Driving in China’s winter is an enlightening lesson in just how gray this world can be. As heavy smog shrouds cities like a lingering apparition, motorists drive around with little guilt on their consciences.

There’s no season like winter to point the finger of culpability for unbreathable air. White smoke billows from exhaust pipes as steam condenses under low temperatures, leaving quite a visual impact on the streets. By comparison, high-polluting boilers and factories are more of an “out of sight, out of mind” problem for most ordinary people.

While different ministries are busy urging each other to take responsibility for cleaning up the skies, car owners like me are getting entangled as victimizers and victims. We add to the air pollution while seeking refuge from it.

“Don’t you worry about going out on smoggy days, I will drive,” I told my family, noting that in-vehicle purifiers in cars can minimize our exposure to the toxic open air and the inconvenience it causes to our lives. If this is not the time for us to take refuge in our cars, when is?

Since I bought my first car earlier this year, I have come to understand why so many people need a car so badly in cities like Shanghai, even with fully developed mass transit. I once viewed car ownership as something of consumer vanity. Even if that is true, I have come to appreciate the worthiness of these four-wheeled, plebian workhorses — our trustworthy guardian in extreme weather conditions.

Many commuters apparently agree with me. According to the China Passenger Car Association, the heavy smog that has blanketed much of northern China this winter actually caused a spike in November car sales.

My friend Jason from Beijing, who just experienced one of the severest smog seasons ever to blanket the capital, said he remains keen to buy a car despite his continuing bad luck in winning the car plate lottery.

To curb air pollution as well as traffic jams, Beijing has clamped down on car purchases and usage. The city ordered half the cars off streets when the air pollution level was recently raised to red alert for the first time, the highest level of danger for human inhalation.

“Would you feel comfortable with your conscience buying a car at this time,” I teased him on a day of heavy pollution.

“Let’s talk about it after I get a car plate,” Jason said coyly.

The next day, when a cold front arrived and dispersed the smog, he sent me a picture of the city’s clear blue skies with the breezy comment: “Now it’s time to buy a car!” In that “once on shore, we pray no more” light-heartedness, I could feel his mockery of the insignificance of his own decision to buy or not to buy a car.

Indeed, what’s come to be called “Beijing blue” describes the sunny skies that have prevailed when the authorities have stepped in to end smoggy conditions for important events like the APEC summit and the national military parade. They do it by shutting down factories and limiting use of cars. It’s easy for the powers-that-be to overrule individual selfishness for the greater good, but there are downsides in harsh unilateral action.

Factories are needed to keep the economy chugging along. Power plants burning coal are needed to provide the electricity that cooks our food, lights our homes and keeps us warm. And the auto industry, a pillar of economic growth, won’t run smoothly if cars become pariahs.

The industry has just received hefty tax cuts as incentives to sell small-displacement petrol engine cars to counter a slowdown in vehicle sales. It was a compromise reached by the government and the industry to stabilize car sales while limiting carbon footprints.

No one is trying to be a saint here. And neither should we expect too much self-sacrifice from a self-preservation society governed by the first law of nature.

Despite strong growth this year, new energy cars are still a minority player in China’s market, especially in the passenger car segment. Consumers tend to view them as lacking cost-effectiveness and user convenience.

“Why would I buy an electric car if it weren’t for the free green car license plate in Shanghai,” my skeptical friends asked me. I couldn’t think of one good reason.

For the sake of the environment? Hard-core environmentalists will argue that electric cars bear the original sin of high emissions because the majority of electricity in China is still generated by coal burning.

At the same time, popular petrol-powered MPVs and SUVs are generating high profits and growth potential for vehicle manufacturers in China, who are faced with meeting a strict new fuel consumption target of 5 liters/100km by 2020 but haven’t yet thrown in the towel on gas guzzlers.

The conundrum of fearing the future but living for the moment also explains the agonizing process at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Paris of striking a deal that all countries could accept. It would be much easier to judge today’s leaders if they were as outspoken as Louis XV, who famously remarked “after me, the deluge.”

We are imbued with the doomsday feeling. It never stops creeping into our fiction, where we can examine the aftermath from a safe emotional distance. It also supplies endless food for thought when we talk about things futuristic.

“Isn’t it a good thing for the auto industry, to find opportunity in a crisis?” I ask myself.

I try to stay positive that my auto beat won’t disappear in the near future. Cars, like us, will evolve and become stronger.

When I attended a Volkswagen design workshop last month, I joined other auto journalists and designers in drafting a plan for the car for the future and a movie script to go along with it. I was amused by the recurring theme of post-apocalypse.

We decided to borrow a page from movies like “Mad Max” and “Snowpiercer,” where transport tools become the key to the survival of human beings. On the wheel, we keep going, which is somehow symbolic.

Against the backdrop of a wicked world, we pictured a super versatile car, able to fly and dive and also provide defense.

“It should take us to Mars,” said one of my teammates, who came up with a lone pioneer character for our movie, where a Volkswagen car (spaceship) takes on the role of a trailblazer for human beings to relocate from their increasingly uninhabitable motherland.

In a speech at the recent climate change summit in Paris, Jack Ma, founder of China e-commerce giant Alibaba, nicknamed alien, joked about how much he wished he could go back to his own planet when the noxious smog descends on earth. He said that the time has come to stop arguing about the responsibilities for climate for change and find solutions we all can share.

It is a war against man’s own weakness, a struggling process of discovering self-interest in altruism, he said.

I sometimes wish there were aliens from superior civilizations to help us truly understand that point.