I don't think that anyone would question that we've got Oil problems, right here in River City, and they're not likely to get better.
Some people (including, I guiltily admit, me) think that the problems are substantially exacerbated by the actions of the oil market buccaneers and the oil companies, but even those people can likely be persuaded that the amount of oil is a finite quantity, and if we continue to use it as we have, let alone, use more, we're going to run out. The Malthusian specter, applied to black gold. I realize that the market-knows-best aficionados would point out that the demand for fuel is relatively inelastic with respect to price -- that is, no matter how high or low the price, we're going to need about the same amount. Low prices encourage use, but high prices don't substantially reduce use. (Some, yes. A lot, no.) Either way, there's a base amount that we want, and that need doesn't go down just because we'd like that to happen.
Its easy to be snarky, and chide people about their desire for comfort, and isolation, and convenience. Doesn't help. The bottom line is, we're going to get to a point where oil isn't available for transportation use by most people. What then? I know (emotionally, not experientially) that setting up an infrastructure to ameliorate the effects of that condition is difficult. I would desperately like to understand what we're going to do to make that happen. I do not believe that the market can take care of that. I'd like to believe that, but I cannot. I believe that we're well and fully capable of running ourselves right into a wall -- and then, just before impact, looking up and saying 'Wha - ?'
If there was reasonable writing on this topic, I'd read it. So far, I haven't come across any.
7 comments:
I don't have any answers or original thoughts, but I wanted to say that this is something I really and truly worry about.
You and me both, LC. I think that weaning ourselves from it is going to hurt. One of the reasons I like Obama is that I don't think he'll soft soap the question, and I think both Hillary and McCain will.
There IS lots of rhetoric Bill, but the political solution is way too dangerous for any elected politician to take on. Which is why "peak oil" is carefully skirted in the campaign rhetoric. Same as the "housing bubble", the "tech bubble", and for all I know the "South Seas Bubble" all popped right on schedule, and now the "oil bubble" is going to do the same thing.
I could go on and on about this, but I'll keep it short.
There are three answers.
1. Keep it the same and maybe things will turn out for the best. The "trust the oil companies" solution. At present, this is the scary solution, and will likely be the one all of your presidential candidates will go with.
2. Go low tech. Buy a horse, use kerosene lamps, lower the temp in your house, buy a caulking gun and a dozen tubes of calking, and super insulate your place. Work from home, car pool. Take public transit.
3. Go high tech. Replace lights with LED's, buy a hybrid motor car (you will save the higher price in gas alone over the next 5 years!) go to bio-diesel, solar energy.
With some luck, this will buy us time to come up with REAL high tech solutions.....moving sidewalks, roof gardens, intercity rail, computer driven trucks. A lot of science fiction can become science fact pretty easily.
Lots of room for engineering of course. How do you make busses more attractive to ride in? Is there a future in monorails? In inter-city pneumatic freight tubes? Are moving sidewalks really that difficult to create or maintain? The docklands railway in London doesn't even have a conductor or driver...it is all run by computer.
A sea change is coming, and in the long run, it will all be to the good.
I can't agree that the standard answer is going to come from all three major candidates. Obama's site says this, while Clinton's says this. McCain's doesn't seem have anything -- entering the search term 'biofuel' returns nothing, and searching on 'oil', the first thing that comes up is one of his wife's recipes.
Looking more deeply, Obama says that he wants to commit to the development and use of biofuels; promote hybrid vehicles, promote alternative energy sources (solar, geothermal, wind), and increase the standards for corporate fuel economy. Clinton's site says that she wants to commit to the development and use of biofuels, promote alternative energy sources, fund actions to reduce demand both at the macro and micro level, and increase the standards for corporate fuel economy. Neither says that they'd trust the oil companies, though Clinton does base part of her proposed actions on industry participation.
I think that both low and high tech will be used. For example, we have new-style electric bulbs in our house (though, reading on how you have to handle a shattered bulb, we may not get more); we have a hybrid car; we reduce the temperature (though not as much as advocates would recommend); we work from home. Public transit is only an option if you're going within or between cities, by and large -- though I joke about wanting to take the MAGLEV up the local main road to the capital, I don't expect to see it at all. We're doing good to put in park and ride lots.
What was it that Hannibal Smith used to say about plans coming together? The trick will be to make it happen. Obama's eloquence or Clinton's experience would each be hard pressed to make these happen. I think we'll be sorely distressed at how small the baby steps will be.
Putting ethanol into cars so that people can sit in stop-and-go traffic to get to the shopping mall or the hockey game is not even a bandaid on a gushing wound...it is just allows the wound to gush longer. (am I mixing my metaphors again???)
The Phillipines has been coping with planned rotating power blackouts for about 8 years now and industry is so fed up with it that they are creating their own power plants as part of their factories. Some of these factories are quite small. They will be burning biofuel for energy. The trick is to scrub the stacks to clean up the emissions and Phillipine law is pretty strict on that. (references available!) Political will was there, but unfocused, but market forces stepped up to the plate. (similar story in Iraq, Iran, Khanahar City, New Delhi, and soon, to a city near you!)
I notice in your link that Mr. Obama went to "Detroit to tell them that they will be forced to make fuel efficient cars". He says it with such sincerity that you almost think he has a handle on the problem! The cars ARE the "problem", making more of them is NOT the solution. The solution is to make a bus that people will be happy to ride in! To subsidize taxis instead of building parking garages. To build bus-only lanes instead of cloverleafs and turnpikes. Oh well. I suspect that unlike the others, at least he will be open to good advise, and to real change. It IS his motto after all! I can guarantee that the others will go with option 1.
And Ms. McCain's recipe for pancakes is yummy!!!
I agree that cars are the problem -- but how do you address the need for mobility in a location where rapid (or even not-so-rapid) transit isn't practical? I was bemused, years ago, to read that (at the time, anyway), the most effective rapid transit system was New York City. Around here, rapid transit doesn't even come close to most housing, nor does it run particularly often. Think of the connectivity as being analagous to the telecom's 'last mile' problem -- its not the up and down the highway, its the highway to my driveway.
Then you pay the price of living away from the centre. There is a cost for everything! I am willing to pay it because I don't want to live downtown. I don't get bus service in my village either. However, old Stag here has an answer.
I suggest a taxi.
No seriously. Where I live, it costs sixty bucks to take a taxi into town and return. Pretty pricey right? Well, at two trips a week, that works out to about what I am paying for gas and car payments now.
And that can be reduced by getting together with your neighbours and a couple or three of you doing the food run on Wednesdays. Not really rocket science! But it answers your question on how to handle the last mile AND reduce traffic congestion.
You got any kids in your neighbourhood who would like the job of being the "taxi" one day a week?
I know...sounds pretty simplistic doesn't it! However around here the commuters are starting to take taxi's to work because parking lot prices are just going through the roof! The taxi shows up in his nine passenger van every morning at 7 and picks up a bunch of people right at their houses, and drops them off again at five. They pay by the week. In advance. I know the driver, and his van runs on diesel...and he was asking me just the other day how to get bio-diesel. The cost to the commuters? Less than paying the gas and parking fees for their cars for the same trip!
This is better than car pooling since most people's cars can't comfortably seat more than three people. Four if they are skinny. And besides....your car is like your bedroom,you really don't want strangers in there.
That of course implies a do it yourself approach. A government approach might be to subsidize the purchase of vans for commuter taxis with that money they were going to spend on an extra turnpike lane. But then, perhaps government interferance is not what is needed...after all, they tell me an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.
Oh, that link about the Phillipine power plants....
http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/19792?frmtrk=cr4sd#newcomments
I am busy trying to convince my own city's council to stop this silly subway plan they are thinking of putting in place! Three and a half BILLION dollars. Oh my! For that kind of money,there is lots they can do!
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