Tom Murphy of Do the Math walks us through a topic that’s as crucial to the future of progressive, science-and-communications aided, modern society as anything could be: the comparative energy efficiency of human muscled-powered locomotion.

Corporate capitalism presumes the continuation — and, hence, the sustainability — of present mobility arrangements in at least its core areas. Under that arrangement, a large percentage of everyday, local-area travel is accomplished via automobile. This is due to the unique demand- and profit-stimulating effects (read: wastefulness) of cars-first transportation orders.

From an energy point of view, cars-first transportation means that fueling automotive engines is a major bottleneck for normal social existence. As such, the obvious question is how well does and could the cars-first arrangement compare to its major alternative, the reconstruction of towns and cities to encourage bicycling and walking?

Tom Murphy’s conclusion: On a diet of normal, mixed foodstuffs (rather than pure lard or some other means of maximizing the energy density of the comestible), short-distance bicycling yields an MPG equivalent of 290, or about 6 times the energy efficiency of a Toyota Prius. Walking, meanwhile, delivers about 160 MPG.

There is, Murphy says, one fly in the ointment here: the energy intensity of current agricultural and food delivery arrangements. Factoring that in, Murphy figures that the MPG of cycling drops to 130 and that of walking to 34.

So, even without altering the food system (via increased organic farming, localization of supply chains, moves away from food processing/packaging, improvement of the veggie/meat intake ratio, etc.), bicycles are almost four times more energy efficient than Priuses, and walking is right in the same ballpark. A blend of the two — surely a main feature of any genuinely sustainable, modern human future — would be far more energy efficient than any conceivable cars-first arrangement.

(All this, of course, leaves aside the question of the energy required to build and maintain the infrastructures involved. Cars-first requires huge streets, large parking areas, scattered building patterns, and gigantic, ornate fuel-delivery processes. Muscles-first living would imply much smaller streets, less need for parking, dense building patterns, and comparatively simple fuel-delivery processes.)

Muscles-first would, of course, also be a far healthier arrangement: Using one’s own body, rather than 3,000-pound electrical or fossil-fuel combusting machines, to achieve the desired movements, would have radically positive impacts on public health, as would the accompanying reduction in exposure to the chemicals and large collisions involved in cars-first living and breathing.

Need we mention which society would be more fun and sociable and sane?

Of all the Big Lies surrounding it, none is greater than the long-running claim that the American public independently demanded and continues to insist upon cars-first transportation. In this official view, the remarkable speed and unanimity of  governmental management and subsidy of the car’s reign are held to be signs of the overwhelming strength of the democratic will, rather than the clear primacy of overclass imperatives.

The problem, of course, is that there has never been anything resembling serious public debate of basic U.S. transportation policy since the perfection of the automobile in the early twentieth century. Search the historical record. None exists.

The insistence that governmental ramrodding of cars-first policies is democracy in action is, in actuality, a classic Big Lie. Who, to quote the car-pushing classical source, could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously? Since every policy is greased and every Congressional vote a landslide, who, indeed, would ever dare look into it?

If you doubt this interpretation, consider the latest piece of evidence:

In a move undoubtedly calculated to place the argument in the mouths of entities that can be portrayed as “small businesses,” the nation’s automobile dealers, according to Automotive News, are “taking over” the fight against the Zerobama Adminstration’s proposed (and already watered down) rules mandating scheduled increased MPG standards for new cars.

Auto News, citing Reuters, reports:

U.S. auto dealers are working to undo the Obama administration’s fuel efficiency agenda, replacing car companies that for years kept such mandates at bay with the help of allies in Congress.

The car industry is facing dramatic new standards that would double efficiency targets to 54 miles per gallon by 2025, under an administration plan unveiled in July and set to be officially proposed in the coming weeks.

Automakers have traditionally carried the torch for modest fuel efficiency mandates, arguing that aggressive targets could drive up vehicle cost, compromise safety, and limit consumer choice.

But car executives agreed to the ambitious targets during negotiations this spring, going along with an administration that rescued the U.S. industry from collapse in 2009. General Motors and Chrysler owe their continued existence to Obama, and taxpayers still own a third of GM.

Virtually all big automakers reluctantly agreed to the 2025 deal in the talks led by the White House, leaving dealers on their own to fight the new standards.

Dealers are backing a Republican measure that would remove the influence of federal environmental regulators and the state of California in establishing national mileage standards.

And how are the dealers packaging “their” efforts?

“This is a big jump, and we’d like to slow this process down and find out what’s working and what’s not,” said Dave Westcott, who operates two North Carolina showrooms and is an executive with a trade group behind the delay effort. “We’d like the public to be in control of what they would like.”

So, what, pray tell, is actual public opinion on this topic?

WASHINGTON (July 28, 2011)—Against a backdrop of sharp differences on a variety of current public policy issues, new polling by the Pew Clean Energy Program demonstrates strong support from American voters for immediate action on vehicle fuel economy.

In a national survey of 1,000 likely 2012 likely general election voters (interviews were conducted by telephone July 8-12, 2011 using a national registration-based sample conducted for Pew by the bipartisan polling team The Mellman Group, Inc. and Public Opinion Strategies between July 8-12, 2011), 91 percent of Americans agree that dependence on foreign oil is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” threat to U.S. security, with 61 percent indicating it is a “very serious” threat. These views cut across demographic and partisan lines, with 65 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents identifying dependence on foreign oil as a “very serious threat” to national security.

The polling results reinforce news reports of an ambitious proposed interim fuel economy rule agreement reached by the Obama administration, the auto industry and other stakeholders to improve fuel efficiency for cars and light-duty trucks in model years 2017-2025. The proposed standard is to be announced Friday, July 29, 2011.

The survey found 82 percent of respondents support an increased fuel efficiency standard of 56 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025, with 68 percent who “favor strongly.” Overwhelming majorities in every demographic subgroup support increased fuel efficiency to 56 mpg, including 70 percent of Republicans, 87 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of independents.

Voters across all regions also backed increasing fuel economy to 56 mpg, with 80 percent in the Northeast, 85 percent in the Midwest, 77 percent in the South and 86 percent in the West. Further, 92 percent of Americans believe it is either “very important” (69 percent) or “somewhat important” (23 percent) for the United States to take action now to increase fuel efficiency.

If anything, since it excludes those not registered to vote and since registered voters tend to be wealthier and more conservative than the non-registered, these numbers are almost certainly an under-estimate of the actual state of public preference.

Such is the standard stuff of transportation dictatorship in America.

And for any who might construe this post as any kind of endorsement of Zerobama, let me remind you that the consciously accepted role of that operation is Pitchfork Catching. The proposed MPG rules, as I’ve said before, are a distraction. They were also built to be whittled down. No mainstream politician is allowed (or even inclined) to question, let alone threaten, the machine that lays the golden eggs.

Politics in this plummeting empire would have to improve substantially to become merely surreal.  As it stands, they are wildly anti-real.

Consider the fact that Zerobama is in mildly warm water for leaning on the Ford Motor Company to yank a television ad bragging about Ford not taking government bailout money.  Zerobama, bailer-out of not just the automotive corporations but the whole array of for-profit medical operators, and self-conscious (and highly effective) pitchfork deflector, might or might not have sent a letter to Ford asking it to suppress its ad.

In response, the far-rightists are now trying to turn that possible act into political hay.

The issue at the heart of the matter, meanwhile, is how much validity resides in the pulled ad, which apparently ran as follows:

The Ford commercial was the first time an automaker had made the message part of a national ad campaign.

The ad is part of Ford’s “Drive One” campaign to win over consumers from other brands. In it, a Ford owner, identified only as Chris, says, “I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw.”

The proposition here (and its amplification by the R wing of the ruling duopoly) is a moderately clever and completely typical move:  No mainstream politician, Ford and and the Rs know, is either permitted or inclined to mention the fact that cars-first transportation would not exist, were it not for huge annual flows of public preference and subsidy.  The annual cost of road-building alone is larger than the entire automotive bailout program was, and also far larger than the portion of the bailout loans that will not be recouped.

We won’t go into details about the portion of the nation’s police, court, and hospital costs caused by cars-first transportation.

Suffice it to say that the notion that any car-related capitalist is “standing on its own” is simply Orwellianly and petulantly deluded and dishonest.  Only in America, as they say!

The DoubleThink is really piling up fast.   In last Friday’s New York Times, the illustrious Fareed Zakaria, star of a corporate news show with “GPS” in its title, published “How Will We Fuel the Future?”, a review of The Quest, the new tome by oil-industry front-man Daniel Yergin.  Yergin, of course, minimizes the nearness and severity of Peak Oil and takes it as an axiom that capitalists are soon going to be selling the automobiles that transcend it.  How?  Yergin doesn’t say — because he can’t say — because it is a physical impossibility.  Profitable as it has been to capitalists, relying on intricate 3,000-pound machines as the primary means of everyday locomotion for significant segments of the human population is inherently and radically unsustainable, given the physical properties of planet Earth.

So, how does Mr. GPS review Yergin’s book?  While lecturing about “the need for lucid thinking” on all sides, here is Zakaria’s conclusion:

The steam engine, the automobile, the computer, the Internet are all miracles.  We need something on that order in energy — and fast.

Might the reign of the automobile, despite the miracle talk, be incompatible with any kind of decent human future?  That possibility, despite the screamingly basic facts of the matter, remains literally unmentionable in the mainstream media.  Some miracles are just way too important to the sponsoring class.

Chronic dry coughs are one symptom of lung cancer. Physicians who examine cigarette smokers with chronic dry coughs can take an xray to check for lung tumors, or send the smoker home to take cough syrup.

Huge and unsustainable use of petroleum is one symptom of cars-first transportation. Activists who aim to create sustainable societies can either attack cars-first transportation, or strike futile poses about “oil addiction.”

These two situations are precise analogs: Getting arrested in an attempt to win marginal twitches in the petroleum supply chain is precisely the same as sending a coughing cigarette smoker to the pharmacy for cough drops. Both are reckless evasions of duty.

Meanwhile, the eco-shirkers are now congratulating themselves for staging “the largest grassroots environmental protest in decades.”

ROFLMAO. Anything is bigger than nothing, right?

Social movements are rare and hard to organize. To succeed, they must choose the right targets and point in the direction of imaginable and meaningful victories.

To see instead this kind of wasted, deluded effort makes me profoundly sad, especially when activism on behalf of real transportation reform is something large chunks of public might come to support.

Tom Murphy provides yet another invaluable analysis of yet another “cute solution” to the crisis of cars-first transportation. According to Murphy, here are the actual potential contributions of three ballyhooed recycling-based alternative fuel sources for automobiles:

Used restaurant cooking oil: <1 percent of current oil usage (71% of which goes into moving cars)

Recycled plastic containers: 0.5 percent of current oil usage

Reprocessed human feces: 0.25 percent of current oil usage

Murphy's conclusion:

Demonstration, or proof of concept, is often taken as enough evidence to satisfy our skeptical nature. And even if half of the things we hear about are over-hyped, we hear enough of them to placate our worries. The result is that we do not have an all-hands-on-deck effort to plot our energy future. Reliance on market forces, human ingenuity, and a track record of successful substitution short-circuits our ability to get serious.

“Market forces,” of course, are the key. Capitalists are quite unwilling to permit seriousness on this topic, despite its obvious importance and foreboding. Hence, ignorance and delusion are the only games in town.

Having everybody in the United States use automobiles to accomplish daily travel has always been a capitalist pipe dream. That is thanks to the laws of physics and the geology of our planet. It will simply never be remotely economical, sustainable, or sane to deploy 3,000 pound objects that sit idle 95 percent of the time to accomplish what walking, cycling, and public transit could just as easily (and much more safely and healthfully) facilitate. On a planet that was fated to reach Peak Oil, awakening from this pipe dream, one way or another, was also always inevitable.

A major side note to this story is the open secret that the basic physics of automobile travel are also far more fixed than present promises from above would have you believe. Just as an acceptable level of safety in a sprawling, cars-first society like the United States will always require cars to weigh something like 2,500 pounds, so it is that moving 2,500-pound cars will only get so energy-efficient.

Evidence of this physical fact was recently helpfully analyzed by Rick Kranz of Automotive News:

On the basis of vehicle weight, how dramatic has the increase in fuel economy been over the past 45 years?

This week I was running through some old news articles, seeking information for several stories I’m writing for Automotive News‘ special issue devoted to Chevrolet’s centennial. The issue will be published Oct. 31.

I decided to compare those cars to two 2012 cars with similar vehicle weight to see the differences in fuel economy, 45 years later. Obviously, the length, width and height of the 2012 models are somewhat reduced compared with cars in the ’60s. The new models have far better aerodynamics than the Chevy and Rambler. Additionally, the 2012s compared here have four-cylinder engines.

The 1966 Chevrolet Biscayne weighed 3,294 pounds and averaged 21.04 mpg. I used a base 2012 Ford Fusion sedan with automatic transmission for the comparison. The Ford weighs 48 pounds more than the Chevy and gets 23 mpg city, 33 mpg highway and 26 mpg overall, according to the EPA.

The 1966 Rambler averaged 23.80 mpg, coast-to-coast. For a weight comparison, I used a base 2012 Honda Civic with an automatic transmission. The Civic weighs 2,608 pounds, and is rated at 28 mpg city, 39 mpg highway and 32 mpg overall.

Using the EPA’s overall miles per gallon numbers, the Fusion was 5 mpg better than the Biscayne and the Civic was about 8 mpg better than the American.

Was there a dramatic difference in fuel economy 45 years later on the basis of vehicle weight?

Those numbers work out to about a 25% mpg gain for the heavier car and a 33% one for the lighter vehicle. So, despite three major oil shocks and the recent quasi-official acknowledgement of Peak Oil, automotive mpg has improved by substantially less than one percent per year since the days when everybody assumed Earth’s resources were infinite and mpg ratings were not posted on sales stickers or anywhere else.

Something to keep in mind the next time you hear some Democrat or other “green car” moron bloviating about 62 mpg.

As the late Stephen Jay Gould wrote, every human endeavor is subject to “right walls,” or outer limits of improvement. Here at DbC, one of our core theses is this: The automobile is already much closer to its own right wall than anybody will admit.

I bet they’re drooling on themselves over at Greenpeace, thinking themselves oh-so-clever for producing this spoof of a recent triumph of car-peddling smarm:

Not only does this sort of lavishly expensive undertaking encourage would-be radicals to mistake gestures for organizing, but take a look at the language of the thing:

More efficient cars are cheaper to run, use less oil and emit less CO2. Volkswagen has a history of lobbying against the strong European standards that we need to kick our oil addiction. As the biggest car company in Europe, with the biggest responsibility, VW must change and support strong standards from now on.

Volkswagen says it wants to be “the most eco-friendly automaker in the world”, but only 6% of the cars it sold in 2010 were its most efficient models. It has the technology to do better. VW must set out its plan to make its entire fleet oil-free by 2040.

Wow. Greenpeace, the operation that used to risk life and limb to halt nukes and whaling ships, is now spoofing TV ads, and telling its audience that “more efficient cars” are the answer, that “oil-free” cars are somehow green, that’s it’s “our oil addiction,” and that we can afford to diddle around until 2040 playing games with such silly-ass dishonesties.

Sad, and scary.

Nobody denies that domestic U.S. petroleum production passed its peak 40 years ago and has zero chance of ever regaining it. That, of course, has no impact on mainstream reporting and politics, where everybody plays the game of implying that some secret stash will be unlocked and return the United States to carefree cars-first living.

In the least surprising news of the month, Zerobama, the most fraudulent of all modern U.S. Presidents (a major competition, I know, but one he easily wins), is now officially piling onto this remarkably dishonest game, having just announced, in his unchanging didactic techno-smarm, that he’s caving in to demands to further deregulate domestic oil and natural gas drilling.

The only effect of this latest item of complete conventionality will be to raise the level of ecological destruction that accompanies the ruling institutions’ perpetuation of the nation’s massively unsustainable transportation infrastructure.

In the United States, government devotes great energy to helping the overclass conceal the multiple disasters inherent in cars-first transportation. The agency that tracks the tens of thousands of yearly deaths in car crashes and invariably reports them as good news? That’s the National Highway Traffic Safety (not Danger) Administration.

Hence, how surprised are we here at DbC by this report about the fraudulence of federal CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) mpg ratings?:

Under a 62 mpg CAFE rule, real-world fuel economy would be just under 50 mpg.

And if CAFE were 47 mpg, the real-world number would be about 38 mpg.

To know why, you have to understand what the CAFE number is — a sales-weighted average of the mpg ratings for vehicles produced in a given year. Vehicle mpg ratings are based on lab tests using a dynamometer, a sort of treadmill for cars.

Dynamometer testing produces an artificial number, but it does provide controlled conditions. No wind, no rain. And it allows for precise test protocols. For instance, the federal city-driving test cycle lasts 1,874 seconds, with an average speed of 21.1 mph, and has cold- and hot-start segments of 505 seconds each.

That’s where CAFE mpg numbers come from. But — here’s the curveball — those numbers don’t appear on window stickers.

In an effort to get closer to real-world fuel economy, CAFE numbers are reduced by 20 to 25 percent, depending on the type of vehicle. So a car that scores 35 mpg on the laboratory test will have a window-sticker rating of 28 mpg. [Source: Automotive News, May 9, 2011]

The obvious purpose of the continued use of a test known to be unrealistic? To make the “debate” on transportation among politicians sound more serious than it is, and to thereby shift attention farther away from the real issues, which continue to be utterly unmentionable in public fora.