dohboi and TonyPrep gave the most interesting objection to this idea. My rebuttal of their objection is given at the end.
dohboi wrote:But as MQ and others remind us if you save money by biking, you are going to spend it on something else that will require burning of oil. On average every dollar spent involves the burning of about a quart of oil somewhere along the line.
TonyPrep wrote:Indeed, thus negating the conservation.JohnDenver wrote:Conservation saves money and that money can be spent elsewhere. For example, the average commute in the US is 16 miles long. Now suppose Joe with a 16 mile commute stops driving and rides a bike instead. It's slightly more inconvenient, but hardly impossible or the end of the world.
Joe used to drive an SUV with 12mpg fuel efficiency, so at $3 gas he was spending $80 a month. Thus he now has $80 more money, per month, than he used to have. And that money can and will be spent on other things.
This is an interesting objection, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. In a period of declining oil availability it is impossible to negate conservation by spending the money saved.
To see why this is so, let's assume that oil has peaked and is declining. Oil prices are going through the roof. So the entire US population switches to bicycles. (Of course I'm not suggesting that as a real scenario. Just using an extreme to illustrate the point.)
This saves a huge amount of oil (roughly 8mbd), and as a consequence, puts a vast sum of money (about $2 billion/day at $150/barrel oil) into the pockets of the bicycling population. That is, all the vast sums which the population previously spent on gasoline, and which mainly went out of the country, are now in the pockets of the population, ready for spending in the domestic economy.
Now, the claim of dohboi and Tony above is that, when this money is spent, it will result in an expenditure of oil equal to the amount which was saved by bicycling. But that's clearly impossible because we're assuming here that oil has peaked and oil availability is falling. In other words, if every act of saving oil results in an equal expenditure of oil (when the saved money is spent), then it is impossible for oil consumption to decline. But that's clearly absurd. Oil consumption has declined many times, for the world as a whole, and for individual countries. And we know for a fact that it will decline in the post-peak period. Therefore, there is something wrong with dohboi and Tony's argument.
My argument demonstrates two indisputable points about the post-peak period where oil availability is declining:
1) Conservation of oil will save money, and thus put money in people's pockets. That money will necessarily be spent or invested/saved, stimulating the economy.
2) Spending the saved money will NOT maintain or increase oil consumption, because it can't. Oil consumption is dropping due to peak oil.