The American people have always benefitted from a very generous supply of natural resources. The United States in its over two-hundred year history has never known scarcity of resources. It is a land of abundance. And its economic history is one of constant growth.
Generations of immigrants were welcomed to support that growth. Dealing conservatively with natural resources was seldom a key to economic success, seldom a factor in the nation’s decision making. Far more important were such factors as innovation and rapid reaction to the demands of a competitive market economy.
The structure of American cities and towns is such that an automobile is required. Germany is different. It is the size of the U.S. state of Montana. German cities and towns – large or small – are well planned, well structured. They’ve grown based on structures going back as far as the Middle Ages with the core consisting of the church, the market square, the post office, perhaps a river running through or along it.
Over the centuries the towns grew outwardly, organically. Life and work were – and are still for the most part – integrated. Modern transportation and logistics adapted to the town’s layout. Trams (streetcars) linked the city’s neighborhoods. The underground (subway) did the same. Life can be lived in German towns and cities without an automobile.
A car in every garage and a chicken in every oven
In this, as in many other, senses, the quality of life in Germany is higher than in the U.S.. America experienced a huge growth spurt after the Second World War. Baby boom. People were tired of rationing. They wanted to consume. Eisenhower – and his military and civilian colleagues – were impressed by the German autobahn system and wanted the same for the U.S..
Not only because he saw it allowing for the rapid transportation of heavy military armor necessary in the case of defense of continental USA. A national highway system would make civilian transportation modern and efficient. It would further spur growth. The automakers in Detroit were thrilled. The automobile took over, pushing aside public transportation. “A car in every garage and a chicken in every oven” was the motto of the 1950s.
Then came the flight of white Americans from the cities (primarily in the North) to their suburbs. There were two main driving factors: First, families had more children, needed and wanted more space, in the home and in the yard. The automobile, and the building of streets and highways, made it possible. Secondly, more and more African-Americans migrated from the South to the North attracted to better-paying jobs. White Americans wanted to live among themselves.
Resources. I think of the family I grew up in. Mother, father, six children, a house with five bedrooms and two full baths, on a half-acre of land, in a neighborhood full of children (mostly boys): the Moses family with four, the Heidts with three, the Argyris family with four, D‘Aquila two, Bridi three, we Magees five.
“Don’t be wasteful” was only every said in terms of food.
Up the street lived the Plames. Mother, father, daughter. A few years ago I learned from my mother that Mr. Plame had developed the land and had built the ten or so houses, including ours. He had been a retired officer of the U.S. Air Force, his last years spent in Alaska.
“Hmm”, I thought, most likely Strategic Command, where the U.S. had long-rang bombers stationed in case of war with the Soviet Union. Then I read in the newspaper and online about Valerie Plame. The name was immediately familiar to me. Valerie attended grade school with my youngest brother, Tom. Valerie Plame: exposed (perhaps by the U.S. government itself) as a CIA undercover agent. Her husband, an American diplomat, was openly skeptical of the reasons the Bush administration took the country to war in Iraq.
Like most American families we were very active as children, which continued into high school. School, sports, visiting friends, all possible in the suburbs thanks to cars. As soon as three or four of us had our drivers licences we had three or four cars. This was the 1960s and 70s. One can imagine how much energy we used: water, electricity, gasoline, packaging for all sorts of products. And we were just one of millions of similar families. “Don’t be wasteful” was only every said in terms of food. That’s what the suburbs in the U.S. were (and are still) like.
Cheap energy is the motor of American society.
They were built quickly. They had no center, no village old town. There was open land. Streets were built. Houses were built. Developments they were called. Whenever my mother visited Germany she marveled at the elderly women riding their bicycles from their apartment houses to the various stores. We did not grow right in the U.S., not thoughtfully. I doubt that there was a discussion back then among town, city or civic planners about how to grow (expand) intelligently, not only in the sense of impact on the environment, but also in terms of quality of life.
The two are not mutually exclusive: growth and quality of life. Jimmy Carter made an attempt in his speech Energy and the National Goals – A Crisis of Confidence on July 15, 1979. He spoke about limits, about energy policy. Carter was criticized heavily. Energy is the motor of American society. It makes our life simpler and more comfortable. In the last years, however, we have realized that we need to make some changes. Gasoline prices have climbed steadily over the years. The second Iraq War did not go well, to put it mildly. Russia uses natural gas as a weapon against the Ukraine and as a lever against Western Europe.
Dramatic environmental catastrophes have become a yearly – often monthly – occurrence: Hurricane Katrina, the forest fires in California and the Southwest, hurricanes in Florida, the rapid changes in temperatures. Think of the impact on the ozone layer by air conditioning set on high and running from April until October in countless homes, schools and office buildings in the states of the Southeast stretching across the Southwest to the Pacific Coast.
“My goodness, what does it cost to heat those places?”, my mother always asks whenever we drive by so-called McMansions in the Philadelphia area, the houses built during the boom years of the 1990s: oversized, ugly, without style or character or imagination. Neureiche (noveau riche, new rich). Yes, people can do as they please with their money. Yes to private property. But individual interests often have impact on collective interests.