and they even invented the phrase “America’s love affair with the automobile” in a TV show sponsored by an owner of General Motors. The article concludes with some misguided hopes about self-driving cars; it’s not something I want to get into here, but to borrow Allison Arieff’s phrasing, “Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That.”

“GM and Ford Knew, Too: Reporting Reveals Auto Giants Recognized Looming Climate Crisis in 1960s—and Helped Bury Reality” (5 minutes)

This one is only marginally on topic, but I couldn’t resist including it because while it’s ultimately unsurprising, it’s another glaring example of what we’ve been looking at over the last few weeks: the question of whether or not it’s possible for corporations to prioritize human and planetary well-being over profit in our existing socio-economic and political system of organization. The headline summarizes it pretty effectively: just like Exxon and many of the other oil majors, car manufacturers Ford and General Motors learned about climate change in the 1950s, maintained research teams focused on climate for decades, knew global warming was caused by burning fossil fuels — and consequently, personal vehicles — and spent huge amounts of money on campaigns to discredit climate science and obfuscate the issue, ultimately succeeding in moving the conversation from “climate change is a major problem and everyone agrees we need to do something about it” (early 1990s) to where we are today. Should we hold those responsible criminally liable? Probably, yes, but at the same time, we need to recognize the pattern here and hold the systemic structures accountable as well or it will just keep happening.

In testimony to Congress in 1967, a Ford executive argued against federal investments in electric vehicle research, arguing that industry was actively developing EV technology and would be ready to bring electric cars to market within a decade.

EVs. Within a decade. 1967! Want to know what they did instead? Invented and marketed the SUV. SUV emissions have been one of the most significant drivers of emissions growth over the last decade.

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