Peak Oil Matters

In a recent column discussing the inane transportation bill proposed by the House, Isaiah J. Poole noted this charming piece of legislative integrity—admittedly, no doubt used by both parties since forever: “A more bipartisan Senate bill, which is not nearly as ambitious as the White House would prefer but nonetheless has its blessing, was being hung up over Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s demand for an amendment denying aid to Egypt over the government’s detention of some America citizens and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s amendment that would permit employers to deny coverage for health services that run counter to the employer’s ‘religious beliefs and moral convictions.’”

The relevance of these two stunts to transportation funding will—no doubt—be revealed to all of us at the appropriate time. Our tax dollars hard at work….

When does it start to get better?

As I noted in two prior posts about this legislation (here and here), the philosophy/ideology behind the bill’s intent to eliminate assured financing (insufficient though it is) for mass transit in favor of more money for roads is what’s most troubling. I keep hoping that at some point, some legislator from the GOP will have the balls to accept reality and propose legislation that will actually mean something long-term and for our collective well-being.

I’ve admitted before and will say again, I pretend no expertise in transportation legislation or its funding. I come to these discussions with concerns about the strategies employed in light of what I believe is an even more serious and long-lasting problem for all of us: inadequate energy resources to provide us all with business-as-usual lifestyles—current economic conditions aside. The failure to incorporate public transportation on a much broader scale than Congress seems capable of understanding creates a serious deficiency in our ability to adapt in the future to a society with less energy resources at our disposal—if continued growth is a goal.

Typical arguments include the following:

[T]ransit has firmly secured its place in the federal budget and has acquired a large and vocal constituency in Congress which can be counted upon to defend its interests….
Restoring the Highway Trust Fund to its original mission of being a source of funds solely for the federal-aid highway program would accomplish several things. First, the program would no longer need to rely on speculative royalties from future oil and gas leases, as currently proposed in the House bill. Second, the Trust Fund would not need to be periodically propped up with contributions from the General Fund. Third, the principle of the highway program paid for with user fees would be maintained. Lastly, the House bill would return the federal-aid highway program to its original roots. It would restore the program’s lost sense of purpose and focus Trust Fund resources on what they always were meant to do—preserve and renew the nation’s prized asset, its interstate highway system. [1]

A few comments are in order.

As to the first point about transit’s defenders in Congress, a wonderful sound bite which means absolutely nothing in this Congress with its Tea Party-dominated inability to think, plan, or legislate beyond next week. “Defend” transit all you want, but if no one is paying any attention, it loses some of its vigor and impact.

“[T]he program would no longer need to rely on speculative royalties…” It never had to! That’s like retirement planning via the lottery. It’s an idiotic proposal to begin with, duly lambasted by many with far more understanding than I possess, and merits exactly no discussion or consideration.

As for eliminating the “need to be periodically propped up with contributions from the General Fund,” the House could actually … you know, legislate intelligently and put together a plan, even if, GASP! it contained ideas from the left. What a concept!

“[T]he principle of the highway program [being] paid for with user fees would be maintained.” Really? “Principle” sounds good; reality tells a different story.

Long before this legislation was drafted, Tanya Snyder discussed the Republican Party’s expected antics when Congress would eventually get around to … you know … do what we pay them to do—legislate!

You’ve heard it a thousand times from the highway lobby: Roads pay for themselves through ‘user fees’ — a.k.a. gas taxes and tolls — whereas transit is a drain on the taxpayer. They use this argument to push for new roads, instead of transit, as fiscally prudent investments.
The myth of the self-financed road meets its match today in the form of a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group: Do Roads Pay For Themselves? (link) The answer is a resounding ‘no.’ All told, the authors calculate that road construction has sucked $600 billion out of America’s public purse since the dawn of the interstate system. [2]

Quoting Dan Smith of U.S. PIRG, Ms. Snyder noted that: “Road advocates use these myths about the gas tax being this user fee and that highways pay for themselves to get preferential treatment, and to get a larger chunk of the dedicated fund.”

Paying a toll is a user fee; paying the gas tax when you fill your tank is not a user fee. Not very complicated, but you’ll find almost no one on the Right who dares explain that simple fact. As the above-referenced report makes clear, highways do not pay for themselves—period! Great talking point offered to the uninformed, but not true … if that kind of stuff matters—which, for some of us, it does.

And Mr. Orski’s final point, that this legislation will “restore the program’s lost sense of purpose and focus Trust Fund resources on what they always were meant to do— preserve and renew the nation’s prized asset, its interstate highway system.” Hate to break the news to those on the Right so desperate to return to Mayberry RFD, but this is 2012. Times have changed.

More changes are in the offing, and the GOP’s determination to keep us locked into a fossil-fuel dependent transportation system at the expense of our future well-being may not be such a good thing, great sound bites notwithstanding. And as Ms. Snyder made clear in the article I cited above, the gas tax/Highway Trust Fund—created during the Hoover Administration—was not intended solely for highways. Only during the 17 year period during which the interstate state was being built were federal gas tax revenues directed exclusively to roads. “Since 1973, the gas tax has been used for a variety of transportation programs and has even been used, on occasion, to pay down the deficit.” Facts….

And of course, no GOP-inspired legislation these days can be marketed without a snarky, irrelevant, and misleading statement or two, Right?

The new infrastructure bill no longer obligates states to spend highway funding on non-highway activities, such as museums or landscaping. But spending for mass transit appears to continue, even though there are better uses for the funds. States now spend 20 percent of their Highway Trust Fund allocation on mass transit, yet only two percent of passenger miles are used by mass transit.…
Just as users of roads should pay all of their costs, such as construction and maintenance, so should users of mass transit. If individual states want to subsidize mass transit, they should do it out of their own revenues. With Uncle Sam broke, the Federal government should not be subsidizing expensive mass transit systems. [3]

Just wondering how much of the funding states are obligated to use on “museums or landscaping?” All of it? Half? A third? Ten percent? Five? Perhaps less? A wild guess on my part, but I’m betting that “museums or landscaping” aren’t a primary focus, but we wouldn’t want to clue in the uninformed about that, now would we? And the lame “passenger mile” standard used by the Right is addressed nicely by Eric Jaffe here as well as in the report cited above, but I’ll admit it is a popular sound bite: “20 percent … for two percent” usage sure does sound unfair! But why add context if that ruins the point?

“Uncle Sam” is not “broke”, but it is another Page One sound bite from the Right’s playbook,  which does induce an appropriate measure of fear in the electorate. Nice strategy, huh? [Kinda like “Cheerful” Newt Gingrich’s uplifting comment in Debate # 4367 held in Arizona two weeks ago: “But everybody needs to understand -- and by the way, we live in an age when we have to genuinely worry about nuclear weapons going off in our own cities. So everybody who serves in the fire department, in the police department, not just the first responders, but our National Guard, whoever is going to respond, all of us are more at risk today, men and women, boys and girls, than at any time in the history of this country.”]

Writing on the “we’re broke” theme, commenting on Speaker of the House John Boehner’s identical comment last year, E. J. Dionne offered this:

Bloomberg News looked at Boehner’s statement and declared simply: ‘It’s wrong.’ As Bloomberg’s David J. Lynch wrote: ‘The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007. Financial products that pay off if Uncle Sam defaults aren’t attracting unusual investor demand. And tax revenue as a percentage of the economy is at a 60-year low, meaning if the government needs to raise cash and can summon the political will, it could do so.’
Precisely. A phony metaphor is being used to hijack the nation’s political conversation and skew public policies to benefit better-off Americans and hurt most others.

And this*:

America’s Tea Party has a simple fiscal message: The United States is broke. This is factually incorrect—U.S. government securities remain one of the safest investments in the world—but the claim serves the purpose of dramatizing the federal budget and creating a great deal of hysteria around America’s current debt levels. This then produces the fervent belief that government spending must be cut radically—and now. [4]

So I’ll ask the same question raised in the first post discussing this legislation: “How much money, time, effort, and resources can we be expected to waste by devoting all of those assets to highways and roadways used by gasoline-chugging vehicles … highways and roadways and vehicles whose usage and very existence will be challenged in decades to come when the availability of affordable, efficient, and plentiful fossil fuels is no longer routinely assured to the masses?”

Or this, from last week’s related post: “[W]hat transportation options will be available to us if we continue to allow shortsighted, narrow-minded ideologies dictate how we plan and prepare for our collective future?”

* as his Wikipedia bio notes, Simon Johnson, author of the quote, “is the ‘Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management[1] and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.[2] He has held a wide variety of academic and policy-related positions, including Professor of Economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.[3] From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he was Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund” so really … what would he know about American being “broke”?

Sources:

[1] http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2012/02/now-were-getting-political.php; Now We’re Getting Political by Fawn Johnson – 02.06.12; Response from Ken Orski: In Defense of the House Highway Bill
[2] http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don%E2%80%99t-pay-for-themselves/; Actually, Highway Builders, Roads Don’t Pay For Themselves by Tanya Snyder – 01.04.11
[3] Now We’re Getting Political by Fawn Johnson – 02.06.12; Response from Diana Furchtgott-Roth: How to Improve the Highway Bill
[4] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2011/08/the_tea_partys_circular_logic.html; The Tea Party’s Circular Logic – Its revolt undermines the private sector more than it reins in “big government” by Simon Johnson – 08.16.11

Although it is likely that the President and his Secretary of Energy understand that a decline in world oil production is not far away, it is simply not a topic to be raised prior to an election as the political risk is simply too great. Someday, likely within the next decade, the US and the rest of world’s governments will have to acknowledge there is a problem here, and unless alternative sources of energy can be developed and brought     into general use quickly, major changes in economic activities and lifestyles are going to take place. [1]

So that’s sufficient reason to be allowing moronic decisions to serve as current policy instead? Do any of our “leaders” in Congress understand the concept of “long-term planning”? Foresight? How about just plain ‘ol basic “planning” … the kind that runs beyond Election Day? Are they all clueless … and self-serving beyond all bounds of basic decency?

The latest demonstration of short-sighted, narrow-minded “leadership” comes courtesy of the House Ways and Means Committee. Last week, the Committee’s majority, in their infinite wisdom, proposed a much-needed transportation bill which managed to all but eliminate currently-legislated funding for public transit, among other egregious, ignorant and decidedly ideological proposals having very little to do with national best interests.

This awesome display of brazen hypocrisy (and a giant “screw you” to millions of not-wealthy citizens who use and/or rely on public transit) calls for that funding to now take a number and wait in line for crumbs from the general fund—the same general fund which supplies the needed revenue for all other government spending. Now, the billions collected from the (wildly insufficient) gas tax will be directed exclusively to road programs, rather than allocating a percentage of those revenues to transit as has been customary and routine for decades.

But the good news is that the House wants $40 billion in spending cuts to offset this “transfer” of funding to the general fund. Another giant “screw the future” message….

With a House like this, what advances can American transportation policy make?
Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the policy recklessness they have displayed speaks truly poorly of the future of the nation’s mobility systems. [2]

Wouldn’t it be easier for them to just announce that they genuinely don’t give a shit about 99% of Americans? Think of how much time and energy they’d save by making it obvious to even the densest of right-wing, (non-wealthy only, of course) supporters that what’s in their best interests really does not matter any more than it does for those who support the Democrats.

Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:
The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future. [3]

Here in Eastern Massachusetts, the state’s Department of Transportation recently rolled out a grim set of proposals designed to counter severe budget shortfalls. All indications are that an increase in the state’s gas tax as a viable source for funding is a dead issue before it’s even raised in the legislature, so cutbacks in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority [MBTA] services—  coupled with fare hikes affecting commuter rail, bus, ferry, and subway riders—are Plan B. Parking fees at various transit stations would also be raised.

Under one scenario, fares overall would increase by 43 percent, while under the other, they would increase by 35 percent.
Under both scenarios, MBTA ferries would be eliminated, commuter rail weekend service would be eliminated and nighttime service would end at 10 p.m., and weekend service on [specified transit lines] would be eliminated.
But in the second scenario, a larger number of bus routes would be cut, generating savings that would enable the smaller fare increase. [4]

The MBTA also provides commuter rail service to the Massachusetts North Shore community where our summer home is located. We try to spend as many weekends there as we can during the late spring through mid-autumn period. But under what I labeled as the MBTA’s Plan B as noted above, elimination of weekend rail service there is also on the table.

… [O]fficials said there is no way to quantify exactly how many weekend visitors who come by commuter rail would stay away if they had to drive instead.
But during the summer, Rockport and Manchester fill with out-of-towners, many of whom take the commuter rail in order to save money or to avoid the difficultly of finding parking space. [5]

(That same article also notes this distressing fact: “According to the MBTA, 12 percent of commuter rail passengers would be affected by the cuts, and 6.7 million fewer people would ride the commuter rail each year than do currently.” That’s not an insignificant number of people obliged to now use autos instead….)

I’ll admit that to date this is not an issue affecting me personally. We drive to our summer home, as I’ve noted in other posts such as this one. I did, however, make use of public transportation on one notable occasion back in 2010, as I recounted (here):

As I noted way back when in my introduction to this blog, we are very fortunate. We own an exquisite (at least to us), spacious summer home a hundred yards or so from the Atlantic Ocean. We vacation here and enjoy every blessed minute of it! In normal driving conditions, it takes us fifty minutes or so to go door-to-door from our suburban Boston home to the ‘beach house’, which is where I am as I write this. What a treat for us!
Summer vacation usually means grabbing as much time as we can here—work and young adult schedules permitting. That means frequent travel along the Route 128/Interstate 95 corridor … most times with more than one vehicle; most times more than once or twice a week.
As a strong proponent of Peak Oil, I have decidedly mixed feelings about this, as I have mentioned before….I love this lifestyle, and I approach my task of disseminating information about our soon-to-be-curtailed availability of fossil fuel supply with more than my fair share of selfish trepidation. We do not yet own hybrid vehicles, and so we spend more than our fair share of time filling the gas tanks of my wife’s German import and my Japanese SUV in order to make many trips to and from our summer home from Memorial Day through mid-October. I balance that guilt with the acknowledgment (rationalization?) that I work from home, and that my wife’s office is about 6000 feet from our home, so we actually spend no more on gas than most other families.
Once gas prices begin their inevitable climb up, whether that’s later this year, next year, or a couple more years down the road, and with a simultaneous curtailment in how much fossil fuel will remain available to us to meet all of demands and expectations and needs, my rationalizations may not matter much.
With that in mind yesterday, for the first time in the 6 summers that we’ve owned this home, I used public transportation to make most of the journey from home to here at the beach house. My daughter drove me a couple of miles to a commuter rail stop which took me into Boston’s North Station, where I then—some fifteen minutes after my
arrival—boarded a different rail line to take me to the North Shore. I then hailed a cab to take me the three miles or so from the train station to our summer place. (I’ve already informed my wife that I will soon take public transportation door to door, just to see what that’s like. That will add two bus trips and a decent amount of walking at the beginning and end of my trip, along with two separate subway rides. I’m expecting at     least an additional hour of travel each way, but no more than a few more dollars in fares.)
The one way trip yesterday cost me about $20.00, and took me two hours and ten minutes door to door. Compare that to less than $10.00 of gas and less than 60 minutes of travel time when I drive. More expensive certainly, and clearly more time-consuming, but all in all it was a pleasant enough experience, and surprisingly scenic in several places along the way. It was nice to be able to read and engage in some computer work while traveling … not an option when I’m barreling along at 65 miles per hour on Route 128.

So when we all begin experiencing first-hand and on a regular basis the myriad consequences of reduced availability of the fossil fuel resources we’ve long taken for granted, how quickly can our local communities, regional administrations, states, and federal authorities reinstate and create new transportations modes? Has that thought occurred to any of our brilliant Congressional officials who now feel emboldened to all but eliminate these options right now because they are intellectually incapable of thinking beyond November, and morally opposed to anything that might smack of decency and national interest (except, of course, the national interests on the wealthy)?

How much money, time, effort, and resources can we be expected to waste by devoting all of those assets to highways and roadways used by gasoline-chugging vehicles … highways and roadways and vehicles whose usage and very existence will be challenged in decades to come when the availability of affordable, efficient, and plentiful fossil fuels is no longer routinely assured to the masses?

… A]s the consumer of a quarter of the world’s oil supply, we can have a significant effect on the world oil market by making sure that our economy can adjust quickly and easily to changes in the oil price….
Increased investment in alternative modes of transport, such as mass transit (both buses and rail), bike lanes, bike and car sharing, and walking improvements to allow many more workers the option of getting to their jobs without the use of a personal car.
Improvements in our nation’s rail system to allow more freight to be shifted from truck to rail.
Encouraging the electrification of transport (including the alternative transport options mentioned above) to provide transport options which are not dependent on oil.
In short, we need to make the market for transportation services more efficient by encouraging new entrants (mass transit, bikes, trains) and competition with the incumbent car/internal combustion engine infrastructure. [6]

Wouldn’t it be nice to have voted into office leaders who think about these fact-based possibilities on our behalf (even if these contrary-to-their-ideology issues are not 100%, absolutely guaranteed to occur in every moment and circumstance?)

Why should this be wishful thinking?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/11048-the-peak-oil-crisis-election-2012.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012 by Tom Whipple – 02.01.12
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/06/time-to-fight/; Time to Fight by Yonah Freemark – 02.06.12
[3] http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/house-gop-takes-transit-funding-hostage/; House GOP Moves to Decimate Dedicated Transit Funding by Ben Goldman – 02.02.12

[4] http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2012/01/state-unveils-two-mbta-fare-increase-service-cut-scenarios/DoUG26YM6frTKPtULQkOUK/index.html; MBTA fares could rise as much as 43 percent; ferry, bus, commuter rail cuts also eyed by Martin Finucane – 01.03.12

[5] http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1666061106/MBTA-service-cuts-seen-hurting-Cape-Ann; MBTA service cuts seen hurting Cape Ann by Stephanie Bergman – 01.05.12

[6] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2012/01/26/the-end-of-elastic-oil/; The End of Elastic Oil by Tom Konrad – 01.26.12

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

I recently had the good fortune to visit my daughter at the university she attends in New Orleans. Scheduled many months ago, the trip was designed to coincide with the spectacular Mardi Gras festival which serves as a grand and delightful marker for a city too often associated instead with the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Although the weather was not as cooperative as we would have liked during the four days of my trip (tornado warnings on the night of Mardi Gras dampened at least my enthusiasm to wander around the French Quarter), I nonetheless caught my fair share of beads during one of the amazing parades that wind their way down St. Charles Avenue, while taking in many other sights and sounds of the celebrations.

It’s an incredible event, wildly entertaining and just plain wilder than one can imagine. Reports indicated that it drew upwards of a million revelers to this unique city—the most since Katrina struck in 2005.

Being as involved with the subject of Peak Oil as I am these days, I soon enough found myself wondering what happens to this spectacle once we are fully engulfed by the effects of ever-declining oil production.

Last summer, I took an initial look at air travel. Among others, I posed the following question: “What decisions are the various transportation industries—freight and aviation in particular—going to be faced with when the worldwide supply of oil cannot ever match demand again? Who decides which of those two will have priority? It’s unlikely that only one industry will have all of its demand met, so that means both industries will suffer reductions in what is available to them. Then what?”

What does happen a few short years down the road when we have nowhere near the same amounts of fossil fuels at our disposal (and/or at prices even remotely affordable) to travel to New Orleans, and when those who design and operate the hundreds of floats and tractors and emergency vehicles that are part and parcel of the Mardi Gras festivities are now at the mercy of fuel prices that have doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Hundreds of gas-sucking vehicles crawling along a 5 or 7 mile parade route run up a serious gas/diesel tab in today’s economy.

Then what indeed? A reasonable several hundred dollar round trip air fare from Boston to New Orleans during this celebration is likely going to be a lot more expensive in years to come, and most likely prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of visitors. Granted, many thousands may still find ways to get there, but you can be certain that if air fares have spiked through the roof in a few years, gas prices for our automobiles won’t be far behind. Are citizens who live even just a few hundred miles away going to want to pay $6.00, $8.00, $11.00 for a gallon of gas to go to a festival? Is something like Mardi Gras going to be any kind of priority for most?

Given the dazzling levels of shortsightedness on display by those who balk at investing in mass transit and/or high-speed rail, what options might be available in a half-dozen or so years from now (not that mass transit will be in place in so short a period of time)? Anyone thinking that we’ll just rev’ up design, production, and construction in a week or two is even more delusional than imaginable. Those are investments (among others) which must begin now.

A determined segment of leaders are hell-bent on cutting funding for alternative energy research and transportation—among many other categories vital to our future well-being—and are doing so contrary to what most polls state that Americans want. What’s going on? If they succeed in their efforts, what then? Can we all just rely on whatever magical technology these officials seem to believe will come flying to the rescue in years ahead? Are there some special alternatives that are going to be envisioned, designed, produced, and implemented successfully, commercially, and nationally overnight? Is that the plan for those so determined to cut spending so as to preserve tax benefits for the oil companies and multi-millionaires among us? Is that what we’re about?

The Mardi Gras pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the New Orleans economy. Not too difficult to imagine that city more so than most, and its industry leaders, count on that revenue more than just a little. What’s the ripple effect to New Orleans and its businesses when hundreds of millions of dollars are not-so-suddenly reduced by half, or more, simply because most attendees can no longer (or choose to no longer) afford the travel and lodging costs? What city services will be placed on the chopping block? How many more will suffer?

What of the restaurants and hotels that likewise depend on Mardi Gras? It was almost impossible to find lodging in the few months leading up to Mardi Gras unless you were willing to pay some seriously jacked-up prices and travel a long way into New Orleans each day. Many, many fewer patrons represent a tremendous hit to the bottom lines of those in the lodging and food service industries.

Many if not most of those retailers depend on tractor-trailers to deliver or transport supplies. Can you say diesel fuel price hikes? It’s hard to imagine that either the transportation industry or the lodging and restaurant industries are each going to absorb on their own the increased fuel prices (another domino effect which comes into play when supply no longer satisfies demand). As freight delivery charges increase and are passed on to end-users such as hotels and restaurants, and food costs themselves increase because the fossil fuels needed to provide fertilizers and a host of other “ingredients” of food production have likewise climbed into new territory (while the quantity of the fossil fuels themselves are on the decline), the unpleasant outcome is fairly obvious.

What happens to the taxi drivers who escort all these new patrons who descend on their city? (Based on my conversations with several of them however, the drivers have decidedly mixed feelings about Mardi Gras, given the logistical nightmares they must deal with every time a parade route or street-cleaning crew cuts off their travel options.)

I usually rent a car when I travel to New Orleans to visit my daughter. She cautioned me against doing so during Mardi Gras. Heeding her advice, I made do with buses, the partially-available street car lines, or a good pair of sneakers to get me around during my stay. I had the choice of taking a cab or the airport shuttle to get me to/from the city. I opted for the latter. The 55-minute or so trip from pick-up on campus to a half-dozen or so hotel stops en route to the airport when I left was by contrast a two and a half hour “adventure” when I first arrived.

Getting dropped off at my daughter’s school was the last of 8 stops the shuttle made in New Orleans after we left the airport. It seemed that almost every street was closed off that Saturday afternoon either by police barricades, an actual parade, or the random hoards of street cleaning crews which materialized seemingly out of thin air on multiple occasions as we wound our way through the city proper. At one point, although we were only four cars from a Canal Street intersection, those crews held up the shuttle van through four consecutive light cycles! That is a lot of wasted fuel….No doubt the very reasonable $40.00 or so round trip shuttle fare is going to also be a lot more expensive in years to come—assuming they (and the taxi drivers) have access to the fuel they need as and when needed. No guarantees….

Hundreds if not thousands of merchants, from street vendors on up to retail stores in and around the French Quarter, also no doubt depend on Mardi Gras revenue to bolster their bottom line. Whatever merchandise they offer is also most likely trucked in from somewhere else. Those suppliers won’t be immune to increased fuel prices and/or limitations on availability, and that means at least one entity somewhere along the supply chain is going to wind up paying, and then passing the costs along.

And the employees of the countless industries who depend on events like the Mardi Gras for a substantial portion of their annual income (keeping in mind that Peak Oil is not limited to impacting just the Mardi Gras festival while other lesser events and conventions escape unscathed)? When all of these increased prices are absorbed and then passed on to the ultimate end-users, more than a substantial percentage of those businesses are not going to be able to endure the increases or supply restrictions or lack of buyers because consumers no longer want to pay the higher prices. And that then means that more than a fair amount of employees and business owners are going to find themselves looking for work elsewhere. A lot of dominoes tumble when people are out of work … no need to elaborate.

“Just do something to lower fuel prices and none of this will be a problem” is a wonderful strategy and solution … if you don’t mind living in some alternate reality. Here on earth, however, these declining oil production consequences all inevitable, logical, and unavoidable—despite heavy doses of political grandstanding.

We can either duck for cover, or start appreciating the tasks at hand and get busy adding our voices and offering productive input into the almost-inconceivably complex planning and implementing Peak Oil will mandate—regardless of political ideology.

It is, as mentioned repeatedly, time to get busy.

More to come….

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.

Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

My parents live approximately one hundred miles from me. A drive to their home is at most only ninety minutes, given that each of us lives fairly close to highways that quickly take us to opposite ends of the cross-state Massachusetts Turnpike.

If I didn’t own or have access to a car and had to rely on public transportation, I could—thankfully—still get from door to door.

Of course, getting there might be just a bit more costly (but only a bit) than if I toss in 10 or 12 gallons of gas into my SUV and pay the $7.00 or so in tolls. MBTA bus, MBTA subway, and Amtrak rail or Peter Pan bus fares will run about the same as near as I can figure, so that’s a wash. The big drawback is the time factor for that round trip.

First up is a pleasant and easy walk down the 1000 foot-plus hill that is our street. Getting up is a whole ‘nother story, however. My house is at the top of that very steep hill, and it’s not a casual stroll for a 15-year-old, let alone someone like me who is … older than that. But that’s a relatively minor trifle, especially since it is the only outdoor walking I need to do until I arrive at a bus stop near my parents’ home. From there, all I have to do is walk approximately 500 feet on two perfectly level roadways before arriving at their front door.

Walking down the hill takes about 5 minutes; at least twice as long going back up (it is a mean hill).

Right around the corner at the bottom of my street is an MBTA bus stop, which takes me directly to either of two MBTA subway stops of my choosing (both the same “Red Line”). From there, I can head directly to South Station in Boston and take either a bus or an Amtrak train to Western Massachusetts. Upon arrival, I could (I believe) still take a local bus line that would drop me off that very short distance away from my parents. If the local bus line is not running, then it’s about a 3 mile walk … and not all downhill, either. I’ll leave that one alone for now.

The local bus ride to either of the two subway stations near my home, with all the intermediate stops along the way and the expected traffic congestion upon arrival at either station, runs about 20 minutes, give or take. Assuming I don’t have too much of a wait for a subway train (generally not much of an issue), I can then get to Boston’s South Station in another 20 – 30 minutes.

In that amount of time, I’m (usually) already two-thirds of the way to my parents’ home if I’m driving, but no matter.

Granted, the cross-state bus or Amtrak train, with all of their intermediate stops, is going to take a while to get me to the other end of the state—certainly longer than my ninety minute door to door drive. But either of those options allows me work or read or rest, something a bit trickier to do when I’m driving. Fair trade-off? Sometimes, perhaps. I guess it just depends on the day, but if I can afford a 7 or 8 hour block of travel time, I can visit my parents entirely via public transportation. Not the most convenient way, to be sure, but the option exists.

I have a sister who lives in Pennsylvania. I can get there in just under 5 hours by car. No idea at all how long it would take me to get even close to her via alternative means of transportation, since she lives some 90 miles outside of Philadelphia and I have no idea at all if getting to within even remotely-walking distance via bus or rail is an option out there. Pretty sure that if it is, I’m budgeting a lot more time to get there than just a 5 hour drive. Given that they reside in a very tony suburban development which surely has no public transit options close by, I’m guessing there’s some walking involved at the tail end of that trip.

I also have two siblings who live in the western Massachusetts area. I think I could get to within a mile or so of my other sister’s home via a somewhat convoluted series of bus routes. I’m guessing that the 15-20 minute drive to her home from my parents is closer to 90 minutes via those multiple bus routes and the ensuing walk. A lot more effort and planning if I had to get there from my home….

My brother lives even further out in the suburbs, and I’m not certain if there is even any regular, local bus service in his very small town. If there is, I’m reasonably confident that it would travel only along his town’s one main thoroughfare, but which nonetheless would put me a very walkable three-quarters of a mile or so from his home. I’m not at all certain, however, that there is any way to get to his town via bus routes from either end of our state. As best I can determine, I could probably get within 3 – 4 miles of his home by other bus routes and transportation alternatives … perhaps.

Just a guess, but I’m probably looking at close to 3 hours via those alternatives in order to visit my brother if I were to leave from my Boston-area home (about an hour’s ride by car). Certainly an hour-plus from my parents’ home, which is otherwise about a 20 minute drive.

This all assumes I’m then within a reasonable walking distance after my last bus stop. I could do 3 miles or so … in the spring, when it’s a pleasant 60 sunny degrees. Not so sure about that in January (this month we’ve had more than 3 feet of snow and single digit temps tossed in for good measure—hardly ideal walking conditions. This morning’s forecast is now calling for nearly 18 more inches of snow in the next 48 hours. Not good). A 90 degree day in July? No hikes for me, thank you very much.

As mentioned in my very first post, we’re fortunate to have an ocean-view summer home along the North Shore of Massachusetts. Even under terrible traffic conditions, it almost never takes us more than an hour to drive there from our home. As I described then, we can also get there without driving: “It takes a bus trip, two subway trips, a commuter rail trip, another bus trip at the tail end, and a several hundred yard walk thereafter for us to get to our beach house via public transportation … about 3 hours start to finish if we schedule it right, and that’s not counting the brutal walk up our very long and very steep hill when we return home.”

I raise all of this for several very simple reasons. For one, I’m quite fortunate to have alternative options to visit at least most of my immediate family. None of those options are especially convenient, some much worse than merely inconvenient. And as for my out-of-state sister, I’m not entirely certain I “can get there from here.” We’re quite close, so that’s bothersome to contemplate.

We’re also fortunate that we have means of getting to the summer home we love—likewise more than a slight inconvenience, but doable.

I’m a very optimistic person. Even with all the information I’ve acquired and try to share with others about Peak Oil, I’m not convinced that the sky is falling in the next few months or even perhaps the next couple of years.

The inexorable decline in oil production we now face (slight upticks or disingenuous-at-best arguments to the contrary notwithstanding) is not going to get better, however. Slowly (I hope!) but surely we’re all going to soon enough be dealing with likely higher and then much higher prices for oil and gas, which will have their expected individual budgetary impacts, forcing most of us to cut back here and there in purchases, or traveling, or both.

While I don’t like to sound any alarms about rationing, I can state with great certainty that I will not be in the least bit surprised if somewhere down the road each and all of us find ourselves having to deal with restrictions in our ability to get gas as and when we need it. (Facts continue to be damned annoying.)

This will certainly alter the nature and frequency of my visits with siblings and parents. My daughter graduates from college this year, and it’s likely she’ll be living back in state, so I’m not too concerned about how I’ll get to see her … yet. My step-daughter attends college in New York City, and we already rely on Amtrak to get us there and back, so that’s not an issue now. My step-son graduates from high school in June and is then off to serve in the military. Big question mark, there.

My wife and I will certainly have to come up with some alternatives for getting supplies to and from our summer home. There’s a grocery store less than a mile away, and the downtown area is a good two or three miles away at least, but not impossible to get to on foot if we have to. Carrying anything back to the beach house is a different matter. I stopped being twenty years old several decades ago. Muscles and conditioning aren’t what they used to be.

There is also local bus service. Obviously we’d have to plan local trips around the daily bus schedule, which runs not nearly as often as I’d like. I doubt that my complaints will make much of a difference. Of course, I’m also optimistically assuming that bus travel will still be affordable in the not-too-distant future, and/or that rising diesel prices (or lack of availability) won’t force services to end entirely.

In that case, I can probably disregard at least some of the family travel options I’ve mentioned above. I’ve barely figured out Plan B. No clue yet about my Plan C.

So the declining oil production and availability is clearly going to have some distinct personal consequences, forcing some changes in lifestyle that I would definitely prefer avoiding. I’m convinced, however, that these small sets of inconveniences and changes will not be restricted to just me and my family.

How are these declines going to affect you? (Make no mistake, they will.)

Might be a good time for all of us to start thinking and planning. While we’re at it, might be a good idea to be asking our local, regional, state, and federal governments to do the same. Gonna take a good long while to figure this all out (and a lot more)….

More to come.

“We are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it….
“If current trends continue, somewhere in the next five years a critical mass of us will realize that new foundations for civilization, and new ways of life must be found and implemented if we are going to survive with a modicum of comfort, economic, and political stability. Until then there will be many false prophets calling for a return to a civilization which is no longer possible.” [1]

A stubborn insistence that we’re just going to ignore the facts about global warming and the arrival of a peak in worldwide oil production—paying no attention to a rather large body of quite convincing evidence in the process—and instead plow ahead with public investments and plans that will in due course prove to be nothing more than monumental wastes of time (and incredibly short-sighted to boot), ought to be revisited.

We cannot afford to continue to design and then implement plans based only on what seems feasible now, or much worse, because it’s what we’ve always done, or it’s what an uninformed electorate would prefer. The first task, as I’ve mentioned in my recent posts, is that we all need to make a commitment to learning more and understanding the facts. In doing so, we need to find and rely upon the resources where the truth is the only option.

Allowing current business and political leaders to decide what will need to be done based on what has been done before is not the solution. There is no clearer indication of that than the continued resistance to spending money and investing in alternative forms of transportation.

“[N]ewly elected Republicans soon to enter gubernatorial offices have promised to shut down their local federally funded intercity rail corridors that they fear will overwhelm them with future operating expenses. Of course, those complaints are patently absurd when put in context of each state’s respective overall transportation budget. Wisconsin, for instance, spends more than a billion dollars on roadway construction annually and would have been asked to contribute a mere $7.5 million to train operations. Is such a small contribution really such a huge price to pay for a transportation alternative?” [2]

A worthwhile question that demands a much better response than what we’re seeing.

To be fair, there’s no question that making these kinds of investment decisions and committing even more funds from a limited supply is under no one’s definition an easy, simple or—at first—an obvious solution. There are indeed many legitimate arguments against such a commitment. I’m firmly in the camp that believes high speed rail is a necessity, but I’m just as clear that we need to think through the strategies more than we have to date. High-speed rail aside, I’m more convinced by the day that a great deal more reliance on public transportation will be mandatory.

A fear of deficits and increased public spending are going to have to give way to a longer term vision for the kind of nation we choose to be and the levels of growth and prosperity we at least hope to attain in a world no longer able to rely on fossil fuels. That vision and the corresponding plans of necessity must include a greater commitment to public transit. The choice to devote our limited transportation capital funds on the more familiar roadwork projects makes perfectly good sense in a vacuum where growth is expected to return to “normal” soon enough. The harsh truth is that it will not because it cannot. There will be new definitions of “normal” in the years to come.

I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but we create only more difficulties for ourselves by denying the facts and delaying our efforts to create an industrial economy that no longer depends on fossil fuels. It’s a monumental undertaking to be sure, and is not one we should expect to complete for at least a couple of decades. But oil supplies have reached their peak and it is soon enough all downhill from there, so we’re confronted with the dual challenge of re-creating the way our economy functions while utilizing declining supplies of oil in the process, and simultaneously trying to keep our heads above water under current conditions, dependent on that exact same declining supply. All the creativity and spin in the world cannot make that math come out in our favor. Change is a-comin’.

The bottom line is that for all the arguments favoring more expenditures on road construction at the expense of public transportation, the same end result would be arrived at with far less effort if we simply burn piles of money on the steps of Capitol Hill. Appreciating the challenges and implications of having now arrived at the peak of oil production does lead to the obvious conclusion (political ideologies in opposition notwithstanding) that we are going to have to move away from an automobile-centric society.

In the years to come, we simply will not have enough oil/gasoline to power the number of automobiles we own in this country under similar or growing levels of usage when we add to that astounding number the many millions more new automobiles that will be added to the roadways of other nations. We could meet that demand, of course. We’d simply have to do away with a great many other necessities and products (see my last post for a brief list) dependent on oil, since there won’t be enough fossil fuels to go around to meet all the demand everywhere all the time for everyone. That’s Peak Oil!

As I’ve taken great pains to emphasize, we’re not running out of oil any time soon. But depletion and an inexorable decline in production which no alternative or unconventional resources can make up for means there’s going to be less available for everyone and everything. Those dominoes will continue to tumble until one day, likely several decades into the future, it will no longer be feasible to continue extracting oil or using. Too much effort and too much expense for too little reward is what we face. Start planning now is the smart choice, because once we’ve solicited all the input available—no easy or quick task in itself—we’re going to have a lot of work ahead of us putting those plans into action, with the myriad modifications and adaptations that will surely be needed.

We’ll need to be smarter about the new choices we make, too. Reliance on (or hope that) the electric vehicle is the answer to the transportation aspect of Peak Oil’s impact is all fine and well in the abstract. But as has been pointed out by others (here and here), if we’re just expecting that fancy new electric Mercedes and BMWs and Ford pick-up trucks and Honda SUVs and Chevy Volts will just simply replace the ones we drive now, we’re in for another rude awakening. An enormous conversion of infrastructure will be required, for one thing. And for another (topics for upcoming posts here), if the strategies we design to cope with fossil fuel depletion do not also include plans for where and how we live, we’re just digging another deep hole for ourselves.

As objectionable as this will be to many, “smart growth” and “sustainable living” practices are going to warrant much greater levels of attention than they have to date. If ideological principles cause one to blanche at the thought of our federal government “dictating” how and where people live by controlling urban sprawl, the message is a simple one: Get used to it. This is not about a desire of the government to impose its will or make choices for others. It will instead be another courageous recognition that great changes will and must take place, and that there must be a national mechanism for guiding the choices and actions of local governments and private industry to address those looming realities.

Given that certain segments of the media (and the political and social groups that align themselves with that media’s particular ideology) seem convinced that President Obama does not believe we’re an “exceptional” nation (the convenient omission of facts and context debunking that meme are neatly summed up here and here), here’s our chance to prove him “wrong.” Let’s do so by leading the charge into the 21st century with a new vision about how prosperous and successful nations adjust to the new realities about energy supply and usage. It will take one hell of a village to make this happen in any event.

Why not us?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7980-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-future-of-government.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: The Future of Government By Tom Whipple
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/12/01/growing-conservative-strength-puts-transit-improvements-in-doubt/; Growing Conservative Strength Puts Transit Improvements in Doubt by Yonah Freemark

“I don’t think people quite understand how fundamental transportation is to the economy and their standard of living.” [1]

“Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels—which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment.” [2]

“The United States is saddled with a rapidly decaying and woefully underfunded transportation system that will undermine its status in the global economy unless Congress and the public embrace innovative reforms, a bipartisan panel of experts concludes in a report released [several weeks ago].
“U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags so far behind that of China, Russia and European nations that it will lead to ‘a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run.” [3]

This is real life; this is what happens when you put on blinders and decide that a political ideology already proven not to work will nonetheless work magic this time. If they do what they’ve always done, we’ll get more of what we’ve already gotten … hello!

Spending the kinds of money being tossed about for transportation infrastructure modernization is mind-boggling. As one recent report suggests, an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail and air transportation systems. [4] Coupled with even larger investments needed to modernize our entire infrastructure, and it becomes terrifying. Talk about bad options or bad options! There are few short-term upsides to the choices we’re confronted with, but that’s the key issue: this is not about what’s best for us only right now. Difficult decisions or difficult decisions are the choices on the table.

But what is the option? Where do we wind up ten, twenty, fifty years down the road? Do we leave our children and grandchildren with potentially burdensome debt but in an economic environment that meets their needs and gives them hope and chance for an even better future, or do we send them into the world relatively debt-free but confronted with decay and decline and little hope as far as the eye can see?

“The United States can’t compete successfully in the 21st century with a 20th century transportation infrastructure—especially when its chief trading partners, including not only the advanced economies of Western Europe and Southeast Asia but also rapidly developing countries like China, are making significant investments in cutting-edge transportation technologies and systems. Transportation efficiency has a direct impact on Americans’ standard of living and on the cost of goods and services delivered by U.S. firms and businesses.” [5]

The knee-jerk reaction to raising any fees, notably the 18.4 cent (per gallon) federal gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, hamstrings any efforts to legitimately address these challenges. A sense of entitlement—that we shouldn’t have to pay for public services—is rapidly becoming not just an enormous impediment to resolving our difficulties. We also run the risk that our fears of national decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and with no one to blame but ourselves.

“We would also note that while other nations are effectively rebuilding and improving transportation infrastructure (think China, France, India and other competitors), we are consumed with debates about the proper role of our national government, all the while avoiding the tough decisions that would give us the resources to do the same. [6]

You don’t have to be a math whiz to understand that inflation and increased fuel mileage over the years (and thus less spending at the pump) have dramatically reduced the sufficiency of the gas tax as a source for highway construction and maintenance funds. The sad truth is that Americans don’t want to pay for much, and that’s a sure recipe for all kinds of disasters, but our attention span is short and our memories about other consequences are just as short.

One proposal repeatedly floated about only to be instantly shot down is a one or two cent (cent, as in penny!) increase in that per gallon gas tax. Two or three cents would be fabulous, but we can’t get Congressional leaders to even consider a one freaking penny increase to help pay for road maintenance and repair … one penny per gallon! Let’s take a look at how this breaks down in the real world of facts:

Estimated miles traveled per year by the average driver is 15,000

Average miles per gallon is 15 – 20 miles per gallon. Let’s lowball and say it’s only 15 mpg

15,000 miles per year divided by 52 weeks = 290 miles; let’s say 300 miles per week

300 miles per week divided by 15 miles per gallon = 20 gallons of gas used per week, or about $60.00 per week at current prices, or about $3000.00 per year

20 gallons of gas per week with a one freaking cent gas tax increase = 20 cents per week, times 52 weeks means that the average driver paying $10.40 more per year to help alleviate an urgent need … ten freaking dollars per year!

And we have leaders and organizations and media personalities telling us that raising this tax is as calamitous as anything we’ve ever seen. This begs the obvious and unfortunate question:

How irresponsible, clueless, and short-sighted is this?

“The fact is that failure to adequately maintain and invest in our transportation systems means not only gridlocked roads and deteriorating bridges in the near term, but a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run. Avoiding this outcome means government, and ultimately taxpayers, need to be willing to invest more in transportation, not just for one year or a few, but on a sustained basis over time….Policymakers and the public will need to understand that investments in transportation infrastructure—provided these investments are wisely chosen and effectively implemented—will have long-term benefits that more than justify their near-term costs.” [7]

“[O]ur transportation infrastructure also is the foundation upon which virtually every major industry sector depends. Many industries could not exist without the wise infrastructure investments our nation has made in the past. These industries include tourism, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, agriculture and forestry, mining, retailing, wholesaling and many others that are essential to our economic vitality and quality of life. Dependent industries provide more than 78.6 million American jobs with a total payroll in excess of $2.8 trillion, illustrating just how much we have at stake when we underfund our transportation efforts.” [8]

As my favorite political blogger, Steve Benen, so dryly noted: “We are, by the way, talking about projects that create jobs, spur economic development, relieve traffic congestion, and help the environment, all while offering the promise of transforming American transportation in the 21st century.” [9]

Not that that matters….

Whether or not we manage to restore some semblance of prosperity in the near (or even not-so-near) future will depend in no small part on the courage and wisdom we ask our leaders to demonstrate—with our support—in making wise investment decisions with an eye to the future, difficult as those choices may be. Not making those decisions has the potential to be catastrophic.

We have to encourage and even insist on a vision for our future that takes into account legitimate concerns on both sides of these investment issues but also moves beyond them in recognition of the fact that in a near-future powered by less fossil fuel resources, changes will have to be made in how we address these challenges. Throwing more money at public roads is not the sole option, nor can it be.

“Name one attribute America’s most successful cities have in common. The ‘it’ factor often overlooked – but necessary for success – is transit. Successful cities all across the nation have made the choice to make public transit a priority – and that decision pays off.
“According to the American Public Transit Association, for every $1 cities invest in public transportation, they generate $4 in economic returns. Economically viable cities make funding transit a priority because they can generate multiple, positive economic outcomes with a single investment:
“Developers are attracted to transit areas. If a city wants to revitalize a blighted area or dictate where high-density growth and expansion occur, one of the smartest things it can do is invest in transit.” [10]

For all the (many of which are legitimate) arguments against investing in high speed rail, the reality that almost none of those opponents bother to consider is that in a world with ever-declining oil production, increasing world-wide demand, and more complex geopolitical and geological challenges, our insistence on remaining an automobile-based nation evidencing our greatness and independence is at best extremely foolish. We are simply not going to have same level of fossil fuels we now depend on for transportation. That’s just the reality, and we ignore it or stubbornly insist otherwise at our peril. Alternative forms of transit—expensive or not—are going to play a critical role for us in the future, both personally and commercially. Stomping our feet and demanding otherwise is nice, but not going to get you much.

“In the United States, high-speed rail remains roadkill for Republicans who, in playing to anti-big-government voters, reflexively say states cannot afford it rather than reflect on how mass transit and speedy corridor trains will wean us off oil and improve quality of life for generations to come.” [11]

We, and our leaders, need to be wiser and far less shortsighted than we tend to be.

Sources:

[1] http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/10/22/new-report-shows-states-want-to-cut-infrastructure-spending/; New Report Shows States Want to Cut Infrastructure Spending by Eric Jaffe (quoting Byron Schlomach, director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute in Arizona)

[2] http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/11/peak-oil-is-history.html; Peak Oil is History

[3]http://millercenter.org/policy/transportation [link to PDF]; Report from the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virgina: Well Within Reach – America’s New Transportation Agenda – David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference (Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner, Conference Co-Chairs, Jeffrey N. Shane, Conference Director) issued October, 2010

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100402269.html; Failing U.S. transportation system will imperil prosperity, report finds By Ashley Halsey III

[5] Miller Center Report (above) p.26

[6] http://www.amconmag.com/cpt/2010/10/19/how-to-finance-the-next-six-year-transportation-authorization-a-taxing-issue/; How to Finance the Next Six-Year Transportation Authorization: A Taxing Issue – October 19, 2010 by Glen Bottoms

[7] Miller Center Report (above) p. 27

[8] http://www.hntb.com/point-of-view/think5-investing-in-our-economic-future; Investing in our economic future

[9] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026518.php; SO MUCH FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL…..

[10] http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2010/10/talkin-about-a-railvolution.php; Talkin’ About A Rail-Volution? By Fawn Johnson; (Response by Tom Madigan: The ‘It’ Factor Of Successful Cities)

[11] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/30/us_needs_to_get_on_track_for_high_speed_rail/; US needs to get on track for high-speed rail By Derrick Z. Jackson

Last week I had occasion to visit with my father at my parents’ property in the lovely Berkshire Mountains region of New England. They live elsewhere in western Massachusetts, but have owned this 30 acre parcel in a very rural community since I was very young. It’s not especially well-developed … there is no running water and thus no usable bathroom (unless trees and bushes count), but it is a peaceful and lovely plot of nature I’ve always enjoyed. For Dad, it’s heaven here on Earth; Mom, not so much, but she deals with it.

As I was making the 135-mile pilgrimage from my home outside of Boston and across the state, contemplating once or twice how much gas my SUV was sucking down and wondering more how families will arrange to visit when the price of gasoline—or its unavailability—make these kind of treks prohibitive, I found myself thinking more and more about all the people who live in the small, out-of-the-way towns at the opposite end of Massachusetts.

What are they going to do?

After I exited the highways just north of Springfield (the largest city in western Massachusetts) and began traveling the sparsely populated back roads and on through occasional farmland—dotted only very rarely by anything that resembled a commercial establishment and miles and miles from any malls or shopping centers of note—I kept wondering: how difficult must it be for them now to just get around and run the types of errands that you and I do rather effortlessly?

What are they going to do?

How are these people going to make do tending to their most basic of everyday needs when gas prices are off the charts, when ownership of autos is prohibitively expensive, and when basic transportation becomes an issue of monumental complexity because we no longer have the readily available supplies of gasoline we’ve been accustomed to for decades? How can we expect public transit to help people when they live miles from anything even resembling a sizeable city?

How will they deal with the loss of the modern, daily conveniences those of us in and near big cities routinely take for granted, conveniences which they even now surely labor to enjoy? From my home in a quaint Boston suburb, I can walk to my bank, my dry cleaners, my wife’s office, the grocery store, several convenience stores and restaurants, the pharmacy, the post office, and scores of different retail establishments. At the bottom of the very steep hill we live on I can grab a bus which takes me to the subway which takes me to the Amtrak station or the MBTA commuter rail system or Logan Airport, and from there, the world.

And these rural townspeople far removed from city life: What are they going to do? Most, living in these hilly towns with neighbors often several acres away at the very least, cannot walk to … anywhere. There is no close-by there, there. Getting there requires a car, even for the simplest of errands (biking up and down some of those hilly stretches is a job best left to Lance Armstrong). I can get a gallon of milk 200 yards from my home. People in these rural communities can get that same gallon of milk three or four or eight miles away right now.

I don’t know if bus service of any kind runs out there (doubtful), but if it does, I’m sure it’s a once a day event for most. “Big city” Springfield is 40 + miles away from my parents’ property; not-quite-so-big-Pittsfield is about 15, tucked in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. While Pittsfield will never be mistaken for a big city, it certainly has most of the modern amenities anyone would need: malls, banks, restaurants, retail establishment, car dealerships, and all the rest. Still … can’t get there from rural here without a car.

Median income is about $45,000 in the town where my parents own their land; population is about 1000. Not a big demand in places like that for malls, stand-alone retail stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, or public transit. Hell, it shares its post office with another town! They do have a fire department and police force, but no one will mistake the size of those forces with what we’re accustomed to in cities or towns of 20,000 or 50,000 or 300,000.

I may be mistaken, but I sense that these people are much more what we recognize as salt-of-the-earth folks: hard-working, straightforward citizens content with many of life’s simpler pleasures (obviously, and to their everlasting credit), living most likely from paycheck to paycheck. I doubt many of them are wealthy progeny of big industry titans, or live on these outskirts thanks to endless piles of family money. They are thus likely to feel a fair amount of pain and stress when fuel prices increase and travel becomes more difficult every day. They are going to suffer more than their fair share.

How do they plan and execute their frequent trips to the market, or to stores to purchase family necessities, or get medical care, or entertain and visit with family members and friends, when they live so far from … well, everything? Right now I imagine it’s a bit of a convoluted process to try and get all of those things done. Surely some careful planning is required, whereas for me, I can just hop in the car any old time and complete my local errands in fifteen minutes. “Local” has a different meaning in the rural Berkshire communities.

What are they going to do?

It’s not just the inhabitants of these pleasant and placid towns that will suffer. What happens when we simply do not have enough oil and gas to meet our own demands—however sourced—and we have to endure restrictions of one kind or another that are much too painful to consider right now? How will those residents—so far removed from our easily accessible every day creature comforts and amenities in big cities as it is—manage when they simply can’t get anywhere?

What are they going to do?

Peak Oil is not just about big city residents suddenly being forced to rely on public transportation more than they care to. Peak Oil is about lots of people in lots of places who are not going to have the resources and conveniences and comforts they need as and when they need them.

What are we all going to do?

Michael Lind is the Policy Director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a frequent contributor to Salon.com—a publication (and writer) whose perspectives I usually agree with. The new America website is quite good.

However, Mr. Lind recently published an article at Salon regarding the future of transportation—fixed/high-speed rail, specifically—that I take issue with. I do so not so much because his information might be incorrect (and I don’t dispute his knowledge and information on the subject), but I disagree because he offers up an attitude regarding our approach to transportation and automobiles that can only cause us more problems as we confront Peak Oil. It’s an all-too-familiar refrain Peak Oil proponents encounter, and is one we find especially distressing in light of the challenges Peak Oil is going to impose upon all of us.

Lind begins his article advocating more government spending on infrastructure—a position with which I wholeheartedly agree. (Readers familiar with Bob Herbert’s op-eds in the New York Times—which I’ve referenced in several posts—will recall that Mr. Herbert is likewise a passionate advocate of our need to repair, maintain, and enhance infrastructure spending for a host of sound, well-considered reasons.) Enough studies are out there demonstrating the many positive benefits and effects those spending priorities have on our economy and employment numbers.

Despite his advocacy for this essential governmental strategy, Lind criticizes support for high speed rail. In doing so, he raises common objections to funding and planning for alternative forms of transportation. While factually there may be merit to his arguments, the problem is that despite the rhetoric, the reality of Peak Oil is going to make the stated objections entirely irrelevant.

There is little chance that we’re going to devise a perfect public transportation solution, but to dismiss the approach outright because we’re too spoiled to recognize the need for change is at best foolish. We’re in need of some serious attitude adjustments, and transportation woes are another consequence of Peak Oil that we can either prepare for voluntarily, or have imposed upon us. Something is going to have be done. We can either throw our hands up and keep hoping, or start taking steps to figure out the solutions that just might work. It seems quite obvious that public transportation is going to have to be part of that mix.

Lind observes that “As nations grow more affluent, their people prefer the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit.” Of course they do! I much prefer jumping in one of our cars to run errands or to go to our beach house or do any number of other things when I feel like doing so rather than walking up and down my lengthy and very steep hill and then figuring out how many different modes of public transit I might need to get where I want to go. Millions and millions of other car owners harbor their own legitimate reasons why they favor the comfort and convenience of their own autos.

If fossil-fuel supplies were unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready, we would not be having these discussions. But facts are annoying—especially the true ones!

All of the factors this blog and other writers have set forth regarding the imminence of Peak Oil tell us that unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is not going to be an option for much longer—some reports suggest in as few as a couple of years. Many writers have already noted one of Peak Oil’s many obvious warning signs: we’re drilling thousands of feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere because “cheap” and easy-to-find oil no longer exists. It’s just one sign among many. “Affluence” isn’t going to buy anyone bonus points when it comes to oil supply and demand … the transportation needs of the rich won’t stave off Peak Oil.

So when the ever-diminishing supply of unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is a factor with which we are all contending every day, preferring “the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit” won’t be worth the paper that comment is printed on. Peak Oil doesn’t much care about our “preferences,” or whether long-distance air or passenger car travel is “more practical,” as Lind also argued.

That’s simply not going to matter … not a little, not a lot, not at all. It’s nice to discuss preferences and wishes and hopes and all the rest, but geology and reality are what they are, and soon enough we are not going to have anywhere near the amounts of inexpensive oil readily available to each of us so that we can drive wherever and whenever we want. That’s a fact. Wishing it away is a nice sentiment but utterly meaningless. Peak Oil doesn’t much care for wishes and prayers, either.

So objections notwithstanding, we need to be thinking about, planning for, and finding ways to fund, create, and construct the types of public transportation we’re all going to need in the decades to come. It’s painful, but it’s that simple.

It’s no doubt true that implementing passenger rail and other forms of alternative transportation (and sources of energy, which Lind also criticizes) on a scale even remotely approaching the levels we’ll need in the decades to come is a jaw-dropping, almost unfathomably expensive proposition … until you realize we will have no rational alternatives other than to truly shrink our growth and become a nation of many local economies.

There is going to be a lengthy list of items and services and needs that are going to have to continue to be fulfilled by an ever-declining amount of crude oil, and I daresay that your and my carefree choices to run a couple of errands on a near-daily basis or visit with friends on the weekend aren’t going to have much priority on that list of who gets what, when, and how much.

Those who are waiting for a low-cost, ideal alternative to our current forms of personal transportation are in for a very rude awakening somewhere down the road.

Likewise, Lind’s urging that we devote more financial resources to enhance freight transportation on our roadways is just as misguided. Truckers won’t be exempt from Peak Oil’s impact … no one will. He is unfairly and inaccurately dismissive in suggesting that all of our urgings to provide more funding for high-speed rail and the like is so that we can “cut five minutes off the daily commutes of office workers in New York and New Jersey.” Enough high speed rail proposals have been put forth, and the Obama Administration has at least opened the door to enough other high-speed rail projects, to dismiss Lind’s snarky contentions outright. That’s something I’d expect to hear from someone on the Right, for whom facts are all-too-often useless and/or irrelevant when choosing to perpetuate narrow-minded ideology instead.

“Focusing on freight infrastructure improvements means that, among other things, we need to build more highway lanes and in some cases new highways for the trucks that will continue to carry most freight.” I’m hard-pressed to understand how that could possibly be a legitimate solution. Not only will not be able to afford that; higher gas prices and declining supply will leave less cars and trucks on the road. What a waste of limited resources!

And despite Lind’s claims about asphalt as some kind of magic solution, the truth is that asphalt is one of the countless products derived from crude oil, or from the energy-intensive and more expensive extraction process of the tar sands. (See this Oil Drum post for a discussion of asphalt.) Less crude oil equals less asphalt—as some cities have already witnessed first-hand.

Thinking that the enormous population increases expected in the coming decades is going to be properly addressed by building more roads and creating more suburban sprawl where owners are going to be left entirely dependent on automobiles they won’t be able to regularly or readily fuel seems ass-backwards at the very least. Asphalt is not nearly the savior Lind asserts it to be.

Two items of note on this subject from an extremely informative 2009 article by Phillip Longman (a Lind colleague) in The Washington Monthly [1]:

“The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that for distances of more than 1,000 miles, a system in which trucks haul containers only as far as the nearest railhead and then transfer them to a train produces a 65 percent reduction in both fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. As the volume of freight is expected to increase by 57 percent between 2000 and 2020, the potential economic and environmental benefits of such an intermodal system will go higher and higher. Railroads are also potentially very labor efficient. Even in the days of the object-lesson train, when brakes had to be set manually and firemen were needed to stoke steam engines, a five-man crew could easily handle a fifty-car freight train, doing the work of ten times as many modern long-haul truckers.”

and

“Failing to rebuild rail infrastructure will simply further move the burden of ever-increasing shipping demands onto the highways, the expansion and maintenance of which does not come free. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (hardly a shill for the rail industry) estimates that without public investment in rail capacity 450 million tons of freight will shift to highways, costing shippers $162 billion and highway users $238 billion (in travel time, operating, and accident costs), and adding $10 billion to highway costs over the next twenty years. ‘Inclusion of costs for bridges, interchanges, etc., could double this estimate,’ their report adds.”

And Lind wants to increase freight transportation on our roads?

As for his urging that we build more airports … seriously? In a few short decades—as things stand now and for the foreseeable future—we’ll be lucky to have one-third the number of airports now existing. It’s also quite likely that only a very small percentage of the population anywhere will be able to afford air travel in any event—assuming jet fuel remains available in any semblance of reasonable supply. How is that a solution?! Ignoring the effects of Peak Oil isn’t going to get us much except more difficulties.

Lind urges us to consider a “harsh reality” that makes no sense in light of Peak Oil: “The greatest economic crisis since the Depression shows no signs of ending soon. A major, long-term program of public investment is needed more than ever. But the public investments must pass the reality test. And the harsh reality is this: There isn’t going to be a significant high-speed rail system in the U.S. in the near- or medium-term future. There isn’t going to be a continental electric grid permitting solar panels on condo buildings in Berkeley, Calif., to power heirloom-poultry farms in Maine. Most Americans are not going to sell their cars and move back from the suburbs to the cities in order to live in tiny apartments or condos and ride the rails to work. These are romantic daydreams that Democrats could afford to indulge only as long as they were out of office and were not responsible for results.”

So how does he reconcile those statements with the fact that majority of the world’s population already lives in cities, with estimates suggesting that as much as 75% of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2050? [2] Hate to say it, but “romantic daydreams” or some reasonable approximations may very well be our only options in the not-too-distant future. That is the very harsh reality we will have to contend with in the face of Peak Oil. The fossil fuel choices he seems to think we’re going to endlessly possess are simply not going to be available to us. Ignoring that truth is an option … just not a very good one.

Lind is absolutely correct that we need a massive commitment to our woefully ill-maintained infrastructure. (See this and the referenced links therein.) But his assertions that we need to rely on more roadways and more fossil-fuel-consuming trucks is not a solution. We will cater to consumer demands or for more suburban sprawl at our collective peril. We won’t have those options once Peak Oil is upon us, either.

Again I’ll emphasize how critical it is that we begin considering alternatives to transportation, the nature of our infrastructure, and our sources of energy. The dislocations will be challenging enough; let’s not make them worse by waiting for some “better” day to get started. (And let’s not forget that putting into place the infrastructure and technologies needed to make the transitions a reality are themselves going to require a lot of fossil fuel. We’re simply not going to have enough to do all of that and still maintain our lifestyles and industries as we do now. Something is going to have to give.)

While Lind is correct that “There is no public support in the U.S. or any other industrial democracy for the combination of self-imposed austerity and massive subsidies that would be necessary to create an economy based on renewable energy,” that is likewise not going to matter. Who among us wants to sacrifice the lifestyles we’ve come to insist upon?! The real issue is that when Peak Oil is here, lack of public support (predicated on selfishness and an unwillingness/inability to make sacrifices voluntarily) won’t matter either. We either suffer from the harsh impact of Peak Oil by choosing to do nothing, or start working on the next best options, whatever they may be (while understanding those undefined options are no guarantee of harsh-free changes).

I fully recognize that the energy, affordability, and efficiencies derived from fossil fuels/crude oil are as yet unmatched by any forms of alternative or renewable sources of energy. That’s a major part of the challenge of Peak Oil: there will be no seamless transitions to something else to keep life going as it does now because we don’t have that option. Changes—perhaps even drastic ones—are looming.

So do we wait until we’re really battered and beleaguered by Peak Oil, or do we make a national commitment (and act upon it) to finding some reasonable means of supplanting fossil fuel usage—especially for transportation, given that it’s going to take us many years (decades is more likely) to effectively and permanently transition away from oil? We’re already too far behind, and we have no guarantees of finding a successful solution in any event. Is waiting and doing nothing the better option? Is that our legacy?

There are no easy fixes. There are no inexpensive fixes. There are no quick fixes, either. But we clearly can no longer rely on what got us here.

The sooner we all understand that and begin acting on that knowing, the sooner we can begin digging our way out of a mess our own successes and innovations have created.

Sources:

[1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.longman.html – Back on Tracks: A nineteenth-century technology could be the solution to our twenty-first-century problems by Phillip Longman

[2] http://www.slate.com/id/2256666/- Nimble Cities: Help Slate make transportation in and between cities more efficient, safe, and pleasant by Tom Vanderbilt

One of the main themes that I will return to repeatedly as this blog progresses is that of transportation.

I’ll permit others more technically savvy, experienced, and knowledgeable to address the issue of automobile usage and our eventual conversion of internal combustion engines to those that either run on alternative fuel/energy sources, or electric cars. (I have discussed automobiles in several prior posts such as this one.) My focus will be on the broader theme of how much we depend upon all forms of transportation in our day-to-day lives.

The sooner we can begin having “Oh, I didn’t think of that…” moments, the sooner we can begin effectively dealing with, planning for, and transitioning to ways of living and producing that are no longer dependent on fossil fuels as the energy source needed. We’re all in this together….

My hope is that these types of post will inspire more and more frequent “I didn’t think of that” moments for everyone.

Fairly self-evident, but true: It’s only when we start asking questions that we’ll begin seeking answers. As long as we ignore issues or simply take things for granted, we have zero incentive to make changes. Changes imposed upon us are much less pleasant than those in which we have a say ahead of time.

Everything we do that requires transportation via automobile, either of necessity or of convenience, is going to be affected when the ready supply of relatively inexpensive and always available gasoline from our local service station is no longer relatively inexpensive and always available. We may not have in place formal rationing once the steady decline of gasoline is upon us, but we will experience de facto rationing.

The effect is going to be the same: we are not going to be able to just hop into our cars for a fill-up whenever we need it. Somewhere along the line, limited allocations are going to be imposed upon our lifestyles. It will happen voluntarily and with careful planning, or it will indeed be imposed upon all of us, protests notwithstanding. Which would you prefer?

With that significant change will come all kinds of changes and adaptations in what we do day-to-day. How we live our everyday lives, what we need to do or should do or prefer to do are all going to be impacted in one way or another when that trip to the local gas station is no longer an immediate option for us.

So let’s consider one of those every day common events and how this, too, will be impacted by Peak Oil: the appointment with our dentist/doctor.

How many of us regularly schedule appointments with our family MD or dentist? How many trips on average do we/our family make to see them during the course of a year? Two? Five? Twelve? How many of us walk to those appointments? How many of us have accessible and convenient public transportation enabling us to go with minimal difficulties?

I’m going to guess that the percentage is probably less than fifty—perhaps much less. Certainly those who live in major cities and whose medical providers likewise have practices in the “downtown” areas likely take advantage of public transportation, but most of us either don’t have that option, or for any number of other reasons choose to drive.

It’s quite likely that we combine trips around those appointments: perhaps some grocery shopping after the dentist appointment, or we’ll run over to our children’s school and pick them up after class, or we have to take the kids to practice on our way to the doctor, or we just decide to stop off at a couple of places along the way. There are any number of possibilities that strike us all as perfectly normal and routine events.

Peak Oil is going to change “normal” and “routine.”

So what happens when gasoline has become prohibitively expensive? How many of these combination trips suddenly require much more planning? How many of these trips even become possible? What sort of juggling are we all going to have to do to figure out how to accomplish these routine tasks when it’s either costing us small fortunes to fill up our gas tanks, or when we only have the option of doing so under guidelines that are completely foreign to us today?

If our dentist or MD has an office too far to walk to, too far from public transportation stops (or we have no public transportation options), what are we going to do? For that matter, what are those medical service providers and their staffs going to do when confronted with the exact same issues? How are they going to get to their offices?

Right now I have the option, inconvenient though it may be, of getting to my doctor’s office via two separate modes of public transportation and a half mile walk. But I know that my primary care physician (25 years and counting) lives nowhere near his office, and there is no public transportation that will get him from his home to his medical practice in any manner that might be considered convenient. What’s he going to do? What am I going to do when he can’t get to his office any longer?

My family dentist’s office is about 15 miles from our home. What is plan B for us? For he and his extensive staff? There is a subway stop about half a mile from his office, so once again I have the option of getting there via three separate modes of public transportation), but how convenient is that in comparison to just hopping into my car and shooting down interstate 95?

The solutions for me are not impossible, and indeed for a sizeable percentage of us, that may be true as well. But when a single twenty-five minute trip to our medical care provider—at our convenience (ignoring the countless other routine trips we take each week)—suddenly requires coordinating walking to and from public transportation (hoping that the weather cooperates, by the way), and then having to take into consideration multiple forms of public transportation with the time factors doubling or tripling or worse (all the while ignoring the types of routine errands we now tack on to these trips without a second thought), what are we all going to do?

It is a goal of the United States to develop a national intermodal transportation system that moves people and goods in an energy efficient  manner. The Nation’s future economic direction is dependent on its ability to confront directly the enormous challenges of the global  economy, declining productivity growth, energy vulnerability, air pollution, and the need to rebuild the Nation’s infrastructure.

That prescient language came from a 1991 piece of legislation, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. At the dawn of Peak Oil, and with an infrastructure woefully inadequate and under-maintained so as to properly meet the changing needs of our economic, environmental, and energy-driven revival, these words should serve as the foundation for a renewed commitment to transportation. To be sure, the President understands this, and his initial commitments to high-speed rail are a welcome first step. But so much more needs to be done.

Unfortunately, that language was stricken from successor pieces of legislation, and the result over the years has been (as is true of too much legislation) a mish-mash of efforts with no overriding vision and structure. We too often continue to plug holes here and there instead of summoning the national will, courage, vision, and leadership to plot new courses. President Obama recognizes this, but as with too many other visionary ideas he brings to us, they fall victim to the ugly and insane workings of Congress and an even more insane opposition from the Right. “Long-term” planning continues to serve as four-letter words to those out of power and to those too concerned with their next election, polls, and donations.

Make no mistake: we will not be running out of oil soon, as all legitimate Peak Oil advocates continue to insist despite the at-best disingenuous contradictions from other quarters. Even though production is probably going to soon begin its inexorable decline, we should have enough to meet almost all of our needs, albeit more costly, for years to come.

The problems will really hit home later, when we can no longer borrow from Peter to pay Paul or cover up the decreasing resources with band-aids or sleight-of-hand. What happens then?

We cannot afford to wait until those more drastic times to start making changes to our infrastructure or modes of transportation. They are too vital to our well-being. When production declines really take hold, we will have too many segments of our infrastructure, too many business models, too many political decisions, and too many financial concerns that will all have be addressed, modified, repaired, renewed, or invented in fairly short order. We will simply be unable to meet those challenges only after they all appear.

We must begin planning now, and that can only happen if we understand what is at stake and what changes we’ll all be obliged to make. This is not a problem to be solved by the government … that nebulous entity “out there.” We—all of us—have a stake and a role to play. We cannot afford to pass the responsibility of doing to anyone else.

Almost everything we do and have is in place because we’ve had inexpensive and plentiful amounts of oil available to help us build, produce, market, transport, invent, and repair/replace … almost everything! Few aspects of our industrial society will be unaffected when Peak Oil is in full bloom, and we will then have no choice but to make drastic changes in virtually everything we do. Do we prepare, or hope for the best and continue on our merry little delusional and ignorant ways?

It has taken decades to build the structure of society we now live in, and it will take probably just as long to put into place a new foundation and framework by which we hope to progress in decades to come—without plentiful and inexpensive oil.

What are we going to do, starting now?

Urban transportation systems in particular will be of critical importance as we fashion new ways of growth and development in a Peak Oil world. I hold no illusions that the transitions will be effortless and that we’ll just continue growing and inventing and prospering pretty much as we always have without any bumps in the road. We’re going to have a different future to contend with, and we can either choose to be part of its creation, or be victims of the changes that we’ll have no choice but to accept.

With less oil/gas available in the years to come, we’re all going to be faced with very different and very difficult choices about how we conduct our daily lives. Transportation, as essential as it is to our ways of life—personal, industrial, and political—will continue to play a pivotal role in what we achieve, but it will of necessity take on very different hues when we can no longer afford to fill the gas tanks of our several thousand pound, 140-miles-per-hour-top-speed SUVs and passenger autos (luxury and otherwise) so that we can travel a mile or two into town at fifteen miles per hour in (we hope) less than half an hour (along with thousands of others doing the same and at the same time) to buy two bags of groceries or visit the dentist or pick up our children from school or visit our elderly parents or shop for new household gadgets or drop in on a friend or go to the office or….

We’re simply NOT going to have the energy resources we now have at our disposal. With urban areas carrying the majority of the world’s population now, we’ll have to create different modes of transportation to accomplish all of those necessary elements of daily life mentioned above. With millions still living in more rural settings, or in suburbs individually designed and thus with no broader strategy in mind (and subject to the same energy-deprivations as those living in downtowns all over the country), a comprehensive, creative, and national strategic vision for transportation will be mandatory if we have any hope of meeting the challenges of day-to-day living in a world where oil and gas are simply not available for the countless, mindless all-too-easy and too-often-taken-for-granted chores and trips and errands we all run multiple times per day. Whew!

What are we going to do? Anyone who thinks for even a micro-second that magic technology is going to save the day just in the nick of time and prevent any of us from having to endure even the slightest changes in the ways we live is practicing delusion on a grand scale.

Do we drag ourselves kicking and screaming into the future, or do we begin recognizing what is at stake—what’s involved in doing our best to avoid inconceivable disruptions to our lifestyles—and instead work together to create and seize new opportunities now?

I’m already on record as stating that I absolutely do not want my lovely lifestyle to change at all. I love the luxury vehicles my wife and I drive, I love our forty-five-miles-away-seven-bedroom-ocean-view summer home—the one I can get to in less than an hour any time I want by just hopping into the car and going there, and I love the fact that I can do exactly the same thing when I go and visit my parents at the opposite end of my state. Do I want to have to ride a couple of different bus and/or subway lines near my suburban home in order to get to the train station so that I can take a MUCH longer ride on someone else’s schedule to go to our summer home or to see my parents (and make the same alternative and time-sucking transportation arrangements at the other end) instead of … just driving there on my own? Of course not! But I’m not going to have much choice in the years to come, and I for one know that I’d like to have a say in how our governments and our business leaders and our fellow citizens work together to create new transportation systems so I can (I hope) still do those things with only slightly less convenience.

Slightly less convenience would be a good goal to shoot for.

With much less oil available to us in the years to come yet with the same personal/travel/food/goods/work needs and wants then as we have today, we’re going to have to figure out different ways of dealing with those myriad transportation issues. Fifty thousand dollar SUVs that get forty miles per gallon instead of eighteen really won’t make that much of a difference when all is said and done. The sooner we recognize what we’ll have to change (sacrifice) in order to continue to live prosperous and fulfilling lives with readily available and inexpensive supplies of oil and gas no longer at our disposal, the sooner we provide ourselves with the best opportunities for making those continuing ambitions a reality. Waiting until “then” to do something cannot be the plan.

The federal government will have to lead, but there will also be vital roles played by state and municipal governments in implementing the strategies needed. We will not be able to afford ad hoc experiments. While each locality will have its own unique needs, responding to those transportation needs and concerns will have to be shaped at the “top” so that we minimize the waste and unsuccessful attempts that hundreds if not thousands of individual transportation plans would otherwise occasion. Funding considerations can be adopted with national purposes and goals in mind, so that we avoid the unfortunate and unnecessary competitions that still take place from one congressional district to another.

Goods and citizens will still have to be transported across state lines, from the suburbs to regional hubs, and within urban/metropolitan areas. That won’t change. Given the economic demands, safety requirements, environmental concerns, and yes, climate considerations, a national transportation strategy (high-speed rail and other forms as well) must be what guides our decision-making.

How soon can we start?

I’ll be back next week with something new….