Cars

Having lived in Europe, I realize how much we rely on cars in North America. We cherish the freedom of doing what we want and when we want to because of our four-wheeled friends.

I think we go a bit two far in promoting this love. Considering that fuel costs are rising and we are trying to cut down on pollution, there are two areas I would like to change.

The first is my newspaper. I get the Toronto Star. It is a fine paper. The Saturday edition has over ten sections. Most of it is not late-breaking news. It is filled with things that people have been working on all week.

Two of the sections are devoted to automobiles. Why? Why can’t there be two sections on the environment or tips on how to save money? Why can’t we just forget the two sections and save the newsprint, thus allowing them to keep the production costs down? The answer? Advertising. Automobile companies and private owners spend lots of money to sell their cars. As the consumer, as newsprint prices go up, and they will, I have to pay more for parts of a newspaper I don’t want.

My other desire is to get rid of things like auto racing in its present form. Why not have solar power auto racing? Why do we have to use gasoline and other fuels to power these vehicles going round and round in circles? Again, the answer? Advertising.

And it has to be on television. Forget the fact that you really have no idea what is happening on the small screen. You could edit last year’s race and just add commentary and few would notice the difference. Most of it is just waiting around for a crash.

Meanwhile, we are using valuable farmland to grow corn to produce ethanol gasoline. The price of most food has gone up dramatically in the past year. We need to fuel our cars.

What is scary is that China is now falling in love with the car. When I went there in 1983, most people travelled on bicycle. The government, I was told, owned the only vehicles. Now, the tale is quite different. You hardly see any bicycles on the streets and many, many cars.

The demand for gasoline is going to increase dramatically unless we change our ways. I don’t know if that is possible. Most of us are waiting for the next guy to do it and since they don’t, we ask ourselves why should we if they aren’t.