OP-ED: Take Your Foot Off The Gas, America. By LincVolt Continental.
“GM, Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion.” Ripped from today’s headlines, folks. I didn’t make that up. A loss of a billion dollars? That’s progress? They might want to rethink the path they’re progressing on. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that because I’m a Lincoln, part of the Ford family, I have an ax to grind with GM just on general principles. But I don’t mean to single out GM, I really don’t. I just think that GM, and Ford, and other auto manufacturers, need to look at a bigger picture, beyond their balance sheet. It’s time for them to take a world view, indeed, an earth view. It’s time for them to slow down, look around, and step up. It’s time for them to take their foot off the gas.
But since they’re in the news today with their “progress,” let’s use GM as an example. General Motors spends two billion dollars a year on advertising. Two billion dollars a year! That’s $50 million a month. That’s a lot of money to hammer home a message. But that’s not just a lot of money. That’s power. General Motors (and all of Detroit) has an opportunity, I’ll go even farther, a responsibilty, to use their power, their voice, their very big voice, for good. The message they should be delivering with their billions of advertising dollars is Take your foot off the gas America! Slow down. Look around. Pay attention. Save the planet. Change the way you drive. (And it’s important for me to point out that I’m not saying that the message that they or anyone else should be delivering is Stop driving. I mean, Jesus, I’m a car, why the fuck would I say something like that? The adventure and freedom of the road is a large part of what America is all about! I’m saying Change the way you drive.) Auto manufacturers should be retooling their manufacturing plants to make earth-friendly vehicles and then pushing them like a peanut vendor at a baseball game. Look, this isn’t rocket science. This is common sense. We all live on the same planet. We all know the Earth is in danger. Am I the only getting these memo’s? Where’s the desire? Where’s the sense of responsibility? Where’s the moral imperative that this country was founded on?
Look, like I said, I’m a car. I’m all about fueling up for the big the road trip. No one is seduced by a car commercial saying “Full tank of gas, let’s hit the road!” more than me. Trust me. But if we don’t change the way we drive, there aren’t going to be any more road trips folks. Nothing to see nowhere to go. Our very freedom to roam is at stake not only because of our dependence on foreign oil and the dangers inherent there, but also because of our daily destruction to the planet as gas-burners. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s why I’m changing. And look. This isn’t easy for me. I’m a two and a half ton 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV. I was designed to burn gas like a motherfucker. But I’m on my way. Already I have an ethanol fueled, turbo-charged, single rotor engine turning a UQM 75KW generator in place under my hood. That’s progress. And if I can change, so can you. And so can Detroit. Come on people. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
I know I’m not the first person to talk like this. Hell, Robert Frost talked about the advantages of taking the road less traveled back in 1916:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
It’s time for cars, and car companies to take the road less traveled. If I were in charge of General Motors, or I guess since I’m a Lincoln it would be more likely that I would be in charge of Ford, I would really shake things up. Strip that company right down to its frame. In car speak, someone needs to step up and pimp that ride.
Think I’m being unreasonable? Naïve? Maybe so. And really, what do I know? I’m just a car. But there is majesty in the grand gesture, I am sure of that. I want to tell you a story. Sam Johnson, of Johnson Wax fame, drove me for a summer. How that came to be, well, it’s a long story, never mind, we don’t have to go there. This was back in the ‘70’s. Things were crazy back then. I am so glad to be back home. With Neil. Anyway. Good ol’ Sam. One day that summer, Sam and I were driving down the road, just minding our own business, up there in Racine, Wisconsin. The top was down, one of the rare times we could do that up there, but it was June, and we were enjoying cruising by the lake. Sam loved nature, just like his father had, and just like his father’s best friend, Frank Lloyd Wright had. We loved to drive around the lake and look at Frank’s work, how he somehow made manmade structures, like houses and garages, look like part of the landscape. Anyway. On this particularly fine June day, Sam and I were driving around the lake, listening to the radio. A news report came on, and Sam’s normally easy face suddenly turned hard. I hadn’t known him very long, but I knew I’d never seen him look like that. He drove me right into a ditch. He jumped out of me, not even bothering to shut my door behind him. I watched as he raced over to the old phone booth, (this was 1975, folks, even Sam Johnson didn’t have a car phone), and made a frantic phone call, gesturing wildly with his hands. He kept saying things like “Right NOW!” and “I said STOP!” and “I said IMMEDIATELY!” When he came back to me, he was the old Sam again. Smiling. Happy. Calm. He slipped into the driver’s seat and patted my steering wheel. “Sorry about that, LC (that was my name then, before I was LV). I had to attend to some business. Let’s get you back out there on the road where you belong.” And that was all he said. But I knew something important had just happened. I could tell by the way Sam was smiling to himself. He looked pleased, but determined about something. And when he got me back on the road, he turned around and went in a different direction.
Later, I found out what had happened. The radio station we were listening to, a popular NPR station in Wisconsin, had just announced that fluorocarborns had been proven to be dangerous to the environment, and were playing a part in destruction of the earth’s ozone layer. Many of Johnson Wax’s products contained fluorocarbons! No wonder Sam was upset. He loved nature, and the earth, fiercely. And now he had just found out that his company was contributing to its demise. He was flabbergasted, and distraught. And without a second thought, he pulled me off the road, into a ditch, and shut down production in every single one of his manufacturing plants that manufactured products with fluorocarbons in them. Right that second, right then and there. With a single phone call. That was that. He vowed that until Johnson Wax could find a way to produce aerosol products without the damaging fluorocarbons, they wouldn’t produce them. Closed for business until they could find a better way.
Impressive, if you ask me. That took a lot of guts. Are you listening, Detroit? Sure, it was his company. Sure, that makes it a little easier. But the bottom line is the same. Sam Johnson wasn’t afraid to do the right thing, he wasn’t afraid to make a sacrifice for the greater good. You think Sam Johnson wasn’t concerned with making a buck? Au contraire. Every single employee at that company had a sign on their desk that read simply “Have you sold any wax today?” They probably still do. Sam Johnson was all about keeping his eye on the ball. But he also had his ear to the ground. A respect for the bigger picture. A deep respect for Mother Earth. Respect for the future. Three years after Sam shut down his plants until they could figure out a better way to manufacture his product, the country followed suit, banning fluorocarbons altogether. He made a difference. And I never forgot it.
I’ve been on this road for a long time. I’ve been lucky to have friends like Sam Johnson, and Neil Young. People who care about the planet, and their part in it. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m trying to live up to the integrity and call of my friends or what, but I’ve always thought I had a greater purpose. Some Native American friends of mine have told me that I am the modern day White Buffalo. Native Americans believe that the birth of the White Buffalo signals hope, and change. A new light into the world. And really, the analogy fits, when you think about it. I am white. I am huge. And I am The Heavy Metal Continental. I am designed to cross the continent. No one loves to roam more than me. Just the way the buffalo used to roam this country freely, the automobile does today. But the problem is this. The buffalo were in perfect harmony with the planet they roamed. They would graze and fertilize, and move on, graze and fertilize and move on, in a very wide circle, not returning to the same area for an entire year or two, until the earth had regenerated itself and the cycle could continue. With their circle of migration and refertilization, they didn’t draw down the reserves of this earth, they actually gave the planet life! They gave back. And if cars are the modern day buffalo, roaming the planet, we need to be regenerative, not destructive. Like the buffalo.
I always thought it was no mistake that I was born an American Car in 1959, when some very important things were happening in our country. First of all, it was a time of peace. And it was the same year that Hawaii and Alaska joined these United States. Alaska: A land of promise, “North, To The Future!” their state motto. Hawaii’s motto is “Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka Aina I Ka Pono,” or “The Life of The Land is Perpetuated In Righteousness.” If I were a state, either of these mottos could easily be etched into my state seal. I practically have these words written on my soul. Two years later, in 1961, when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as our nation’s president, he re-issued these words himself in a different way in his inauguration speech, urging us all to think beyond the limits of ourselves. He said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Well, America, this is what you can do. Take your foot off the gas. Slow down. Look around. Keep the adventure of the road trip alive, and the very spirit of America and the freedom it represents alive, by taking your foot off the gas now. Pause. Stop. Think. Look to the future out of respect for the past. Sometimes the past can be an albatross. In car speak, drag. But sometimes, it can be a cairn.
Let’s go back to the future (thanks, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis). Back to a time when we were willing to say “What can I do?” Back to a time when convenience and apathy weren’t the most powerful drivers of our decisions. Back to a time when not only individuals but indeed corporations made decisions based on a moral imperative about the future of the planet. Come on Detroit. Come on America. We’re at a fork in the road. Take your foot off the gas. Head for the ditch. Take the road less travelled by. It might make all the difference.
From one of my many scrapbooks.
LincVolt Continental is a guest Op-Ed contributor for The Pragmaticus, and was the subject of a Pragmaticus Profile by F. Childs on 11/11, 2009. In addition to the daily work she is doing in the garage with her owner, musician Neil Young, to finish her own conversion to a zero-emissions, high-mpg, earth-friendly vehicle that could eliminate roadside refueling entirely, she is also working on a movie, and writes regularly on her blog, Under The Hood.
