Nuclears and fossils

[imomus]

This is my nuclear family. We're at my brother's wedding, which happened on Saturday. We don't all get together very often, the Currie nuclears, but I always really enjoy it when we do. We speak the same language. We share the same genes. I love them. It's also weird; when I look at a picture like this, I can't help thinking of Charles Ray's spooky 1992 sculpture "Family Romance", where a nuclear family stands naked in a line holding hands, all the same height, at different stages of development. We're all grown, and we're all still here, even if we're somewhat scattered now and all have our own lives.



We were mostly together in the 1960s and 1970s — that would be our "active years" in a music encyclopaedia if we were a rock band. Like a rock band, we toured around the world endlessly. In planes, in boats (my sister's son Robbie now looks exactly like me in a photo taken in 1973 on the SS France, as we sailed into New York harbour, emigrating to Canada) but mostly in cars. In the speech at his reception, my brother proposed a toast to his dear nuclears: "The main thing I remember about my family is that I never said a word," he mused, to the amusement of the crowd. "That we drove all over the world, it seems, the five of us, in a car, and I don't ever remember speaking. But there's something very good about this, because I think I derive from the four other members of my family all the key personality traits that I have now. I took the good bit from each. People say this about me — that somehow I sit quietly and absorb. That's what I did with them, and I think I got a fantastic combination of things."

My brother chose a particularly lovely part of the Norfolk coast to get married on. The wedding and reception were in a barn at Burnham Market, and the next day we all had a walk along the gorgeous beach (pines, dunes, miles of white sand) at Holkham Bay. Mark also chose a particularly inaccessible place; even for a public transport afficionado like myself, it was completely necessary to rent a car. In fact, Hisae and I missed the wedding ceremony itself because I made the mistake of thinking the A1(M) and the M1 were the same road. We turned round at the Watford Gap service station and headed across country, arriving a couple of hours late.



The fossils in my title aren't my family. They're cars, and the fuels they burn. As I drove towards the beauty of my brother's wedding, I couldn't help thinking how ugly car culture has made rural England. I'm sure once upon a time cars were a good idea, an idea you could get behind. When I was born there were 6 million cars in the UK. Now there are around 30 million, crammed into the same small island, all vying for space, polluting the atmosphere, making their drivers disconnected, disembodied, irritable, contributing to global warming, poisoning people, poisoning politics, making transit corridors of places that barely still have dignity as places-in-themselves. Driving past the roadkill and the Fatal Accident Here signs ("call police with information"), making way for the screaming ambulances (two or three of them) en route, I imagined how Chaucer's England, or Robin Hood's, must have been; covered with mixed temperate deciduous forests, traversed by donkeys and horses. Slow life! The air must have been clean then.

From the plane, flying in, I counted a convoy of oil tankers on the English Channel. Fourteen of them, heading south. The next day my plane to Berlin took off from Luton two hours late, delayed by Britain's biggest ever peacetime explosion. A fossil fuel explosion. I got a good view of the fire, just ten miles from the airport, when we took off at 9pm... in fact, after take-off we turned and flew right over the inferno, so close I feared the plane would be buffeted or singed. The lights of the highway snaking past the blazing depot looked oddly normal, oddly unperturbed by this oily cataclysm spilling black smoke across England. The radio reports I'd been hearing all day had been calming in tone: motorists shouldn't panic-buy fuel, there was still enough to go around. People should stay indoors and try to avoid inhaling the cloud of burnt ultra-low sulphur diesel, unleaded petrol, super unleaded motor spirit, kerosene, gas oil and aviation fuel. But as for pollution, well, all this stuff would have been burnt into Britain's atmosphere anyway, just in slightly more efficient ways. No cause for concern. No more than usual, anyway.

I believe that one day we'll look back on the age of the car as an age of fossils, filth and savagery. But I'm the black sheep of my British nuclear family: the only one without a car.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, you're simply wrong! Work it out. Air travel generates almost as much CO2 per passenger per kilometre as car travel. If you fly a dozen times a year, including let's say a couple of long-haul flights to Japan or the U.S., then you are generating FAR MORE CO2 than someone who drives every day but doesn't fly much. Someone who drives every day might clock up a few thousand kilometres a year. You, with your dozen flights, will clock multiples of that! I'm surprised you've devoted so many of your posts to transport pollution and you aren't even aware of how much you're contributing to the problem - ie, much more than the average American.

[(Anonymous)]

Some quick fact checking:

According to an ABC News poll from February, the average commuting distance for an American is 16 miles 1 way. There is a lot of variance there (and I'm roughing it on days for commute), but it works out to about 13000 km yearly for a commute.

Round trip from Berlin to Tokyo directly is about 18000 km.

Momus, though you are right that the total damage done by airlines is *much* less that cars, the impact of your traveling to Tokyo just once a year exceeds that of the average American commute.

[(Anonymous)]

And now I'm realizing that you weren't comparing average American commute with flying, but rather the total impact of the average American with your own lifestyle. Assuming that the average American is flying just as much as you, *plus* driving...well, my mistake. Apologies.

[(Anonymous)]

But wait! Before I finally get out the door this morning, I decided to see if I could get a sense for the average per capita flights in the US. According the the US Department of Transportation, there were 646 million people boarding flights in the US in 2003. That works out to about only 2.2 flights per person, and those flights are going to skew towards the short domestic flights!

I apologize for throwing all these numbers at you, but it does seem clear that your lifestyle of taking a dozen flights a year at least approximates the environmental impact of the average american and their car.

[xaotica.livejournal.com]

Momus, though you are right that the total damage done by airlines is *much* less that cars, the impact of your traveling to Tokyo just once a year exceeds that of the average American commute.


there is one difference, though: the typical american commuter is in their car alone.

i've never flown in europe, and i've been told that a lot of the discount airlines are smaller than the usual american plane... but even so, i'd assume that there are still at least 25-100 people on a flight?

so if you were going to average it out, i'd think it would be the total number of people divided by the amount of pollution...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

This doesn't apply because the original poster was already using a 'pollution per passenger per kilometre' calculation.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It says here (http://www.distributiondrive.com/Article18.html) that an average American motorist drives 12,000 miles per year. Also, it's not either/or: many drivers in the US do fly several times a year, too. And when they fly, they cover big distances, even if they're staying within the Contintental US.

Also, every time someone drives to the store, that's a journey that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But every flight I've ever taken would have gone ahead whether I'd been on it or not. Once I was the only passenger to show up for an Air France flight due to fly Tokyo-Paris on Christmas day. They cancelled the flight and put me on the next one, bumped up to Business Class.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, every time someone drives to the store, that's a journey that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But every flight I've ever taken would have gone ahead whether I'd been on it or not.

Momus, this is truly terrible logic! If fewer people flew, then fewer flights would be scheduled. Moreover, your story about your Air France flight perfectly illustrates the point.

You're grasping at straws here. There is no way that the average car-owning American clocks up a dozen flights a year. There is simply no wiggle room here. The amount of pollution generated by shifting Momus to various points around the globe is far, far greater than that generated by your average car-loving American.

[xaotica.livejournal.com]

There is no way that the average car-owning American clocks up a dozen flights a year.


how do you know? have you ever researched it?

[(Anonymous)]

Whoever wrote this is correct, see my (anonymous) comment above. As of 2003, the average american less than 2.5 flights a year.

-Jacob

[xaotica.livejournal.com]

hmm... that sounds low to me, so i guess i must be one of the travelling freaks. i wonder if it has something to do with the cost of air travel.. some of the prices i've seen on european discount flights seem pretty damn low