The Economics of Peak Oil and the Suburban way of life...

[Solon]

Its common sense, the automobile, as a PRIMARY means of transportation, is NOT sustainable in any type of long term plan for economic growth. We have had them for a century as the primary means of transport in this nation, and before 2020, they are going to be as rare to see on roads as they were in 1901. The problem was that by the 1950s, Americans became enamoured with this idea of FALSE "freedom" associated with the automobile that they still buy into today. My grandmother has a friend who is visiting here in the states, living with her, for the past few months, from Great Britian, and she put it beautifully, she feels "trapped" by the concrete roads. See, she lives in Manchester, and a simple 5 minute walk from her house is the bus stop, to take her anywhere she desires, she sold her car years ago, doesn't need it. She is NOT so enamoured by our concept of paying for "freedom" out the nose, with car insurance, gas prices, and maintenance to worry about, we Americans are certifiably insane.

But that isn't all, I was talking about Suburbia after all, and the biggest problems, I think, are related to our concept of Industrialization back in the late 1800s. Back then, we had cities that, while they were dirty before(horse dung), became downright toxic later on(toxic fumes from coal). So, with this hammered into our minds, that, because industry was centered in the cities, they were dirty by default, we abandoned them, to our faux country homes back during the economic boom of the 1950s. Of course, we only traded one type of dirty living for another(car fumes), its just less visible. Of course, this population movement was accelerated by White Flight. Now we live on Islands of Concrete and Cement, disconnected from true concepts of community, deriding suburbia while at the same time saying there was no choice.

The kicker was that their was choice, but we allowed the Auto industry and their urban planners to create their market for them, we bought into this fantasy of the "American Dream" that is simply ridiculous from a sustainability point of view. Not everyone in this country or world can afford to own 2 cars in a garage in a house that measures several thousand square feet in floor space. Its too damned energy expensive, and we are quickly using up all our energy resources just to maintain this fantasy life. Coal will be gone as an economical fuel for electricity in 50 years, and oil, the bedrock of suburban living is already becoming uneconomical, and the effects are going to be catastrophic from both. Forget about Natural Gas as a savior, hell, this past Winter, Denver ran OUT of it, causing rolling blackouts, what happens in one area of the nation will happen nationwide soon enough.

Part of the problem is systematic as well, this is a complex issue, and we have problems that are far from being felt by the majority, but will be felt by all soon enough, if not already. Let's be frank here, our entire Capitalistic system is tied to the idea of unlimited economic growth, this is what creates jobs for the economy, improves technology, and improves our lives overall. The problem is that unlimited economic growth is IMPOSIBLE to sustain without unlimited energy consumption. If the amount of energy used today is less overall than what the energy yesterday was, then economic growth stops, and we end up in a semi-permanent recession. Granted, this is usually localized, at first, but then spreads worldwide, and could quickly turn into a worldwide depression that makes the Great Depression seem like a simple bump in the road.

The entire time that we had an automobile driven, fossil fuel based, economy, growing by leaps and bounds, along with trips, we had the technical and industrial capability to actually foster an actual sustainable economic system that would have probably not have grown as quickly, but would have lasted much longer. I don't know how many people know this, but did you know that in the early part of the 20th century, many cities actually mandated that trucks for local deliveries, and buses for inner-city travel be electric powered? Granted, back then, they were inefficient and didn't have nearly as much range as such vehicles would have today, but then again, neither did the automobile back then. The point being that even back then, with trolleys and other systems ALREADY in place, we had alternatives to this unsustainable way of life. The problem was that, these weren't systems that you could turn around and make a quick buck off of, and now, today, with the price of fossil fuel usage becoming more expensive than all these alternatives, we now turn around, once again, and look to these "old" technologies as if they were new and scramble to implement them. The only question now is, is it too little, too late?

[lonestarnot]

1. Yes, too late.

[marmar]

2. Agreed...

It would take another century to adapt American infrastructure, post-suburbia. European and Asian cities, still being centralized and public transit-drenched, have a much better shot.

[acmejack]

3. Your Grandmother's friend has it exactly right!

As far as I am concerned. I was dragged from my car, kicking & screaming, I admit, by a medical factors, but as a third party observer, many things are becoming clear, not the least of which is that the automobile driven economy is a sure route to disaster. We are so dependant on this construct, when cars pull off the road massive unemployment will follow.

Our entire economy is built on the automobile and it's attendant support network, leading to the interesting question of what happens when all this becomes unsustainable very soon? If one takes a look at how many jobs are directly linked to the car it is an eye opener. We are in serious trouble.

[Solon]

5. I think the biggest problem is the fact that we have to rebuild...

much of the infrastructure that has been neglected for the past 50 years. People in this nation argue that we are too spread out for any type of alternative to automobiles being economical. We aren't Europe or Japan. I say they lack imagination, if any nation in the world needs high speed rail, and would benefit the most from it, its the United States. We are spread out, but only in localized areas. We still have our urban centers, and suburbs can be rebuilt to reclaim old farmland, that would be needed to grow enough food without modern fertilizers, and also high speed rails could be built, or old rails refurbished, to link major cities together. I live in the Midwest, we are pockmarked with cities of good population density, surrounded by farmlands with extremely low population densities. So, link the major cities with high speed rail, like Chicago with St. Louis, St. Louis with Kansas city, etc. This would replace the extremely inefficient car or air travel systems we have in place now, in addition to less polluting overall. Supplement this with electric busing and light rail systems for inter-city travel within these metropolitian areas. This, at least, is already happening in some areas around here. St. Louis, the closest major city to me, has Metro-Link, a light rail system that is being greatly expanded into St. Louis County. My City, St. Charles, somewhat recently, rejected a proposal to have Metro-Link expand into it, it is situated across the Missouri River, in St. Charles County, and many people here would greatly benefit from such an expansion, including myself, my father, and many others that work in St. Louis. Instead, they opted for a new highway bridge that links the southern part of the city with St. Louis county, to relieve congestion. Oddly enough, it didn't help THAT much.

I mean, how pathetic is my City? We have ONE local public transportation system, its called SCAT(St. Charles Area Transit), cue the jokes from THAT name, and its mostly used for the elderly that can no longer drive, they are minibuses that are sorely inadequate for the area. Not to mention the ONE Greyhound location, off of highway 70, I think they come once a day, if that. Its a city of oddities, an old city, with the accompaning old city planning, the old Mainstreet that predates the founding of the United States as a country, with old neighborhoods that have been neglected for far too long, surrounded by suburbs that have only been built in the 1970s or later. Not to mention that unincorporated St. Charles county is an area of new suburban planning surrounded by cornfields, its stupidity run amok.

[sweetheart]

4. India is the future

The future of america is india, a grossly
overpopulated nation that has toxically
destroyed most of its natural areas, and
has 2 times the population of the USA living
in third world poverty.

The suburban lie is for the upper class, and
the rest of us can visit to make deliveries,
mow the laws, or wipe the marble floors... provided
we can be trusted not to lynch the master. ;-)

Poverty behind a failed economic pusch financed by
funny money and funny economics, a load of official
lies that the universities and governments ignore to
keep alive the global future illusion of 6 billion
people each with their own 2 car garage home in the
burbs.

[The2ndWheel]

6. "to keep alive the global future illusion"

I always wonder where we're going with this thing called civilization. Is it a world where 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 9 billion people live in that luxury you mentioned? If it isn't, then what's the endgame? Is there even a "plan"? Are we just making crap up as we go? Is the machine just running itself?

[sweetheart]

8. Nobody is paid to consider the whole

A computer simulation of the earth's resources shows
that there are not enough resources to feed that
future population like we eat today. None of the things
i've lived with in my life could be spread to 6 billion
persons without a serious problem, let alone 9 billion.

9 billion with cars is a nonstarter,
9 billion with 1000 square feet each, nope.
9 billion with disposible nappies, nope.
9 billion with over 10,000 airmiles, nope.
9 billion eating fresh caught wild rainbow trout, nope.

There are very clear environmental limits to our expansionist
regime of colonial primitive systems. This stares juxtuposed
to a subsidized transport world that lifts us upper classes
off the sodden earth to be whisked about on flying carpets.

Either the wealthy will take the resources and defend them
with big guns against the poor,
Or they will try to implement a global economic pricing regimen
that seeks to merit resource allocation to economic contribution,
(using economic flows thinking, not wealth concentration thinking).

As i see it, the new world imperialist economy is actually rejected
by the vast majority of the human race, and was the internet spreads
out to the 9 billion, a new populist consensus will stand against
unfettered corporatism and its "growth" culture.

Shockingly, i really is coming down to "us or them", a survival thing
where "them" is the corporate growth/mammon model that destroys things
consistenly with totally irresponsible mass social engineering.

[The2ndWheel]

10. Well, can't say it better than that

Although I'm not sure it's shocking that it's come down to life(human, plant, insect, animal, whatever) against the corporation.

[Solon]

7. I think part of the problem is that we have expectations that are too high

The REAL American dream is being able to live your life to the fullest, without living from paycheck to paycheck, hoping you never get sick because you may not make the next house payment, and being able to be HAPPY. This does NOT involve buying a big assed McMansion with a 2 car garage, driving Corvettes or Excursions, and just collecting stuff that will collect dust when we die.

[HereSince1628]

9. It isn't just transportation. It's the entire logistical infrastructure.

And changing that will create resistance to losing methods of private transportation in 14 years.

The corner grocery and drugist have vanished from the American landscape too. Cities were once characterized by these as well as little clusters of business every half mile or so. These are all gone. There is no local business to walk to.
I'm old enough to remember these things. Old enough to remember when living in a town of 30,000 meant there were real jobs in the community and it was unnecessary to commute into an urban monster 40 miles away or a glass-walled highrise at the junction of two freeways.

That town 45 miles outside Chicago had 3 different dairies that provided daily deliveries, and bakeries that made home deliveries 3-5 times a week. Now there is no delivery, there is one dairy in that town, there is no bakery. There is no central business district to speak of and there are no functioning neighborhood business clusters providing groceries, and usually either hardware or five and dime type sundries every 3/4 to a mile or so. Most of the people commute out of town to a job.

The efficiency of scale made possible by automobiles also made widely placed supermarkets commonplace and ultimately brought us the big box retailer that crushed small neighborhood businesses and for most Americans cut off the possibility of an easy retreat into a nostalgic neighborhood based life style.

It's going to take much more than 14 years to re-establish that neighborhood life style to accomodate into urban/metropolitan areas the scores of millions of American's that would be forced out of the small town hinterlands by a lack of personal transportation and to expand high speed mass transit.

Personally I think it is more likely that the next 14 years will be a time of switching to alternatively fueled/powered vehicles. Not unlike the primary shift in vehicle fuel/power underway in your 1901 world view of the rare car society...that being the shift away from digestable plant biomass and the horse to petroleum and the internal combustion engine.

[sweetheart]

11. Internet supply chain evolutions

The old model of supply chains puts the supplier ignorant of
demand, "pushing" a warehouse of goods at the market, but the
evolutions might be better done "webvan" style, where the
transport model is smoothed out that no person has to make
a grocery run, or a petfood run, or a bedding run, or a
glassware run... so much of life's basic primitives, when
the web connects to the actual "demand'er", personal "just
in time" delivery could be the future. IT works for
corporations to disintermediate the market, why not do
the same for individuals.

The internet could, with informational efficiency, radically
cut the transport need, but not when there is a profession
purposefully spoiling such approaches to sell us more fuel.
The world cannot support 6 billion alternative fuel vehicles
either... the whole "solution" is faux, the hunred mile
carburator does not solve the economic root problem of
"resonable expectations" and a collision between people's
hopes and dreams for "happiness", and the resource reality
as the freshly doubled world population wakes up to its own offal.