New York is suing Big Oil – but the motorcar is the real villain

Bill de Basio, the mayor of New York, said his city is suing the five big oil companies because “they did everything to hook society on their lethal product”.
The very first fossil fuel to be widely used was coal. Big oil only became “ big” when Americans adopted a lifestyle centred on the use of the private automobile. And the private automobile, not big oil, is the true “lethal product”.
As cars graduated from the early model-T stage to efficient, mechanically reliable modes of transport, the American urban and rural landscape changed not only to accommodate, but also to encourage its use.
“Bedroom communities” were created in the form of sprawling suburbs, each house with at least a two-car garage. The occupants of these houses commute to and fro every day between “home” and their place of work, business, or study. This “car culture “is abetted by investments in car-serving infrastructure – ribbons of freeways near major cities, and secondary highways snaking out to smaller towns. Giant parking lots accommodate the cars of the suburbanites and rural folks who drive to shop at the malls.
Railroads were ripped up (many railway beds converted to bicycle paths) and travel by rail became a thing of the past.
We see the same reliance on transportation by automobile in the rest of the world. As an example, Beijing is no longer a city whose streets are filled with cyclists. And Beijing’s well known air pollution is to a substantial degree caused by the automobiles that clog its streets.
Bill de Blasio’s suing big oil for supposedly causing climate change and its attendant Hurricane Harvey is a futile and misguided gesture. Big oil became big to serve the car culture, which it didn’t create. The millions of cars and SUV’s need to have their gas tanks filled, and big oil simply obliges.
To reduce the climate changing emissions resulting from the extraction of oil and the proliferation of cars powered by internal combustion engines, communities everywhere must look at ways of how to get people out of their cars and onto rail and other forms of convenient public transportation. Then big oil’s activity – extraction, storage and transportation of its product – will decrease accordingly. 
Edward Zile 
Rayong