Rory Sutherland
Already a subscriber? Log in
On any subject involving consumption, academics and journalists have dubious motives. For they often belong to that rare class of people who are rich in social status yet relatively poor in material status. As a tenured professor or a columnist on a newspaper, you enjoy a superabundance of social capital. You have respect, influence and a degree of fame, and spend your time with adoring people hanging on your every word. But your car is probably a bit crap. Hence it is in your interests to denigrate and devalue the very status currency in which you are poor, since by doing so you increase the value of the currency in which you are super-rich. (If you think academics aren’t status conscious, try telling one you’ve given away his parking space to someone with fewer citations.)
So the assumption that environmentally conscious behaviour automatically requires self-denial is perhaps overplayed by people who want to believe this is true. I recently spoke to a man in Zurich who had decided that the best thing he could do for the planet was to buy a Patek Philippe watch. He calculated that, by hour of pleasure delivered over its useful life, a luxury watch had a carbon footprint many times smaller than a glass of orange juice. He owns only five shirts, but all are hand-made.
There is also a whiff of the naturalistic fallacy in environmental prescriptions. Contrary to most assumptions, a waste-disposal unit is better for the planet than a compost heap. Food matter, when decomposing under water, produces far less in the way of earth-warming gases.
My biggest surprise was cruise control. I had assumed that, because this was American and kind of lazy, it was obviously a bad thing. Yet it significantly improves fuel economy by preventing the driver making needless adjustments to speed. Adaptive cruise control, where your car adopts the speed of the car in front, seems to be even better. Adaptive cruise control also prevents include needless lane-changing and the habit where sociopathic tailgaters (or Audi-drivers, as they are technically known) needlessly intimidate the car in front. This behaviour causes the effect known as the ‘brake-light shockwave’, where a flash of brakelights on a motorway creates a wave of braking, causing traffic five miles behind to grind to a standstill.
But it will be decades before all cars have adaptive cruise control, surely? Apparently that doesn’t matter. Such are the network effects, once 25 per cent of the cars on the road use this technology it will create a tipping point where the whole pattern of driving shifts, reducing congestion by over 20 per cent. So don’t think of ACC as an optional extra. It’s your social duty.
Also in Society
Also by Rory Sutherland
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in