US Economy Needs Oil Like a Junkie Needs Heroin
James Chamblee
Will Supply Its Next Fix
Published on Saturday, January 18, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
Car Wars
The US Economy Needs Oil Like a Junkie Needs Heroin - And Iraq Will Supply
Its Next Fix
by 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 molded 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
ian.r...@LSHTM.ac.uk
) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003