Its influence can chiefly be recognized in the design of suburbs and other new places, places that are built around the car, around making it easy for cars to get around in them. That's not very efficient. It takes energy to make energy. We're using up millions of years of fossilized solar energy like it's going out of style, and it soon will. It's going to take millions of years to make the energy to keep driving our cars once we run out of that oil.
Automobiles take up a lot of space.
Automobiles produce greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming. Fifty percent of the air pollution in most urban areas is due to transportation, primarily automobiles. This translates into respiratory problems for everybody who lives in places criss-crossed by cars and trucks. The street used to be the primary place where people met each other, where community happened. Now streets are the exclusive domain of automobiles and their drivers, a type of being whose sense of compassion has become deeply warped by the power they possess with a ton or two of steel, and community is, well, all you have to do is watch the television news to find out where that went.