In his recent book, Seeds of Wealth: Four Plants that Made Men Rich , Henry Hobhouse defends the automobile as an environmental boon. Reviewing the book in the August 15 issue of the TL , Paul Levy summarizes Hobhouse’s argument:
In 1900, apart from a few steam and internal combustion-driven experimental omnibuses and cabs, there were 7,000 horse-drawn cabs and 3,000 buses daily, totalling “nearly 40,000 horses at work in London, each emitting 20 litres of solid effluent a day, or more than a quarter of a million tons a year . . . . At least 25 percent of this, or 70,000 tons, was dropped in the street and had to be picked up, largely by hand.” Not to mention the “smelly, high-ammonia urine” and the ozone-layer-damaging methane gas contained in the flatus of 40,000 large herbivores.
I, for one, will take smog any day.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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