Electric Cars Are a Fix For Capitalism, Not The Planet
The entire EV apparatus is a for-profit transport system compatible with capital accumulation in an era of climate change.
As I write these words on September 19th, 2023, there is an alignment in the sky: the Sun, Earth, and…a cherry red Tesla Roadster? That’s right, Starman — an astronaut dummy launched into solar orbit by SpaceX in 2018 — is witnessing the Earth eclipse the sun. What does this mean astrologically? I’m not sure I want to know.
Starman is currently more than 200 million miles away. With his eons of leisure time, he reads and rereads Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a copy of which was stashed in the glove box. Thousands of years from now, he will still be out there, tumbling around the solar system. And he will still be associated with our moment in history. He could, in fact, be the defining symbol of our time: a dummy in an electric sports car launched into space by the world’s richest white guy.
Will future anthropologists, with their privileged hindsight, make any more sense of it than we can? Perhaps not. Perhaps its absurdity will baffle human and alien life for all time. Still, as one of the dumbfounded Earthlings alive to witness this event, I feel obligated to offer up some notes.
In this essay, I try to understand how, exactly, a car came to have its own orbit around the sun. Along the way, I make pit-stops to investigate the first and second automobile revolutions, pick up some concepts from critical geography, and explore connections between Starman and green colonialism. It’s not a linear journey, to be sure, but what road trip is?
Parallels between the first and second automobile revolutions
Musk’s Roadster seems to have been flung into space by a cyclone of capital descending on renewable energy. On the rise since at least the 1960s, investment in renewables picked up steam in the early 2000s and is expected to climb higher and faster into the future. Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act pledged $369 billion for investments in electric vehicles (EVs), charging stations, solar panels, home retrofits, and other green goods and services.
This trend rhymes with another period of technological development. In the early 1900s, investment in fossil fuel infrastructure — coal-powered plants, electrical grids, gas-powered cars, and roads — had been rising. It accelerated in the 1920s and ’30s and took off during the postwar period. This process, helped along by a number of governmental policies, culminated in the vast suburban landscapes of the United States.
The automobile — which was increasingly required to access goods, services, and work — became the symbol of freedom, status, and self-sufficiency. No one embodied these virtues more than car manufacturer and poster child of postwar prosperity, Henry Ford.
As critics throughout Ford’s era asked: why privately owned automobiles rather than public and active transit? Geographer David Harvey argues that development unfolded according to the “logic of capital”: as surely as water finds the path of least resistance downhill, capital finds the path of maximal growth over minimal time.
Everyone having their own thing — car, house, lawnmower, hand-tools, etc. — means more commodities are sold, in total, than if we shared goods through systems at various scales. More commodities being sold means more profits for the employer class. Despite the social and ecological benefits of sharing, the logic of capital cuts in the opposite direction.
Today, as we convert the fossil fuel system to renewables, we are following the same logic. Elon Musk is the new Henry Ford.
Fixes: spatial and socioecological
Harvey coined the term “spatial fix” to describe large infrastructure projects which stimulate capital growth. He cleverly put all uses of the word “fix” to work. First, spatial fixes anchor large sums of capital in place geographically. Second, they fix or solve problems of overaccumulation by creating spaces for profitable investment. Third, they are “fixes” in the sense of an addict looking for a fix; they temporarily satiate capital’s craving for growth.
The two major spatial fixes of the 20th century were the automobile revolution and suburbanization. Harvey observes that they “feed off each other to stimulate symbiotic forms of accumulation (suburbs need cars and vice versa) and collide to form a potentially serious contradiction.” Following Marx, Harvey uses the word “contradiction” slightly differently than we do in common parlance. It’s used to describe a tension or source of instability within capitalism, or a way in which capital undermines its own goals.
So, what contradiction is Harvey talking about with reference to cars and suburbs? The set of social and ecological debacles facilitated (though not completely caused) by car-centric suburban living: social atomization, climate change, ecological collapse, and dependence on large amounts of cheap energy. To prevent further societal breakdown and maintain accumulation at an acceptable rate, capital will have to somehow “fix” these problems.
Geographer James McCarthy calls fixes which aim to grapple with these distinctly socioecological challenges “socioecological fixes.” He writes: “A transition to a global energy complex built mainly around renewable energy sources has the potential to provide a socioecological fix to many of the short- and medium-term crisis tendencies in contemporary capitalism.” He describes the Green New Deal, for example, as “a way to renew accumulation on a more socially and environmentally sound basis.”
Through the lens of the socioecological fix, we can see the entire EV apparatus for what it is: a for-profit transport system compatible with capital accumulation in an era of climate change.
“We will coup whoever we want!”: Starman and green colonialism
I think about fixes a bit like coral reefs: structures that support large, diverse ecosystems. Whereas reefs support biological species, however, fixes support species of private industry. The fix currently materializing from public investment in EVs is invigorating one of the most the predatory “species” on the planet: the mining industry.
In spring of 2021, I spent a week camped on the site of a proposed lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada. Lithium, of course, is a key element in lithium-ion batteries. One of the many activists I met there was the state coordinator of the Nevada Chapter of Moms Clean Air Force. She shared with me her concerns about air pollution, water scarcity, and increases in substance abuse and violent crime associated with man camps.
Extractive industry and violence against Indigenous peoples often go hand-in-hand. This is especially true in Nevada. In 1865, amidst the ongoing rush for gold and silver, Thacker Pass became the site of a massacre by US cavalry. Nearly 70 Paiute men, women, and children ran to escape, but the soldiers hunted them down. When their relatives came over the hills and looked down into the pass, they found their bodies fallen in the shape of a moon. Hence in Paiute, Thacker Pass is called “Peehee Mu’huh” or “Rotten Moon.”
Lithium Americas, the multinational mining corporation heading up the Thacker Pass project, has another site under construction in South America. Spanning parts of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, the ‘Lithium Triangle’ is much like Nevada’s Black Rock Desert: dry, home to fragile ecosystems, and populated by Indigenous peoples who don’t want any more mining on their land. Already, two workers have mysteriously died and the Argentinian government has fined the company $190,000 dollars for violating environmental regulations. The struggles in Nevada and South America are in solidarity with each other — and against their common enemy — through the international organization Yes to Life, No to Mining.
Like all EV manufacturers, Musk has his eye on lithium supply chains. Recall his charming Tweet in response to the 2019 coup attempt on Evo Morales, Bolivia’s democratically elected president: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Morales, a socialist, had nationalized Bolivia’s lithium and encouraged other Latin American countries to do the same.
At least Musk was honest: like the fixes of generations past, today’s will be administered by imperial force if necessary.
Why doesn’t Starman ride a bus or bicycle through the solar system?
As scholars are tiring of pointing out, everyone having their own EV is not a green solution to our transportation problems. It requires more energy and resources than the Earth can provide. Now as ever, we need to focus on meeting all human needs as efficiently as possible.
Sparing the Earth means sharing its resources: holding social and ecological wealth in common. Public transit is central to this story. It’s safer and more equitable, too. A recent report by the Climate + Community Project concludes that:
…the United States can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling. Reordering the US transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.
Public transportation is also more cost-effective. Car insurance, crashes, maintenance, car-related crime, parking, and infrastructure are expensive. A cost-benefit analysis of mobility regimes in the European Union found that, unlike automobility, cycling and walking actually have a net positive financial return: “Due to positive health effects, cycling is an external benefit worth €24 billion per year and walking €66 billion per year.”
Will policymakers make the commonsense decision to phase out cars? So long as capital rules the day, the Magic 8 Ball says “Don’t count on it.” At all scales, from neighborhoods to nations, sharing is an impediment to capital growth. It’s the opposite of a fix. That’s why an EV currently has its own orbit around the Sun. It’s a testament, if there ever was one, to the tragicomic smart-dumbness that defines life under capitalism.
According to scientists, there’s a 22 percent chance that Musk’s Roadster will collide with Earth sometime in the next 15 million years. If it does, I hope a better society is there, popcorn in hand, to watch it blaze across the night sky.
Want a post-growth transit system? Here are 3 things you can do:
- Use public or active transit wherever possible.
- Check out this list of public transit advocacy organizations you can support. Don’t see an organization near you? Contact your local transit authority — chances are they know of groups in your area.
- Support policies that promote 15-minute cities (comprised of mixed-use neighborhoods which reduce car dependence) and oppose proposals to expand highways, build new parking infrastructure, and increase suburban sprawl.
