The road to respect: Americans, automobiles, and the environment

During the twentieth century, Americans embraced the automobile as a useful form of personal transportation. As an expensive, publicly used, personal possession, the automobile also proved an ideal means by which Americans gave symbolic expression to ideas about who they were as people.; In finding mutually beneficial ground, automobile owners and makers together caused a variety of environmental problems best cataloged with the product lifecycle perspective. Each part of the lifecycle had its own history. Reserve Mining dumped taconite tailings into Lake Superior to produce iron ore for automobiles. Ford generated industrial pollution when it manufactured automobiles at River Rouge. Drivers created smog and traffic congestion in regions such as Southern California. Junkmen and scrap metal dealers struggled to dispose and recycle old automobiles.; Most of these problems were recognized (at least in basic form), publicized (chiefly by specialists or concerned local citizens), and addressed (to some degree) well before the coalescence of the modern environmental movement. Ultimately, problems that resulted from consumer use of the automobile—emissions and gasoline dependence—became the subject of greatest public concern and Federal regulation. Americans had difficulty linking the other problems directly to automobile use.; Environmental problems arose not just because automakers, sold automobiles to earn a profit but because consumers bought them for their own ends. The harm resulted from the intersection of both producer and consumer motivations. American consumers used automobiles for transportation but also to make important symbolic claims to dignity and respect. Before 1925, ownership alone sufficed. Thereafter, styling became an important means to this end. By mid-century, automakers possessed great power to influence consumer tastes, but in the late 1950s and 1970s many consumers ignored the automakers' preferred offerings for alternative vehicles that better served their needs. The SUV boom at century end, however, revealed that consumer desires could outweigh the need to address even well-publicized environmental problems. Thus, Americans' need for dignity and respect and their preference for using consumer goods such as the automobile to seek it proved to be both an important cause of their environmental problems as well as a barrier to solving them.