About DbC

Death by Car tracks the coming of Carmaggedon, in the belief that our only hope of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is to see what’s happening and why.

My main argument is that, however much some of us commoners in America may love using and thinking about automobiles, it is our corporate capitalists, not our Joe Sixpacks, who are the real car-addicts. Thanks to the normal working of the big business-dominated national and global economy, our overclass of big-time inheritors and investors is intractably addicted to selling us cars in crazy-huge numbers, forever, no matter the ecological and social consequences.

Hence, our problem is sociological and political, not technical.

Green cars, an oxymoronic concept if ever there was one, are simply not going to cut it, despite our masters’ increasingly strident suggestions to the contrary.

What we need instead is a smart, powerful new social movement demanding a green, egalitarian New New Deal — a huge, radical, democratically-led national reconstruction program centering on remaking our towns and cities around genuinely sustainable transportation infrastructures. Before it is too late.

Meanwhile, my name is Michael Dawson. I live in Portland, Oregon, where I also write The Consumer Trap blog.