Transitioning from horses to cars: resource consumption
I’ve always been fascinated by how this actually happened. How did the world change, apparently so suddenly, from getting around on animals and, well, legs to automotive methods?
And, intriguingly, how did that impact our resource consumption?
Let’s dig a little deeper.
The car’s origin
The first car to be invented is generally recognised as Karl Benz’s 1886 motorwagen. (This was only two years after the first motorcycle was created.)
Over the following few years, he, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach would make key strides in improving the power output and practicality of the concept.
Fun fact: all three would come to be associated with Mercedes.
Let’s take that year — 1886 — as a reference point. Was everyone else getting around on horses at that time?
This fascinating paper gives us a table showing U.S. horse (equine) populations over the 1900s. In 1900, there were 21,531,635 horses and mules in the country. This figure peaked at just over 26,000,000 in 1915 and then rapidly declined. By 1950, after World War II, there were only 7.6 million, dropping to 3 million by 1960.
(These figures were limited to larger corporations — backyard horses from non-agricultural businesses weren’t counted, and it’s unclear if riding schools and boarding stables were either.)
Fascinatingly, there are newspaper clippings from the early 1900s where owners bought and sold horses in a way similar to how classified listings deal with cars today.
Nevertheless, this drop-off is clearly due to cars’ increasing availability, affordability and popularity.
Motorcars were a luxury for a while, and most people found them quite strange. Henry Ford and his Model T (released in 1908) were the main driving force in changing that, especially in the United States.
Now, they’re everywhere. They’re great, and I love them, and most people do — but they’re absolutely everywhere, across the entire world.
Hence (part of) our little carbon emissions problem.
Horses and cars in relation to people
(The following link from History Stack Exchange contained lots of links to sites I referenced below — check it out.)
However, the horse ownership and use rate was far lower than you might think. The 1900 census showed that the average city had an average of around 4,500 horses for every 100,000 inhabitants. New York City, by far the largest city at that time, had an average of 3,779 horses per 100,000 people but a far higher ratio in the Queens and Richmond areas.
Our dependency on cars today is astounding in relation to that figure. For example, let’s once again take New York City — arguably the least car-friendly big American metropolis. 2021 saw 2,077,000 cars on the road in NYC, alongside a population of about 8.5 million. That’s 24,435 cars per 100,000 people, over six times higher than the horse-to-people ratio in 1900.
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Sure, there were other ways of getting around than horses back in 1900. Electric trams had been invented. Trains had been around for a long time for cross-continental travel. Early bicycles were also around. And most people just… walked. You know, that old-fashioned thing with legs and that?
But there are also many other ways to get around New York today besides motor vehicles (I’m including taxis and buses in that bracket). In fact, a car is probably one of the slowest options. For example, about 2.4 million people use the Subway every day. (Wow!).
What about a broader look at the entire American country? In 2022, Forbes records 278,870,463 registered vehicles on the road. Of these, 98,573,935 were cars (not including private or commercial trucks). The national census estimated that in the same year, the population was 333,287,557.
Let’s take cars alone. Even then, we see 29,576 cars per 100,000 people.
In reality, we should also count private truck ownership, including pick-ups and light trucks, but I don’t have the precise figures for that. I’m led to believe it probably doubles the figure I’ve calculated to around 50,000 to 60,000 private passenger vehicles per 100,000 people, but I don’t know exactly.
Including the private and commercial trucks (which is a fairer comparison, in my opinion, as horses were also used for work and private travel), that’s 83,673 road-going vehicles per 100,000 people.
In other words, there are far more cars (or vehicles, in general) to people now than horses to people in 1900.
But those figures lead me to discuss the next thing I discovered: it’s not as simple as a like-for-like comparison.
The complexities of comparing the times
But here’s where the data is lacking — or at least incomplete. Horses may be a much more ‘natural’ way of getting around, providing a good way of keeping back vegetation without pumping out crazy amounts of fossil fuels. Plus, they give their owners and handlers a sense of joy.
However, there were a few downsides, especially in the cities. The main one? Manure. Each animal produces an awful lot of the stuff, and it began piling up on the streets. Public, horse-drawn transportation would have to clean it up and dispose of it, which was expensive and probably led to numerous cases of fly-tipping. They were also costly to feed and needed a lot of space.
Now, you might argue that cars come with a similar problem. Exhaust emissions, like horse poop, aren’t exactly clean or sanitary. Like feeding, the cost of fuel is rising to unbelievable heights. And cars still take up lots of space, especially in these days when SUVs (ugh) rule the roads.
I agree, actually. Horses weren’t great for cities, and neither are cars. Even if everything’s electric or hydrogen-powered, I’m sure there’ll still be the same age-old problems in some capacity or other.
The thing is, we use more resources because we have more resources available.
Look at the figures. If we’re being extraordinarily kind and conservative, we can say there are 29,576 cars per 100,000 people in America.
Compare that to the 4,500 horses per 100,000 people in 1900. Bear in mind that we’re missing a few horses there — any that weren’t used in an agricultural business. Hey, let’s double it — why not? We’ll take a high-end guess.
Even if there were actually 9,000 horses per 100,000 inhabitants, there are still three times more ‘transportation methods’ per person today than there were then. In fact, if we’re counting commercial vehicles (and I think we should), there are nine times as many vehicles today as horses per person back then.
And that takes me back to the same conclusion I’m always reaching. Modern vehicles are cheaper, more widely available, and easier to manage than horses.
Wonderful.
Yet, as a result, we buy and use many more. If we stuck to 9,000 vehicles per 100,000 inhabitants, all our pollution and traffic problems would instantly be fixed. But we won’t do that, will we? Because we like the freedom that our excess use of resources brings.
In conclusion, then, the car is a more effective transportation method than the horse. However, the natural limitations of having horses would keep us more in line with our emissions and pollution. As more environmentally friendly cars roll out and become mainstream, we must be careful that we don’t make the same mistake again.
