The Wrong Track

The Washington Post lost its mind yesterday and published an article entitled 5 Myths About Suburbia and Our Car-Happy Culture by Ted Balaker and Sam Staley. The five myths are:

• That Americans drive too much. In fact, it's not that Americans drive too much but that we are rich and, all over the world, rich people drive more. The Europeans, with their smaller countries, big cities, trains to die for and gasoline at $5.00 per gallon, use cars for 78% of their travel. We use cars for only 88% of our travel, and the Europeans are gaining on us.
  
  
• That public transportation makes sense. Public transportation simply can't be made convenient, cheap and attractive enough to displace driving. Even in New York, only 25% of commuters use public transportation.
  
  
• That cutting driving would improve air pollution. To the contrary, we're now getting improved air quality along with more driving. Even more improvement is locked it, as older cars get replaced by newer less-polluting cars.
  
  
• That we're paving over America. Only 5.4% of the US is "developed," meaning a population density of at least 30 people per square mile (the approximate population density of Kansas).
  
  
• That less driving would lead to less global warming. The Post comes to its senses here and the answer given is not all that convincing. But Kyoto is a joke, the best thinking now is that the costs of global warming will not outweigh the benefits until the temperature has risen about 2 degrees F which is the entire likely rise this century and tying global warming to substantial decreases in driving will only ensure that we take no action to stop global warming.