We have a new term to summarize modern America's car-centric social organization: autoculture.

Autoculture encompasses much more than America's torrid love affair with the personal internal-gasoline-combustion powered automobile.  The term also means all societal attributes directly related to our utter dependence on the personal automobile.

Autoculture includes all of the following phenomena:

• Sprawling suburbs that all look the same
• Horrendous traffic jams
• Road rage
• Abandoned and economically shattered downtowns
• Fast food and corporate chain restaurants
• Corporate-owned big-box stores
• Vanishing neighborhood businesses
• Cookie-cutter tract homes on meandering or circular street patterns
• Gated private communities with private security forces and private recreation facilities 
• Gigantic freeways cutting through dilapidated slums
• Huge shopping malls and strip malls with gigantic parking lots
• Corporate "business parks" located far from downtowns
• Mothers acting as harried "chauffeurs"
• Drive-through banks, coffee shops, etc.
• The rise of television, video games and "instant gratification" entertainment.
• Lack of public life for many citizens, including isolation from family and neighbors
• Radio shock talk shows

Another way of looking at this is to look at the resources which are consumed by automobile-reliant societies, in terms of actual pollution and in opportunity costs: (just take me to the solutions!)

• Taxpayer-subsidized road building and maintenance
• Roadside pollution and land use
• Suburban sprawl
• Vanishing farmland
• Vacant downtowns
• Global warming
• Exhaust, evaporative and refinery emissions
• Oil well, pipeline, truck and ocean tanker accidents
• Land consumed and polluted by gas stations, refineries, oil fields, etc..
• Tire particulates, piles and fires
• Disposal of used cars and fluids
• Noise pollution
• Crippling accidents and resulting litigation
• Staggering insurance rates
• Income-sapping car payments
• Personal isolation and road rage
• Increased dependence on oil companies
• Environmental ruin in far-off lands, and,
• Expensive and treacherous oil politics

to name but a few. 

It is safe to say that the culture of the personal automobile is the primary force driving Earth to the brink of destruction. This force is exacerbated by the recent proliferation of trucks and sport-utility vehicles as transportation for the masses.

Good books on this subject include (from our affiliate, Amazon.com):

• The Geography of Nowhere; by James Howard Kunstler
• Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century also by James Howard Kunstler
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
• A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb by Philip Langdon

Solutions:

Alternatives to the personal, internal-combustion powered vehicle and the car-centric society include:

• better land use
• high-speed trains
• public bicycle programs
• electric, fuel cell and hybrid vehicles

Ways to improve safety on the roads while we work on long-term solutions include:

• More realistic driving tests
• Eliminating incentives to drive large, gas guzzling SUVs

Here's a brief explanation of oil supply and demand issues.

The Oil Game

Much of the easy oil on the planet has been burned. Oil companies find and extract oil more efficiently than ever, so for most of the 1990s gasoline appeared to be in oversupply.  That appearance was shattered in 2000.  In fact, the late 1990s are likely to be halcyon years for world oil production. The world will pump less oil in the future, and it will be more expensive. Therefore, oil is undervalued, even at prices which— compared to a few years ago— seem high.  American drivers can expect additional unpleasant surprises when world oil demand, particularly from Asia, booms.  

Americans drive behemoths weighing 8,000 pounds and averaging 12-15 miles per gallon in an era when 50 mpg 2,500-pound cars should be the norm. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, "the average fuel economy for all model year 1999 light vehicles is 23.8 miles per gallon (MPG). Within this category, average fuel economy is 28.1 MPG for passenger cars and 20.3 MPG for light-duty trucks. The 1999 fuel economy average is the lowest value since 1980 and is 2.1 MPG less than the peak value of 25.9 MPG achieved in both 1987 and 1988. Average fuel economy for new light vehicles has dropped 1.0 MPG since 1996."

Unfortunately, from drilling to refining to transport to consumption, the petroleum industry causes more pollution than any other human activity. Blame oil companies if you wish, but it is consumer's insatiable appetite for autoculture that fuels the destruction.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, for every single gallon of gasoline burned, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide go into the atmosphere.  Carbon dioxide is a primary factor in global warming.  Scientists who do not receive money from oil companies agree: global warming is real.  Seven of the ten warmest years in recorded human history occurred in the 1990s. Read about the impacts of global warming.

Our fuelish ways have devastating impacts in far-off lands

These days, finding and delivering inexpensive petroleum typically involves the destruction of far-away lands necessary for the survival of indigenous peoples.  American oil companies operating in places like Columbia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and just about everywhere else the black goo can be found have been involved in everything from hiring armies to intimidate indigenous peoples, to bribery, extortion and murder.

Project Underground is dedicated to exposing human rights and environmental atrocities by oil and mining companies world wide.  Please pay them a visit and inform yourself about the impacts of your daily gas addiction.  

When millennia-old cultures in the far corners of the Earth confront extinction because of the "civilized" world's perceived need to drive 8,000-pound sport utility vehicles to the supermarket, we have clearly crossed a line of economic and moral decency.  For the human species and the planet to survive, the culture of the personal automobile must be destroyed. America must build its homes and cities for people, not cars.