Four arguments for the elimination of privately owned cars...

The article title is in part borrowed from a book title: "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander which was published 40 years ago.

I will be attempting here to make my arguments for the elimination of cars. Of course this will be short. A book would have to be written to expose thoroughly each argument. This is the basis to any change of paradigm: the elimination of private car ownership. Everything else is a tributary of this. So if we do not operate this elimination of private owned cars, nothing else goes.

First argument: owning a car is a religion. We have to change religion.

We have to go back to a time when there were no cars! This is an argument dealing with the use of time and a looming climate crisis. Cars have made possible an ever-ending urban sprawling. Anyone can argue about the 'convenience' of cars ad nauseam but the fact is cars have made our life an incredible burden on our relationship to our existence on the biosphere, disintegrating the necessity to deal with our surroundings. We have to do a 180° and reinvent our civilization to a time without cars and with the modern tools at our disposal: better collective way of transportation, internet. We have to surpass the worst aspect of thie industrial revolution and plan a future that allows for a natural pace. This will help eliminating most of our deseases, linked to our lifestyle.

Second argument: cars are weapons of mass destruction

Cars have existed for a century now. Each year worldwide there are 1.2 million people being killed by cars. That's more than all the people who died during all the wars on the planet since the beginning of time. And this is only the people being killed by cars. Collateral damages run in the tens of millions depending on the years: people being injured, having nervous breakdowns, being killed by the enormous amount of pollution cars create, not mentioning all the animals being swept away by cars every minute. Each car produces its own weigh in pollutants every year.

Third argement: Cars make us forget about our natural belonging

The multiplication of cars makes for a miserable life for most people who spent half their wages nourishing their cars. We organize our cities for the cars. Half of the space in any given city is for cars thus expanding further and further the realm of a city. The reality that has been created for us and that we willingly embrace for its apparent convenience is a smokescreen nonetheless. We are unable to perceive the distraction it is from assuming our main role as a species, that is a role of stewardship over the planet.

Fourth argument: The time we spend in cars is time not spent on anything else

Hence we are being fooled in thinking that cars are convenient for transportation. If we were to built our cities differently with work, leisure, supplies at walking distance we would not need cars. We would meet people in the streets, spend more times with our love ones, read a book (here the argument is the same that could be brought up concerning television), we would find time to be more creative, etc.

Here is a quotation from Jerry Mander book mentioned at the top . It applies as much to television as it applies to cars or any construct we cart around with us:

Psychiatrist R. D. Laing, among others, has said that the growing incidence of mental illness these days may be explained in part by the fact that the world we call real and which we ask people to live within and understand is itself open to question. The environment we live in is no longer connected to the mix of planetary processes which brought us all into being. It is solely the product of human mental processes. It is real, but only in the way that a theatrical play or a fun house is real. Our artificial environment is there and we can experience it, yet it has been created on purpose by other humans. It is an interpretation of reality; it no longer reveals how nature works and it cannot provide much useful information to human beings who seek to see their own lives as part of some wider natural process. We are left with no frame of reference untouched by human interpretation.

Listen to  "Something in the air", from The Nature of Things on CBC TV
Air pollution is a major killer, even in places we think of as 'safe,' so scientists are using new technology to measure it and study its effects on our bodies.

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