High Gas Prices Direct Assault on American Commuter-Consumer Lifestyle
Building the Green Economy, Quipu Economic Forum, Zero-combustion paradigm :: Comments (7)
7 August 2008 :: by J.E. Robertson
As gasoline prices were escalating seemingly without hope of stalling or coming down, due to all-time record oil prices, and in the context of a severely weakened consumer economy, we found ourselves confronted with a major challenge to the basic assumptions of the dynamics of our economy. We have seen, in just one year, our entire political landscape change to privilege not only energy, but renewable energy and transport efficiency as key national strategic goals.
Facing the probability that our economic lifestyle as we have built and lived it, is no longer sustainable, we are now forced to make serious choices about how to sustain the key elements of our national culture and character, without succumbing to the downward spiral of economic trends, fuel pricing, and failing consumer credit, if we try to sustain our lifestyle without the key infrastructure changes needed to enable this.
Daimler-Chrysler has announced it intends to eliminate petroleum-based fuel from its entire fleet of new cars by the year 2015, as it has now perceived the value-added efficiency gains to be achieved by applying cutting edge technologies to its new models. Toyota plans for all of its vehicles to run on hybrid technology, and Ford has announced it will transition multiple plants from manufacturing gas-guzzling SUVs to making Euro-market compact cars for the US market.
The US presidential candidates both intend to push for flex-fuel vehicles as an industry standard, as well as hybrid technology, high-efficiency electric-car batteries, and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions, all of which will contribute to a dramatic restructuring of the details of our energy and transport economy. Having won a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, in relation to his work on raising awareness of the global climate-stability crisis, Al Gore has announced a strategy that would generate all US energy needs from clean resources within 10 years.
Voters not only tell pollsters the economy is “Issue # 1″, but specify high energy prices as their top concern and an issue of major national importance going forward. In this environment, sweeping changes to our energy economy are not only possible, moreso than at any time in recent memory, but necessary and ongoing. There are plans to use wind-energy and solar-power technologies to turn the United States into the “Saudi Arabia of clean energy”, potentially providing enough energy to permit expanded exportation of not only carbon-based fuels but of real-time clean energy as well.
All-told, the American economy as we know it depends on a world-leading high rate of regular individual driving, transcontinental trucking routes, and air links making the speed of trade and distribution between major US regions and cities as time-efficient as possible. It also depends on the cost-effectiveness of paying for low-cost China-based manufacture-plus-shipping. A currency crisis, a credit crisis, a job-loss crisis, a fuel-cost crisis, a series of bank failures and dramatic home-equity declines, are converging to make that system less cost-effective, and less conducive to long-term economic growth.
Without meaning there would be wisdom in economic isolationism, this crisis climate is driving a new spirit of economic self-reliance, which could be the cultural basis for a move to more regionally-produced foods, a potential agricultural resurgence, and a transport economy based more on overall sustainability and efficiency than on the petroleum-fueled standards of the 20th century. If we do things right, this will not mean a drop-off in industrial production or in the ability of individuals to master their own transport freedom via the automobile.
Good grief! Paradigm shift, a revolution is brewing.
The ‘modern’ post WWII suburban/consumer ‘lifestyle’ is destructive and pointless. “Without meaning there would be wisdom in economic isolationism,”
The key words are ‘without meaning’. The pointless and senseless churning for no end other than to expend credit and thereby enrich the priveileged has finally played itself out. Forget about fixing it. Time to move on.
People live to be happy. It’s part of the Declaration of Independence; ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. There is nothing spoken or written about consumer products, and the attendant waste.
The American Way; a path leading to bankruptcy. What a legacy to leave to our children.
The real paradigm shift is the Peak Oil catastrophe:
According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, global oil production is now declining, from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from “outside,” and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH, but moved to a safer place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area, good climate with much rain and good soil?
[...] High Gas Prices Direct Assault on American Commuter-Consumer Lifestyle Facing the probability that our economic lifestyle as we have built and lived it, is no longer sustainable, we are now forced to make serious choices about how to sustain the key elements of our national culture and character, without succumbing to the downward spiral of economic trends, fuel pricing, and failing consumer credit, if we try to sustain our lifestyle without the key infrastructure changes needed to enable this. [...]
The Energy trade will be back. Oil and the US dollar are having a temporary respite and as discussed recently ( http://www.savingtoinvest.com/2008/08/oils-temporary-respite.html ), the overriding factors for high oil will return. Long term trends and Asian demand will make the energy play good for the long term. China’s oil demand growth rate continues at its current pace of 6% to 7% per year, China will use 20 million barrels a day by 2020 – about the same as what the U.S. uses today. And by 2030, China would be up to 40 million barrels per day – twice what America uses now.
Now is a good time to get into some energy stocks and funds.
Joseph Eugene’s article conveniently ignores the underlying issue of the myriad problems facing human civilization. And this issue is the DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH of the world population and the global economy on Earth, a planetary System of finite space and finite resources. Behold the collapsing fisheries in the oceans. See the every increasing scarcity of fresh water and soil for growing crops. Climate change? Imagine the Greenland ice cap melting into the seas withing the next 10-20 years. Manhattan will be under water if that happens. The DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH in a finite system is not progress. It is CANCER!
The exorbitant price of fuel has driven up the price of everything from the increased production and shipping costs. I have yet to hear more than a sugar coated one liner from either candidates as to their plans to bring Americans relief. Does either candidate even have a plan other than to support new off shore drilling. It is easy to say we need to decrease our dependence of foreign oil and seek out alternative fuel sources, but where’s the beef…where’s the plan?
a site to share if you should be interested…
http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com
http://www.howmuchenergydoesmycaruse.com
I think the rise in business electricity prices is having a terrible effect on all sorts of company’s “along with the credit crunch” although there is still some good deals out there someone somewhere has to do something.