Great Recession? That was so yesterday…
Credit card companies are pushing plastic again, consumers are shopping till they drop, and Wall Street had a great year. So this development was predictable, as per today’s Washington Post:
SUVs lead U.S. auto sales growth despite efforts to improve fuel efficiency
If U.S. consumers are in the midst of a green revolution, the news hasn’t reached car buyers.
With the end of the recession, bigger vehicles have made a comeback, sales figures show, and it has come at the expense of smaller, more-efficient cars…
…”You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed to fuel efficiency,” said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. “But the other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a better cup holder.”
I like to think that nations have characters much as people do, and there is of course so much talk about how great ours is — American exceptionalism was one of the defining beliefs of the recent election cycle. But there was also much talk about how the recent economic shock would change us for the better, return us to a virtuous state that we apparently had left behind somewhere.
Or not. Or maybe we were always thus.
If one of the worst things that can be said about America is that we buy too many SUVs, then we truly are a great and exceptional nation.
The Chinese like BMWs, Cadillacs, and Buicks.
Actually I don’t think it is one of the worst things that can be said about America, but is perhaps symptomatic of worse things. I’m also not sure I’d equate exceptional with great.
I think our Corporate Masters are exceptionally good at sales.
We bought a used SUV and got rid of two smaller cars that were over 10 years old and starting to need big-ticket repairs. So we’re experimenting with life with one family car. We pretty much had to go with something like the Jeep b/c Raber needs a vehicle capable of hauling lumber and power tools to job sites. Having just one car requires us to consolidate trips, so we’re probably breaking even gas-wise.
But I take David’s point that the SUV’s are symptomatic of other problems:
1. People haul their kids around to activities instead of making them walk there, which is often no longer possible given the way suburbia and exurbia is situated miles away from activity centers.
2. People buy more car than they can afford, which contributes to individuals getting themselves in hot water with credit.
3. People care about energy consumption in theory, but it doesn’t translate in car selection.
4. Having a nice comfy SUV that handles nicely makes taking road trips look really attractive (well, except for that $3.19 per gallon of gas right now) and weakens demand for more energy efficient mass transit. Too bad, because the best times I’ve had on trips have been by rail (though I mostly hate taking trips of any sort).
5. We’ve always driven very modest, no-frills cars, but I was, frankly, seduced for the first (and I hope last) time by the SUV, which, for awhile, persuaded me I looked 15 years younger driving it. This had an unexpected psychological effect; I had urges to wear darker lipstick, dye my hair, buy some Ray-Bans and cooler CD’s, though I successfully beat these urges back.
I have an SUV but do not need one I don’t think. Used to live in the country where 4wd was essential. Mine is a 1995 so it is almost 15 years old and still in good condition.
Don’t necessarily see a problem with SUV but I have not idea why ANYONE would EVER need a Hummer which is a military styled vehicle. Most people who have one would never even dream of taking it on a gravel road and I bet rarely if ever use the 4wd. That, I think, is total and complete over-consumption and the very personification of what is wrong with the US (and Canada and anywhere else these status popping, gas guzzling) vehicles can be found.
Still, the bottom line folks is that if the worst that can be said about the US is that they purchase too many SUV’s just remember there is a cost – not only to the environment but globally. You need a stable oil supply.
So you need Saudi Arabia and Iraq where there is ample supply of oil because Americans will NOT consume less. Say what you will, the neo-cons and Cheney’s had it right. America needs stable oil commodity. Period.
These monsters have gotten so big buying one has become a moral matter — a sin, and I suspect ;it’s a serious sin for those who know anything about chemistry at all. No, Jean, not for businesses that need one. Many people plead that they’re not really *sure* that CO2 causes global warming, and many just fool themselves that the most qualified scientists don’t *really* know what they’re talking about., and that’s a sin. (What’s a Nobel prize winner? What do *they* know?) I say that’s a sin.
But there is justice. Their grandchildren who are going to have to pay bitterly for their selfishness (they’ve already started to pay, actually) are going to hate them for it.
I’ve never understood why Americans think we can do no evil, that we’re the “best” in every way. We’re not, and telling ourselves we are is plain pride. (Just look at the reading and math results that just came out — our kids are something like 24th and we used not to be!!! Damn it, Korea does a lot better!)
While I’m on moral matters, here’s a confession. I hate SUV’s so much (remember Katrina) that when I have to park next to one I park so close that the person has to struggle a little to get in. (Hee hee! >:-)
Speaking of stable oil supplies — this very week Iran imposed huge price increases on oil for IRANIANS. Prices were raised so much there has been rioting in some places. Can America be far behind?
We never learn, do we?
I recall a few years back when two well dressed women parked their fancy GOLD Cadillac SUV in a reserved parking space behind the local cathedral in order to walk only a short distance to the nearby downtown shopping mall. We called the tow truck on retainer, but it unfortunately arrived only a couple of minutes too late. Oh, how much I wanted to deflate a tire or two…
I’m with you, Ann. Next time I’m in your town and learn of the situation you’ve described, I’ll make it a point to park uncomfortably close to their OTHER door :-)
I’ve always wondered why there are so many shiny new Range Rovers in Manhattan, but I suppose it must be that to the natives, any trip beyond the Five Boroughs (and perhaps even to some off them) is a safari.
We have a Subaru Forester; my husband said we needed it for “safety reasons” for the children. It was really because he felt humiliated driving the last car, our dinky little Hyundai Accent. (which we put 140,000 miles on before we crashed it).
I don’t like SUVs because they take up a parking space and a half. Street parking was never easy in NYC, now its just crazy.
George D says ” Say what you will, the neo-cons and Cheney’s had it right. America needs stable oil commodity. Period.’
4000+ dead Americans and 100,000 Iraqi dead and counting … and the neo-cons had it right? .. blood oil !!
My point is not to justify the war. I am simply saying that Americans need to take responsibility for their collective choices.
On the consumption versus demand equation – I think it is fair to say that the neo-cons (for lack of a better term at the moment) maintained that Americans will not consume less, will not buy large scale hybrid vehicles, and will demand more energy and oil.
Oil rigs are ugly and distort the scenery of the coasts.
Not saying that is the only calculation but it was one. At least in Oliver Stone’s movie version of W which charicatured Dick Cheney as making the, what must be acknowledged as persuasive oil argument
If it is a contest between status in the form of bigger houses, large vehicles versus sacrifice for the national good…well the article says it all.
Will $5.00 gasoline do the trick? Methinks we are going to find out in just a few years.
This thread inspired me to go online to look for ways to conserve gas if you drive an SUV. Most of these things we’re already doing–consolidating trips, not “goosing” the engine on acceleration, buying the right type of gas, keeping tires properly inflated, using cruise control on the highway, and sticking to 60 mph freeway.
Apparently a roof rack is a major source of drag, but that will have to stay; Raber sometimes needs to strap stuff up there).
There are also various fuel efficiency kits, most of which seem to be scams, but I plan to ask the mechanic about it next week. Anyone had experience with HHO converters or similar?
Jeez, sorry; I’m turning this into “Car Talk.”
Jean, what’s wrong with “Car Talk”?! I love that program.
As for SUVs, knock yourselves out. I have all the prejudices against them expected of my class, or demographic. There are certainly justifications for them, and pickups, in many areas. But watching them (and Hummers) roar down city streets makes me furious, and of course fuels my sense of moral superiority. Which I like. But I really think almost any car, even my Honda, is a relative gas guzzler, and this is all a symptom of a larger cultural problem of excess and using too much. In the case of SUVs, when gas prices go up, as they inevitably will, all these new truck buyers will be bemonaning their fate and running out for hybrids and cursing when there aren’t enough, and when they can’t get enough money back on their gas guzzler. And of course we all subsidize this car mania massively with tax dollars.
There is a review today in — sorry to stoke this fire again — the New York Times of an interesting book that doesn’t seem terribly good, but is a good topic:
WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY
Self-Control in an Age of Excess
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/books/31book.html?_r=1&ref=books
From the review:
A while back I had clipped a review of Claude S. Fischer’s new book, “Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character,” which put me in mind of these musings:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=old_image_new_portrait
And the invaluable Arts & Letters Daily has another one today from the Boston Review:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/kennedy.php
PS: AL Daily’s impressive founder, Denis Dutton passed away this week. RIP
http://www.aldaily.com/
PPS: ALD also links to a WSJ piece on Boredom, the institute and the state.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html
David, I love “Cah Tawk” also, though my Jeep’s fuel economy didn’t seem quite on topic. Thanks for the reading.
I think it’s true we’re a nation addicted to our stuff. I have girl friends who talk quite frankly and unashamedly about “retail therapy”–going shopping when you get blue. It’s also a phenom George Carlin talked about in his monologue about “stuff.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Almost 50 degrees, pouring rain, and thundering here in Michigan. Looks utterly dreary with piles of dirty snow, muddy puddles and gray skies. We won’t be stargazing this New Year’s Eve.
When I lived in Africa, French aid workers would drive all around the desert in these hideous cars call Deux Chevaux. They stopped making them in the 90s, but these ugly little economy cars got 64 mpg and were total workhorses. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/06/citroen-2cv.html
George D; Another dollar tax added on a gallon would force and keep the economic alternatives. When gas got higher e.g. 4.50 the oil co. lowered the prices in order to make the alternative less effective. A dollar or 1.50 tax would end their manipulation. unless you really believe there is a ‘free market’ in oil even when you see Saudis, OPEC and BP laughing all the way to the banks. How many Saudi soldiers died in Iraq.. I’ll save you the lookup …none.. Drill baby drill was the stupidest slogan of 2000s. but it seems to have worked …The one dollar, or 1.50 tax will help pay off the cost of the 30,000 US wounded for life and not add to the deficit. A 2$ a gallon tax and say hello to electric cars..
” The addiction label serves to absolve us of blame and therefore responsibility for our actions”
David G. –
Indeed. But I wonder how much is sheer hedonism. I think American hedonism is partly a distraction from the boredom of secularist life-goals. Having the essentials and then some, being a good friend, a good citizen, having pleasures == Aristotle realized that those are limited fulfillments, and, as the Epicureans noted a long time ago, pleasures gets old fast.
I don’t think the prosperity gospel manages to fully sate the longings of Christians either. If it did, those who follow those teachings wouldn’t put such emphasis on prosperity and what it leads to. So the shopping gets even more frenetic. Our hearts are restless. . .
I don’t think addiction absolves anybody. Most of us who have lived with addicts don’t buy that whole notion that addiction is an illness that makes someone helpless; it’s a personality disorder that makes people manipulative and single-minded until they can no longer find enablers.
To the extent that higher gas prices and/or taxes would stop enabling people to use gas, that’s ducky. But how gas tax revenues might be used, provided they could be enacted, would be a source of contention, I imagine. (What isn’t these days?)
Alternative forms of transportation would be great, but those of us in rural areas might not see much benefit unless we live along a corridor that connects larger cities (and I don’t). Making hybrids more fuel efficient or providing tax breaks to those who buy them would be nice. Right now, they’re WAY beyond my price range.
OK, on to the New Year’s festivities. Prospero Ano, all.
The Capitol Steps had the best take I heard on SUVs, “God Bless My SUV”, from their 2003 Album “Between Iraq and a Hard Place” at http://www.capsteps.com/albums/ .
There’s a video of the song at YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBzU_H4Z9NA that’s worth it just to hear the song, although the original album version is better.
While our SUV addiction is serious, it’s good for our health to start the New Year 2011 with a laugh!
This article in the NY Times reports that the much-maligned minivan is making a modest comeback. “Mocked as Uncool, the Minivan Rises Again”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/business/04minivan.html?src=me&ref=general
(I will confess, in an illustration of my security in my masculinity, that we drive a Honda Odyssey).