I haven't meandered here a while. But here I am back with some thoughts I typed up and saved back in August of 2013.
Here it is:
“Where Have All the Scooters Gone”?
“Americans still perceive scooters as recreational runabouts or luxury items . . . [p]eople who use two wheeled transportation to get to work here in America do so because they want to, whereas people in Europe and Asian countries do it because they HAVE to because of fuel costs. So until fuel costs get to that point here, the popularity of scooters and small motorcycles will be limited to a small market”. (From a blog post in 2012 at http://www.scooterfile.com/sf-feature/the-dilemma-of-scooters-and-gas-prices-part-two/)
I have tried for eight years to follow the Gandhian motto in the area of personal transportation: “Be the change to you want to see.”
In 2005, during the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and high gasoline prices it caused and coming completely awake on the issue of global warming as a result, I realized Americans who though comprising two percent of the world’s population, burn twenty-five percent of its fossil fuels, have got to change - have to got to stop pouring so much carbon in the air.
I personally decided to live that and within three weeks after the hurricane struck I bought my first motor scooter and began using public transportation when the weather didn’t allow me to ride it. For me riding a scooter was and is a matter of primarily saving the planet for future generations and secondarily for saving money or having fun.
The use of the personal automobile as the main mode of transportation and its production I saw then, and still see now, are a major culprits in the warming of the planet. I believed and still believe that to prevent a huge multi-generational planet-wide catastrophe from striking, that a major change in how Americans get about and how they live was needed and still needs to happen.
However, I realized that most people weren’t going to change willingly - especially when it came to changing a whole way of life passed on from parents to children for over a century. If change was going to come it would have to come through other means than the weather; it would have to come from something that could not be resisted.
So, I came to count on change coming from an economic one – the crash caused by the Great Recession in 2008-09. The automobile industry was tottering then - it looked like it would fall of its own weight if just left to itself. I saw General Motors and Chrysler disintegrating in an unstoppable industry collapse. I even saw the still viable Ford Motor Company, its founder being one of the progenitors of the car culture, ultimately forced to change not only how it did business, but what it made - if it wanted to survive.
However, a legislative solution was proposed to stave off this disaster: offer the automobile industry an huge monetary “Stimulus”. It was to be paid directly as a “loan” from the U.S. Treasury (really the American people). Discussion began in late 2008 in Congress. As I wanted the auto industry to fall, I opposed it from ever being enacted.
Yet I was amazed to see just how much Americans wanted their car culture survive - no matter what. They were willing to pay whatever was necessary. So, the “Stimulus” was enacted in 2009 - with newly elected President Obama, the auto industry heads, the fossil fuel industry leaders, the powerful UAW leading the way and the majority of American people following enthusiastically behind. Billions of dollars were transfused from the U.S. Government’s coffers into G.M. and Chrysler. Thousands of investors were wiped out in the process, BUT the automobile industry (and all of its dependant subsidiaries) were saved. Those who had to pay the ultimate financial price of losing it all were quietly counseled to accept their sacrifice as the necessary price to ‘save the nation.’
And despite all the complaints, jokes, smart-aleck quips and histrionics coming from the right-wing about G.M. becoming “Government Motors” the fact remained - conservative Americans did not want the automobile industry to collapse either. They did not like how it was done but, grudgingly acquiesced and accepted “Government Motors” as the way.
I had hoped that common sense, high gasoline prices, intense weather disasters and an industry’s collapse would show Americans the folly of trying to hold on to a way of life that is not sustainable and inspire an altruism in the younger folks leading them to turn their backs on the car culture. I had hoped these would voluntarily do the right thing to preserve the planet for themselves, their kids and their kids kids.
But the collapse did not happen. No sense of altruism ever rose from the young folks. Now I see Gen-X and the Millennials, all grown mature adults raising families of their own, applauding as vast amounts of monies get poured into rebuilding and adding to existing roadways - expanding suburbia and sprawl while leaving the urban areas and local mass transit systems languishing and national mass transit, once the envy of the world, even more of a shadow of what it was. I see them urging industry and the government to “frack our way to oil independence”. I see them rooting the Canadians on as they squeeze oil from sand to be piped across fragile ecosystems south to the United States as diluted bitumen (dilbit) ready for refining to a usable state.
The fact is - the younger crowd want their turn at the “white picket fence” way of life aka the “American Dream” as their parents had. They want it so much that they are willing to deny what America is doing to the climate; they are even willing to damage the environment to get it.
For now, it seems, Americans are willing to pay whatever price they must pay or suffer whatever they must suffer to keep that very fragile life-style based on the car and fossil fuels intact. To paraphrase from Frank Herbert’s Dune: “The oil must flow”.
And I? I am still at it, still trying to “be the change” I want to see. These days I am riding as the sole scooterist in a sea of gas guzzling SUV’s, luxury cars, huge pick-up trucks, Hummers, and minivans (owned and operated by many of those kids whom I had such great hopes to be a catalyst for change in 2008).
I’ve owned five different scooters since September 17, 2005 - the current being a Honda PCX 150. I have had Piaggio’s Vespa LX150 and its three-wheeled marvel the MP3ie - the 250 cc engine version. The scooter bust in late 2008 and again in 2012 drove the local dealerships of that scooter dedicated company out of business locally. That left me to buy from and get serviced by indifferent motor-sport dealerships whose focus is recreational and for whom scooters are merely an annoying side-line.
Yet, I must endeavor to persevere in hope that in time “being the change I want to see” will come while I can still see it or accept that when it does come I will have laid the foundation for a new way of life, but probably will not be here watch it rise and come to fruition.
So, “Where have all the scooters gone”? Gone to oblivion every one. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
