Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute has a new report out today showing that the U.S. auto fleet shrunk by four million cars in 2009 — the first time that’s happened since World War II. All told, 14 million vehicles were scrapped and just 10 million were bought (by comparison, auto sales had been averaging about 17 million per year before 2007). Now, this could just be the recession talking, but Brown thinks it marks the beginning of a “cultural shift away from cars”:

Among the trends that are keeping sales well below the annual figure of 15 to 17 million that prevailed from 1994 through 2007 are market saturation, ongoing urbanization, economic uncertainty, oil insecurity, rising gasoline prices, frustration with traffic congestion, mounting concerns about climate change, and a declining interest in cars among young people.

Market saturation may be the dominant contributor to the peaking of the U.S. fleet. The United States now has 246 million registered motor vehicles and 209 million licensed drivers — nearly 5 vehicles for every 4 drivers. When is enough enough?

Market saturation isn’t unheard of: Japan, for one, hit “peak car” back in 1990, and sales have been dropping every year since. (Of course, Japan was struggling through economic stagnation all through the ’90s, as well.) But there’s other evidence that a shift is afoot. U.S. public-transit ridership has been climbing steadily since 2005, as cities like Phoenix and D.C. expand their networks. (Although D.C.’s about to backslide in a big way.) Local governments are rethinking their old habit of subsidizing free parking. People are worried that $4/gallon gas could come back. And, oddest of all, young people aren’t nearly as excited about driving as they used to be:

 Perhaps the most fundamental social trend affecting the future of the automobile is the declining interest in cars among young people. For those who grew up a half-century ago in a country that was still heavily rural, getting a driver’s license and a car or a pickup was a rite of passage. Getting other teenagers into a car and driving around was a popular pastime.

 In contrast, many of today’s young people living in a more urban society learn to live without cars. They socialize on the Internet and on smart phones, not in cars. Many do not even bother to get a driver’s license. This helps explain why, despite the largest U.S. teenage population ever, the number of teenagers with licenses, which peaked at 12 million in 1978, is now under 10 million.

Really? Kids spend so much time on Facebook that there’s no need to putter around in a car? I suppose it’s plausible. We’ll have to see if this trend continues once (if?) the U.S. economy starts growing again. It’s not exactly good news for automakers — and makes you wonder how much longer Western governments can keep propping up an industry that may have to start shrinking. Although the other thing to note here is that even if Americans are buying fewer cars, developing countries are making up for it. China officially became the world’s largest auto market last year, and by some estimates, the number of vehicles worldwide will double — to two billion — by 2020.

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Americans often put tremendous value on numbers, and rightfully so. We spent 2009 tracking the stock market, the president’s approval ratings, interest rates and home values.

Reflecting on 2009, it became clear that numbers — whether in columns, tweets, ledger sheets, Facebook pages, bottom lines, televised speeches, bank accounts or the litany of legislation recently introduced — tell the real story. I’ve pored through many of them to bring you “The Numbers to Know in 2010.”

– $459 billion: the size of the federal budget deficit in 2008.

– $1.587 trillion: the size of the federal budget deficit in 2009.

– 0: the number of House Republicans who voted for the stimulus bill.

– 1: the number of U.S. senators it took to blow up the public option in health-care reform.

– 60: the number of votes needed to move legislation in the U.S. Senate.

– 13,930: the estimated high-end number of H1N1-related deaths between April 2009 and November 2009.

– 2.9: the number of percentage points unemployment jumped between November 2008 (6.5 percent) and November 2009 (9.4 percent).

– 5.7 million: the number of people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job in 2008.

– 9.1 million: the number of people working part-time for the same reason in 2009.

– 119,874: the number of personal bankruptcy filings in 2009, as of this column.

– 358,471: the number of home foreclosures from September 2008 to August 2009.

– $3.65: the average price for a gallon of gas in September 2008.

– $2.59: the average price for a gallon of gas in September 2009.

– $99,000 (give or take): the price for one share of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as of this writing.

– 5.07 percent: the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in 2009.

– 155: the number of lives saved by pilot Capt. Chesley Sullenberger’s ability to land U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on — not in — the Hudson River.

– 41: the percentage of Americans in a recent NBC/WSJ poll who feel either very or somewhat positive about the Tea Party movement.

– 700,000: the number of cars sold under the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

– $22,000: the median debt faced by recent college graduates in 2009.

– 1,100: the total square footage of the new White House vegetable garden planted by Michelle Obama and 23 fifth-graders from Bancroft Elementary School.

– $439 million: the average amount districts held by Democrats received in federal stimulus money.

– $232 million: the average amount districts held by Republicans received in federal stimulus money.

– 20: the number of city blocks between the former World Trade Center site and the federal courthouse where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the accused masterminds of 9/11, will be tried.

Had enough? Well, me too. But here’s one more:

– 7: The number of weeks New Orleanians will pray that the Saints make it to Super Bowl XLIV. Who ‘dat? My hometown team!

* * *

I’d like to end 2009 with my own version of New Orleans’ famous gospel hymn and funeral march. Raise a glass of cheer and sing along with me:

“Here come the Saints, go marching in

Super Bowl Saints, will march on in!

Lord, how I want them to be number one

’cause the Saints will never reign again!”

Happy New Year!
 

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Here’s part two of my lunch interview with Jeff Parker of Florida Today, Mike Peters of Mother Goose & Grimm and the Dayton Daily News, Monte Wolverton, brilliant weekly editorial cartoonist and Mad Magazine alumni and the Ottawa Citizen’s Cam Cardow. We’re all here in Seattle at the annual Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention talking shop about the future of editorial cartooning.

In this video, we speak about social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter aiding us as cartoonists. You’ll even see a glimpse of me peek in and speak about the night Michael Jackson died, and how I was able to shoot ideas by my Twitter followers (follow me on Twitter here), ending up with a cartoon that resulted from their suggestions.

Here’s the cartoon I ended up with (and note the thank you I added for all my twitter followers):

Check back for more videos from the convention.

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We get the same questions in the email box every day and I thought I would take some time out to respond to some of the most frequent ones.

You say you update the cartoons “every day” but I see lots of the same cartoons are up now that were there yesterday. What’s up with that?

The fact that we update the cartoons everyday doesn’t mean that each cartoonist draws a new cartoon every day. Most editorial cartoonists draw between three and five cartoons per week, some draw once a week. Some draw six times a week. Some draw local cartoons some days, that they don’t send to us. Some take vacations. On the busiest days of the week we update the site with 100 new cartoons per day  there are 175 cartoonist slots on the site.

Why can’t you set up your site so that I don’t have to look at those same cartoons that I saw yesterday? I want to see only the new cartoons.

Look at our RSS feeds which feature only the newly updated cartoons at the top of each page.

Where are your RSS feeds?

Go to our daily updating cartoons pages and click on the orange button to the left of any cartoonist’s name, or scroll to the bottom to click on the RSS feeds for batches of artists. We can’t include all of the cartoons in one RSS feed because the pages are too long with 100 new cartoons on busy days.

Why don’t you make the cartoons in your RSS feeds full sized? I have to click on each cartoon to be able to read it.

That’s so that you have to look at an ad and we don’t go broke.

I have a great idea for a cartoon! Want to hear it?

No.

I have lots of great ideas for cartoons, but I can’t draw. Can you tell me which editorial cartoonist I should contact to draw my cartoons?

I don’t know any editorial cartoonists who work with gag writers.

I would like to have a cartoon logo drawn for my business and I like your style. Could you do that for me? I can’t afford to pay any more than $50.

No.

I have to write a paper about an editorial cartoon and I picked yours. Can you tell me what it means? Please tell me right away because my paper is due tomorrow.

Sorry, I get too many requests like this. I have to let the cartoons speak for themselves. Besides, you’re supposed to be following the news and the meaning of the cartoon should be obvious to you  if it is not, then it wasn’t a good cartoon.

Would you like to: Enlarge your penis? Get cheap drugs? Refinance? Help us move millions of dollars from a foreign dignitary’s bank account?

No. No. No. No.

May I run your cartoon in my blog?

If you are on Myspace.com, yes, go to any cartoon on caglepost.com’s cartoon ticker page, click on the thumbnail image for any cartoon, then click on the Myspace.com link to put the cartoon on Myspace.com. If you are not on Myspace.com, you can post any of our caglecartoons.com cartoons on your blog for a nominal fee, just visit Politicalcartoons.com. We may do a Facebook application in the future.

May I use your cartoon for my class at school?

Yes. In fact, “in-classroom” use is one of the “Fair Use” exceptions to the copyright law. You can use any copyrighted materials you want in the classroom without asking.

May I post your cartoon on my high school class web site? Or in my school newspaper? Or on posters at school?

No, unless you want to pay the nominal fee on politicalcartoons.com ($3 for school use). These school uses are not “in-classroom.”

Why don’t you let us use your cartoons for free in schools?

We tried that, but we found that letting people download free, high-resolution cartoons on Politicalcartoons.com was a bandwidth hole. Suddenly everybody was saying they wanted cartoons for schools and our bandwidth went through the roof. When we put a $3 fee up for schools the bandwidth bleeding stopped.

I have to write a paper on the career I want to go into and I chose cartooning. Please tell me:
1) How much money do you make?
2) How much education was required for you to get your job?
3) How much time does it take you to draw a cartoon?
4) How did you get into this business?

1) Cartoonists make anything between $0 per year and $50,000,000 per year  just like actors, musicians and basketball players. And, like actors, musicians and basketball players, most cartoonists make closer to $0 than $50,000,000.

2) No education is required, only quality of work and some business acumen  but that is true of most careers. Education is very important and it is unusual for anyone to be successful without a good education.

3) All my life. Some cartoonists brag about drawing quickly; I think this diminishes the value of their work in the eyes of their editors and readers. Good cartoonists think about their work all the time and spend a lit of time working to improve.

4) I started as a general illustrator, and then worked as a cartoon illustrator, then I worked as a toy inventor, I did a syndicated cartoon, then editorial cartoons. I drew other people’s characters in other people’s styles, working on projects for others before my career got to the point that I could draw as I wanted.

Why don’t you have any conservative cartoonists on your site?

We have a lot, but conservatives, like you conservatives notice the cartoons you disagree with more than the others. It is an optical illusion for you.

When are you going to stop bashing President Bush?

Be patient. It won’t be long.

I can’t cancel my newsletter subscription! What do I do to make it stop?

Most people who can’t cancel are replying to the email with a note asking to cancel  we don’t get these replies. To cancel you have to click on the unsubscribe link in the newsletter, or go to our newsletter subscriptions page and follow the instructions. Another problem is with people who have the newsletter forwarded from another email address  there is no way for us to know that, and clicking on the unsubscribe link won’t make any change to a different email address. If you are flummoxed, email us.

I tried to subscribe to your newsletters, but I don’t get anything! What’s wrong?

You probably have an email account with a company like Earthlink, which does “whitelisting” that is, these providers send an email reply to us, asking us to confirm that we are a real person who wants to send an email. This is a method of preventing spam. We don’t respond to the “whitelisting” replies. Your only solution is to try subscribing from another free email service, like Yahoo, Google or Hotmail, which doesn’t do “whitelisting.”

You might have a spam filter - take a look at your blocked emails and approve us as a sender.

I was getting your newsletters, but they suddenly stopped. What’s wrong?

If we get the email bounced back from your email address a couple of times, your subscription is automatically cancelled. You may have had technical problems with your email, or you may have had a full mailbox. You need to go to our newsletter subscription page and resubscribe.

Another problem is spam filters. You might have a new spam filter, or a new setting on your spam filter - take a look at your blocked emails and approve us as a sender.

I was getting your newsletters fine for a while, and now I don’t see the images in the newsletter they are all broken image links? What’s wrong?

Some email services, like Hotmail, will occasionally ask you to approve images from senders and will block the images in an email from displaying until you approve the images from us, or any other sender. This is to prevent users from accidentally seeing pornography in a spam email. Just approve us for image display in your email program.

I want you to syndicate my cartoons. Will you look at my samples?

No, sorry. We get too many requests from aspiring cartoonists and just don’t have the resources to deal with unsolicited submissions. Also, we have had bad experiences with angry amateur cartoonists who won’t take “no” for an answer and now we are skittish.

Your site is slow!

No it’s not! The problem is on your end, or in between you and our server  Microsoft serves the Cagle.MSNBC.com site  it is like getting electricity from the utility. We can blast as much bandwidth as all of MSNBC.com. Our cartoons are bandwidth heavy compared to other sites that are mostly text, so our pages will naturally take longer to load.

But, if you’re complaining about Polticalcartoons.com or Caglepost.com, we serve those sites outside of MSNBC.com, and yes, sometimes we have too much traffic. We’re upgrading from two servers to four and we should be speedy all the time with our new load balancing. We’re working on it and we apologize for any hassles.

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