Mass Motorization and Mass Transit: An American History and Policy Analysis

10. The Road to Sustainable Motorization

TEN The Road to Sustainable Motorization The litany of complaints about the intensity of American motorization typically includes the automobile’s contribution to global warming and metropolitan air pollution, its dependence on imported petroleum, and its adverse impact on America’s international trade deficit—along with stubbornly high accident and fatality rates, metropolitan congestion, and suburban sprawl. More than half of these complaints center on the internal combustion engine: its seemingly stalled-out fuel efficiency, its combustion by-products, its requirements for petroleum-based fuels, and its thirst for imported oil. Only one of these complaints—the one about congestion—is a direct complaint about the automobile as transportation. In this sense, most of the problems associated with the automobile are externalities of the internal combustion engine: they inhere to the ICE and the carbon-based fuel it uses, rather than the automobile per se. Both the advantages and the liabilities of the internal combustion engine are well known. On the positive side, the ICE is a known technology that is well supported by a robust network of manufacturers, dealers, after-market parts suppliers, mechanics, fuel refiners, fueling stations, and pipelines. Refinements in fuel composition and add-on technologies have substantially reduced tailpipe emissions, but problems remain in terms of meeting ambient air quality THE ROAD TO SUSTAINABLE MOTORIZATION ⴗ 209 standards, especially in sunbelt cities where ozone concentrations are problematic . Energy efficiency has been improved by electronic fuel injection and by changes in nonmechanical aspects of automotive design including aerodynamics and the substitution of lighter weight materials. Dependence on imported oil has been reduced marginally by blending gasoline with corn-based ethanol, an accepted option in the Midwest where corn and ethanol production is concentrated . Incremental improvement in the automobile and its fuels is ongoing.∞ But it has been dwarfed by the magnitude of the challenges posed by global warming, oil depletion, and the recurrent price volatility of imported oil and domestic gasoline. With motorization and industrialization both occurring on a global basis, there are increasing demands on the world’s oil supplies and increasing use of the world’s atmosphere as a sink for both CO≤ emissions and industrial pollution . China, for example, already accounts for 18 percent of global CO≤ emissions , and India is close to surpassing Japan, which accounts for 5 percent. Simultaneously, another tier of smaller Asian nations is approaching industrialization levels comparable to those Korea and Taiwan achieved 20 years ago. This is the context in which the United States has faced increasing global pressure to curb the CO≤ emissions associated with the use of hydrocarbon fuels, the internal combustion engine, and pervasive motorization. These pressures are particularly intense because the United States accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s population but fully 23 percent of world energy consumption and an estimated 35 percent of all CO≤ emissions associated with road transport. Another reason for pressure from other nations is that American fuel taxes are among the lowest in the world, even though the United States imports three times more petroleum than any other nation.≤ Table 10.1 uses index values to show the relative price of gasoline in the United States and other G-7 nations on a tax-inclusive basis. It shows the price levels characteristic of 2001, a year of friction but not serious instability in the Middle East. It shows that U.S. motorists have paid far less for a gallon of gasoline than their counterparts in other G-7 nations in such periods of geopolitical stability. In 2004, the U.S. invasion of Iraq produced an interruption in oil supply from the Middle East and a third global oil shock, which had significant short-term impact on world oil prices. This prolonged new oil shock focused renewed attention on the U.S. share of global oil consumption and produced new calls for the United States to moderate its demands on the world’s oil supply. Each oil shock has also focused short-term attention on the relative fuel inefficiency of the vehicles manufactured by U.S. automakers and global disparities in tax-inclusive gasoline prices. But each previous oil shock has also been followed by price normalization and new lows in crude oil prices. Thus oil and gasoline prices have not provided any consistent long-term incentives for 210 ⴗ EVOLVING CHALLENGES IN AN EVOLVED ENVIRONMENT Table 10.1...