Basic HTML Version
October-November 1970
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- and do anything, at any time, under
any attitude or state of mind in the
privacy of his car.
The car has revolutionized - mostly
for the worst - the dating habits of
young people. It provides ready-made
portable bedrooms. In those bedrooms
on wheels occur innumerable pre–
marital or extramarital sex acts or
perversions.
The automobile has abetted the crime
spree because criminals, rioters, arson–
ists can go far and wide in a big hurry.
When all the pros and cons are listed,
there is very li ttle good which can be
said for the automobile.
We Must Choose - And Soon
A few people - very few - have
come to realize how critica! a situation
we have on our hands. They are saying
that we must CHOOSE between the inter–
nal combustion engine and breathable
air.
Are we goiog to eliminate the auto–
rnobile or are we going to Jet it kiU
us by polluting our air?
When carbon monoxide gas reaches
levels of ten parts per million parts of
air,
it
becomes dangerous. In today's
congested city, that is no longer a
rarity. In Chicago and Philadelphía, for
example, that danger point is
exceeded
throttghortt one third to one half of the
day!
In Los Angeles the danger point
is exceeded 40 percent of the time.
Each day in Los Angeles cars spew out
20 million pounds of carbon monoxide,
enough to decrease the blood's oxygen–
carrying capacity in some people by 20
percent.
When are we going to learn? Must
we Df!Z before we are going to wake up
to the facts?
We have allowed ourselves to become
slaves to our technology. But why
CONTINUE to become ever more deeply
enslaved? Why must our manufacturers
continue to produce ever more and bow
down before Gross National Product?
Oh yes, we talk about no-lead gas–
oline ( forgett ing to mention other pol–
lutants may be increased); we build
more roads (which increases travel) ;
The
PLAIN TRUTH
we build smaller cars (but these are
bought as second cars); we talk about
smog devices
e
which are going to do
little i
f
anything to resolve our prob–
lem).
Wby all these excuses? Why all these
insigni.ficant nips at a major problem?
When will we admit - both consumer
and manufacturer - that we have
travelled clown the wrong road, that
technology has been used wrongly, that
we must make an about face - before
we actually commit autocide - death
by automobile.
The time for excuses has passed . lt
is
aimost
too late. Our technology has,
step by step, worked us ioto a box
canyon. We spray our crops and die
of poisoning; we guit spraying our crops
and they will be lost to disease and
insects.
Why' Because we have
mmúprtlated
our environment to the point of disas–
ter. The more we have manipulated
our environment, the more we have
been FORCED TO manipulate it.
If
we continue to produce automo–
biles and to drive as we do, many of
us will, in a few years,
die directly
from
unbreathable air. But if we guit pro–
ducing our automobiles and quit driv–
ing as we do, our national and personal
economic life is in jeopardy.
And it is OUR fault! We have put
ourselves where we are.
It
is we humans
who have created tbe Frankenstein
monster which now threatens to destroy
liS.
Al! the talk, the half solutions, the
panaceas are not going to work. Because
we have NOT been willing - and are
NOT willing - to give up the religion
of Gross National Product of which
the automobile is the chief god. And
the subsidiary deities are legion.
We
ALL
Have Reverently Bowed
W e are little different f rom an
ancient people of whom it was said:
"Their land also is full of silver and
gold, neither is there any end of their
treasures; their land is also full of
horses,
neithe1' is there any eud
to
their
chariots
[ today's automobiles]. Their
land also is full of idols; they worship
the work of their own 11ands, what
their own fingers have made." (Isaiah
2:7-9, Amplified Old Testament).
39
America and much of the Western
World faces the critica! need to recon–
sider the use of its automobiles. Period.
Sounds rather odd, doesn't it? Almost
UNAmerican - or anti -progress . After
al!, the car is about as American as
apple pie.
But if we
DID
reconsider the use of
automobiles, 60% - in some cases up
to 90% - of the pollution would dis–
appear
If
all those millions of keys
stayed in all those millions of pockets,
we wouldn't have that foul smog tomor–
row morning.
But you can bet your dutiful statis–
tician we are going to go out there and
turn those engines on. We're going to
go roaring to those jobs. We're not
going to move closer to our jobs or
disperse that industry. We will MOVE
OUT FURTHER - and clamber for more
roads, more freeways so we can go to
the place from which the other fellow
is leaving.
Are we going to change the system?
Will we guit worshipping GNP? Ima–
gine government leaders, auto manu–
facturers, economists getting together
tomorrow morning and saying: "Look,
the autornobile, as we know it, has to
go,
and 11ow!
We're not going to poison
ourselves any longer. Get right on it
and work out a plan to dismantle and
reconstitute Detroit if necessary - we
don't care WHAT the public thinks. We
have got to solve this problem now -
no matter what
!"
Is everyone going to say "Yes, sir!"
and get to work NOW and solve the
problem? Oh, no, they're not.
If
some–
one tried that - be he the leader of
any nation or the United Nations -
such an outcry of excuses, curses,
threatenings would go up so as to
reach nigh heaven itself.
We're not willing - at least there
is no record from our history - to
make the ultimate change. We haven't
been willing to correct our system, to
guit worshipping our god of Tedl–
nology. And until we do, we are going
to sink deeper and deeper in our prob–
lems - with no end in sight. It's later
than we think, and the consequences
are
frightening!
O
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