Houston

I’ve been watching the devastation from flooding in Houston, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. I spend my days researching the cost of renewable energy vis a vis natural gas, trying to build the case for investors to put pressure on utilities to transition to clean energy. I spend my evenings watching the result of 150 years of burning fossil fuels. It is incredibly frustrating that people won’t see what is right in front of them. But that is modern capitalism: privatise profit, socialise risk. I wonder if every homeless person in Houston understands that bargain.

The needless, excessive, thoughtless consumption of fossil fuels in the US is one of the things that made me leave. I remember in 1980 returning to America after six years in Ulster and being appalled by the land yachts cruising along the highways when, over here, people were driving the original Mini (very tiny). Not much has changed.

The most popular vehicle in America is the Ford F150 pickup truck. It’s number one in a whopping 21 states, including Texas. Not far behind is the Chevrolet Silverado, No. 1 in five states, according to Kelley Blue Book data on new car registrations. In an additional 10 states, buyers prefer SUVs over pickups. In 36 states, the top seller is not a car.

In the UK, the two top selling cars are cars, the Ford Focus and the VW Golf. These cars average 30 mpg, more than twice that of the two top-selling pickups in America. In addition, the average American drives 13,476 miles/year, compared to 7,900 in the U.K., where we have good public transportation and planning that encourages short commutes.

According to NPR: "Drivers in cars, trucks, minivans and SUVs put a record 3.22 trillion miles on the nation's roads last year, up 2.8 percent from 3.1 trillion miles in 2015.” The refineries of Houston, Port Arthur, and Galveston make this possible.

The infinite hubris of American consumers and politicians and economists prevent people from linking their way of life to Hurricane Harvey and the submerged Indian subcontinent. China, Indonesia, Russia, India have all done their bit to push us past the 350 ppm guardrail for a safe planet (we’ve already sailed past 400 ppm). But has any country been as aggressive as the U.S. in exporting its economic model and the aspiration to its way of life? It’s brands, it’s shopping malls, it’s cars, its violent films? Thomas Friedman posited that exporting McDonald’s is a means of spreading democracy. How many rain forests have been felled to raise beef for McDonald’s? And what is the blowback from loss of habitat and biodiversity? The feedback loop is a reap-what-you-sow mofo and she’s just warming up.

I’m reading a book about retooling capitalism to allow for a sustainable planet. Did you know Sigmund Freud’s son is the father of modern marketing--applying psychology to the consumer sector? Yet buying more and more stuff has not made people happier while trashing the planet. The book’s author quotes psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: “Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and are the best way of concealing it from ourselves.” Is it possible more people will now connect the dots between our excesses and the extreme weather it has wrought? Wouldn’t it be nice if the silver lining were that Americans decided its time to take climate change seriously, buy an electric car, and find a national pastime other than shopping.
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