[gego]

As gasoline prices increase, there will be more and more incentive for drivers to find efficient means of getting around, and the car manufacturers who grasp what the demand is, will do their best to provide what people will buy. GM for one obviously thinks (or thought) that SUV's were the thing, and maybe their market research told them that, or they thought they could advertise people into buying whatever they produced.

Now maybe inventory buildup of SUV's is telling them something else. If they are too slow to respond then it will be bankruptcy for them. This is the way freedom works. Transportation buyers are free to choose what them deem best for themselves, whether you personally think others are making a good choice or not, and car manufacturers are free to manufacture what they think is in their own best interest, right or wrong. Economic history is full of great success stories from good decisions and wreckage from bad choices.

Maybe the private choices will not fit your agenda, but then you are not taking the financial risk, nor do you have the right to rule how others spend. The only way we find out what the good choices are is by people taking risk and finding out if their great brainstorm will work out or not. Countries like the USSR, where choices were made for consumers and manufacturers by government had a history of low productivity, polution, waste and failure of people to get what they wanted and needed. Your grand scheme will have the same result and only enlarge the problem we face from depletion of resources in a world with a very large population.

If there is a solution that will solve the problem of 6.5 billion people living on a declining resource base, that soultion will come from individual inventiveness, not from government intervention, government planning, or government programs which are notorious for waste and failure.

The thread sounds to me like someone a little more desperate for someone to bail him out rather than someone who solidly believes his previously expressed cornucopian views. If there will always be enough for and ever increasing population, they why not just let nature take its course.

[Windmills]

In a way, I'm glad that you've been lurking here for a while. You might have had the opportunity to realize there are a great many intelligent people here and that not every post is met with pitchforks and torches.

You've gotten a brutal reception so far without a great deal of substance in the rebuttals of your plan. I think the reason for the harsh responses is that the suggestions that you make are not original, and this site has exhaustively debated just about every option anyone can imagine, certainly including yours.

I would politely suggest that you spend a little more time lurking and reading some of the old threads. There are search functions you can use for both articles and posts that will allow you to catch up on past discussions. Many people here are well read on this subject, so you might do better to speak less and listen more. And if you do post, it may be more beneficial for you to ask more questions and make fewer assertions.

I hope this is helpful. Welcome to the site.


P.S.

I wonder what all these electric cars are going to travel on once the price of asphalt begins to degrade the transportation infrastructure. The car of the future seems like it might be...not a car.

[KhanCEO]

Peak oil may not be so hard to solve after all.

1. Offer a giant tax incentive to the first car company to improve its fleet's MPG to a 100 mpg average. Offer considerable incentives to every other manufacturer who achieves the same feat.

2. Research and develop electric cars - their implications as to power grids, their costs, their benefits, and how they can be brought to market.

3. Sell these cars to citizens, shipping and delivery companies, offering simple, easy-to-understand payment plans for people who cannot yet afford them.

And peak oil is nullified. I have a feeling the electric car (or any other car that uses an oil-substitue) will be brought to market sometime before we start eating each other because gas is too pricey.

My God! You just totally DESTORYED this site and all the doomers in agony. You are indeed the man of men, WE NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT.

[dub_scratch]

If there is a solution that will solve the problem of 6.5 billion people living on a declining resource base

Yes, but it is realy only about 1.5 billion people who are the ones depleting those resources the most. I recon everybody on this board are members to that global tribe of resource suckers.

But the primary offenders of resource exhaustion are those living the American style car dependant lifestyle.

So in reality, a much smaller population of the 6.5 billion are the ones living on the biggest portion of that shrinking resource base.

that soultion will come from individual inventiveness, not from government intervention, government planning, or government programs which are notorious for waste and failure.

Thanks gego.

When I-- as a PO mitigation optimist-- hear these asinine ideas that are directed toward preserving inherently wasteful motoring, and I begin to tilt toward the doomer future outlook. The worst thing we can do is to get government involved in mitigating this transition, under the current prevailing cultural mindset.

Mitigation measures, such as those modeled for the Hirsch report, would waste huge amounts of scarce resources and public funds. And it all would be for pork and the preservation of American motoring, along with assets dependent on motoring.

Left alone, individuals will be able to make do with less car transportation just fine. And by not having a forced redirection of funds toward replacing the auto fleet would mean that those resources can be directed toward other investments-- such as renewable energy systems, better insulation and reworked urban/building stock.

[chakra]

You people are way too harsh. Sure, incentives like the one the original poster describe aren't going to solve all our problems, but since we are producing wasteful vehicles right now anyhow, why not produce more efficient vehicles? Do you honestly believe that wasteful production of current vehicles is going to magically stop anyhow?

The steps you describe might not save us completely, but in the very least it would buy us another 10 years at least. At least those extra 10 years can give us a better chance to slowly adapt to our new conditions.

Even if all new vehicles purchased got 100 mpg starting in a few years, within 10 years it could reduce fuel consumption by many millions of barrels a day. Not only that, these produced vehicles would also be purchased in all the other economies too, saving additional millions of barrels a day. At least perhaps we could reduce our consumption at the rate of decline and ride this boat for more time.

[Elan_Rasa]

Certainly oil is used in numerous ways and is vital to our "modern way of life" (electricity, plastics, pharmaceuticals, etc etc etc). However, where is most of the oil Wasted/Used? I don't have the exact reference, but I've read that approximately 75-90% of oil is used for transportation purposes. It seems to me then, that an efficient transportation system should be the primary target (rairoads for mass transit and for shipping; electric cars and biking for most individuals).

[SoothSayer]

Ok, we decide that we need electric cars.

Lets' also assume that we have the energy and material resources and skills and factories and electricity grid and electricity supply to build and run 200 million or more new cars using lots of copper and electronics and large batteries.

(Don't forget the facilities to crush all the unwanted old cars)

At what point does the TV news flash come on to announce this major change to our society?

Who will explain to the MILLIONS involved in the car industries that they are jobless ... or at the very minimum will have to retrain?

How will we avoid panicking the population ... they will (correctly) assume that the world has a serious energy problem.

We COULD do this migration over say 30 years, citing eco-worries as the reason .... but over say 15 years or less? No way.

Can anyone here REALLY imagine living in an electric car world in say 10-15 years time? I can't.

The migration may indeed happen ... but there will be a lot of social & economic pain in between.

[NeoPeasant]

Ok ok it was funny up until the bong part in an attempt to insinuate that pot smokers are stupid and I will not stand for that!

Winner of the first Celebrity Jeopardy tournament - Cheech Marin

[EnergyUnlimited]

If one talk about electric cars (which at least in theory could replace current version), he should ask from where necessary electricity will come.

It appears to be complete crap, that it will come from cheap overnight electricity, we have now.

I believe, that 10 years or so after PO we will face Peak Natural Gas as well (it may even come faster, if Russians turn off the tap to keep rest of gas for themself).

We rely badly on gas to produce electricity now.
This will have to be replaced (and extra capacity added to charge batteries of those few hundreds of millions cars, we will have on Earth if current version is replaced somehow).

I believe that within a decade or so from now virtually ALL new generating capacity will go to replace redundant gas generators, not mentioning redundand nukes (also in need of replacement) etc.

How possibly this extra electricity will be generated?
Any ideas?

Even if electric cars *will* successfully manage on the market, I can see total world motoring amounting to not more than 10-20% of current level.
Two cars family will be gone for sure, but even single car may turn to be privilidge of the rich.

[dinopello]

This was a decent thread until specop took off with the bong!

[Aaron]

I was thinking this morning, that America & the West, are like the fingernails of a person.

It's all a matter of perspective...

From the point of view of your fingernails, the best possible outcome is death. Only in death do the fingernails get the full resources available for growth. The rest of the body can protest, saying that without them, the fingernails too will perish.

But the fingernails know nothing about that.

They only know growth.

The hydrocarbon revolution was a great boon for the wealthy...

For almost everyone else, it's been a nightmare.

Same with all our supposed "innovations". Sure they are great... for the benefactors. But for the vast majority, our hydrocarbon wealth has not delivered the promised-land. Instead it has fostered the greatest poor/rich gap in human history.

Modern Petro-Agriculture has not decreased hunger... more starve than ever before.

Modern medicine has not decreased disease... more perish from treatable illness than ever.

Name any modern innovation, and you will quickly see the terrible impact it's had on humanity. Not because the innovation is bad itself, but because of the way we administer them.

Electric cars & resource wars...

I have met the enemy... & it's me.

[peripato]

Peak oil may not be so hard to solve after all.

1. Offer a giant tax incentive to the first car company to improve its fleet's MPG to a 100 mpg average. Offer considerable incentives to every other manufacturer who achieves the same feat.

Your scheme intrigues me, simple and enticing. Realistically though what would this feat as you call it do to the price of oil? Make it go up, or make it go down? Well I'm guessing that it would send the price down. What would this drop in price do to the way it is consumed? Well if the price of oil is way cheaper this would encourage even greater consumption because more people could afford it, wouldn't you say? Not just in the US but worldwide. Surely the manufacturer of such a product would want to export it, or they'd lose their edge. Make hay while the sun shines as they say. And what would a fall in price do to viability of many unconventional oil projects? With prices low many would be expected to fold. How much production which is presently unconventional in nature, and has come on-stream over the past few years only because of high oil prices would dissapear from annual volumes as a result?

2. Research and develop electric cars - their implications as to power grids, their costs, their benefits, and how they can be brought to market.

Honestly, how much more research into electric cars would it take? They're not exactly a new discovery now are they? And over what timeframe - now be honest - would we expect the grand audit of all this infrastructure to be handed down? Once that's happened when could we expect to see the transition start to occur? How long would it take to retire the exisitng fleet and the entire petroleum-driven infrastrustructure? Who would raise the capital? The existing tax base, cash-strapped homeowners in the mortgage belt? Perhaps company tax rates could be increased to make up the shortfall? You know the Fortune 500 could make it their patriotic duty to contribute to this grand project. Seems reasonable to me, as reasonabe as your scheme, the country is at war after all.

3. Sell these cars to citizens, shipping and delivery companies, offering simple, easy-to-understand payment plans for people who cannot yet afford them.

I think the car you have in mind might have to resemble a VW from the Nazi era to make them so affordable that even those who don't have medical insurance, or a living wage - you know the working poor, the people who actually do things that make the country run, could get behind the wheel of one.

And peak oil is nullified. I have a feeling the electric car (or any other car that uses an oil-substitue) will be brought to market sometime before we start eating each other because gas is too pricey.

You talking about the market mechanism signalling it's time to switch to alternatives, arent you? But you're not familiar with the lag effects involved. Is that right? I have an alternative feeling about the price signal. Once oil is not too far past its peak we will have to "eat our cars" in order to simply eat instead. The price signal will come at exactly the point when the oil necessary to drive the petroleum-reliant infrastructure your scheme would rely upon to implement itself will became both scarcer, and more volatile in price. The market will not invest heavily in something that won't have an immediate pay-off, so they will delay and delay. Otherwise shareholders will get angry! So what will happen to your grand transformation when the economy necessary to support it is affected by the price shocks emanating from a permanently contracting supply?

[Elan_Rasa]

[quote="EnergyUnlimited"]If one talk about electric cars (which at least in theory could replace current version), he should ask from where necessary electricity will come.

It appears to be complete crap, that it will come from cheap overnight electricity, we have now.

When I first learned about PO (back in Dec/Jan) I immediately panicked and it was partly b/c I started with Kunstler's book. Though the book is informative, it certainly can create feelings of panic and hopelessness. The reason for this (in my opinion) is that if someone takes a look at how oil is entirely integrated into every facet of our lives (we live, eat, and drink oil) then the problem becomes overwhelming b/c we can't possibly find an alternative to everything that oil provides.

Going back to electricity. Even though electricity is largely generated by fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal), it does not have to stay that way. This system was created b/c of all the cheap fossil fuel we had. Alternatives need to be found (nuclear?).

If we get bogged down and say that oil is an essential and irreplaceable part of everything, then the situation is truly hopeless. However, if we realize that oil is primarily concentrated in certain areas, then we can take action to mitigate it's effects. In my opinion, transportation is the key. I don't propose that we have 200 million electric cars in the US alone. But what if, we had a fraction of those running on electric engines and we made smarter decisions about the rest -- most of it is truly wasted on trucking/transportation of goods in an truly inefficient manner (travelling 2hrs per day to get to work, etc).

Will there be problems even if we change our transportation infrastructure. Of course, but it will give us time and hopefully the ability to find better uses for the remaining oil and other fossil fuels.

[dub_scratch]

The steps you describe might not save us completely, but in the very least it would buy us another 10 years at least.

I see. The idea is to have 10 years more of mass motoring. Sure we'll have an energy crash after the end of that period-- and sure we really don't need cars-- but the continued mis-investment in car dependent America will be fun-- more traffic jams at the expense of the future.

Even if all new vehicles purchased got 100 mpg starting in a few years, within 10 years it could reduce fuel consumption by many millions of barrels a day.

Machine energy efficiency and systemic energy efficiency are not the same and one doesn't necessarily promote the other.

We can flood the landscape with a mega-fleet of high MPG cars and the public will simply drive more the they would have otherwise, consuming all the efficiency while investing in more auto infrastructure and sprawl. This is the perfect case for Jevon's paradox where energy efficiency prevents systemic efficiency.

Or we can keep the existing fleet and dramatically reduce the amount of driving. Perhaps instead of having an average of one person per vehicle we can have 3. And perhaps instead of the average commuter traveling 15 miles one way to work the average can go to 7 miles. Under these conditions the adoption of high MPG cars would be slow or nonexistent but the energy efficiency in the system would improve greatly.

Not only that, these produced vehicles would also be purchased in all the other economies too, saving additional millions of barrels a day.

More confusion about efficiency and energy consumptive patterns. If there were the building of hundreds of million high MPG cars for the use of people around the world, then there would more oil consumed in transport

At least perhaps we could reduce our consumption at the rate of decline and ride this boat for more time.

One more blow of top for the auto species will definitely take society down with them.

[foodnotlawns]

You want to buy some time from Peak Oil? A stroke of the legislative pen, and a signature from the President will do it. Here's how:

Delegate a lane of the highways for bicycles, and impose strong enforcement of cars to yield to bicycles. Impose a 1 dollar gas tax, and use it to subsidize the sale of recumbent bicycles. It wouldn't be popular, but it would massively bring down gasoline use.

Recumbent bicycles are much more comfortable and efficient, and make longer commutes more possible. You can get on a recumbent and go 50 miles without thinking about it. The main thing is that you don't have a sore butt after an hour of pedaling, like you do with a conventional.

One of the main companies makes a recumbent now, I think it's Huffy or something, and they back it up. A lot of the boutique recumbents had a lot of problems. I have a Vision and it broke every time I took it out. but they are expensive. I know there's good bents out there, but they'll set you back about 2 grand. Of course a car will set you back a lot more.

And hell, a lot of us would tolerate the sore butt and the possible impotence for the money saving and weight loss of pedaling to work and back on a conventional bicycle. I know I would.

[BurnCalories]

Recumbent bicycles are much more comfortable and efficient, and make longer commutes more possible. You can get on a recumbent and go 50 miles without thinking about it. The main thing is that you don't have a sore butt after an hour of pedaling, like you do with a conventional.

One of the main companies makes a recumbent now, I think it's Huffy or something, and they back it up. A lot of the boutique recumbents had a lot of problems. I have a Vision and it broke every time I took it out. but they are expensive. I know there's good bents out there, but they'll set you back about 2 grand. Of course a car will set you back a lot more.
.

[sup]

These are cheaper and maybe even more practical than recumbents

http://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/030.00 ... ?range=279

[rogerhb]

If we get bogged down and say that oil is an essential and irreplaceable part of everything, then the situation is truly hopeless.

Now you're getting it.

Don't forget to add that "The American way of life is non-negotiable".