Expensive gas won't stop pollution

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

September 4, 2008

I AGREE with David J. Barboza ("Don't fight for cheaper oil") that fossil fuels should be replaced with clean energy, that food subsidies should go towards feeding the hungry rather than lining the pockets of agribusiness giants, and that agricultural self-sufficiency should be restored.

I disagree that we should base our strategy around the argument that higher oil prices "create all the right incentives to conserve that are a necessary prerequisite to a clean-energy revolution we should all embrace."

A fundamental problem with capitalism is that corporations like ExxonMobil and the other few major oil and related companies have the power to shape the market for their products, to actually create demand. And they are driven solely by the profit motive.

During the second quarter of the 20th century, General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Firestone Tire and Phillips Petroleum (now ConocoPhillips) formed National City Lines, a holding company that bought up electric streetcar lines in over 100 cities across the U.S. in order to force people to rely on buses and automobiles.

Although this was more expensive (electric streetcars are much cheaper to maintain and more durable than buses, and cars are horribly inefficient) and worse for the environment and public safety, it conveniently created huge markets for their products.

The Interstate Highway System was created by the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the result of lobbying by the automobile industry and arguments by President Eisenhower that the system would facilitate the quick transport of military vehicles and personnel. The largest public works project to date at that time, the billions spent on highways could have gone to faster, safer, cleaner public transportation.

To this day, in large part because of the massive political influence of corporations that profit from the use of automobiles (who are buying off Democrats in Denver as I write this), public transportation in most places is underfunded and insufficient to get people to work on time, let alone to allow them to drop off their kids in the morning and run all of the errands they need to run.

So there is still a demand for automobile transportation, even though it's more dangerous and causes more pollution than any other form of transportation.

The point is, incentives on the consumer end are not what shapes what is produced or how it's produced. This is decided by capitalists who have the power to make fundamental decisions like what type of transportation infrastructure we have, and don't care how many people get asthma, lung cancer, die in car accidents, or go broke trying to keep up with rising gas prices.

A struggle for lower prices at the pump, at the expense of ExxonMobil's outrageous profits, can be a step towards building the type of movement necessary to win the fundamental changes we both want to see. Such a struggle could be linked to environmental demands already being made by truckers and residents in Oakland ("Fighting for union rights and clean air") and could grow into broader, related demands for things like affordable, clean and expansive public transportation.

A demand for a cap on gas prices should be raised not in isolation but as part of the larger struggle that is needed to combat the devastating impact of the current economic crisis on a working class already bruised and battered by 30 years of attacks.

Millions of workers are being pushed to the edge and/or over it by the high price of gasoline that they need to buy to get to work today, so they can feed themselves and their families tomorrow.

If we celebrate high gas prices and say, "Well, now you'll be forced to conserve," we will only alienate the very people we need to organize with in order to win a sane, clean world.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.