On March 23, 2009, India’s Tata Motors launched the world’s cheapest car, the Nano. Originally priced at $2,500, the strong dollar has effectively re-priced it at $2000. The launch was six-months behind schedule, and the company has a smaller production capacity than originally envisioned. Obstacles and a weakened economy notwithstanding, for Indian enterprise and a middle-class hoping to get behind the wheel, this is a proud moment, a giant leap forward. However, for the global environment, this is not-such-a-nano step toward meltdown.
Wags in the skeptical Western press have greeted the news of the Nano with jewels like, “but, will it blend?” Comparisons with lawn mowers abound, and there is a great deal of concern about its crash-worthiness, emissions and even the ability of its single windscreen-wiper to deal with the monsoon. Such criticism misses the point: Nano’s impact on the world is not about what it can’t do, but what it can. It can enable suburbanization, auto-dependency and sprawl on a scale that the world has never seen.
According to the World Resources Institute, the annual energy consumption per U.S. resident was about 340 million BTU (British Thermal Unit) in 2005. This number represents all energy consumption (industrial, residential, commercial, etc.), divided by the population. The average American consumes about twice the energy of the average European or Japanese, 10 times the average Chinese and about 25 times the Indian. Between them, China and India constitute about 40% of the global population and their low per-capita energy consumption is changing. Industrial activity was the first to move the graph. Now, there are massive highway construction and expansion programs enabling automobile proliferation in both of these countries. The Nano could well be the catalyst that pushes global emissions to completely unsustainable levels.
So, should Indians (and eventually Chinese, Thai, Brazilians and so on) not be allowed to make and drive cars that they can afford? If not, is there a way to ensure that they will not want to do so, of their own accord? There may be an answer to this question, and that answer may well come from Japan and the European Union. Make cars, buy cars, just don’t drive them all the time. And that, in turn, can only happen with sustained and substantial investment in public transit.
So, how can we ensure that developing economies can purchase the automobiles they crave without sending the climate into a tailspin? Japan and the European Union offer clues: Though both nations make excellent cars and have world-class highways, they have a sustained and substantial investment in public transit infrastructure. This commitment has shaped their urban fabric and enabled average citizens to save money, hassle and emissions by leaving their cars at home.
As with many other issues, the world will expect America’s “talk”–say, urging China and India not to become auto-centric–to be accompanied by “walk,” at home. That, unfortunately, despite early glimmers of hope, is not happening. The stimulus bill has allocated about 8 billion dollars to transit, compared with 30 billion to highways. This is roughly in keeping with the traditional 80/20 split of federal transportation funds that have been enshrined since the Eisenhower days.
If we are to get serious about halting climate-change, this split will also have to change. Likewise, the measures that analysts use in determining the cost of removal, per-ton, of carbon-dioxide, will have to start accounting for the long time that it takes for transit projects to be built and to make an impact. Analysis based on 20 to 30 years discounting, inevitably, shows positive impacts of transit systems in a poor light. Most of these projects take 10 years or more to build and a generation for a denser settlement to coalesce around transit lines.
With a multi-generational time-frame, however, there are few strategies as effective as mass-transit. One has only to look around and compare regions within the United States for proof. The average Texan consumes approximately 500 million BTU per year, about six to seven times that consumed by a resident of New York City or San Francisco. This dramatic difference is not due to heating or cooling as one may think, although, urban buildings are remarkably more efficient. The difference largely results from level of dependence on the automobile. Metropolitan regions where many people travel by public transportation (or by bicycles or on foot) are inherently more carbon-efficient than places that rely almost exclusively on automobiles, which is to say, most of the United States.
The president’s stimulus package has put dollar commitments behind promises about promoting green-jobs and increasing renewable energy generation capacity of the U.S. Yet, despite the concern and awareness within the administration, American lifestyles are inextricably linked to very high automobile usage. Until that bull is taken by the horns, climate change cannot be properly confronted. With the launch of the Nano in faraway Mumbai, the bull, far from being stopped, has just gone on rampage. “Yes we can” is echoing back from India in the tagline of Nano commercials–”Now you can.”
To stop this rampage we should answer these questions: How do we break the automatic mental linkage between development and the automobile? How do we offer a sustainable alternative based upon mass-transit? How do we restore landscapes and ecologies scarred by sprawl and rebuild communities, based upon densification and the introduction of rail, bus and bike infrastructure? How do we ensure that people can commute to work or school, meet friends, socialize and buy milk without having to drive their cars?
The answer lies in reducing the need to drive. Japan and the E.U. illustrate a compromise between rising automobile aspirations in China and India and reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In this compromise, the car is present for family pictures and the trip to grandma’s, but the daily commute starts with a walk to the station and culminates in a ride on a safe, punctual and comfortable train, where all sections of society rub shoulders and, like town squares of old, share a truly public domain.
Projjal K. Dutta is director of sustainability initiatives at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He grew up in, soon to be Nano-country, India.