The Great God Car: Re-evaluating Our Worship of the Car in an Age of Electric Dreams and Climate Crisis

Introduction: The Enduring Altar of the Automobile

In the early 1990s, I wrote a searing critique of modern transport policy in which I depicted the automobile not merely as a machine, but as a deity—the “Great God CAR,” a powerful phrase I borrowed from the late Australian union activist Jack Mundey.¹ This metaphor captured a profound truth: our society’s relationship with the car had transcended utility to become a form of worship, shaping our cities, economies, and cultures around its insatiable needs. In my original essay, I argued with passionate urgency that this deification had created a destructive, self-perpetuating system. Our cities were built as temples to the car, hard-wiring dependency “like an addiction.”¹ The litany of its sins was long and damning: it was a voracious consumer of finite resources, a prolific polluter of our air and water, and a remorseless killer on our roads.

Crucially, I contended that the prevailing strategies to mitigate this damage were fundamentally flawed because they were anthropocentric—concerned only with human well-being and unwilling to question the car’s central role. Solutions like the catalytic converter I dismissed as mere “tinkering around the edges,” designed to assuage human guilt and preserve the status quo of “business as usual” without demanding any fundamental change in behaviour.¹ Such incremental fixes, I warned, would inevitably be “outstripped by growth in numbers,” rendering them futile in the face of the automobile’s exponential proliferation. The only true path forward, I concluded, was a radical paradigm shift: the adoption of an “ecocentric transport policy” that would dethrone the car, phase out the internal combustion engine in its current form, and redesign our urban landscapes around environmentally benign forms of mobility.¹

More than three decades have passed since I made that clarion call. The world has been transformed by forces scarcely imaginable at the time. The digital revolution has rewired society, the spectre of climate change has become a declared global emergency, and a new technological saviour has emerged: the electric vehicle (EV). The air in many of our cities is demonstrably cleaner, and our cars are statistically safer than ever before. On the surface, it might appear that the old gods are being retired.

In this paper, I pose the central question: Have the seismic shifts of the last thirty years finally dethroned the Great God CAR? Or have we simply constructed a new, more technologically sophisticated, and deceptively “green” altar for our continued worship? I will re-evaluate my original thesis in the harsh light of the 21st century. I will demonstrate that while the specific manifestations of the car’s destructive power have evolved, the underlying pathology of automobile dependency remains deeply entrenched and, in many ways, has intensified on a global scale. I will argue that the proposed solutions of our era—the electric vehicle, the ride-hailing app, the promise of autonomous driving—risk becoming the false prophets of a new automotive religion. They are modern iterations of the same anthropocentric, technology-focused “fixes” that I decried in my original essay, threatening to absolve our environmental conscience while perpetuating the core problems of resource extractivism, spatial injustice, and the systemic prioritisation of the machine over the ecosystem. Ultimately, I will contend that my original call for an ecocentric transport policy is more urgent than ever, but that it must be updated and fortified with the modern principles of climate justice and the circular economy to offer a truly viable path away from the altar of the automobile.

My Deep Dive crew tackled the subject matter in this essay, so if you are short of time then a six-minute listen will orientate you – especially if you are in the car! Dethroning the Great God Car Beyond Green Tech to a More Equitable Future – Kevin Parker

Part I: The Vengeful God in a New Millennium: A Modern Damage Assessment

In my original essay, I painted a grim picture of the car’s impact, portraying it as a “Vengeful God” whose appetite for energy, resources, and human lives knew no bounds.¹ An updated assessment reveals a complex and often paradoxical landscape. While targeted regulations have successfully mitigated some of the most visible harms of the 20th century, the sheer, explosive growth of the global vehicle fleet has created new, and in some cases more insidious, forms of damage. The god’s vengeance has not abated; it has simply changed its form.

The Unrelenting Expansion—A Global Fleet Beyond Imagination

The scale of global motorization has vastly exceeded the already dire predictions I made in the 1990s. In the original essay, I cited a worldwide vehicle fleet of 420 million, with a forecast that it would reach a “massive one billion in the year 2030”.¹ Today, that forecast seems almost quaint. The global light vehicle fleet now stands at approximately 1.7 billion, having already surpassed the one-billion mark well over a decade ago.² The rate of production remains staggering, with global car manufacturing totalling 75.5 million units in 2024 alone.³

This explosive growth is mirrored at national levels. In Australia, the vehicle fleet has nearly tripled, growing from 7.4 million in 1988-89 to over 20 million by the early 2020s.¹, ⁴, ⁵ This surge has kept car ownership rates in developed nations at exceptionally high levels. Australia, for instance, has approximately 776 motor vehicles per 1,000 people, while the United States maintains a rate of around 850 per 1,000.⁶, ⁷, ⁸ These figures are not merely abstract statistics; they are a concrete measure of the profound deepening of the “addiction” to car dependency that I identified in the original essay. The cultural, economic, and infrastructural forces promoting automobility have not weakened over the past three decades; they have intensified and globalized.

This relentless increase in vehicle volume is the critical context for evaluating any claimed technological progress. While individual engines may have become more efficient and individual cars safer, the sheer growth in the number of vehicles on the road has overwhelmed many of these incremental gains. This phenomenon, where technological efficiency improvements lead to an increase in overall consumption, validates one of my most prescient warnings: that piecemeal fixes would be “outstripped by growth in numbers”.¹ The problem, then as now, is not just the design of the individual car, but the systemic logic of automobility itself, which is predicated on perpetual, unsustainable growth. This overwhelming expansion of the fleet forms the backdrop against which all other impacts must be measured.

The Human Toll, Revisited—The Paradox of Safer Carnage

One of the most visceral arguments in my original essay was its depiction of the car as a “killer,” responsible for an unending stream of “human CARnage”.¹ I cited a figure of 2,883 road deaths in Australia in 1988.¹ Here, the modern data presents a significant and complex challenge to the original narrative. In 2023, the number of road crash deaths in Australia was 1,272.⁹ This represents a dramatic and undeniable success story. On a per capita basis, the reduction is even more stark. The decades-long, anthropocentric focus on safety engineering—the introduction and mandatory adoption of technologies like airbags, anti-lock braking systems (ABS), electronic stability control, and vastly improved structural crashworthiness—has been remarkably effective in reducing the lethality of individual collisions.

However, this success story is neither complete nor without its own dark ironies. After decades of decline, road fatalities in many developed nations, including Australia, are beginning to trend upwards again.⁹, ¹⁰ For the 12 months ending in May 2025, Australia recorded its deadliest year on the road since 2010, with fatalities increasing by 4.8% from the previous year.¹⁰ This reversal is driven by a confluence of modern factors, including the rising dominance of larger, heavier Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and light commercial vehicles—which pose a greater risk to other road users—and the pervasive problem of driver distraction in an age of ubiquitous digital connectivity.

This creates a paradox of “safer carnage.” The success in reducing fatality rates has fostered a dangerous public and political complacency. The risk to an individual occupant inside a modern vehicle has been significantly reduced, but the systemic risks associated with a massive, ever-present vehicle fleet have not. These systemic harms are often less visible than a fatal crash but are arguably more pervasive. They include the public health crisis of sedentary lifestyles fostered by car-dependent urban design; the social fragmentation and severance of communities carved apart by arterial roads and motorways; and the persistent and, in some cases, rising danger to vulnerable road users. In the year to May 2025, deaths of cyclists and pedestrians in Australia saw alarming increases of 36.7% and 15.7% respectively.¹⁰

The vengeful god of the 1990s may be less likely to demand a blood sacrifice in any single encounter, but its omnipresence continues to degrade public health, erode community cohesion, and terrorize those who dare to travel outside a metal cage. The focus on making the act of crashing safer has diverted attention from the more fundamental goal of creating a system where fewer crashes occur and where car travel is not the only viable option for daily life.

The Shifting Smog—From Tailpipes to Tires

My original essay’s focus on air quality was dominated by the visible and noxious threat of photochemical smog, with pollutants like lead, nitrogen oxides (NOx​), and carbon monoxide (CO) choking cities from Los Angeles to Sydney.¹ On this front, decades of stringent, targeted regulation have achieved successes that would have seemed miraculous in 1990. The global phase-out of leaded gasoline has been a monumental public health victory; in the United States, for example, airborne lead concentrations have decreased by over 99% from their peak.¹¹

The case of Los Angeles, the archetypal smog-choked city of the 20th century, is particularly instructive. Despite a 30% population increase and a 38% rise in motor vehicle activity, a suite of aggressive emission control strategies has led to dramatic improvements. Between 1994 and 2011, average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2​) fell by 28% to 53%, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5​) decreased by 13% to 54% across the region.¹² These gains were driven almost entirely by policies targeting on-road mobile emissions, proving that determined, anthropocentric regulation can be highly effective at tackling specific, well-defined pollutants.¹²

Yet, the problem has not been solved; it has transformed. The focus of concern has now shifted to two critical areas. First is the persistence of pollutants like ground-level ozone, for which Los Angeles still has the worst air quality in the United States, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5​), which remains a major health concern in cities like Sydney, where levels are now increasing.¹³, ¹⁴ Second, and more fundamentally, is the emergence of a largely unregulated and previously underestimated threat: Non-Exhaust Emissions (NEE).¹⁵

NEE are particles generated not from the engine’s combustion but from the physical interaction of the vehicle with its environment: the abrasion of brake pads, the wearing down of tires, and the resuspension of road dust.¹⁵, ¹⁶ These sources are now recognized as a growing contributor to urban air pollution, releasing particulate matter that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, contributing to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.¹⁵

The rise of the electric vehicle throws this issue into stark relief and serves as a profound modern validation of my original thesis. EVs are celebrated as “zero-emission vehicles” because they eliminate tailpipe pollutants. However, they do nothing to address NEE, and may in fact worsen them. Due to their heavy batteries, EVs are typically heavier than their internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts, which can increase the rate of tire and road surface wear.¹⁵, ¹⁷ While the use of regenerative braking in EVs significantly reduces emissions from brake wear, the net effect on total NEE is complex.¹⁷ One experimental study found that when equipped with certain common types of brake pads and when secondary exhaust particles were not considered, an EV could produce 10-17% higher total PM10​ emissions than an equivalent gasoline or diesel vehicle.¹⁸

This illustrates the concept of the “technological treadmill.” Our singular focus on solving the problem of the tailpipe—the most obvious and politically tractable issue—has blinded us to the pollution generated by the fundamental mechanics of a heavy, fast-moving object rolling on an abrasive surface. The very technology hailed as the ultimate solution to automotive pollution is a significant contributor to a new, more insidious form of it. This forces a necessary evolution of the critique, moving from a focus on the engine to a holistic, ecocentric perspective on the entire vehicle system and its physical impact on the planet.

From Greenhouse Gas to Climate Catastrophe

In the 1990s, I discussed the “greenhouse effect” as one of the most significant threats facing the planet, noting that the transport sector contributed 26% of Australia’s carbon dioxide (CO2​) emissions.¹ Today, the language has escalated from a “threat” to a “crisis” and “emergency,” and the scientific certainty is unequivocal. The transport sector’s role in this crisis has become even more pronounced and problematic.

Globally, the transport sector is responsible for approximately 14% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with road transport accounting for the overwhelming majority of that figure.¹⁹ In developed, car-dependent nations, the share is significantly higher. In Australia, transport is the third-largest source of emissions, accounting for around 22% of the national total in recent years.²⁰ Critically, while other major sectors like electricity generation have begun to decarbonize through the rapid deployment of renewable energy, transport emissions have remained stubbornly high, increasing by 19% since 2005. As a result, the transport sector is projected to become Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030.²¹

This failure to decarbonize has made transport the “problem child” of climate policy. The continued growth in vehicle kilometres travelled—driven by sprawling urban forms, the boom in freight and logistics, and the cultural preference for private vehicles—has largely offset the modest gains made in fuel efficiency over the past decades. This represents a systemic failure of policy. The regulatory and market mechanisms that have successfully driven down emissions in the stationary energy sector have not been applied with the same force or political will to transportation. The “Great God Car” has been granted a special, protected status, its primacy in our way of life deemed too sacred to challenge with the kind of transformative policies required to meet our climate obligations. The consequence is that every kilometre driven in a conventional vehicle is pushing the planet further into a state of climatic instability.

The table below provides a stark, quantitative summary of how the scale and nature of the automotive challenge have evolved over the past three decades, setting the stage for a critical examination of the solutions proposed for the 21st century.

Part II: The False Prophets: A Critique of the Modern “Technological Fix”

My original skepticism towards “tinkering around the edges” and the “technological fix” remains profoundly relevant.¹ My core argument was that solutions failing to challenge the fundamental tenets of car dependency were doomed to be insufficient, merely perpetuating the system under a guise of progress. Today, a new trinity of technological prophets has emerged—the electric vehicle, the ride-hailing service, and the autonomous car—each promising a clean, efficient, and convenient automotive future. Yet, a closer, ecocentric examination reveals them to be modern incarnations of the same flawed, technology-centric, and anthropocentric thinking that fails to address the root of the crisis.

The Electric Messiah? Deconstructing the EV Panacea

The electric vehicle is positioned as the definitive solution to the car’s environmental sins, the technological messiah that will absolve us of our carbon guilt and allow our love affair with the automobile to continue, unabated and sustainable. From a narrow, tailpipe-focused perspective, the case is compelling. But a full lifecycle analysis, extending from mineral extraction to vehicle disposal, reveals a far more complicated and troubling picture.

The Carbon Debt and Lifecycle Reality

The primary climate benefit of an EV is the elimination of tailpipe emissions. This is not, however, the full story. The manufacturing process for an EV, and particularly its high-capacity lithium-ion battery, is significantly more energy- and carbon-intensive than that of a conventional ICE vehicle.²³, ²⁴ This initial burst of manufacturing emissions creates a “carbon debt” that the EV must “pay off” through its zero-emission operation before it yields a net climate benefit.²⁴

Fortunately, for most drivers in developed countries, this break-even point is reached relatively quickly. Rigorous lifecycle analyses by organizations like the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) and the Union of Concerned Scientists show that, over its entire lifespan, a typical EV produces far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent gasoline car.²³, ²⁴ In Europe, an EV purchased today is expected to cut lifecycle emissions by 66-69% relative to a petrol car.²⁴ The carbon debt is typically repaid after just 1-2 years of average driving, or approximately 15,000 to 20,000 miles.²³, ²⁴ Furthermore, this advantage is dynamic; as electricity grids become cleaner with the addition of more renewable energy sources, the lifecycle emissions of EVs will continue to fall, while those of ICE vehicles will remain largely static.²⁴ From a pure greenhouse gas accounting perspective, the widespread electrification of the vehicle fleet is an essential and effective decarbonization strategy.

The New Extractivism: Shifting the Ecological Burden

The problem, however, is that greenhouse gases are not the only metric of ecological harm. The ecocentric perspective demands an accounting of the entire chain of impact, and it is here that the EV’s clean image begins to tarnish. The production of millions of EV batteries requires a massive scaling-up of mining for critical minerals, primarily lithium and cobalt, creating a new form of resource extractivism with devastating environmental and social consequences.²⁵, ²⁶

The geopolitics of cobalt are particularly fraught. An estimated 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a nation plagued by decades of conflict, political instability, and weak governance.²⁷ The sector is notorious for severe human rights abuses, including hazardous working conditions and the widespread use of child labor in so-called “artisanal” mines, where miners dig for the mineral with basic hand tools in perilous conditions.²⁵, ²⁸ Chinese companies have secured control over a vast majority of the DRC’s cobalt production and refining capacity, creating a strategic choke point in the global battery supply chain and raising profound geopolitical concerns.²⁷, ²⁹, ³⁰

Lithium mining presents a different, but equally troubling, set of environmental challenges. Much of the world’s supply is extracted from brine reservoirs beneath the salt flats of South America’s “Lithium Triangle” (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile).³¹, ³² This process involves pumping vast quantities of brine to the surface and allowing it to evaporate in large ponds, a method that consumes enormous amounts of water—a scarce and vital resource in these arid high-altitude ecosystems.²⁵ The process also risks contaminating local water supplies with the toxic chemicals used to separate the lithium, threatening fragile ecosystems and the livelihoods of local and Indigenous communities.²⁵, ²⁸

This is the dark underbelly of the “clean” energy transition. The environmental and social damage of personal mobility has not been eliminated; it has been externalized. The burden has been shifted from the visible smog of cities in the Global North to the less visible, but no less real, suffering of communities and ecosystems in the Global South. In my original essay, I spoke of the car’s “predatory partnership with humans,” referencing the oil wars fought to secure its “nectar”.¹ The EV transition has not ended this predatory relationship; it has globalized and diversified it. The new nectar of the god is a cocktail of lithium, cobalt, and nickel, and its acquisition perpetuates a neo-colonial dynamic of resource extraction, environmental degradation, and social exploitation. From an ecocentric and climate justice perspective, this is not a solution but a geographical and moral displacement of the sacrifice zone. The EV, in this light, is not a radical break from the past but a continuation of the car’s long history of consuming the planet for the sake of individual mobility.

The Mirage of Sharing—How Ride-Hailing Deepened the Addiction

In the early 2010s, a new prophet emerged: the sharing economy. Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft promised a revolution in urban mobility. Their narrative was seductive: a seamless, app-based service would make on-demand car travel so efficient and accessible that people would gleefully abandon private car ownership. Cities would be freed from the blight of parked cars, and congestion would melt away as shared vehicles efficiently served multiple users. It was a vision of a technologically optimized future, a “modal shift” driven by market innovation rather than government regulation.

The real-world impact, however, has been a stark and sobering refutation of this utopian promise. A growing body of independent academic research reveals that, far from alleviating the problems of car dependency, ride-hailing has in many cases exacerbated them. A landmark study from researchers at MIT and other institutions, analyzing mobility data across the United States, found that the entry of TNCs led to a measurable increase in road congestion, with the duration of congestion rising by 4.5%.³³

The reasons for this perverse outcome are twofold. First, TNCs did not primarily replace private car trips. Instead, they cannibalized more sustainable modes of transport. Survey data consistently shows that a large portion of TNC trips—up to half in some cities—would otherwise have been made by walking, cycling, or, most significantly, public transport.³³, ³⁴ The MIT study found a staggering 8.9% decline in public transport ridership associated with the arrival of TNCs.³³ Second, the operational model of ride-hailing introduces a significant amount of “deadheading”—the miles a driver travels without a passenger, either en route to a pickup or cruising while waiting for a ride request. This additional, unproductive mileage adds directly to traffic volume, with some estimates suggesting it accounts for over 40% of all TNC vehicle miles traveled.³³

Meanwhile, the central promise of reduced car ownership has failed to materialize. The same comprehensive study found only a statistically insignificant 1% decrease in private vehicle ownership, suggesting that households view ride-hailing as a supplement to, not a replacement for, their personal car.³³

The core innovation of the “sharing” economy was not sharing at all; it was the radical reduction of friction in summoning a private car trip. This hyper-convenience, while undoubtedly beneficial for the individual user in a given moment, has had profoundly negative systemic consequences. It has induced new demand for car travel, weakened the viability of collective transport systems, and reinforced the cultural and spatial dominance of the automobile. The story of ride-hailing serves as a powerful modern cautionary tale, perfectly echoing my original skepticism of any “solution” that fails to fundamentally challenge the primacy of the individual car trip itself. It demonstrates that making a destructive behaviour easier and more convenient does not solve the problem; it deepens the addiction.

The Ghost in the Machine—The Sobering Reality of Autonomous Vehicles

The ultimate technological prophet of the automotive world is the fully autonomous vehicle (AV). For years, the industry promised a near-future of driverless “robotaxis” that would eliminate human error, solve congestion through hyper-efficient coordination, and free up hours of unproductive commuting time. This vision, however, has collided with the immense complexities of the real world.

The initial hype around achieving Level 5 autonomy—a vehicle that can operate anywhere, under any conditions, without human intervention—has largely dissipated.³⁵ The industry has undergone a significant recalibration, pivoting towards a more practical and incremental path. The current focus is twofold: the slow, careful rollout of Level 4 autonomous ride-hailing services, which operate only within strictly defined and extensively mapped geographic areas (e.g., Waymo’s services in select cities), and the widespread integration of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) into consumer vehicles.³⁵ These systems, often marketed with misleading names like “Autopilot,” are not truly autonomous but represent Level 2 or Level 3 capabilities, requiring the human driver to remain fully engaged and ready to take control at any moment.

The technological, regulatory, ethical, and legal hurdles to achieving full, ubiquitous autonomy have proven to be far more formidable than early proponents acknowledged.³⁶ The “long tail” of unpredictable edge cases—a child chasing a ball into the street, confusing lane markings at a construction site, erratic human drivers—makes programming a truly infallible artificial driver an exceptionally difficult task.

Yet, the most critical discussion about AVs is not about if or when they will arrive, but about the largely unasked question of their ultimate purpose. The debate has been overwhelmingly dominated by technological feasibility, obscuring the more fundamental question of what societal problem AVs are intended to solve. If the primary application of autonomy in consumer vehicles is to make the experience of driving (or being driven) more comfortable, convenient, and entertaining—allowing commuters to work, stream movies, or relax during their journey—then the likely outcome is a transport catastrophe.

By removing the primary disincentives of a long car commute—the stress, boredom, and cognitive load of actively driving—AVs threaten to induce a massive increase in vehicle miles traveled.³⁷ People may be willing to tolerate much longer commutes if that time can be used productively or for leisure, leading to further urban sprawl as the perceived cost of distance decreases. This would be a disastrous outcome for climate goals, urban congestion, and land use.

The autonomous vehicle, as currently conceived for the mass market, represents the ultimate expression of the flawed technological fix. It is a solution aimed at perfecting the experience of the private car, making it more seamless and seductive than ever before. It does nothing to challenge the systemic problems of space consumption, resource use, and the inherent inefficiency of a mobility system based on moving two-ton metal boxes to transport single individuals. In this sense, the AV is not a solution to the problems I identified in “The Great God Car”; it is an accelerant, a ghost in the machine that promises freedom while threatening to lock us into an even deeper state of automobile dependency.

Part III: Towards a New Covenant: Reimagining an Ecocentric Transport Policy

I concluded my original essay with a call for a radical reorientation of transport policy away from an anthropocentric focus on perfecting the car and towards an ecocentric vision of redesigning our habitats for ecological and human well-being.¹ I proposed a suite of strategies—urban consolidation, modal shift, and demand management—as components of this new approach. More than three decades later, this vision remains the essential antidote to car dependency, but our understanding of how to implement it has become more sophisticated, informed by real-world experiments and a deeper appreciation for the complexities of social equity. The abstract call for an “ecocentric” policy can now be translated into a more concrete and actionable framework built on the modern pillars of proximity-based urbanism, climate justice, and a circular economy.

From Urban Consolidation to the 15-Minute City

The 1990s concept of “urban consolidation” and the promotion of “eco-villages” has evolved into a more dynamic and compelling urban planning paradigm: the 15-minute city.¹ Popularized by Professor Carlos Moreno and championed by political leaders like Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the 15-minute city is a model for creating a “human-scale” city composed of vibrant, people-friendly, “complete” neighborhoods.³⁸, ³⁹ The core principle is “hyper-proximity”: designing urban space so that all residents can meet their daily needs—for work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure—within a short 15-minute walk or bicycle ride from their home.⁴⁰

Paris has become the world’s most prominent laboratory for this concept. Mayor Hidalgo’s administration has pursued a bold and multifaceted strategy to reclaim the city from the car. This has included the pedestrianization of major thoroughfares, most famously the banks of the River Seine, which were transformed from a congested urban highway into a linear park.³⁸ The city has invested hundreds of millions of euros in creating a comprehensive network of over 1,000 kilometers of protected cycleways, turning over vast amounts of on-street car parking space to other uses like bike lanes, public seating, and green space.³⁹, ⁴¹ The results have been a tangible improvement in air quality and a marked shift in the city’s culture of mobility, empowering residents to choose active transport and improving their daily quality of life.³⁸

The success of Paris demonstrates that the vision of a less car-dependent city is not a utopian fantasy but an achievable policy goal, given sufficient political will. However, the history of another pioneering city, Curitiba, Brazil, offers a crucial cautionary tale. For decades, Curitiba was hailed as a model of sustainable urbanism for its groundbreaking Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), which integrated a high-capacity Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system with high-density, mixed-use zoning along its transit corridors.⁴², ⁴³ The system was efficient, reduced congestion, and inspired hundreds of cities worldwide.⁴⁴, ⁴⁵

Yet, recent analysis has revealed a darker, more inequitable side to Curitiba’s success. The very policies that created vibrant, accessible corridors also drove up land values, leading to a form of climate gentrification. The benefits of the TOD—high accessibility to jobs, services, and green space—have been disproportionately captured by high-income residents who can afford to live in these desirable areas. Meanwhile, low-income communities have been progressively pushed to the poorly-served urban periphery, far from the high-quality transit network and the opportunities it provides.⁴⁶ In effect, a policy designed for ecological sustainability ended up reinforcing and exacerbating social and economic segregation.

The juxtaposition of Paris and Curitiba yields a profound lesson. My original call for an “ecocentric” policy was groundbreaking in its rejection of human-centered arrogance. However, the experience of Curitiba shows that an ecocentric framework is insufficient if it does not explicitly and rigorously integrate the principles of social justice. A transport policy can successfully reduce car use and promote density, yet still produce deeply unjust outcomes. The modern evolution of this thinking must therefore be explicitly socio-ecological. It is not enough to plan for the environment; we must plan for environmental justice, ensuring that the benefits of a sustainable transition—clean air, accessible communities, green spaces—are distributed equitably and that the burdens are not disproportionately placed on the most vulnerable.

The Price of Movement—Demand Management in the Digital Age

In my 1990s essay, I was rightly skeptical of “economic instruments” when proposed in isolation, dismissing them as “voodoo economics” that relied on a flawed faith in the market to solve systemic problems.¹ Today, we have decades of empirical evidence demonstrating that when implemented as part of a comprehensive package, demand management tools like congestion and road pricing are among the most effective instruments for taming the “Vengeful God.”

The principle is simple: to treat scarce urban road space as a valuable public asset rather than an unlimited free good. By charging vehicles to enter congested central city areas during peak times, these schemes directly address the negative externality of traffic. The results from pioneering cities are unambiguous. London’s Congestion Charge, introduced in 2003, led to an immediate and sustained reduction in traffic entering the zone by 20-30%, reduced congestion delays, and now generates over £90 million in net revenue annually, which is legally reinvested into improving public transport.⁴⁷, ⁴⁸, ⁴⁹

Singapore’s even more sophisticated Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, which uses a network of electronic gantries to vary charges dynamically based on real-time traffic conditions, has been even more effective. It has reduced traffic volumes by up to 45% in priced zones and successfully maintains optimal traffic speeds on the city-state’s major arteries.⁵⁰, ⁵¹, ⁵²

The primary barrier to the wider adoption of these proven policies is not technological, but political. The mythology of the “Great God Car” has instilled a powerful cultural and political belief in a “right” to drive, and a corresponding resistance to paying the true cost of that activity. However, the transition to electric vehicles is forcing a fiscal reckoning that may finally break this political impasse. As EVs replace ICE vehicles, the revenue from fuel taxes—the primary source of funding for road construction and maintenance for nearly a century—is set to collapse. This is creating a massive and growing fiscal hole in transport budgets worldwide.

The logical and most equitable replacement is a form of Road User Charging (RUC), where all vehicles pay a fee based on the distance they travel, potentially varied by location, time of day, and vehicle weight or emissions class.⁵³, ⁵⁴, ⁵⁵ RUC is becoming a fiscal necessity, not just a desirable tool for congestion management. This shift creates a critical opportunity to implement a pricing system that is not only financially sustainable but also aligned with broader ecocentric goals—managing demand, encouraging efficient vehicle use, and funding a transition to more sustainable modes of transport. Confronting the political challenge of pricing the inefficiencies of driving is a direct confrontation with the car’s deity status, and it is a battle that must be won.

Beyond the Machine—A New Framework of Climate Justice and Circularity

To truly move beyond the flawed, anthropocentric model, the ecocentric vision I outlined in the 1990s must be updated with two powerful, interconnected frameworks that have come to prominence in the 21st century: climate justice and the circular economy. Together, they provide the ethical and practical architecture for a truly transformative transport policy.

Climate Justice in Transportation

Climate justice begins with the recognition that the impacts of environmental degradation are not distributed equally. Historically, low-income communities and communities of color have disproportionately borne the burdens of our transport system.⁵⁶ They have been more likely to have their neighborhoods divided by urban freeways, to live next to busy arterial roads with high levels of air and noise pollution, and to have poorer access to reliable and affordable public transport.⁵⁷

A climate justice framework demands that transport policy actively works to dismantle these historical inequities.⁵⁸, ⁵⁹ It requires the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people” in the planning and implementation of transport projects.⁵⁸ This means moving beyond tokenistic consultation to genuine community empowerment, ensuring that those most affected by transport decisions have a real voice in shaping them.⁵⁶ It requires that every policy—from EV purchase subsidies and the placement of charging infrastructure to the planning of new bus routes and bike lanes—is rigorously evaluated through an equity lens. Who benefits from this investment? Who pays? Does it reduce or reinforce existing disparities? A just transition is one that prioritizes investment in the communities that have suffered the most from the old, polluting system and ensures they are the first to benefit from the new, sustainable one.

The Circular Economy for the Automotive Sector

The second pillar of a modern ecocentric policy is the circular economy. This framework offers a direct antidote to the linear “take-make-dispose” model that has defined industrial production for over a century, including the manufacturing of automobiles.⁶⁰ A circular economy for the automotive sector is built on several key principles: designing vehicles for durability, repairability, and eventual disassembly; prioritizing the remanufacturing and reuse of components; and, at the end of a vehicle’s life, recycling its constituent materials at their highest possible value.⁶¹, ⁶²

This approach is especially critical for mitigating the negative impacts of the EV transition identified in Part II. A robust circular economy for batteries is essential. This involves creating systems to give batteries a “second life” after their automotive use (for example, as stationary energy storage for the power grid) and developing advanced recycling facilities to recover valuable and problematic materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel.⁶³, ⁶⁴, ⁶⁵ By “closing the loop,” a circular approach reduces the demand for new virgin mining, thereby mitigating the associated environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and geopolitical vulnerabilities. It transforms the end-of-life vehicle from a waste problem into a valuable resource stream, fundamentally altering the predatory nature of the car’s material footprint.

Together, climate justice and the circular economy form the modern, actionable successor to my original, more abstract ecocentric orientation. Ecocentrism demands that we consider the health of the entire ecosystem. Climate justice specifies how we must consider the human part of that ecosystem, with an unwavering focus on equity. The circular economy provides the practical, industrial framework for how we must manage the material flows within that ecosystem to minimize harm and regenerate value. These are not peripheral concerns; they are the core components of a transport policy that is truly fit for the 21st century.

Conclusion: Dethroning the God, Reclaiming the City

More than three decades after I first identified the “Great God CAR,” its reign continues. The fundamental nature of our societal worship of the automobile remains tragically unchanged. The deity, now beginning to don an electric halo and whisper promises of an autonomous future, still demands the same fundamental sacrifices: vast swathes of our public space, immense quantities of the Earth’s finite resources, and the systemic prioritization of individual, atomized mobility over collective well-being and ecological health. The “fixes” of the last thirty years—safer cars, cleaner engines, more convenient apps—have been technologically sophisticated and, in some narrow, anthropocentric aspects, successful. But they have utterly failed to challenge the underlying dogma. They have treated the symptoms while allowing the disease of car dependency to metastasize on a global scale.

My analysis in this paper confirms the enduring validity of my original thesis. The electric vehicle, while a necessary component of decarbonization, risks becoming a Trojan horse for a new era of resource extractivism and ecological injustice if it is not coupled with a radical reduction in overall vehicle numbers. The “sharing economy” of ride-hailing has proven to be a mirage, inducing more car travel and undermining the public transport systems that are the bedrock of sustainable urban life. The dream of full autonomy remains a distant and perhaps undesirable future, one that threatens to make car dependency more seductive than ever before. These are not solutions that dethrone the god; they are merely renovations to its temple.

The path to a sustainable and just future lies not in perfecting the car, but in systematically and deliberately displacing it from the center of our lives and our cities. A genuine ecocentric transition, updated for the challenges of the 21st century, requires a courageous and integrated strategy that moves beyond tinkering and embraces transformation. The essential pillars of this new covenant are clear:

1. Urban Design for Proximity: We must aggressively redesign our cities for people, not cars. The 15-minute city model provides a powerful, human-centric vision for creating dense, mixed-use, and complete neighborhoods where walking, cycling, and community life can flourish.
2. Systemic Demand Management: We must make the true costs of driving visible and unavoidable. The fiscal imperative created by the EV transition provides a once-in-a-century opportunity to implement comprehensive Road User Charging systems that manage congestion, fund sustainable alternatives, and signal that road space is a precious public good, not a private entitlement.
3. Prioritization of Alternatives: A massive and sustained shift in investment is required, away from road expansion and towards the creation of world-class public and active transport networks that are frequent, reliable, affordable, and accessible to all.
4. Systemic Responsibility: We must embed the principles of the circular economy and climate justice into the heart of our industrial and transport policy. This means mandating the recycling and reuse of vehicle components, especially batteries, to break the cycle of destructive extraction, and ensuring that the benefits of the transition are directed first to the communities that have historically borne the greatest environmental burdens.

Dethroning the Great God Car is not an anti-technology or anti-progress stance; it is a profoundly pro-human and pro-environmental one. It is about reclaiming our cities, our air, our climate, and our communities from a century of servitude to a machine. It is about choosing a future that is not only cleaner and more sustainable, but also more equitable, more connected, and more humane. The old gods have proven to be vengeful and false. It is time to build a world in our own, better image.

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