The Saturday Morning Post

Suzanne Bertrand, Health and Living

Just like every one else, I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on 9/11 when the day’s tragic events unfolded and the World Trade Center towers came tumbling down. I can also remember my first thought at the time, clear as day. “Here comes the Europeanization of America,” I remember saying to my friends in California as we stared in disbelief at the distant carnage on TV that day.

What I meant at the time, and what appears to be more and more evident each day since, is that this was a turning point for America in more ways than one. The most obvious turn America would take in the wake of this event, of course, involved its preservation. For the first time in it’s history, the United States had been successfully attacked by foreign terrorists on its own soil and our country was going to react precisely as it should. It would follow the trail blazed by Europe decades ago.

To any one who had lived in or visited the major capitals of Europe during or since the 70’s — cities that had seen their fair share of international terrorist acts from bombings to kidnappings — it was obvious what was coming next to America. Security cameras and facial recognition technology covering every metropolitan street corner, transit system, and public venue rivaling those in Great Britain erected to fight the IRA.

No more rent-a-cops guarding our airports, train stations and major sporting events. Now, when the threat level rises, our national guard is at public venues armed with assault rifles, resembling the Carabinieri that can be found directing traffic on the streets of Rome. By 9/11, Italy had been under assault by terrorist organizations like the Red Brigade for generations. Walk down the Champs Elysees in Paris and you’ll find it useless to look for a trash container anywhere on the street. They were done away with long ago given their potential as perfect hiding places for bombs from groups such as ETA and Action Directe. While the Euro might have united the European economy under one currency only as recently as 1999, Interpol, based in Lyon, France, has been tracking terrorists like our newly formed Department of Homeland Security for many years.

But it would be a mistake to believe that it is only our own relatively new found vulnerability and the necessities of security that has our continents beginning to look and act more alike. Our respective cultures and the way we go about living our daily lives, as different as they are and may always be, are beginning to show real signs of similarity far beyond how we choose to protect ourselves. And at the root of this long term convergence — this Europeanization of America — are economic forces that have been in the works for decades. They are only now becoming more apparent, indeed accelerated, with the extraordinary financial and credit crisis upon us.

On the financial front, American businesses, taxpayers, and trade interests have complained loudly for decades about European subsidization and outright government ownership of various key industry sectors from aircraft manufacturing to defense weapons systems to agricultural products. The competitive advantages often times gained through European Union sponsorship within these critical economic sectors has often times led to loud complaints from America as to how such “socialized” control over free market forces unfairly affects the playing field. Now, we in America can only painfully wince at the foregone conclusion that the U.S. Government must come to the rescue of its entire financial system, bailing out the largest investment firms, banks, and insurance companies in America. With U.S. government exercising outright ownership of well over $1 trillion in once private assets in less time than the average American takes for a vacation in Italy, we are starting to make our friends in Europe look like pikers when it comes to government control of our economy. Next stops? Left-of-center government, re-regulation, nationalized health care by another name, and bail outs for the auto industry , airlines, credit card, student loan and car loan companies, and even our state governments to name a few.

Longer term, no single force is likely more responsible for the melding of American and European lifestyles and economic outlook than the supply and price of oil. If you think you were fed up with the advent of $4+ per gallon gas this year, consider the fact that everyone from western France to eastern Germany continues to pay more than triple the price found at an American gas pump, and have been doing so for many years. As of this Fall, you’ll find $8.31 per gallon in Great Britain; $9.66 per gallon in France; and $11.49 per gallon in Germany. The average cost of gas is 7.53% of daily GDP per capita in Europe. Here in the U.S., that figure was as low as 2.54% only a few years ago. Now that the price of gas in America has more than doubled in the last eight years, the gap on what the average American spends as a percentage of his or her wealth to “filler up” compared to our friends in Europe has closed dramatically.

To be sure, the winding, narrow streets found throughout European capitals make smaller, compact cars a real necessity for those not using widespread mass transit to get to or from work. The average American SUV or truck would make for a nightmare of a driving experience, not to mention parking, just about anywhere in Europe. But smaller, more fuel efficient cars — and fewer cars per family — have been an economic imperative for most European families for generations.

They have learned over time what many Americans are just now painfully discovering. When it comes to your car, conserve, or reduce your standard of living. A recent Washington Post survey discovered that 51 percent of respondents said higher gas prices were creating financial hardship for their family. And for those who do not adjust, the hardship will only continue. The recent rush from New York to California to dump the SUV in favor of smaller, more fuel efficient cars and hybrids is here to stay, regardless of whether we see a waning in gas prices near term as the price of oil fluctuates. We are on a longer term course to “European-ize” the nature of driving in America, and the trend will be a healthy one for our wallet and the environment.

The higher cost of transportation on the roads in the U.S. is also starting to drive record percentages of Americans off the highway and into mass transit. We are following Europe’s example where riding the train or metro to work has been a preferred and more affordable source of transportation for years. Boston has seen an increase of almost 10 percent in subway usage year over year. According to the American Public Transportation Association, light-rail use is climbing dramatically in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and St. Louis. Commuter trips by rail are up by double digit percentages in L.A., Seattle, and numerous other cities across the U.S. Two-wheeled transportation, popular in Europe since the invention of the bicycle, is on the rise as well. Cities across the U.S. are adopting road designs and bike-friendly policies fostered in Europe for over a century and Americans are joining in for the ride. As much as 15 percent of the workforce in Portland, Oregon now bikes to work each day.

Over the long haul, the economic squeeze placed on us through the higher cost of energy and transportation of all forms is going to reverse the post-WW II flight of the middle class from our major cities in favor of a way of life Europeans have long loved and Americans once knew: working and living in the city. A real revitalization of our cities is on the horizon as more and more Americans will make them a place called home. This will slow the ugly trend toward urban sprawl and the loss of community characterized by distant suburbs in favor of a more economical, and vibrant, way of living in our inner cities.

As Steven Pearlstein, business columnist for the Washington Post has noted in the midst of the current world-wide financial storm, “at the most fundamental level, the United States is in the process of being forced by its foreign creditors to begin living within its means.” More and more Americans, like Europeans, will need to learn to make do with less, including less square footage in favor of more convenience. In this new urbanization, more and more will actually walk to their favorite neighborhood restaurant, park, theater, school, or coffee bar. Fewer and fewer families will need or want more than a single car.

It is a certainty that America will never lose its own identity and way of life. In this author’s view, it is still the greatest country in which to live on earth. But this trend toward economizing the European way, borne in great part out of financial crisis, higher energy costs, and economic necessity, eventually holds promising developments for all of us. As Jeremy Rifkin recently noted in his book “The European Dream,” “much of Europe enjoys a longer life span and greater literacy, and has less poverty and crime, less blight and sprawl, longer vacations, and shorter commutes to work than we do in the United States.”

Consider that next time you fill up at the pump.

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