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BLAME IT ON CARS
ASPHALT NATION That's the overblown thesis of Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, a new book by Jane Holtz Kay, architecture critic for The Nation. Kay argues that by skillfully using advertising to play on Americans' longstanding infatuation with cars, manufacturers turned their industry into one of the world's largest. They also managed to make car ownership more important to most people than environmental health, social justice, or sound usage of land and resources, she says. The impact of pollution from 200 million automobiles is as obvious as the rusty haze hovering over the Detroit skyline. Environmental watchdogs, Kay says in her 418-page polemic, hold ''motor vehicles to blame for up to half of all smog forming volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, more than 50% of hazardous air pollutants, and 90% of the carbon monoxide found in urban air.'' She argues that the health consequences have been profound. An estimated 30,000 people die each year from asthma, emphysema, and other respiratory illnesses ''stemming from the car's airborne toxins,'' Kay writes. The impact has been especially pronounced in inner cities, where neighborhoods are often ravaged by new roads built to serve those who can afford to buy cars. A shocking 80% of asthma deaths occur in urbanized areas such as New York City, Illinois' Cook County, and California's Fresno County, Kay writes. People are not the only ones damaged. Perhaps the auto's greatest effects are upon the world's forests, streams, and atmosphere. The fossil fuels consumed by the nation's autos produce chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrogen oxides that trap heat on the planet and raise the temperature of the earth. Even the gulf war, Kay contends, stemmed from Americans' insatiable desire to protect their access to vast reserves of oil to fuel their cars. If all of this sounds a bit shrill, that is because Kay is not at all shy about hammering home her point--again and again, even when evidence for her claims appears to be in short supply. Her analysis of the growing divide between rich and poor, for instance, is oversimplified. There's no doubt the working poor often cannot afford to buy, insure, maintain, and gas up their own personal internal-combustion machines. But does their resulting dependence upon inadequate public transportation really represent a leading cause of poverty? Despite the strident tone, Asphalt Nation is thought-provoking and perceptive as it describes just how dependent we are on these dirty, inefficient, and costly machines. Kay makes it hard to deny that the path we are on with our cars is probably a road to nowhere.
BY CHRISTINA DEL VALLE RELATED ITEMS
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Updated June 23, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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