I've found that ignorance about oil depletion is spread throughout the political spectrum.

The only difference is who the scapegoats are.

US Right -> environmentalists, OPEC.
US Liberal-Left -> Oil companies, OPEC, speculators.
OPEC -> Speculators.
China -> US
US -> China

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Now, as our planet's oil supplies are projected to last no more than thirty to fifty years, and species and cultures are dying off at an unprecedented rate, we confront difficult choices.

"We need to push a mandate on turning the American car fleet into an all-electric fleet ...."

Get everyone in America driving cars with mileage equivalents of a TDI, Honda Civic/Prius hybrids and our oil use would be cut almost in half. Wouldn't that be a good start? Maybe move from there to plug-ins hybrids?

"...they have choose to drive long distances..."


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

And, BTW, driving long distances is not an acceptable lifestyle.  Rural communities existed well before motorized travel, and they need to get back to a combination of the way they used to live and perhaps a good rail system to connect them to what they need.  But in the latter case, the only way to protect the natural environment from further incursion by industrialization would be to constrain rural communities to just outside urban areas, in order to feed those areas.  Everything outside of that should remain in its natural state.  All .000001% that's left of it!

He's not the only one.  As I've recounted, I heard Barnie Frank talk about a gas tax holiday on the Bill Maher show, and he seemed to think that it was everybody's inalienable right to be able to affordably commute 30 miles per day.  Again, he knows what "sells" and what doesn't.

If by "Left" you mean Communist regimes, they are probably even worse than capitalist ones, but I subscribe to the idea that dictatorships are worse for the environment than democracies.  I agree with you that "rural" should ideally mean close enough to urban centers to be accessible by rail; it would make sense, in fact, to have most of the population live in dense urban centers, that way most of the planet could become "wild", i.e., functioning.

  I'm hurting, while Exxon is laughing all the way to the bank, therefore it is solely caused by Exxon's greed.
   Add in the politically motivated propaganda: blame the left, or oil companies who want the last highly profitable drilling opportunities (ANWR & offshore) willing to lie about the realistic effect on supply of such, and you have a near perfect storm of false beliefs.

Jon,
I have two close friends who are petroleum geologists (small, independent exploration co.). One is quite into peak oil and an avid reader of TheOilDrum, the other is aware but doesn't give it that much thought. A mutual friend of all of us, and the director of "Crude Impact," was how I learned of peak oil several years ago. He was making a documentary version of "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and interviewed Hartmann extensively. When Hartmann says 30-50 years, I still have to believe he is talking about the last of the oil, not the peak. But you never know, maybe you correctly interpret his thoughts on the matter from his program. I haven't heard it.

I teach a seminar to high school seniors on the subject of peak oil. I have a top geophysicist from Shell coming in to tell us that peak oil is now. His son, one of my students, puts it more bluntly: "My dad says that anybody who doesn't believe that peak oil is now is a retard."

But America's modernity is largely based on the notion of speed and large distances traveled by the petrol engine. If you read Paul Virilio or Baudrillard's descriptions of America, this 'dynamic' space is the true essence of America's modernity.

Everything "America" stands for, its mindset and capitalist culture, is based on this fluidity and mobility. The automobile represents primitive notions of "freedom", individualism and capitalist laissez-faire. It represents a superfluous life-style and a lack of sociality.

The transition to an electric mobility concept and a more localist geography will in effect transform America's culture totally. Maybe this is for the better, because what we've seen coming from America over the past 50 years hasn't been pretty.

Only, I'm not sure whether America really can change. Its entire being is so deeply tied to its car culture, that Americans might have trouble making the transition to a new era.

Also, there are some who have said that America's life-style is 'non-negotiable'.

It sort of blows my mind that oil is where it is (120 a barrel?) and there seems to be a collective shrug; the NY Times is barely acknowledging the problem of peaking, for instance.

Americans often (tend to?) think positive thoughts about trolleys, which were quite widespread through the 1920s, and may be one reason for a revival of light rail.  Also, NYC has had quite a tourist revival, which may be teaching some Americans on the advantages of walking -- and walkable communities in general are experiencing something of a comeback, the real estate meltdown has not affected areas that are walkable.

So, here's to an new American transformation!

So you need strong social policies to correct this inequality.

Is it, for example, conceivable that poor Americans, high school students and senior citizens will receive free tickets for public transport?

Over here, we already have such social policies, but our culture is quite different, I think. (I can use train, bus, tram and metro for free, in the entire country, because I'm a student.)

Can a person who proposes a policy of free mobility for society's most vulnerable, even get elected at all in the U.S.?

Do places in the U.S., schools and colleges, anything post-secondary, have anything like this? We previously had a student pass that really wasn't at all cheaper, especially if students only came to and from the U.

Solar energy comes from 93 miles away.

Wind is only in a few very windy places.

Oil is everywhere, and constantly replenished by quantum forces.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

On a side note, I have to say that a lot of greens in North America look to Europe for solutions, but it's important to realize how Europe came to be the way it is. The cities there are more pleasant to look at and walk around in and environmental awareness is better, but I suspect that it's all because of density and pre-existing infrastructure. Density means more tax payers, means more money for social programs, education (how about that free or near-free or even paid university in some countries?), means less space to muck up with garbage and pollution, means scarcer resources (water is much more expensive and much better conserved, as is energy). Once it becomes really too expensive for big segments of the population to drive to work, and/or food prices get much steeper, things will change in North America. I guess my point is Europe would have looked the same if they'd had the same space and (lack of) infrastructure when cars came about. Often people look to Europe, which, it's good as a model, but it's really much more difficult to create change here, and it's not because of individual choices or because people are any more "selfish" or uneducated in N.A., it's because we haven't had the same limits as Europe. Oil scarcity will probably be the first real limit.

Have you ever been to Europe?

Many cities are filled with beggars, the abject poor.

Meanwhile there are royalty, landed rich, people who own villas while others scramble for expensive apartments.

Europe is highly stratified.  Jobs are hard to come by.   Yes, you can be a happy peasant...but is a peasant all you aspire to be?

Europe excludes millions of immigrants.  They will never have what the "natives" do.

Europe will not recognize their "invisible men".

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Far from having any sort of public transit, there are not even roads.  Nearly everything and everyone comes and goes by small plane.  And hence, fuel is more expensive, and prices have an even higher effect here than most places. Incomes aren't real high either.

Aside from getting renewable energy for the villages to get off diesel generators (which many are working on, and some have done), are there any ideas for making transport more sustainable?  I'm not sure how the carbon footprint of small planes lines up, or if there are efficiency differences between different sorts of small planes?

Just looking for any thoughts and ideas...

-Erin
Ground Truth Trekking

dissociated, freepublictransit.org and others have advocated, well, free public transit, but it is rare still in the U.S.  

As for Europe, the situation in some ways is similar to the U.S.: when a city or town has developed its basic structure before about 1920, when cars started to become an important phenomenon, then they are structured in such a way that is relatively easy to have walkable communities and good public transit.  Where major development took place after WWII and cars were the main consideration in planning, then you have a big mess.  So in the European case, there was an advantage to being "old-fashioned" (and by the way, while jabailo does write comments that are interesting and helpful, he also can be something of a troll).

For instance, over 45 cities were built and extended abround street cars (which could be revived, as Jon mentions). These were ripped out by the oil, tire and auto companies to "socially engineer" the car culture, as well documented.

Likewise, there have been strong labor movements which shows that social solidarity is quite possible here. (Even on May 1, the Long Shore workers closed down the West Coast ports to protest the Iraq War.)

"American culture" is really something that has been manufactured by the corporate PR industry after WW1. They are still at it, inventing new strategies. Today in our local paper a letter writer pointed out that an attack on public transit ("Focus on fuel-friendly cars, not rail" by Randall O'Toole of the CATO Institute) is funded by oil money:

"According to Media Transparency, which tracks funding of right-wing organizations, O'Toole's Thoreau Institute received $321,100 in grants between 1997 and 2005, much of it from foundations funded by oil fortunes"

I suspect hybrid cars will become the equivalent of low-tar cigarettes in the future -- a marketing scheme to protect corporate profits.

The rural poor will suffer under the trend towards electric cars, which will be extremely expensive in a (long) first phase.

So there should be social corrections.

In France, the government has come under criticism for its CO2-friendly tax cuts on cars. Those who buy an electric car get the highes break (€5000). Those who buy a hybrid get a break too. Those who keep driving dirty old - but very affordable - diesels get punished. It's not difficult to see why there was social anger: an electric car costs a lot of money, whereas diesels are used by the poor.

But that's a general rule; for all environmental interventions, care must be taken to ensure that they don't have immediate social drawbacks.

If THIS is the moment of PEAK OIL is irrelevant.  The overall supply might (or might not) be expanding, but because of demand from China and problems with supply from Iraq it FEELS like peak oil because supply is tightening.

I think most people understand that prices are not going back down to former levels, even if they drop a little.

So we'll adjust.  We'll conserve.  We'll do so kicking and screaming, like we are right now.  Or we'll crow about how green we are even while our motivations are pure economics.  

Americans (and rural folk) do not have a right to our current lifestyle.  If prices change enough the whole economy will have to shift, land values will shift, reflecting the cost of transportation (or lack of) and food and other products will become more expensive.

These shifts are a good thing - they reflect the true environmental costs of eating in the American way, enjoying a "rural" lifestyle and using our cars and claiming as much personal space as we do in the US.  We should be paying more.  But it will hurt and of course it will affect the poor the most.

Our highly developed industrialised countries are capable of conserving. But energy intensive developing countries are not. They feel the pinch much harder.

According to the UN, more than 50 governments of developing countries are already spending six times more on oil than on health, poverty, education, etc...

High oil prices there are truly having a catastrophic effect, they are destroying all development progress made over the past decades. And because these economies are still in the phase of high demand inelasticity, they cannot just say "let's conserve". They can't.

In this sense, low oil prices should be an inalienable right, at least in developing countries. Of course, luckily, they can follow the substitution logic and invest in biofuels (which is what most of these poor countries are doing). That's their only option.

Until they reach the status of highly-industrialised economies, which have the capital and the flexibility to invest in conservation.

We literally dig or pump it out of holes in the ground. Hard to imagine any source that could be produced in such quantities that could possibly be cheaper. It is unlikely that biofuels will be less expensive. Their prices are also dependent on supply and demand but unlike fossil fuels, they are also influenced by weather, competition with food, and other land constraints (biodiversity conservation). JMG's litmus test puts it into perspective:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/26/101952/578


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Much of rural living has been predicated on cheap oil; I don't know what to say to the commenter above worried about a village on the Bering Sea.  Some of these communities won't be viable, or will have to go back to different modes of transport, such some form of sailing, in the Bering Sea example.

There's a difference, I think, between a "rural" area, whatever that means, and a farm area.  Farmers in the 19th century took their crops on horse-driven trucks and brought them to trains.  The sustainable equivalent would be small electric trucks brought to electric freight trains.  The trucks would be slower, but I don't see that as a deal-killer.

In fact, what might be worth another post is the idea that we have electric cars now, it's just that people won't consider slow, low-distance cars like Daimler's GEM car that won't go over about 30 mph.  Considering that most city traffic is at that speed, or worse, what would be wrong with having only these neighborhood electric vehicles in cities?  And Jonas, why shouldn't developing countries concentrate on cheap electric vehicles, instead of Tata cars that will become too expensive as fuel becomes too expensive?  Why should people in developing countries go hungry with 60-mph vehicles instead of eat well with 30-mph vehicles?  I'm sure if Daimler can make those vehicles for around $6,000, Tata could make them for $2,000.

Conductor Chris -- there's a very important point to understand about the relevance of peak oil here, even if we aren't right at peak (I think we are) -- in the pre-peak oil world, when demand went up, the oil producers could always turn on the spigot more (up?).  The US actually played this role until 1971, then Saudi Arabia and OPEC.  They can't do that anymore.  Thus soaring oil prices.

I agree with your sentiments on this. I think folks like A123 will succeed and I can't wait to see others succeed as well. But higher gas prices are not the answer because the bottom half of the population on minimum wages will suffer immensely, putting many businesses in trouble. I already see signs of the cracks in this happening.

A tax is a way to go.  It's contrary to common sense, but I feel it is needed. Investors are needed in these sorts of areas..huge potential, but without raising money at the federal level it won't happen unless gov and industry participate together to assume some risk. Then the same speculators that are riding high on oil will finally wake up and see alternatives as a viable option (it helps minimize their risk).

I'm a fan of clean energy alternatives including investment in certain smarter aspects of 'cold fusion' technologies that intersect key material science key areas in nanotechnology. Oil companies have invested in these areas in the past, but are they really looking at these new areas? Nah ..not that I can determine. Dabbling might be a good analogy that I see at the moment. To me here in Texas, from what I see oil companies are alot like like auto mechanics trying to do brain surgery(prayers welcome). They have the brian surgery part down part ..they do know how spend money on big houses, but anything else?.

Who knows maybe they're quietly investing in alternative energy companies. I'm sure many are ready to retire about now before their bottom falls out.

Unfortunately, the way I see it either 1) the Oil prices will rapidly decline in 2 years causing the US to re-think our 'oil policy' as I call it, or  2) we'll finally get smart and add an energy alternative 'tax' to oil profits/big auto purchases at current levels  to calm speculation and make speculators 'rebalance their portfolios'  to help companies like A123 get started and succeed with consumers,.. or 3) things will implode even worse than recent issues we've seen in the markets already. That's the one I'm really praying doesn't happen ..#3.  #2 is the wisest option I've thought long and hard about that will be a win for everyone ..even the speculators(key).
Go A123...I'de like to see A123456789....

-JChan

It's the vast bulk of folks in cities and especially in sprawling suburbs that need to change the most, because there are many more of us.

There will always be some high-energy activities, and we don't need to enforce uniformity. For instance, I would like NASA to launch a satellite to better observe earth albedo. That will take a lot of energy. I think it would be silly to charge that energy to the individuals working for NASA; it's a cost we should be all be chipping in for.


mt

low oil prices should be an inalienable right, at least in developing countries. Of course, luckily, they can follow the substitution logic and invest in biofuels (which is what most of these poor countries are doing). That's their only option.

First, oil physically will not be there for anyone, in the quantities and at the costs to which we have become accustomed.

Second, developing countries are ill placed for the remaining supplies, since the developed world has the guns and wealth to enforce its claims.

Even biofuels are a sucker's game for developing countries. Whose land will be used? Where will the biofuels go? Who will be earning the money?

The only direction I can see is rejecting the old model of development and coming up with a new one. A low-energy, indigenous model, relying heavily on traditional patterns (one example, Kerala in India).  

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Bernie Sanders is one of the very few in Congress who I like and respect, but unfortunately, he's dead wrong on this issue.  As is typical of most humans, both on the left and right, he has no sense or consideration for the natural environment, and so focuses on his constituents in rural areas who drive a lot.  I realize he's a politician and doesn't want to take positions that would preclude his reelection, but it's too bad he wasn't brave enough to point out how driving is destroying the planet instead of pandering.

Re the "left," I meant the U.S. left, but your assumption about "communist" governments, none of which are or were really communist at all, is false.  For example, while industrial pollution in the Soviet Union was mostly unregulated and an utter disaster, that country left its huge Siberian forests alone until capitalism came in after the government collapsed.

Finally, whether a society is a dictatorship, democracy, or anything in between, is no indication of its environmental stewardship.  Thailand is a dictatorship, as are many tropical island nations, but most take far better care of their natural environment than say, Hawaii, which is part of the U.S. and thus a supposed democracy.

The Soviets and East European regimes (I agree they weren't "communist", I always thought they were all really right-wing military dictatorships) were capable of some mind-boggling pollution and ecosystem destruction, although I can believe that only now are the Siberian forests being ruined -- I believe much of that is Chinese demand, and one of the results of globalization.

I suppose that the counter to the democracy argument would be that most people would prefer to ruin the environment if it means a higher standard of living.  I'm hoping that for the first time in human history, we have the technologies to live a high standard of living without having to destroy its basis.

As for Bernie, I think he is very aware of the climate change crisis, and is pretty good about wanting to transform the energy system.  But peak oil awareness obviously has a ways to go before most politicians feel comfortable talking about it.

Finally, whether a society is a dictatorship, democracy, or anything in between, is no indication of its environmental stewardship.  Thailand is a dictatorship, as are many tropical island nations, but most take far better care of their natural environment than say, Hawaii, which is part of the U.S. and thus a supposed democracy.

So really what needs to peak is world GDP. The problem is that businesses are by profit-seekers, making capitalism a phenomenal growth engine. Governments are of little help because they also promote growth to generate revenues. Only citizens (and leaders who respond to democratic movements) can begin to restructure the economy around human and ecological needs. So Speth's view is that democracies have the better chance of generating change.

It's an interesting talk. Speth mentions a few ideas (changing corporate charters to bring in the workers and the community to the board , revoking corporate free speech rights, ...).