So you hope to preserve technology through madness?

(you did say he had it backwards.... )

__________________
De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum

lol.... i hope to eliminate our madness.

Andrew

__________________
Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

This is an apparently popular idea amongst US thinkers on the topic. Many of them maintain very unreasonable expectations despite the data. The idea that everyone having their own personal cars seems to be a cultural imperative in the USA. This is totally unrealistic and one major reason we are having a huge problem right now.

Actually, alternative energy sources are not sufficient. I've seen some projection numbers on windpower, solar power and geothermal sources. Even with massive investments in these areas, they have the potential to take a few points off the US energy consumption rate. At the present rate of US energy demand growth, these alternatives aren't even likely to dent the rate of growth in energy demand, let alone reduce it to sustainable levels.

Some are speculating that the planetary population will likely drop to about 1-2 billion by the end of this century due to peak oil and global climate change. That population drop is not likely to be pretty...

I think it was Bush sr. who said the american lifestyle is non-negotiable.
The point that really needs to me made here is that we would need to use the current hydrocarbon subsidy in order to have any hope of making any significant use of the alternatives. If we use the current subsidy that millions of years of geologic history has provided only to make a few people fat and rich, instead of using it to develop a more sustainable economy for the future, we will have wasted our only opportunity. Fossil fuels really are a one time bounty.... and we will waste it im afraid. Tiem truly is of the essence here. We really should have started in the 70s when Carter was wearing a nice cardigan to keep warm and making conservation a virture. (as opposed to the current driving force to see who can buy the most stuff)

For people to live off the land that would be about the maximum this earth could support. If getting there was not so horrific i would look forward to that day.

Andrew

__________________
Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

I'm living in the city right now, a big city, eight million people, and I really don't think you need your own car here. If I can't walk (I can to school, thank God) I can hop a cab or a Combi (a suicidal little van-bus) and get wherever I'm going pretty easily. Obviously the solution would be to put in a metro such as the excellent one in DC. I like forward to getting to Buenos Aires where they also have a metro. If you installed a seriously comprehensive public transport system in every city, you could completely eliminate the need to drive every day.

ON THE OTHER HAND: When at home in Ohio I live out in the country. ANYWHERE I go is at least 20 minutes in the car. Unless you want to eliminate rural living people, we're going to need efficient, non-polluting private vehicles.

__________________
"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

lol - we hear about the sacred cow in India - but we have the sacred car.

Personal vehicles and cheap gas were more of an expected US birthright. The cheap gas illusion has disappeared but due to a dismal lack of cultural adaptability, public transportation and infrastructure development, the US gas hog is still in play. That lacking is already applying severe economic pressure on the lower economic tier due to inflation and stagnated wages, which should eventually force them into accepting reality. Oil closed at almost $88/barrel, a 31% increase in one year. Numbers such as those make it difficult for anyone with a functioning brain cell or two in accepting official US government inflation numbers.

It is amusing to see city dwellers (not referring to any specific poster here) telling people we need to get rid of cars.

It's kind of like the "Who killed the electric car" crowd - yes, the EV1 was great for inner city folks in warm climates who took short trips. Utterly useless to someone who has to drive 40 miles to the grocery store. Particularly in the cold.

For those in a city, a personal automobile might be a luxury. For someone in a rural area, it is a vital necessity.

Matt

__________________
De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum

That is essentially one of the largest environmental issues in fact. The zoning laws and the tax subsidies that support sprawling suburbia and 'conurbia' in the USA, which in turn drives the demand for personal vehicles (which is extremely wasteful of our precious energy resources) for traveling the long distances so produced.

Subsidizing rural communities and rural industrial enterprises and then having to suffer the negative outcome of increased oil dependency (in the form of local pollution and political instability due to the Middle East) means that city-dwelling people (who have much lower energy footprints than non-city dwelling people) have a just cause in criticizing the rural energy hogs.

Indeed, who killed the electric car? GM and the oil companies, that's who. The damn things were selling like hotcakes and that freaked the big boys out and made them scared for their short term profits.

Environmental issues are always complex and rarely admit of simple answers. One thing is for sure, the American habit/dream/demand for endless miles of sprawling suburbs is killing the planet (oil depletion and global warming).

I find this interesting.

I'm not accusing you of anything, but it seems to me that Republicans generally like to argue that people are responsible for the consequences of their own decisions do they not?

Indeed, if we apply the standard of the rightwing view on national healthcare, we ought to just say "screw them" to the dumb SOB's who decided they wanted to live in the middle of nowhere, 40 miles from the nearest grocery store. That's their stupidity isn't it? They are responsible for their own decisions. As gas prices go through the roof, they deserve to suffer for their own bad decisions.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

As a rural resident I find it amusing that former city dwellers most often bring their city mentality to the country in the form of massive SUVs, oversize pickup trucks and other suburban trappings, necessity often being interpreted as convenience. A good snow always displays soccer mom long-wheel based SUVs in the ditch due to overconfidence with the drivers dialing cell phones to tow services having six-hour backlogs while front wheel drive economy cars with correct tires zip right past them.

I just voted in a civic election for a 28 year old candidate who ran on a platform of ending urban sprawl and putting more funding into public transport. He won. We need to stop designing cities around the car. Cities should be designed for pedestrians. And more than anything, the blight of urban sprawl really needs to stop. I live in a boom economy and i have never seen so much crappy houses built in such far off places destroying land and life, with no services around, so people have to drive 60-70 KM everyday just to get things done. There are better ways.

Andrew

__________________
Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

Yes, that's the point here.

All of our banking/mortgage/finance rules, building codes, tax codes and municipal bylaws all make it very, very easy to develop another 'chicken-coop suburb' on virgin farmland - and comparatively extremely difficult to build sustainable development that doesn't require cars.

For example, there is a rather large and innovative residential project proposed to be built in downtown Toronto that has been held up for years now because it doesn't provide any parking for the residents. The municipal building code requries one parking space for every 1.5 units (absolute minimum). So far all indications are that this project is going to stay on the shelves for another ten years because of this.

Another good example (from Canada) is that single-unit house construction is GST exempt. Building multiple unit residences for rental are not GST exempt. This is a clear-cut tax subsidy to the building of private single-unit houses (that are comparatively speaking, energy pigs compared with any multiple unit dwelling).

The markets tend to respond to regulatory incentives. Right now, all of our regulatory incentives favor building ever more sprawling suburbs of single-unit residential houses surrounded by nothing. This is insane and has to change.

He swears that the seas will rise 20+ feet in the next decade.

Fact: He just bought a multi-million-dollar beach-front Condo in San Diego.

Laughing all the way to the Nobel prize...with millions of clueless lemmings following right behind.

__________________

I'd like to see the source for the 20' rise in a decade quote. Everything I see give no time frame for the rise, and in fact discusses the possibility, not the inevitability, of the rise.

I bet his condo isn't on the ground floor, though.

__________________
This land was made for you and me
-Woody Guthrie