Motor Mouth: Anti-car hatred runs deeper than you think

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If you think someone is out to get you, does that automatically make you paranoid? It’s a question I asked myself repeatedly as I wrote last week’s “Is the anti-car movement winning?” column. In writing about something as controversial as Paris banning privately owned automobiles from its streets, the important thing was to determine the depth of the anti-car movement without heading down some conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Is there really a movement to rid the world of cars? How evolved is it? And how far should I go in decrying its toxic psychology?

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Not far enough as it turns out.

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I got lots of feedback, with many readers — thank you, one and all — sending in letters, articles, and links to stories regarding those who see the car itself — not just the internal-combustion engine — as the work of the devil. Indeed, most of the articles brought to my attention focused on the burgeoning concept that EVs are merely a stepping stone to a completely car-less society. Banning vehicles from downtown cores would be just the first step, anti-car legislation such as Paris’ but the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg that would eventually see us all kicked out of our cars.

And, let there be no doubt that the movement to rid city cores of privately owned vehicles is gaining momentum. Uber, as I have previously reported, would like to ban all passenger cars from urban centres save for (conveniently) professional services like itself. The only good thing, I concluded, was that said bans were at least localized.

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Not for much longer, at least if a paper from Australia’s Monash University, one of the top research universities in the world, gets any traction. According to A proposal for limits on vehicular passenger travel levels, published on academia.edu , the problem isn’t so much that we drive vehicles that pollute, but that we drive at all. The use of cars — “green” or not, it seems — must be severely restricted.

To be perfectly fair, author Patrick Moriarty makes some valid points, namely that travel has exploded in the last century, from being predominantly by rail in 1900; to the approximately 48.2 trillion passenger-kilometres we travelled in 2018, a little more than half of which was by car (with the remaining 40 per cent split between public transport and air travel). And his reasoning for ridding the world of all cars, not just those ICE-powered, starts off with some basis in reality, pointing out that the oft-cited menace of greenhouse gases will not be solved by electric vehicles, since 61 per cent of the world’s electricity is still produced from fossil fuels.

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But the discussion quickly devolves from there, eventually positing that not only are cars bad for the environment, but that the mere existence of roads is life-threatening: “EVs will eliminate exhaust pollution, but pollution from tire and brake wear will still remain.” And yes, since that’s in quotes, you’d be correct in assuming I didn’t make that up. Even the lights — the lights! — on the side of our highways are a menace, affecting “predator-prey relations, animal lifecycles and when plants flower.” To reiterate, it’s not just the internal-combustion engine, but the car itself that’s evil.

Moriarty’s solution is that we all be limited 4,000 kilometres of driving a year. Of course, he also believes in something called the “2kW society,” a cockamamie Swiss theory that we should all be limited to 2,000 watts of energy consumption . That’s not just for cars, but for everything. For reference, we Canadians, the most profligate of energy consumers, currently use about six times that amount. In other words, if the car doesn’t go, the big screen TV will have to. Probably have to get rid of the pool and the lawnmower, too. And you didn’t really think the snowmobile, even if it’s one of those new-fangled electrics coming down the pipe, was going to make the grade, did you?

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Much of this call for sacrifice is usually nothing more than the age-old narcissism of 'I don't do such and such, therefore nobody needs to.'

Of course, such thinking is not just a threat to driving, but to all of modernity. Mankind has spent a goodly portion of its existence trying to reduce the inconvenience of personal mobility. We invented shoes because walking barefoot, well, hurts. We learned to ride horses, build bicycles, and manufacture automobiles simply so we could travel farther faster and easier. The freedom to go where you want, when you want has been one of mankind’s primary goals throughout history. Now, according to Moriarty, “destination choices will change to reflect this new reality.” In case you don’t speak fluent academic, allow me to translate: That’s you not driving to visit your grandma at Christmas, and me not flying to Italy next year to ride my precious V-strom 1000 up and down the Stelvio Pass.

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What really renders me apoplectic, though, is that in covering this automotive beat for the last 35 years, I have noted one almost universal truth: The sacrifice proselytizers demand is almost always something they already eschew. Gourmands almost never demand the closing of restaurants, no matter how costly the plague of obesity. Bar owners are seldom the driving force behind alcohol restrictions. And Tesla owners who say they don’t mind stopping for an hour or so for a roadside recharge probably didn’t road-trip much even before they went electric.

Despite the piety of their stated intentions, much of this call for sacrifice is usually nothing more than the age-old narcissism of “I don’t do such and such, therefore nobody needs to.” Indeed, in a page that could be taken right out of God is Not Great , it seems that environmentalists, like the evangelists that author Christopher Hitchens so loved to skewer, now see sacrifice as proof of the true believer’s devotion to climate change.

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And in case you’re thinking I’m just another kook peddling conspiracies of my own concoction, consider the following before you pen that angry comment: Ten years ago, would you have believed that Donald Trump, the very definition of self-absorbed rich narcissist, would be able to convince a plurality of Americans that he was a man of the people? Or that, faced with the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu, a significant portion of supposedly sentient human beings — some of them claiming they can in fact walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time — would decide that the wearing of a mask in public places is somehow a breach of freedoms worth dying for? Like it or not, the crackpots we once use to relegate to their mothers’ basements now command the attention of the similarly disaffected. And their influence is growing.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get your car.