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TechnoratiAmerica's Love Affair Fades as the Car Becomes Burden of Suburbia
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - It is known as the Inland Empire: a vast stretch of land tucked in the high desert valleys east of Los Angeles. Once home to fruit trees and Indians, it is now a concrete sprawl of jammed freeways, endless suburbs and shopping malls.
But here, in the heartland of the four-wheel drive, a revolution is under way. What was once unthinkable is becoming a shocking reality: America's all-consuming love affair with the car is fading.
Surging petrol prices have worked where environmental arguments have failed. Many Americans have long been told to cut back on car use. Now, facing $4-a-gallon fuel, they have no choice.
Take Adam Garcia, a security guard who works near the railway station in Riverside. Like many Inland Empire residents, he commutes a huge distance: 100 miles a day. He used to think nothing of it. But now, faced with petrol costs that have tripled, he is taking action. He has even altered the engine of his car to boost its mileage. 'I have to. Everyone does. I can't afford to drive as much as I did,' he said.
Recent figures showed the steepest monthly drop in miles driven by Americans since 1942. At the same time car sales are collapsing, led by huge SUVs.
General Motors, once the very image of American industrial might, is in deep trouble. Cities are now investing in mass transit, hoping to tempt people back into town centres from far-flung commuter belts where they are now stranded by high petrol prices.
Jonathan Baty used to be a pioneer. The lighting designer has cycled to work every day since 1993. It's a nine-mile round trip through the heartland of a car-based culture once famously termed 'Autopia'. But now Baty has company on his daily rides as others choose two wheels rather than four to navigate southern California's streets. 'We have seen a whole emergence of a bike culture in this area. There is a crescendo of interest,' said Baty, who does volunteer work for a cycling group, Bicycle Commuter Coalition of the Inland Empire.
In Riverside, bus travel is up 12 per cent on a year ago, rising to 40 per cent on commuter routes. Use of the town's railway link is up eight per cent. A local car pooling system is up 40 per cent. It is the same in the rest of the US. In South Florida a light rail system has reported a 28 per cent jump in passengers. In Philadelphia one has shown an 11 per cent rise. Even nationwide scooter sales have shot up. At the same time car sales are hitting 15-year record lows. Last week major American car-makers reported a devastating 18 per cent drop in car sales.
The numbers point to a more fundamental shift. In America car sales carry a symbolic value that transcends the wheeler-dealering of the showroom. This is a nation of fabled road trips and Route 66. 'There is an American dream of mobility and freedom and wealth. The car is part of all that,' said Professor Michael Dear, an urban studies expert at the University of Southern California.
In the 1950s the confident nation that helped win the Second World War was expressed in classic car designs of huge fins and open tops. By the 1990s it had become the Hummer, a huge bulking car born from the military. Now there is to be another shift. For, hidden within the car sales figures, is a more complex story than a simple fall. Sales of big cars are plummeting while smaller vehicles, especially fuel-efficient hybrids, are replacing them.
GM has now closed SUV production at four plants. Its Hummer brand is up for sale, or might even be closed. GM is ploughing huge resources into its 2010 launch of the Chevy Volt, a hybrid car that may get up to 150 miles a gallon. It needs to. GM's share price recently hit a 54-year low, prompting one top investment bank to warn that the firm could go bankrupt.
The Volt, and cars like it, could become symbols of a new more conservation-minded car age. As Americans enjoyed the 4 July holiday weekend, increasing numbers of them were staying at home rather than hitting the road. Newspapers were full of tips for 'stay-cations', not weekend breaks away. Customs once scorned, such as car pooling and cutting out trips to the mall, are now commonplace. The fact is, the vast majority of Americans cannot give up their cars altogether. Too many cities lack any reliable public transport.
Adam Garcia is one of those caught. He does two jobs and his daily road trip by car is a necessity. 'We don't have much of a choice. I have to drive,' he said. Sacrifices come elsewhere, in giving up trips to the cinema and to see friends.
But America's changing relationship with the car is just part of the story of how the most powerful nation is changing in the face of the oil price rise. America has been built on an oil-based economy, from its office workers in the suburbs to its farmers in the fields.
Since the 1950s and the building of the pioneering car-orientated suburb of Levittown in Long Island, the American city has been designed for the convenience of the car as much as its human inhabitants. People live miles away from jobs, shops or entertainment. If you take away cars, the entire suburban way of life collapses. To some, that development is long overdue.
'Suburbia has been unsustainable since its creation,' said Chris Fauchere, a Denver-based film-maker who is producing a new documentary on the issue called The Great Squeeze. 'It was created around cheap oil. People thought it would flow easily from the earth forever.'
Fauchere's film, due out later this year, aims to tackle the profound changes caused by a world where oil is becoming scarcer. He does not think that it is going to be easy for America to make the adjustment. 'It is going to be tough. It is like a chain reaction through the economy. But if you look at history, it is only crisis that starts change,' he said.
The suburbs are already being hit. As cars become more expensive, the justification for suburbs seems to disappear. Some commentators have even suggested that suburbs - once the archetype of an ideal American life - will become the new slums.
In the face of expensive fuel and crashing property prices, the one-time embodiment of a certain American dream will become crime-ridden, dotted by empty lots and home to the poor and unemployed. That is already happening as crime and gang violence has risen in many suburban areas and tens of thousands of homes have been reposessed because of the mortgage crisis.
In effect, suburbs will become the new inner cities, even as once-abandoned American downtowns are undergoing a remarkable renaissance. Even malls, the ultimate symbol of American life since the war, are undergoing a crisis as consumers start to stay away.
But there are even deeper changes going on. The car, the freeway system and cheap air travel made America smaller. Everywhere was easily accessible. That, too, is ending. Higher fuel prices have dealt a terrible blow to America's airlines. They are slashing flights, raising costs and abandoning routes. Some small cities are now losing their air connections.
In effect, America is becoming larger again. That will lead to a more localised economy. To many environmentalists that is a blessing, not a curse. They point out that cheap fuel for industrial transport has meant the average packaged salad has travelled 1,500 miles before it gets to a supermarket shelf.
'Distance is now an enemy,' said Professor Bill McKibben, author of the 1989 climate-change classic The End of Nature. 'There's no question that the days of thoughtless driving are done.'
The worst hit parts of the US are not yet the suburbs or the freeways of southern California, but the small towns that dot the Great Plains, Appalachia and the rural Deep South. Even more than the Inland Empire, people in these isolated and poor areas are reliant on cheap petrol and much less able to afford the new prices at the pump. Stories abound of agricultural workers unable to afford to get to the fields and of rural businesses going bust.
Even farmers are not immune. They might not need a car to get to their fields but their fertilisers use oil-based products whose prices have gone through the roof. A handful have started using horses again for some tasks, saving petrol on farm vehicles.
The American dream of the last half century is thus changing. The car and its culture is now under a pressure unimaginable even a few years ago. 'The frontier of endless mobility that we've known our entire lives is closing,' said McKibben.
America's excess has had many imitators. Recently a delegation of Chinese government officials and architects visited an Arizona suburb near Phoenix. Approving notes were taken as they surveyed the luxurious car-driven suburban lifestyle on display. This was just one of the many delegations that regularly come from the Far East or South America.
Even as America is sobering up from its excess of cheap oil, other parts of the world are seeking to join the party. They, too, want homes far from dirty city centres, huge open roads and fast cars. It is still a beguiling vision of freedom, mobility and bountiful riches.
McKibben spent last week on a visit to Beijing. He was worried about what he saw. Even as America's obsession with the car lifestyle is ending, others are embracing it. 'The Chinese have spent the Bush years starting to build their own version of America. A key question for the planet is whether they still have time to build a version of Europe instead - global warming will probably hinge on the answer to that question,' he said.
Car culture
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck's classic novel follows 14 passengers and a dog as they set out from the Oklahoma dust bowl for California in a decrepit sedan. 'The ancient Hudson, with bent and scarred radiator screen ... with hub caps gone and caps of red dust in their places - this was the new hearth, the living centre of the family; half passenger car and half truck, high-sided and clumsy.'
On The Road
Written in April 1951, Jack Kerouac's autobiographical account of a road trip across the US and Mexico with Neal Cassady is the definitive account of American wanderlust.
Rebel Without a Cause
James Dean's fate is sealed when he accepts the challenge to a Chickie Race from the high-school gang of Buzz Gunderson. The game ends in tragedy for Buzz, when his car goes over the cliff. Dean was later to die when he crashed his Porsche Spyder.
Bullitt
The 1967 Dodge Charger was the most elegant car of Detroit's muscle era. The car, with its sinister occupants, is destroyed by Steve McQueen, left, in a Ford Mustang GT Fastback, and consumed in a ball of flame. The scene provides the climax to nine minutes and 42 seconds of cinematic car intensity in the hills of San Francisco.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
66 Comments so far
Show AllFAT, DUMB, INDULGENT, PROVINCIAL AMERICANS ...
This society is getting just what it paid for. It's called 'comeupance' and 'reaping what you sewed'. I'm old enough to have cringed while watching Notorious Nixon and his Brownshirts prate about American virtues as they violated every virtue every named to keep their deathgrip on power.
I watched liberalism's demise when the country elected Readumb, the grinning idiot with the heart of a confirmed Nazi with all his oafish posturing before the Berlin Wall and everywhere else he appeared. Stealing average Americans blind as they drooled over his stature and his prowess.
Then, older and wiser, I saw the future when Americans voted in sufficient numbers for Bush, the blatant nitwit and titanic hypocrite, to enable his Family Values troopers steal the White House from the dull but decent Gore.
How mean and stupid does one have to be, to vote for THAT, I wondered. Very, very, it seems.
Now, the Have's have had it their way for 30 some years and our country ... OURS, not the ubermenschen who conned the lazy, indifferent electorate into believing ANYTHING they were told, is a ruin, both at home and abroad.
The problem has always been that we who knew better also got stuck with people unequal to sell shoes fairly at a discount store.
Now, I watch with a certain bitter glee as all the greedy, self-interested dimbulbs sink from their own doltish shortcomings. And I do so without fear, because they sunk ME long ago.
For 15 years, I've been chronically disabled by a demonic physical illness that has helped me understand who matters in America and who does not. I've watched as a paltry, underfunded, shame-based social support system got systematically dismantled and starved to death by my 'let'em eat cake' 'betters'.
After years of clawing and demanding and searching and pleading, I've soared in my country's assistance to $900/month + a Sec.8 subsidy that recently got seriously reduced---in order to provide more benefits for more people.
I believe that's called stealing from the poor to serve other poor. In a country with a military budget larger than the GNP of many other nations.
Americans like to think they know what's up. Provincials are like that. What they really know is only what they're fed by carefully tailored, agenda-driven, profit-making megacorporations of whom Big Brother would be proud ... via infotainment venues on which they rely because it's easier and more comfy to get your thinking pre-chewed and predigested, spoonfed and bland.
That's perfect for the average American for whom high school was merely a prolonged exercise in social networking and college, if it happened, was about future profit, not a developed mind.
Being American has long been about being dazed and confused and getting away with it, sorta.
Working madly so you could consume the same way.
Until quite recently, ignorance really has been bliss amidst America's boundless prosperity (for the Have's) and immense military power. Americans were too busy and too distracted with bread & circuses to know or find out how totally they were being gulled, sold out and robbed by the corporate-political complex that serves only members of its restricted club, and snickers at the Little People who think they actually have a say in the decisions being made.
William Lederer was saying when I was in high school, that this is a nation of sheep and I read him.
We've been getting sheered daily now for a very long time, as our 'leaders' trade favors and count the fleece.
Should anyone wonder, yes, I do plan on emigrating. I just can't stand it any more. I'll take an open, straightforward dictator to a Republican wannabe any day.
I exist on the pittance I'm given, which would be much less if I hadn't fallen for Viet Nam, $650, to be exact, plus good ol' Medicare which most really good doctors won't touch and don't.
I agree that the Darwinian capitolists who've long been running America (over a cliff) are doing their best to enslave our end of the social equation and they're making real progress.
Unless THIS collective worm turns the migrant farm workers won't be the only people first seduced by Republicans and then anathematized by them.
I must be gone over, but I find it genuinely funny that the Republican dons of the West and Southwest should first exploit the impoverished of Mexico and Latin America, thereby putting Americans out of work, all to feed their greed, of course, and the vulnerability of the downtrodden, and then, when all the domestics and gardeners and lettuce pickers began to number in the millions and put a strain of local social resources, those same Republicans feign shock as if they all slipped over the border, bent on social services, the night before and the fatcats had no part in it; then raise the banner of America First and blame their victims for the unexpected consequence of more Republican cheating the system: cash (very little) under the table, no employment tax to pay to fund the social services the 'brown masses' will need. No, just look the other way, and expect the rest of us, We, the People, who can't imagine hiring someone to do OUR shit work, to foot the bill, while they're in Puerto Vallarta (not the part their domestics came from).
Now, along with abortion, etc., they wave the Immigration Issue.
What should we do with this parasitic growth among us? The Hispanics, not the Republicans, ... I think.
Apocalyse is already visiting this land thanks to all the above. What is needed is a revolution. A nation of really pissed-off sheep. And maybe a populist shepherd to organize them into battalions. Maybe even a black one.
GM and other carmakers deserve to go bankrupt. This crisis has been coming for a long time but that knowledge didn't stop them from intensifying the market rush to the SUV. You didn't see them trying to market fuel efficient vehicles, as a responsible company should have been doing. They were too busy greedily cashing in on the fad they helped create.
I wouldn't worry about them too much because corporate welfare is the only welfare that comes without a stigma attached to it. The government will bail them out and the taxpayers will end up paying the tab, again. So much for the wonders of the so-called "free market".
Iwarrior, I'm with you: I've also stayed in the city and never owned any kind of vehicle. Chicago has increasing numbers of bicycle lanes, and I know a few people that even bike to work.
- - - -
Old Jeffersonian, thanks for the article!
- - - -
wdmax3
It's all in who you talk to. A lot of Indians/American Indians/AmerInds/Native Americans just shrug when you ask what they would prefer to be called. Many employ the term 'Indian' themselves. Some actually like 'Indians': it's a joke on the Europeans who didn't even know where they were. Others, of course, disagree. (I was an active member of the Native American Student Organization at university, and there were a variety of attitudes.)
People are going to be racist or not, regardless of what terms they are taught - or pressured - to use.
As a black (his term) friend said to me: "Do you think I care if people call me an African American? You know more about Africa than me. [I'd learned a bit in Anthropology courses.] Besides, the guys that hate me can be forced to say 'African American,' but that won't change what they're calling me in their minds."
Be careful about that 'too many people' talk: some people will accuse *you* of racism, because they 'know' that you mean 'those countries over there.'
See how that 'racist' label (mal)functions?
You're right though, that there are too many people.
How would you drop the population significantly, though, in a short period of time? Short of large numbers of people being killed off outright, the population isn't coming down soon. It isn't even expected to stabilize for a couple of decades or so.
[For those that like to jump to unwarranted conclusions: No, I am *not* advocating mass murder or genocide - either active or passive. Nor am I accusing wdmax3 of any such thing.]
It's laughable how our culture absolutely refuses to change. I personally bought a new mountain bike, and have been having a ball rediscovering cycling, fresh air & exercise getting around town doing routine errands. Then I open the july issue of Bicycling magazine, and out tumbles a huge color 4-page fold-out ad for, of all things, the new Hummer SUV. Instead of featuring personal transporation alternatives, the morons at GM & Rodale Publishing flog this pathetic dinosaur to cycling enthusiasts. Incredible.
"Once home to fruit trees and Indians"
Dear Paul Harris, the last time I checked there were never any Indians in America just Native American or American indigenous people. The term Indian, in reference to Native Americans is outdated, disturbing to some and racist to others. I guess they let anyone write for the Guardian these days...
What fascinates me more about this so-called fuel crisis is that Americans won't stop using their car to save the planet but, hit them in the wallet and they will alter their lives to save a buck.
The most disturbing aspect of our current dilemma is that the Chinese are following in our footsteps. At over 3 times (1.2 billion people) the amount of people now living in America (300 million - not counting the Indians), they want our lifestyle of environmental disregard, waste and greed.
The problem we are facing has nothing to do with oil, food, environmental collapse, or dysfunctional civilized society. The problem we are facing has to do with the number of people that now inhabit this planet. Surely if we reduce the population of this planet by two thirds we would not be facing the problems before us.
I think Hollywood needs to remake the movie "Soylent Green" to drive home a point. I believe that it will be more like "Children of Men" when infertility is the norm due to stress cause by environmental circumstances.
Funny that we call ourselves advanced yet we are unable to balance the carrying capacity of this planet with its human population.
"Should Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger consider a fee on corn fuel ethanol use?"
That Governor laughs about 'ethanol' while tooling about town and driving
oil-men and Pols -- in his LPg-converted Hummers (which give no-better MPG,
but don't-'pollute' while costing less than 1/2 for fuel).
In India (and other '3rd-world' countries where Big-Oil has lesser-influence
on Laws/Reg's) nearly every gasoline-consuming vehicle and stationary-engine
[not already burning bio-diesel] is being cheaply/efficiently converted to
run on clean/plentiful LPG -- which 'exhales' exactly what you-do [H2O &
CO2, almost-exclusively], and costs less than half of what gasoline-does, anywhere. Once
burning-LPG, these motors also last twice-as-long between rebuilds and/or
oil-changes [whereas Ethanol-'boosted' gasoline actually shortens all older/small
engine-lives, while it reduces mileage roughly-equally to the
percentage-added!].
'Ethanol' is a Joke, and increases our overall-pollution AND
'oil-imports/dependency'...while driving-up food-pricing (a
Lose/Lose/Lose-Proposition).
By way of making a point, the Las Vegas economy is hemorrhaging like crazy.
Las Vegas leads the US in foreclosures, and it's getting to the point of a health hazard with all the abandoned pools breeding mosquitos.
The All-You-Can-Eat buffets are increasing in price as the gaming tables and slot machines sit almost empty and unused. Room rates have dropped by 20%, no matter which hotel, casino or resort you look at. And the major airlines are talking seriously about cutting back the number of flights to Las Vegas.
Las Vegas will soon be just another Nevada ghost town, all thanks to Peak Oil and a new economic dark age.
Live Free or Drive!
Ezeflyer: Good post, but are you sure about Davis? Paris, France rocks! A million bikes for the public to use. And a great subway system, too.
Galen: I agree with your posts.
Old Jeffersonian: Good points on first post and a big THANK YOU on your friend's article. Fantastic!
Iwarrior: Very good points. I admire your convictions. If anything, our "tax dollars" should fund public transportation instead of trillions for the Pentagon budget and their murderous agenda, but then what can we expect with Republicrats running (or should I say "ruining" our country?)
David B - Here is the source for Jaded Prole's comment:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/05/bin-laden-144-oil/
Dom N Gloom, nobody is stopping you from driving whatever car/truck you wish to drive as long as you pay for the gas. Trucks will become more expensive to produce hence less profitable for car manufacturers. Some of these heavy cars/trucks may only become sensible in a business environment but not as a means of transporting a single human being from point A to B and back. Remember, these mammoth vehicles will not survive unless you are willing to the pay price that is greater that what GM, Ford ..Etc spends for products that are becoming less attractive by the day.
"There is an American dream of mobility and freedom and wealth."
Since our grandparents days, post WWI we have been living a collective FANTASY of freedom. It will change now. We will have to go back to horse-plows, walking, sharing with neighbors, communities that actually spend time together and rely on each other. The fantasy was FREEDOM. We are interdependent on one another, like it or not. We will have a steep learning curve, but thankfully we still have elders who remember.
Talk to your elders. Catch rain water. Keep chickens. Read a book on Permaculture. Put cardboard and mulch over your lawn and GROW FOOD!
Open a small business in your town!
And by the way, now that WALMART has sucessfully killed off all the small town economies, will they please help revive them?????
Blah-Blah-Blah.....There's just too damn many of us. This planet is not set up for 6-billion trash-producing people. I predict there will be Long Pig commonly served for dinner within this century.
IROTFLMAO :D
Big oil bought up the underground railways and then invented the suburbs. Back in the 50's you could drive around town all day on $2 worth of gas and always find a parking place on the street. Gas was cheap and cars grew huge until the oil embargo and block long fillup lines. Cars shrank to reasonable sizes. Gas went from 25 cents per gallon to a dollar and there was plenty again. Then SUVs and Hummers dried up all the surpluss and gas went towards $5. Or maybe it's really that our dollar has shrunk to only a wooden nickel. Heckovajob! Smoke and mirrors will not fix this problem. It's time for another Great Flood and a do-over.
Hey, Old Jeffersonian... you are on board. Check out this alcohol fuel initiative going on in the US right now.
http://acbagnetwork.ning.com/
America is about 3 years behind in their living mentality. Wait until they have to start gardening to supplement their diets.
Here is a winning combo: CSA + Your garden. You can eat well, everyone!
Now watch this video: http://lawnstogardens.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/good-morning-america-admits-we-are-at-peak-oil/
I fear that all this doomsday talk will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Yes, we should have been able to buy electric cars, manure-powered cars, wind-up cars, etc. a long time ago. Sure, we should have expanded mass transit a long time ago and put solar panels on top of every home in the country. And of course, we should have "stopped" the big Agri-corporations and made sure there was an organic farm in every neighborhood.
They're all great ideas. Unfortunately, right now, they're like digging a well when the house is already on fire. Does anybody have any ideas to reverse the current situation before the economy totally collapses? (Well, actually, the economy won't really "collapse", it will simply revert back to a feudal system--a few castles and lots of peasants.)
I have one suggestion--and I get tired of repeating it so I will simply include a link.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8878
G A L E N,
I think he's the constipated one …
What sucks about this is that those of us who chose to live and work in the urban environment will be increasingly pressured by the influx of suburbanites who are now "discovering" the cities.
It is the "europization" of America. The rich will be able to afford to live "in town" and the poor/working class will be banished to the 'burbs. Thanks to the subprime fiasco, our freshly-built ghettos await us.
Veracity- Umm. Which OBL is that? The original thin Saudi one? Or the fatter, shorter CIA tape one?
DCB- Forced oil dependance? Coerced, possibly. 'American Dream (tm)' produced propaganda, definitely.
Major Corporations are laughing themselves all the way to the bank as the 'Murican public bought the WWII induced 'planned obsolescence' model of modern capitalism/corporatism hook, line, sinker, rod and copy of 'Angling Times'.
Oil dependance is no more forced in America than fast food consumption.
And that will be coming to an end too with Peak Oil...
H O L L O W _ P O I N T,
I think this is the video we've all been waiting for:OBL captured ?
dbc asks: Who can live on $1200 per month gross in the US?
I have news for you many many people do.
OBL that right that guy in an 1998 interview said the price of oil is to low at that time it was 11$ a barrel. He called it would be 144$ a barrel and that was 10 YEARS AGO.
it shows how much of a mugs game oil is. You read every day of how more people are parking the car but the price keeps going up. In early spring the oil companies said 150 a barrel and guess what they some how knew it would be that high. Total BS.
There is an insidious intention to bring down the US middle class through forced oil dependence. Old Jeffersonian is correct with his/her long post of examples of other countries being much more proactive in establishing mass transit and alternative fuel transportation systems. Why energy independence is not a patriotic issues baffles me. The ethanol tax, etc., is so obviously hypocritical. Corporations can get rich while boosting US prosperity for the average Joe at the same time. I think the intention, at the highest levels, is to reduce 90% of us to a slave class, and merge Mexico Canada and the US into one integrated police state and currency (the Amero), which the impending economic (and once entirely avoidable) crisis will facilitate. PNAC talks about this; McCain backers are calling for another terror attack on US soil to boost the campaign. Some $2trillion of Pentagon expenditures cannot be accounted for. If the masses are poor and dumbed down via corporate media and federally mandated "quality" education, who is to gain?
I live in an agricultural area, where immigrants pick lettuce and broccoli for a slave wage. Who can live on $1200 per month gross in the US? Part of our readjustment process, if it is to be equitable, will mean paying a living wage to farm workers. This would require us to pay at least double what we are currently for food. I think this should happen. It would be more respectful of the earth and natural processes. I'd even consider farm work if it paid $15-$20 per hour, and so would a lot of other people.
My comment is "awaiting moderation," so I'm trying it again, but with altered links (skipped spaces):
Excellent source of info re Peak Oil:
www .lifeaftertheoilcrash .net
If you can rent it or buy, please see the documentary (it's on DVD), "Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash." Here's a look at the first three minutes of the film:
youtube.com/watch?v=6HRZPpbpSjg
Also some articles:
www .fpif.org/fpiftxt/5326
www .canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2eeece50-285f-4c4b-bb37-2d053d04d4e8
The fact of Peak Oil is now going mainstream:
http: //blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/01/peak-oil-iea-inches-toward-the-pessimists-camp/
Kudos to all of you who are doing your part to free yourselves from oil.
Please remember that unless you are recharging those electric cars at a solar or wind generated powering-up station you are using electricity produced by a coal burning or nuclear power plant.
So when do we go after NASCAR and all the other ridiculous motorsports that eat millions of gallons of fuel in pointless circle driving contests?
This proves Lee Iacoca (no bleeding heart liberal) right when 25 years ago he stated that "the only means for meaningful fuel conmservatin will be a significant increase in gas tax".
The movie, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is proving to be prescient in the way it depicted the "vision" of auto based commuting tied to freeways and gas stations, with no viable mass transit as an alternative, as sheer insanity that only a toon would come up with. Unfortunately, in real life, a cabal of auto, oil, tire industries, combined with corrupt government has given America the current nightmare (this writer gets to experience the Los Angeles version) that will take significant and long overdue investment in mass transit that should have begun many decades ago. What is tragic is that the corporate media is ignoring the culpability of its' fellows in the "creation" of this mess and way too much of the public is ignorant about it.
BBr-001 - And you extract the uranium ore to be processed into nuclear fuel using machines powered by? What?
And to run the uranium processing plants and their attendant machinery using...what?
And to transport the new nuclear fuel rods to their reactor homes using transports powered by... what?
What do you use to BUILD the new nuclear power plants? What will power those machines?
Do you begin to see the depths of the hole that we have dug for ourselves using oil?
I bet the CEO's that touted giant SUVs over economically superior gas-saving cars voted themselves huge bonuses for being such visionaries.
It seems like every few weeks there is another new Prius on the block. Plug in hybrids are the next step, with up to 40 miles using no gas at all.
Add to that grid electric from nuclear and renewables, the problem is solved, and CO2 emissions from personal transportation are reduced to a fraction of what they are today.
The next and maybe bigger problem is the cost of diesel fuel. Truck drivers all over the world are conducting slow downs, strikes and other protests, and it is inflating the cost of everything. Incentives for reducing heating oil (same thing as diesel) through better insulation and using GHG free electricity will go a long way to control this cost.
l'll give up my HUMMER when they pry my cold dead fingers from the steering wheel. you can always live in your SUV, you can't drive your house. We are AMERICANS we can have it all. That oil belongs to us, we freed the world. lt is ours, it is all ours. Bomb bomb bomb lran, get back Getty, drill in the Gulf of Mexico, shoot them bears and caribou, suck Alaska dry. lf GOD didn't want us to use oil he would not have made all them dinosaurs. Elect McCain! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
I've always lived in the city and have never owned a car. Now I know for certain that I am not insane. You wouldn't believe the stigma. It's all about status. You just have to have that home in the sticks and a hot car or else many people won't even give you the time of day, and if they do, they razz you about it constantly.
I ride buses and carpool and even walk when I can. I save money and am soiling the air less.
Even if gas were dirt cheap, who the hell wants to drive for more than an hour to get to work?
Well my dad has no choice. He works on the railroad, and has to drive 40 minutes outside the city to get to his job.
However, I still think there has to be a renewable and clean fuel out there. I read an article not long ago about a guy in my city who runs his car on used frying grease.
Bicycles are great also. I see a lot more people riding them. They tend not to get a lot of respect from drivers though, which is why I'm leery of going that route.
Another thing. In my city, our Port Authority Transit keeps cutting bus routes and upping fares. All while I see more people, young people in particular, riding more. Yet they say ridership is down. It's why I think this whole issue in part is an example of the war on workers and poor people. The elites will always have a way to get to where they need to go. They want to make life tough and expensive for the rest of us.
Then you have the idiots who are aghast with anyone who is against drilling in the wilderness, thinking that destroying our wildlife will bring them cheaper gas.
We are past due for some good Illichville style villages, free from cars where everything is locally grown and shops are a bike ride away.
http://www.roadkillbill.com/I-Map.html
I received this from an old friend a few minutes ago. Sounds interesting. Perhaps we need not reinvent the wheel.
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Iran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We.
By Gal Luft
Sunday, July 6, 2008; B01
When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries. It would be roughly eight more decades before oil gushed from a well in Titusville, Pa., marking the beginning of the global oil economy; it took eight decades more for the United States to become a net oil importer. But the republic's disastrous dependence on foreign oil has increased by leaps and bounds ever since.
In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill.
Since oil dependence is so unappealing, you'd think that energy independence would be an easy sell, especially on this Fourth of July weekend. But in fact, very few policy ideas have been so ridiculed. A 2007 report by the National Petroleum Council, a privately funded group that offers advice from the oil and gas industries to the federal government, calls energy independence "unrealistic"; a recent book, "Gusher of Lies," by Robert Bryce, a former fellow at a think tank funded in part by energy interests, described energy independence as a "dangerous delusion"; and a 2006 Council on Foreign Relations task force went so far as to accuse those promoting energy independence of "doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future."
_Ignore them. Energy independence does not mean that the United States must be entirely self-sufficient. It simply means reducing the role of oil in world politics -- turning it from a strategic commodity into merely another thing to sell.
Is energy independence a pipe dream? Hardly. In the electricity sector, the mission has already been accomplished. Remember President Jimmy Carter in his cardigan during the oil crises of the 1970s, urging Americans to save electricity? It took us just one decade to wean the electricity sector from oil. Today, only 2 percent of U.S. electricity comes from oil, according to the Energy Department. Could we do something similar with transportation, where American cars and trucks still gulp oil-based fuel greedily? At least four very different countries -- dictatorships and democracies alike -- are already making serious headway toward that goal. It's past time to pay attention to their example.
_The first country, surprisingly enough, is Iran. The Islamic republic has lots of crude but little capacity to refine it, leaving Tehran heavily dependent on gasoline imports. The country's blustery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is fully aware that this is Iran's Achilles' heel and worries that a comprehensive gasoline embargo could cause enough social unrest to undermine his regime.
So Ahmadinejad has launched an energy-independence program designed to shift Iran's transportation system from gasoline to natural gas, which Iran has plenty of. "If we can change our automobiles' fuel from gasoline to [natural] gas during the next three-four years," he said last July, "we won't need gasoline anymore." His plan includes a mandate for domestic automakers to make "dual-fuel" cars that can run on both gasoline and natural gas, a crash program to convert used vehicles to run on natural gas and a program to convert Iranian gas stations to serve both kinds of fuel. According to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, more than 100 conversion centers have been built throughout the country: Iranians can drive in with their gasoline-only cars, pay a subsidized fee equivalent to $50 and collect their newly dual-fuelled cars several hours later.
Ahmadinejad's plan, which has been largely ignored by the West, means that within five years or so, Iran could be virtually immune to international sanctions.
While Iran is moving quickly toward energy independence, Brazil is already there. It's a striking turnaround; three decades ago, the country imported 80 percent of its oil supply. But since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Brazilians have invested massively in their sugar-based ethanol industry and created a fleet of vehicles that can run on the resulting fuel. According to the Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica), 90 percent of the new cars sold this year in Brazil will be flexible-fuel vehicles that cost an extra $100 to make but can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol.
Lest anyone think that can't be done in the United States, many of those new cars are made by General Motors and Ford. All it really takes to turn a regular car into a flex-fuel one is a fuel sensor and a corrosion-resistant fuel line.
Discovering how to make hydrocarbons and carbohydrates happily cohabit in the same fuel tank isn't all that Brazil has done; it has also increased domestic oil production. Its efforts have not only broken the yoke of Brazil's oil dependence but also insulated the country's economy from the pain of the current spike in global oil prices. Gasoline prices have nearly doubled elsewhere since 2005, but in Brazil, they have been almost frozen. This year, more ethanol will be sold in Brazil than gasoline. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
Like Brazil, China has decided to replace gasoline with alternative fuels. But unlike the United States and Brazil, where the favorite substitute is ethanol, China has embraced a different alcohol: methanol. Several provinces in China already blend their gasoline with methanol, a clear, colorless liquid also known as wood alcohol, and scores of methanol plants are currently under construction there. The Chinese auto industry has already begun to produce flex-fuel models that can run on methanol. Shanxi, a province in central China that produces much of the country's coal, has even issued stickers granting cars that use pure methanol free passage on the province's toll roads.
The distinction between methanol and ethanol is just one letter (but then, so is the difference between Iran and Iraq). Both biofuels should be in our basket of options. True, ethanol packs more energy per gallon and is less corrosive than methanol. But methanol is cheaper and far easier to produce in bulk. While ethanol can be made only from agricultural products such as corn and sugar cane, methanol can be made from natural gas, coal, industrial garbage and even recycled carbon dioxide captured from power stations' smokestacks -- an elegant way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Israel offers a fourth testament to what leadership, ingenuity and audacity can achieve. Last year, it launched an electric-car venture designed to turn Israel -- which obviously has some tensions with the region's big oil producers -- into an oil-free economy. Israelis will soon be able to replace their gasoline-fueled cars with battery-operated ones, which they'll plug into the hundreds of thousands of recharging points planned to be erected throughout the country. Israeli motorists, the government hopes, will be able to swap their batteries in a matter of minutes at dedicated stations or recharge them at home or at work. "Oil is the greatest problem of all time -- the great polluter and promoter of terror," said Israeli President Shimon Peres, the project's political patron. "We should get rid of it."
For each of the four countries, knocking oil off its pedestal is no longer a theoretical proposition but a reality in the making. But despite the lip service our own politicians pay to the need to reduce our oil dependence, none of the solutions offered by Iran, Brazil, China and Israel are even under consideration in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Just go down the list. Natural-gas vehicles are nowhere to be seen. Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is barred from the country by a steep 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, courtesy of ethanol protectionists and their representatives in Congress. (No tariff is imposed on imported oil, of course.) For similar reasons, flex-fuel cars sold in the United States are certified to run only on ethanol, keeping methanol and other viable biofuels off the market -- even though they are cheaper and can be made from a wealth of coal and biomass resources. The kind of electric cars deployed in Israel have never returned to U.S. showrooms since General Motors' mass crushing of its EV1 -- the subject of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
It's time to get serious. Policies such as "drill more" and "drive smaller cars" all keep us running on petroleum. At best, they buy us a few more years of complacency, while ensuring a much worse dependence down the road when America's conventional oil reserves are even more depleted -- whether or not we drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The hard truth is that real energy independence can be achieved only through fuel choice and competition. That competition cannot take place as long as (according to the Department of Transportation) we continue to put 16 million new cars that run only on petroleum on our roads every year, each with an average street life of 16.8 years -- thereby locking ourselves into decades more of petroleum dependence.
So let's remember the old saying: When in a hole, stop digging. If every new car sold in the United States were a flex-fuel vehicle and if millions of Americans could plug in their electric cars, gasoline would be facing fierce competition at the pump and the socket. Moreover, our money would have migrated from Exxon to Pepco, from the Middle East to the Midwest -- as well as to scores of poor, biomass-producing countries in Africa, Latin America and South Asia, including the few countries that don't yet hate our guts. This, and no other, is the road to independence.
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Sounds worth a try, doesn't it?
Did you ever notice that all these neat green things that we all would be glad to invest in are so expensive that only the rich can afford them? Those of us retired on fixed incomes would love to get rid of our ten or fifteen year old guzzlers and buy a new 150mpg econocar. The only problem is that it would take a year of our pension to buy one and nobody can give up eating and paying their mortgage for a year.
Many of us live in fairly remote areas, so simply shopping requires a trip of some distance. Now, it requires careful planning to do everything we can think of on every trip.
The American economy is headed for flat collapse. Great swaths of the economy relied upon selling trinkets to the upper middle class that spent their time driving around buying trinkets.
These reports are actually optimistic. Stores are going out of business and boarding up on a daily basis and half-completed construction projects rot in the sun and rain. Look at the gaping holes in asphalt in even good neighborhoods and you can see that cities can't keep up.
Here in California vast areas will be abandoned as people realize that they cannot afford to drive an hour into the hills every day to live away from their neighbors. The fires will drive people out and they will stay out.
This is a great day for fish and trees as it will get too expensive to send trucks in after the lumber and boats out after the few fish that are left.
GM and their ilk needed to "retool" their factories and start making transportation that would lead to cleaner air.....years ago,... instead they chose to follow the oil barons and build personal Weapons of Mass Destruction ie. gas guzzing, carbon emiting monsters....Americans think there are no other choices and refuse to look at Europe and its Electric and Smart cars....our egos won't admit we've been tricked into this lifestyle by those who profit...
...wouldn't it serve "them" right if everyone gave up their cars and cut out everything related to oil, rather than cave to the propaganda "they're" putting out that the dems are the ones responsible for the rising cost of gas because they won't allow the coastal and Alaska drilling.
that would kill two birds with one stone - big oil, and our addiction.
As much as I enjoy traveling I think it is a good thing that we are forced to become localized in our business. It is just asinine to buy food that can be grown or produced locally. But the lazy American does not respond to reason and good sense...only to being forced into submission unfortunately.
Build more mass transit and bring back the local creators of good, quality products and services : )
"Cities are now investing in mass transit, hoping to tempt people back into town centres from far-flung commuter belts where they are now stranded by high petrol prices."
But I wish that was the case in my town. Here, they continue to starve mass transit of funds and bust the transit workers union too. In spite of more than half of workers getting downtown on the bus to trolley, and most students getting to the Unis by mass transit, our "leaders" still seem to regard mass transit as "welfare" rather than a vital public service.
Things weren't this backward below the Mason-Dixon line where I used to live. Lexington, ky, was positively progressive compared to here.
I wish more Americans realized how big a ball and chain their car has always been. The biggest epiphany of my life was moving from the suburbs to the city and no needing a car for errands, night life or commuting. Positively liberating.
Sure, a car is still the best way to get out of the city for outings and other strictly pleasure trips, but for most poeple it is cheaper to rent and not own a car at all.
Just that picture is scary as hell. -Amen!
This is Really Factory Farming of Corporate Robots.
Our triumvirate of asphalt/oil/automobile industry has defined the civ I have lived in.
Asphalt wiped out the greenery and left no place for rain tho soak in.
Even when I was a kid after WWII we knew that what came out of the car exhaust was bad for you. Oil has done tohte air what tobacco did to our lungs.
Steel and such fed the auto industry, and everywhere I have lived the way to 'be active'was to do so in a car.
I know I should pitch in to save the climate, but as long as the premise is at least one individual car/truck for each and every person, anything I do is going no where.
I sold my car the day after CheneyOilCo and the monkeypuppet stole the election over 7 years ago... my wife followed 2 years later... savings of between $100 to $150 thousand dollars have resulted... better health and a great understanding of alternative and mass transit have followed.
I know that it's extreme for some and for others... impossible. But for the vast majority, large private gas powered transportation is little more than a status symbol that has shown its true face... that of destroyer.
Change now before you are ruined by the lie.
D n G,
Very well said, and then going further ( MPG ) empowering the message of connection and hope, for "full spectrum surrender" to nature's wisdom and people's innate need for community. Thank you.
I really dislike the corporape of America's sanitized environments that now days go for the commons of previous communities. The public square is gone -- replaced by private enticements to spend more money -- in pseudo-living mauling contrived synthetic experiences.
We loose human connection, free speech rights to protest, and lot's of time and money in the midst of a 3-d TV reality show around us.
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
Jim Kuntsler must be laughing himself silly!
This is EXACTLY what he predicted would happen in both of his books (The Long Emergency and the fiction work 'World Made by Hand'). The books 'Powerdown' and 'The Party's Over' by Hienberg are also dead on.
Zaz- and what, exactly, do you use to power the compressors that 'charge' the so-called 'air-car'? What is the car built out of to make it light enough to be even sightly efficient? What powers the machinery to build the car?
This just another compounding symptom of Peak Oil.
It's a death spiral, folks. Western technological society as we understand it is circling the drain.
Just that picture is scary as hell.
I am not surprised at the disinformation of this article. SUV sales pale in comparison to large pickup trucks, yet the lowly SUV has become a symbol of wanton spending.
Also, many people do live in locations where four wheel drives are necessary. In serious winter emergencies owners of four wheel drives are often called upon by hospitals and other essential services to assist in getting their personnel to and from work. So lets get real here ok?
Finally, suburbia will increase in popularity because of the presence of land capable of planting extensive gardens. In addition, maintaining a connection with nature is essential for quality living.
City living is much worse in most cases. The old brick buildings have not been insulated and are notorious for high energy use. Congested streets with endless stop and go traffic are tremendous gasoline wasters and cause extensive air pollution.
Those whose prejudices do not allow them to move beyond this wrong-headed mindset and find ways to cooperate and move forward together are a big problem.
The slaves must be herded into the hell-pits that Master makes for them. No future. No sunlight. Endless futile gray slavery. Masses and masses of nameless faceless people, cheek by jowl, shoving and pushing and screaming at each other to get where they're going and all standing on the shoulders of the weak and dying just to survive as they walk hungry down sidewalks made from human bones. America.
Welcome to the first wave. Next comes the part where the 680 Beacon folks find their dream house just took a 30% dump in value and WE get to pay Trillion$$ for the party America has been holding for the Richfilth Monsters since Raygun. Debt slavery indeed.
The same strategy worked on all those third world countries our Masters have enslaved. Working here just fine too. And nobody is going to do anything about it except whimper a little.
Remember: America had a choice.
They could have Democracy or Oligarchy and they chose Oligarchy.
In '64 the end of poverty was in sight. Lifetime stable employment was on the horizon. All we had to do was make a place for everyone at the table and reject war and conquest as a way of life. We chose Exclusion, Oligarchy, and War. Each succeeding generation has reaffirmed that choice. It is still the Choice of America to this day.
They did not misunderstand. They have not been tricked. THEY CHOSE. Couldn't handle the leisure time. Couldn't handle the choices that Freedom demanded. They ran from both into the waiting arms of Oligarchy, "You be the boss. Just keep the niggers, the bitches, and the protesters in their place, below me." Just ask Rush Limbaugh. America has paid him MILLION$$ for lauding America for making that choice.
They're going to go mad. They are going to chew their fingers off. Abundance even now seems like fairy tale once read in a book. Pretty soon people won't have to read books to find out how hunger feels. America chose.
Bon Apetit
Except for the dysfuntional auto industry's love affair with the internal-combustion engine we could all be driving around in electric cars.
Craig:
Greening our cities is an interesting remedy. Some, like Davis, CA don't allow int. combustion vehicles. Only foot, bicycle, skate, electric and other green vehicle traffic. Others are experimenting and succeeding with rooftop gardens, photovoltaics, solar water heaters, windchargers, cogeneration, gardening in empty lots, container planting, green mass transportation, publicly owned bicycles, etc. Some cities in Europe are far ahead of us in this regard and they are very pleasurable to live in. Everything is nearby and there is a great sense of community as well as energy savings. Many have taken their streets back with auto-free zones and more public parks.
If you were in the Black Rock, Nevada desert over Labor Day for the 40,000 and growing "Green Man" gathering (formerly known as "Burning Man"), you would have witnessed some liberating possibilities unleashed by fresh progressive creativity and invention as opposed to the stale conservative regressiveness that rules our country.
Should Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger consider a fee on corn fuel ethanol use?
* * Lower price for food, gas, water, beer, cleaner air and funds for the budget from oil profit.
As people reduce their driving (what percentage single individual in a vehicle?) and use public transport or other alternatives the social landscape shifts dramatically. Conversations increase and alienation from one's environment is reduced. The rate of social change could prove to be exponential and highly desirable. I don't think that we as a people really appreciate the degree of alienation due directly to the automobile.
I suspect this is an essay of wanting it to be, rather than an account of real change. The test will come when oil is relatively inexpensive again! I use an easier gage. America and Americans will show maturity and an embrace of reason when lotteries and gambling parlors cease. What does happen when these glitches occur is that some individuals "get it" and transform their understanding of existence. Will there be enough of these awakenings to change a large nation? Our fatal flow is that as a nation we have embraced the business model of perpetual for profit corporations and removed their leadership from accountability. The poison we drink is militarism. Our nation is strangled by the institutions that professes to protect it!
tho my work may not be up to kerouac's or steinbeck, i have ridden the bus for the past 4 years and keep a daily dairy of my bus adventures. one never lacks for entertainment on the bus.
A good proportion of folks (more toward the lower end of the income scale) still heat with oil. It is a given that a person of limited means cannot afford ten to twenty thousand, or more, to upgrade to geo-thermal. Add this on top of the insult of the oil price betrayal enacted upon these people ... There is a mean-spirited sickness running through this country. "Free market" sure knows how to take care of the ones who already have too much. F_ _ k the rest.
I don't know if this is good news or not. I do not want to live in the city, I've done it for the past 5 years and am about to be done. When it comes to human contact its a trade off between quantity and quality. When the quantity goes up the quality goes down. Next thing you know you are fighting your way through a sea of strangers and are lonely yet surrounded by people at the same time. I'm not trying to say the suburbs are great but cramming ourselves into cities with minimal biodiversity doesn't sound like a post oil utopia to me. I'm too fond of nature and want to be able to see the stars at night instead of the pukey orange city glow. Maybe the suburbs will become more agricultural and can provide our cities with food our something. I'd happily change careers to labor intensive agriculture if I could make a living wage doing it. Where's FDR when you need him!
Hi Jaded Prole, that's very interesting--is it really true? Is there a source for this?
Compressed air cars and vans to be built in India, Austrailia, and Europe. 125 miles on a charge. - http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016.html
In 2001 Bin Laden demanded that oil be raised from $11.00 a barrel to $144.00 a barrel partly to set back the US and partly to give the help Middle East. Well, here we are, it hit $144.00 a barrel the other day.
In the long run it may be a good thing but in the short, it may be the tipping point for our already stressed petroleum-based economy.
Haaaha!
It's about time.
My friends and I have often discussed the fact that there is a true silver lining to the price gouging by fossil-fuel companies. This article provides the details.
Drive less, live more.
jj