Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

[onehandle]

Why has suburban life flourished?
The suburbs were largely products of industrialism. We had a huge supply of oil and cheap undeveloped land, and we decided to become a happy, motoring utopia. It had many practical benefits. The trouble is after a while it became a cartoon of country living.

Why is suburbia now threatened?
Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages. As we get into trouble with these supplies, our economy will suffer. Major instabilities in the system will present themselves much sooner than we are led to believe. And by that I mean the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around.

When will all that happen?
The rise and fall of oil production is asymmetrical. In other words, it'll be a steeper, rockier tumble down than the steady increase going up. My own sense of things is that we will be in very serious trouble inside of five years.

Won't it help to cut back on gas?
I get people who come up to the podium after a speaking engagement to tell me they've just gotten a Prius, expecting brownie points. It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_18/b4082056979063.htm

[bryant69]

1. What if we get serious about public transportation?

Buses within the communities and trains (or something similar) between communities?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[fascisthunter]

2. That's Gonna Be the Only Way

Public transportation.

[notesdev]

8. No... there is another

and it's so sensible that it's only because of the calcification of US business culture that we haven't already taken advantage of it. The other way is telecommuting. Anyone who can work from home should be encouraged to do so, it will save everyone money - businesses who don't need the extra office space; workers who won't be spending time and money commuting; the people who do commute who will find less traffic on the roads, and so on.

[kestrel91316]

14. I'll never be able to telecommute........

But I live near the office so that's ok.

[notesdev]

24. Other people telecommuting

will make life easier for those who can't. Less traffic means less competing demand for gasoline, more efficient and faster travel, less road maintenance, and so on; and at another remove it will make doing business cheaper and result in lower prices for the goods and services you buy.

[kestrel91316]

28. I wish people would hurry up and quit driving so much so I could ride

my bike to the kitty hospital every day.......

[taterguy]

47. What's stopping you from riding now?

No guts
No glory

And I seriously doubt that your commute is more hazardous than the one I do almost every day on my bicycle

[kestrel91316]

56. I'm 51. I would break pretty easily if somebody took me down,

and as a single self-employed woman in a SOLO practice I CANNOT risk down time. Period.

And on Ventura Blvd, cyclists take their lives in their hands. In a group on Sunday it's fine. Otherwise you have to be insane. I tried it a couple of weekday mornings during rush hour, and between the 50% of drivers who honk and shriek at cyclists, and the 10% who TRY to hit you, I decided I wanted to live.

I think my transit option will consist of a 15 minute walk to the bus, a variable wait for the bus, and a 5-10 minute bus ride with either no further walking, or a 7 minute walk at the end (depends which bus). To go home I can either take the bus, and walk 15 minutes, or just walk the whole distance (40 minutes). I need the exercise.

[slackmaster]

36. What do you do, sell shoes?

Just kidding. I understand that many jobs do not lend themselves to telecommuting. But the more people who do, and who use public transportation, the better for everyone.

[kestrel91316]

43. Um, I'm a veterinarian. I own a cat hospital. And it doesn't have an

attached apartment, or I'd probably live there, lol.

I do physical hands-on work. Not possible to telecommute.

[Indenturedebtor]

83. Yes I was about to post this myself

I've recently started working from home, and I love it! Much higher quality of life, same volume of work, less expense for me and my boss.

It's great!

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

3. Public transporation does not work well in the suburbs..

Sure you can get to and from work but where it kills you is getting to and fro shops and the like. The burbs are laid out in such a way that you just cant get it to work..

[bryant69]

13. Well as currently constituted you might be right

But as we make the shift into a public transportation model, one has to assume the communities will shift as well - this isn't the sort of thing that can be thrown up overnight.

Bryant

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

16. spot on

Zoning needs to change in the burbs to allow shops *not just strip malls* to spring up so most people live within a reasonable walk or at the very least a short drive in the winter months to the basic necessities...

[madinmaryland]

27. Interesting that you mention that.

I live in a "planned" community in MD, which is based on small village centers which include a grocery store, pharma, several restaurants, and several shops. Enough to cover your day to day issues. We have lived near two of the village centers and it was really nice to be able to walk to them. Our city here did not exist until 1967, and was planned with this in mind.

[depakid]

55. That would be Columbia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia,_Maryland

Too bad that the rest of Maryland and Northern Virginia largely became mindless sprawl. It didn't have to be that way....

[DFW]

71. I grew up in Northern Virginia, long ago

When I was a child, the area where I lived was farms, a tiny local airport for
single-engined planes (even had bi-planes!), and a lot of dirt roads.

You wouldn't recognize the place today. Shopping malls, huge apartment complexes,
light industry, and it's suddenly the high rent district. Traffic jams all the way
in and out of Washington, despite the new bridge they built across the Potomac.
Route 50 at rush hour is no longer a convenient way in and out of DC. It is more
like a slow-moving, oozing parking lot. Anyone in their right mind who lives anywhere
near the DC metro parks outside town and takes the train in. But the suburban sprawl
has gotten so intense, even the huge parking garages at the suburban stations are often
full if you get there too late in the morning.

The Dallas area isn't quite that bad, but it's getting there, and it's not limited to
North America, either. Try getting into London or Paris in the morning from outside
town. If you're driving, you're either in no big hurry or crazy.

[girl gone mad]

45. My town is doing this.

Every part of the city will be accessible by foot or bike. They are even building tunnels under the main road. Smaller stores, like Sprouts are going up in more areas rather than the big giant markets.

I lived in Chicago for a while last year and was surprised by the lack of small markets. There was only one in my neighborhood, in the basement of a building, with limited hours. The only other option was chain grocers which were too far to carry more than a couple of bags from. I had to take my suitcase to wheel heavy stuff like cat litter home.

[slackmaster]

38. Certainly true for the way San Diego is laid out

We're spread out all over the place. Effective public transportation would involve lots of little neighborhood shuttle services to get people to the bus and trolley lines.

[Ganja Ninja]

5. Yup. You could drive an electric golf cart to a train station.

That technology already exists. The only thing that doesn't is the train. And I'm sure people would be willing to do this if it means not having to move back into the city.

[kestrel91316]

12. I got serious about public transportation years ago by choosing to

live and work within easy walking distance of a major bus route. And we are lucky here in Lost Angeles to have a mayor (Villaraigosa,who I can't personally stand because he's so smarmy, lol) who is BIG on transit and environmental issues. He has basically said there ain't gonna be any more development or redevelopment in this city unless it has easy access to public transit corridors.

We Californians somehow manage to be on the leading edge of these sorts of things, lol, in spite of being a weird, flaky bunch........

[Strelnikov_]

39. Mass transit does not save energy compared to the typical automobile

(20.5 mpg) in terms of energy consumed per passenger mile.

And since we are talking energy, that is what counts.

Mass transit, to date, has been deployed to alleviate traffic congestion and pollution (smog). With the population density we have attained through decades of development, mass transit is not energy efficient.


Following is the publication that caused me to dig into energy efficiency of mass transit.

Our urban sprawl has no precedent in history, so the feasibility of a mass transit system has yet to be proven – a true mass transit system for the U.S. today may, in fact, be impossible. In addition, the energy savings of mass transit, in the context of implementing such a system in today’s configuration configuration of cities and urban sprawl, may be highly overrated. Figure 6 shows that existing mass transit systems do not provide significant fuel savings.11 It depicts the Btus of energy per passenger mile (assuming average passenger densities) for each type of transportation.

11. Transportation Energy Data Book, 25th Edition, 2006, tables 2-11 and 2-12, Center for Transportation Analysis, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

http://www.communitysolution.org/pdfs/NS12.pdf


Following is the raw data:

http://cta.ornl.gov/data/index.shtml


Following is the concept of what I think is the personal transportation future to serve as the collector from low density development to high load factor electric powered mass transit corridors.

[MadHound]

4. Suburbia won't die, it will just change to the slums

All those folks out in the 'burbs will come swarming back to the city, driving up real estate prices and gentrifying neighborhoods for all the poor residents, pricing them right out of house and home. The poor will be forced to move out to the 'burbs, where all those fine McMansions will be cut up into multifamily dwellings with cheap rent, but an expensive commute. Just don't expect the metro areas to cough up money for any sort of mass transit.

The middle class will survive this, it is the poor who will be screwed, again.

[izquierdista]

9. America the oddball

Extensive suburbs are what make America an oddity compared to the rest of the world. In every other country, the poor DO live on the outskirts of town, a walk beyond the last bus stop, up the side of the hill, far out where the rent is low.

The car has enabled Americans to reorder their lives in an unnatural way, no shopping withing walking distance of home, schools not within walking distance of either, and work in a totally different community. The car connects home with work, school, and shopping in the same way that a sailboat connects islands in an archipelago. That's all fine when the wind is blowing, but there is a doldrum ahead, a time of no wind to power the sails.

[paparush]

10. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner..

[onehandle]

18. That's already happening here in Atlanta.

The poor and mostly African-American population in town loses blocks of housing every day.

They are moving out to the suburbs and further.

The ring of right-wing Republicans that surround Democratic Atlanta are very unhappy about this.

[Iris]

32. It's been interesting, hasn't it?

We've always lived inside the perimeter - even before it was "cool" or "hip". The city has lost a lot of its flavor over the past 10 years.

[onehandle]

34. One of the many reasons that my wife and I will be leaving.

Atlanta is now a bland corporate bubble.

Whenever someone visits here, they ask me what they can do that's fun.

I shrug my shoulders and say, "Dunno. Go get drunk?"

I've lived here all my life and have watched Atlanta's soul die. Enough.

[Iris]

37. Yes, a distant cousin is having friends from Paris visit

The cousin lives in SC, but they'll fly into Atlanta. They want to stay a few days to see the city and my husband said we'd be glad to take them around. But I had the same thoughts as you - "where?"

[onehandle]

51. Take them to the Varsity.

"What'll Ya Have???"

That'll impress Parisians.

[Iris]

79. Perfect!

[conscious evolution]

40. The right wingers

all seem to be moving farther out.
Let 'em,I say.The farther away they are the better.

The gentrification does suck though.It's a form of ethnic cleansing.Done in a peaceful way,but still ethnic cleansing.

[krabigirl]

30. I think that's a generalization.

[MadHound]

48. Really? If you look at the evolution of other cities,

Both historically and around the world, it is generally the poor who have lived at the edge of the city. Only recently, with the advent of the car culture have the well off abandoned the city for the 'burbs, leaving the inner city for the poor.

Meanwhile the gentrification movement has been picking up steam for the past fifteen years, and with the cost of gas going up, up, up, those who are well off will want to return to a central urban area. When they do so, gentrification will pick up the pace, forcing the poor out to the 'burbs. This is already starting to happen in some cities and will only increase as the price of gas climbs.

[girl gone mad]

52. So...

inner cities will be soulless, bland yuppievilles and the 'burbs will have hip joints and artist communities. I can totally dig it.

[pitohui]

53. in many areas city real estate is already too expensive for real people

i don't know how the middle class can "survive" this, what middle class person can pay half a million dollars for a miserable little condo? wages aren't high enough to allow people to live in the city, or they'd be doing it already, check out the prices on those city neighborhoods sometimes

[orangerevolution]

6. Hello Work From Home

in suburbia!

[End Of The Road]

7. Since the majority of Americans live in "suburbia"

I don't expect suburbia to disappear anytime soon.

What I HOPE will happen is that we'll see more zoning changes, allowing businesses to move closer to residential areas. I also hope we'll see businesses adapt to us, rather than expecting us to adapt to them. Smaller neighborhood stores might just become viable again.

I, for one, have no interest in moving "downtown". My downtown is noisy, congested, short on parking, and not home to the majority of jobs in my area.

[ThomWV]

11. Something is missing here, something fundemental

There are a couple of posts along this line. They are interesting, very interesting indeed. Transportation costs are going to hurt suburban areas. First people travel to work and just as important is that goods have to travel out an illconcieved sprawl of roadways to isolated distribution spots. The same can be said of utilities. A single underground main sewer pipe can serve tens of thousands per mile in a city but that same mile of pipe might only serve a few hundred in the outskirts, fewer people to share in the cost of maintainence usually means less maintainance.

I just have a picture in my mind of the slums surrounding Rio and then I trans pose that thought out to Rockville or Germantown.

[TomClash]

15. Good

This gets us closer to a better world, free of the petroleum stain and its waste product, the automobile.

[dmallind]

19. Yeah because every inner city I've ever seen

has been a car-free paradise where there is no problem with an overflow of cars stuck burning fuel in stop and go traffic.

Let's take Manhattan - most densely populated place in the nation with all the amenities you could hope for within easy reach of one of the most efficient public transit systems in the world. Not a single damn reason to need a car and yet what do we see? Lines upon lines of 5mph average brake and charge cabs getting 12mpg maybe, almost all of them taking trips within range of the public transit system, fighting for every gas-spewing inch with lines upon lines of private cars doing the same mostly intra-borough trips.

Not even an isolated example. Doesn;t seem to matter how good the transit system is - from DC to Milan to London to San Francisco and every other high density city I've visited - every damn one of them just means less mpg in worse traffic than the suburbs that surround them.

Yep - central high-density living is gonna help us with that petroleum stain. Sure.

[TomClash]

26. Think freely

It wasn't always that way and it doesn't have to be that way. There will always be cars, particularly in rural areas, but they are made for suburban living. People can and will use new energy vehicles and blend mass transit in urban areas. Driving is not getting easier in more densely populated areas and NYC is a prime example - most of the population in Manhattan does not own a car - the congestion in the City is largely caused by suburban and borough drivers.

Soon oil will be a third world energy source. We can either get with the program or welcome ourselves to the third world.

[dmallind]

17. Why the assumption that suburbia=commuting?

I live in pretty much exurbia but I'm closer to my work than I would be in the central city, and about the same distance froma real grocery store as most places in the city. I can aslo get MUCh better mpg commuting that same distance on much quieter roads because of less dense population.

As land prices and parking in city centers became more problematic, a huge number of production and service companies built facilities in the suburbs. It's not like every employer is in the core cities. The traffic is only worse there because of the population density and the infrastructure, not because that's where all the jobs are. Same in every city I've lived in - the employers are spread throughout the entire metro not just downtown, yet we still get the 50's style assumption taht everybody works in a city and commutes from a suburb.

[onehandle]

20. It's still true for the most part.

Cities are changing rapidly. Employers are moving back in and attracting builders to create modern mini-cities.

Cities died in the 70s, but they will become the new place to be as oil prices and traffic increase.

During the day here in Atlanta there are 25-45 mile backups as people swarm in.

At night the suburbs are choked with traffic, but the city roads are very light.

Gas prices will speed up the reversal of development from the spread out suburbs to the cities.

My main point is that the traffic in the cites are not from the residents for the most part.

Some cities are working on ways to cut down the traffic coming in from the suburbs that cause the traffic.

[dmallind]

21. But the roads are busy because of density

Not necessarily because that's where all the jobs are. There are more roads and more space in between the destinations in the suburbs, hence fewer cars per road mile. It's intuitive enough of course. There are simply more places a workplace could be in the suburbs than in the city, so fewer cars going to each individual place.

Remember too that traffic in a city does not necessitate destination in a city. Because I was working at different offices, I often had to commute through the city from a house in one suburb to an office in another when I lived in Mpls for example. Again because the city roads are fewer and all funnel into one place, this increases the gridlock more than roads throughout the suburbs experience.

[onehandle]

22. I added a bit to my post while you were typing.

"My main point is that the traffic in the cites are not from the residents for the most part.
Some cities are working on ways to cut down the traffic coming in from the suburbs that cause the traffic."

Yes, the traffic passing through is a problem. Cities are building passaround roads and tightening driving restrictions with HOV lanes and limited exit to deal with them.

I want the cars out of the city. In London, you have to pay through the nose to drive in the city center. That's where we are headed.

New York is working on a plan to nearly quadruple tolls. Fine by me.

[dmallind]

25. Not sure I totally agree

I do with go arounds and lanes and even tolls where needed, but I strongly suspect most city traffic is a good mix of residents and commuters, It's not like it's easy to park in most major cities even after the work day is done. I live outside Buffalo and even there where we have lost 1/3 of the population in the last 30 years and have some downtown viability issues, on the VERY rare occasion when I venture there weekends and evenings (which is only time I ever do evnture there!) parking is still a bear.

[krabigirl]

29. Exactly. We live in Irvine, CA, a suburb, It's very close to our jobs. 10 min max commute.

[girl gone mad]

54. In my view..

it's a strange Utopian idea that many people have. They imagine gentrification of cities and urban renewal as a solution to all of our problems.

In reality, most urban centers were designed to accommodate cars, not people. There's not really a good work around for that. I think there are only three big cities in the country that truly have the infrastructure to handle a large urban population: NYC, SF and Chicago. The rest would face major congestion and issues related to the basic layout.

The majority of people around the world live in big cities, more often than not in slum conditions. By adopting this model, most Americans would see a lower quality of life, not a higher one.

[eilen]

23. There has always been suburbs

And there has always been inner city poor and rural poor.

What I see happening is changes in the low income housing (the projects, or what we call "the bricks" around here) which had been concentrated in the city during the 1960's being condemned and sold to developers to either build more parking garages and commercial development and those who are still living in those derelict buildings being forced to find other suitable housing within the city. They do this by turning over the administration of these housing developments over to management companies who then neglect them, not pay the utilities etc. We have lost companies in our downtown due to lack of parking. A major insurance company left (a great deal of vacant office space) and went out to the suburbs. The money they were spending just on monthly parking was most likely a big reason why. When I worked at the hospital, my parking was over $80 a month and they plan to increase that amount. Currently they are having employees park across town at a baseball stadium and shuttling them in (adding another 15 min. to your commute). It has the effect of people not wanting to work there if an alternative exists. For nurses, I can't think of a better reason to find work elsewhere. Of course, if you live in the city, it is not a big issue unless you have to work very late at night (with mandatory overtime, you never know).

I live in the upper East Coast Rust Belt so have a different view than those living in Arizona and California. Things are not as spread out where I live and there are main roads that the buses use and our suburban developments are all off the main road so it is relatively easy to catch a bus, they just don't have many running after 4 pm.

Yesterday I needed to drop my car off for repair. I could have walked but the weather decided to hail and it was very chilly. So I walked down the road across the street to the mall and caught a bus ride home. We usually take a shuttle to fair every year too except this year we may sit this one out.

Another squeeze on commuters in NY: the gov. is raising tolls upwards of 28% because ... get this... less drivers on the roads d/t the gas prices. You can't win in NY, they will screw the taxpayer coming and going.

[Iris]

31. No there haven't.

There have always been towns/cities and rural/country/farms. Suburbs came about when we got cars.

[eilen]

73. they just didn't call them "suburbs"

At first they were "neighborhoods" peripheral to the urban areas within the incorporated city limits, then they bumped into "towns" right outside the city limits-- at least here on the East Coast--things are much closer together. The towns "grew" then overlapped with villages, then incorporated them. For example, my friend resides in the Village of Liverpool within the Town of Salina which abuts the City of Syracuse's Arlington and "oil city" neighborhoods. The Village sits on the side of a lake in which the city is on the other side. It takes about 5 minutes to get from the Village to the City. The road that takes you, the Parkway, brings you right to where the new development of the Destiny USA is, previously was "oil city" a place where they kept big tanks of oil, metal scrapyards and a sewage treatment plant. Also, going west, there is the village of Solvay--basicially a milltown that housed Allied Chemical for many years (who, in tandem with the sewage treatment plant polluted our lake to epic proportions--Allied is long gone but the working man bars are still going strong). The main street of the city starts from the road that crosses the natural extenuation off of the Parkway. Our city was also historically part of the Erie Canal network. They filled in the canal in the city and now call it Erie Boulevard, a large commercial strip connecting the city, the university and Eastwood neighborhoods (Eastwood was once an outlying neighborhood, considered a suburb at one time), and towns of East Syracuse, Dewitt and Fayetteville (of which the last three have characteristics of both town centers and suburbs).

I live in the suburbs, which grew from the outskirts of the village and ended up becoming part of another town, the Town of Clay. The high school is closer to where I am, which educates students from two Liverpool zipcodes, from both Town of Salina and Town of Clay. (Salina has two villages-- Mattydale and Liverpool). The first modern suburb (based on the Levittown model) built in Liverpool was called Bayberry. It was built to house the employees of GE, who have long since left. A number of other major employers have their offices and factories in the area in which many of the residents work, and we have seen them come and go. At present is Lockheed Martin, a recipient of many of the employees from GE and Martin Marietta. There are others sitting on industrial parkways that thread between these "suburbs".

The only thing to change our current suburban mode here in my area would be to zone for commercial within each development, allowing a demo of a house or two for small grocers, etc. This would impact the large big box commercial businesses about 1.5 miles from me to a small extent as people will still drive a mile or more for lower prices (see Walmart). I also think that they are very different due to the road structure, the roads are curving and circular while in the village and towns they are more grid-like.

I actually do have a "corner store"-- a produce and garden shop about 2 blocks away, across the main road (5 lane Rd) is a drug store, a Kmart, biglots and Joann's as well as a 2 pizza parlors and a chinese food restaurant, Arby's and Pep Boys. There is a cross walk and walking light, but that is at a main intersection. Most people could walk to all these easily, it just feels dangerous because of the traffic. Many drive to these places from my neighborhood. I often take my bike.

I think the difference is that in the village, there are sidewalks and a more community feel. The structure is more conducive to community while in the suburb, there is no center.

Our highways cut through north to south, east to west. The only congestion we get is during the high commuter hours (8-9:30, 4:30-6) on the highways and the main roads. Otherwise getting anywhere is lickety split. There are more outlying suburbs that have been built up during the boom, oka "exurbs". These areas rarely receive any bus service and are based outside of villages in more remote areas of the county. Some of this is definitely more rural. Some of the villages are sorta high income places and those lucky with big pockets have beautiful historic homes and a gorgeous lake to look at.

I am sure things are different in California and in other more widespaced areas -- when I was in San Diego many years ago, I remember taking a bus (I didn't have a car) and seeing development after development-- a veritable sea of them stretching as far as I could see punctuated by big malls and bigbox centers. That was very disconcerting.

[Strelnikov_]

33. KunstlerCast

http://kunstlercast.com/index.html

[Subdivisions]

42. He's supposed to be scheduled to appear on Colbert tonight. Edited Link:

http://www.tvrage.com/The_Colbert_Report/episodes/654851

[Strelnikov_]

58. Thanks

Starting to get some coverage.

Problem is, about seven years too late.

[slackmaster]

35. I'm staying in my suburban castle and lobbying hard for telecommuting

:hi:

[minerva50]

41. I'm an old lady

and I've heard people predicting the death of the suburbs ever since I was an idealistic young architecture student. It ain't gonna happen. I laugh to hear all you doomers gloat over the coming death of the great american suburbs. Suburbs may become denser as we infill empty acreages, tear-down and re-build older inner-ring communities, but they are here to stay. You ask an inner-city child to draw a house, what does she draw? A single family home set in a lawn with a few trees and flowers. Inside the house you know these's a basement and an attic. This is our idea of home. As many have said, employment is no longer in the center cities, most cities have satelite centers where most of the jobs are today. People telecommute. Ways will be found to make them work.

[Crabby Appleton]

46. I agree. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

80. There are plenty such houses in the city

Not every city looks like Manhattan.

Minneapolis has miles and miles of single-family houses with grass and trees within its city limits. In fact, probably only ten percent of the city looks like Manhattan. When I was a child and teenager, it had at most two inner rings of suburbs and then gaps before you got out to the small towns, and the second ring had large sections that were still rural.

Now there are four or five layers of suburbs, and the square mileage of the metro area has increased much faster than the population.

My theory is that it's due to racism. The city started sprawling like mad after large numbers of African-Americans moved here in the late 1960s to early 1970s, seeing the Twin Cities as a refuge from deteriorated conditions in Chicago. Then came refugees from Southeast Asia and Somalia and lots of Latino immigrants.

Most of them live in neighborhoods with grass and trees.

[derby378]

44. Well, we still have horses...

Just a thought...

[lonestarnot]

49. ewwweee boy are you in trouble!

:spank: :spank: :spank:

:evilgrin:

[zonmoy]

50. problem is that every bit of our economic system is based upon cheap energy

from fossil fuels. when that goes everything goes.

[KillCapitalism]

57. It doesn't have to be this way.

When the hell are we going to wean ourselves off oil?

I'm telling ya, electric cars are the way of the future. Every time I mention electric though, someone has to come in and say "Well generating electricity uses a lot of oil." Prove it. How much oil is needed for Nuclear, Solar, Hydroelectric, Wind, or geothermal power?

[NuttyFluffers]

59. technically electric cars could save this model

all we need is charge/exchange stations at major mass transit hubs and parking lots. drive your car, plug it in. during peak periods the grid can pull off from the car batteries. during off-peak the grid can recharge car batteries.

throw solar panels on roofs throughout the nation, add more interconnections to form a national grid, and nationalize electricity with a dept. to manage it. voila, you got your cheap energy, cars, and brand new "green economy" in solar tile construction and maintenance. unfortunately it requires "sharing" and sounds "commie" even though it'd just be like interstate highways, military, etc. american would never do it. that and it would perpetuate suburbia, which isn't something i necessarily care about.

whee! bring on the end times! :sarcasm: :evilgrin:

[taught_me_patience]

60. nope

they'll have to pry my car from my cold dead hands. I'll continue to live in the suburbs and drive my car when gas is 10/gal.

[ruby slippers]

61. cars can run on water...so they are NOT the problem.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU

[Solon]

62. How many power plants will we have to build to make that even remotely viable?

You require electricity to split the water into a usable substance, and it takes a lot of it to do so. Thousands of power plants would have to be built, just to meet current demand for gasoline in the United States, we burn 400 million gallons of that stuff a DAY in this country right now. It'll take years to replace gasoline with some hydrogen based fuel, years we don't have, and as I said, a lot of power plants will have to be built to produce the stuff.

[ruby slippers]

63. not if they use salt water..Texas wealthy buying up all the H2O lately...

http://www.infinitepower.org/reswater.htm

[Solon]

65. Salt Water or fresh water isn't the point, you still have to extract hydrogen out of it...

and that requires a lot of energy, regardless of where that energy comes from, there is always a trade off, there is no free lunch here, it would be foolish to assume otherwise.

[ruby slippers]

66. no, the energy comes from the saltwater. Did you read the link?

Saltwater (or tidal flow) gives us the energy to turn the water into the electricity for the cars.

The technology is out there. It is just being lobbied away right now....

Water will be the next oil.

[Solon]

67. You do realize how enviromentally destructive that is, right?

Have you seen tidal wave power plants? They completely destroy shallow water habitats for wildlife near the shore, and disrupt the natural flows of the hydro-cycle in the process. Almost as destructive as hydroelectric power plants, with their flooding of local ecosystems. No offense, but I don't find this to be an acceptable alternative.

ON EDIT: In addition, I doubt they would be able to produce enough power to power ALL of our cars at current consumption rates.

[ruby slippers]

68. can't be any worse than the oil industry...but I get your drift.....

I just can't believe that if we can put men on the moon that we can't solve the energy crisis. But, then again, my husband worked for years in the oil industry so maybe I am a little bit biased. At least we ate well.

[Solon]

70. I hate it when people make that comparison...

Its apples and oranges, to be frank about it. It was well within our technical capability to reach the Moon when it happened, otherwise we wouldn't have done it. It was also extremely expensive and took up a lot of resources, and didn't violate any laws of physics.

That is neither here nor there, the fact is, even after reading the other link, that energy needs to be added to the fuel in the first place, for the reaction to be continuous, and the energy needed to produce the reaction is larger than what you get out of it with hydrogen, the process simply isn't worth it. You have a battery, not a fuel source.

[ruby slippers]

78. you know what? You seem very intelligent, perhaps you

missed your calling. I am certain you could solve the energy crisis then. My life is almost over, so I hope you do for my grandkids sake. In the meantime, you are a great debater. Me? I'm just an old lady living on borrowed time. Carry on, I'll just stare at the moon and say, "Why not?" Peace!

[ruby slippers]

69. maybe direct salt water? (link)

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/salt-water-fuel.htm

[ThomWV]

76. You understand why this is pie-in-the-sky bullshit, but these clown can't figure it out

This web page is filled with clowns who do not understand the basic principle that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, that there is no free lunch, that it takes as much energy to liberate the hydrogen as will be released when it recombines with oxygen, that heat losses in the system, no matter where they are, will be its defeat.

They also are utterly unaware that it is more productive to extract hydrogen directly from coal than it is to get it from seawater, but even with the increased efficiency its still a loser, even a bigger loser than fuel from corn.

[ruby slippers]

64. how about a four day workweek--10 hrs. vs. 8

sounds good to me, but then, I don't have to work anymore....so, I'm already contributing to the "less commuting" idea...

[Breeze54]

72. Suburbia began being settled in the 1640's... without oil.

Mendon is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Mendon is very historic
and is now part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, the oldest
industrialized region in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendon,_Massachusetts

Pioneer settlement

Pioneers from Braintree petitioned to receive a land grant for 8 miles square of land, 15 miles west of Medfield.<2> In September of 1662 after the deed was signed with a Native American Chief, "Great John", the pioneers entered this part of what is now southern Worcester County. Earlier, unofficial, settlement occurred here in the 1640s, by pioneers from Roxbury. This was the beginning of Mendon.

[eilen]

74. We have the same kind of thing here in upstate NY

It might be an East Coast thing. I have forbears that came here from England and settled in Skaneateles (a small lakeside village) and the Onondaga Indian Reservation (although I wonder if that is still reservation land or just what the called it before a town was named there, things shifted quite a bit back in the 1700's i/r/t Indian land).

I was just in Worcester for the sewing expo last month, am going back into MA today--Auburn to give my friend some company as she needs to return a sewing machine there. (Another symptom of our sinking economy).

Our original suburbs were based on the canal economy, before oil. Reading historical accounts of people in my village, they often came out to where I live in modern day suburbs (back then were farms) to visit relatives and help out with the harvest. They also frequently went into the local city for business, politics and social entertainment.

[Breeze54]

75. It's all over the east coast I think. That area... The Blackstone Valley also

has a river and therefore they had mills to grind the wheat, corn etc. harvested from the farms.

[ThomWV]

77. Yep, that's the answer, our forefathers came to the New World to settle and establish suburbs.

I've seen a lot of silly things said here but that one takes the cake. George Washington surveyed lands that would eventually become Dairy Marts and 7-11's, is it your assertion that it was his intention in exploring the wilderness in order to establish convenience stores?

[Breeze54]

82. Well; they did start the suburbs back then... without oil.

You can't dispute that. ;)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

81. The problem is not people moving out of the central city so much as

them doing it in an environmentally destructive manner.

In the old days, the suburbs looked like the cities that they were expansions of. Even today, the suburbs of London and Tokyo have good public transportation and stores and services that you can walk to.

Separating housing from shopping and services and making car ownership compulsory is a post World War II development.

[Breeze54]

84. But all of those things are in walking distance to me right now!

And in the 60's and 70's, the town in the suburbs I grew up in (after my family left the
city due to a new job) did have buses and trains and we could walk to all of those stores.
Mind you, they left the city with 6 kids and one on the way. I was 11 months old at the time. ;)

[Bushwick Bill]

85. Kick for my man, JHK.

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency
http://www.kunstler.com/
Something is festering in the psyches of the formerly middle class of this nation-something far more ominous than burgeoning public assistance and food stamp applications or mushrooming meth labs. If the subprime mortgage massacre had occurred in a vacuum, the dirty little secret might have been kept a bit longer, but juxtaposing it with Peak Oil, skyrocketing food prices, wacky weather and debilitating droughts, not to mention proliferating pink slips, it daily becomes embarrassingly obvious that Jim Kunstler was spot-on when he uttered his infamous declaration in the documentary, "The End Of Suburbia" that "the entire suburban project is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/463
http://www.peakoil.com/sample/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.dieoff.org/42Countries/42Countries.htm
http://www.dieoff.com/synopsis.htm