taska and i saw an excellent, though scary, file last night called "the
end of suburbia"
i highly recommend it to anyone, but especially those of you interested in
suburban sprawl, the end of cheap oil and the changing social and economic
fabrics that will result from 5 or 10 dollar /gal gasoline.
basically the worlds oil production, while not dry, has probably reached
(or will soon reach) its peak output. we can get more oil, but it will be
more expensive, and we won't sustain current levels of production. the
commentators in the film discussed the fact that the last 50 years of
american life have depended crucially on cheap oil, and it will become
scarce very quickly now. americans don't know what they're in for. not
just our suburban development model will collapse, but huge sectors of our
economy will be erased as transportation suddenly becomes a major expense.
think local food, local shopping, local manufacturing, and imagine how
much your life might change if you had to make a living by conducting
transactions only with people within, say 25 miles of your home.
my complaint was that they didn't provide a game plan for people who might
believe their warnings and want to protect themselves. its easy to know
what to do in terms of saving "the earth" or the rest of society (i.e.
drive less, more fule efficiency, insulation, etc, etc.) however, what if
i am selfishly motivated. i know now what the future holds. how do i
make sound financial decisions? i.e. is my house close enough to rail,
and town centers to be a valuable property 20 years from now, or should i
sell while i can and get a condo in s.f. should i change careers now, or
will i be relatively safe. while i am not overly concerned for myself, i
think folks pushing this agenda very hard would do well to give people
some selfish motivations and plans, rather than speaking of general
solutions.
2 comments:
sadly i trust big business to pull us through on this one. i believe the plan is already in place-- and it involves co generation power plants which have become the norm. cogeneration can be run 'backwards' if feed coal and hydrogen to make hydrocarbons (oil). it is more expensive but not ridiculously so (in theory). i believe that this technology is being moved in place and when combined with hybrid technology (which is also being sat upon) will even out transporation costs. gas may cost 5 dollars a gallon but drastically increased fuel efficiency offset that. and since we have ridiculous amounts of coal we will keep on burning and polluting for decades to come.
so the only catch is where do you get the hydrogen?
that is really easy though, sea water and electricity. electricity can easily come from nuclear or a cool technology that is doable but sat upon by power companies. supertankers can be fitted with windmills on their decks and if you go 20 miles offshore there are very constant and strong winds. the windmills make electricity (and since you are surrounded by sea water) it is easy to do electrolysis and store up hydrogen. they come back with bellies full of hydrogen to coastal cogeneration plants and viola-- gas. so these old supertankers are in a way still just shipping gas.
anyway just a thought of some technologies that are out there that might sustain our increasingly wasteful and polluting society.
d hess
those are good points, and in fact, i think this will mitigate or eliminate the problem to some extent. i was trying to summarize the documentary's p.o.v., which is not exactly parallel with mine.
we won't wake up one morning to find no oil, it will gradually rise in price making other forms of energy production more and more economically feasible, and eventually, profitable.
i think, though, that if you add up all the energy available from other sources, and all the energy we use now from oil, it could be close. (actually it could go either way-really easy or really hard-probably noone knows)
still a good film...
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