Thanks for pushing my button on oil!
Few cities are designed for walking, bicycling, and other physically active means of getting around and those that are pretty good happened by accident. I can't think of one that is good.
We walk all over the place. It's enjoyable. We have lots of parks, reserves, quiet streets and can cover a lot of ground on foot without getting noise and hassle of traffic. But bicycling is not possible on those paths.
Segways are under production and while riding them is not much exercise, at least the rider is standing! Segways don't take up much room.
Cities designed for people instead of just cars would be great to live in. Riding a bicycle around Beijing recently was great! Big bicycle lanes everywhere and a flat city making it easy. The filthy air was bad though.
On oil, there's so much in one form or another that it's not going to run out or get too expensive for a few decades. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia have got vast reserves. There is a lot of gas too. Then there's the Orinoco basin with vast quantities of heavy crude [for which BP developed a water suspension process for extraction, delivery and combustion]. There's heavy crude in Canada, also in huge amounts. Then there's coal. Then there's noocular energy. There is no shortage of energy, even if we ignore wind, photovoltaics, plant growth and other unlimited energy sources.
So, car fuel becomes just a question of cost. I guess that at double the current price, there would be effectively unlimited energy for vehicles. As vehicle efficiency improves, the cost of fuel becomes trivial. Hence the huge shift to SUVs. The capital cost and fuel cost are low enough that sales are huge.
I think before fuel shortages or costs become an issue, there will be a quality of life shift to walking, Segways, bicycling, electronically controlled individual transport along the lines of linear motor propelled, superconductor supported vehicles and bigger multipassenger units for inter city travel which would travel at 1000 kilometres an hour through tubes [okay, I might be getting a bit carried away there, but we won't just go on burning petrol and diesel in the same old way].
There will also be a population bust in the second half of the 21st century as women [and men] continue to choose not to breed in the good old Malthusian Club of Rome way. If we are unlucky, it might even be next year via chicken flu. The whole culture of having children is fizzling out around the world. As children grow up without children around, the whole concept will seem alien, weird and frightening, not to mention expensive.
I don't think we'll have an oil supply crisis, other than the usual glitches when war in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq or Venenzuela interrupts major production fields.
I'm with Sheik Yamani who said that the stone age didn't end for want of stones and the oil age won't end for lack of oil.
People are very inventive and major paradigm shift happens. Especially so when there's a buck to be made and there's a buck to fund the creativity. Cyberspace is going to have a huge impact, for example. It already is in ways which are important, such as outsourcing, Ebay, investing, banking and in any way we want information of any type.
Mqurice
PS: I'll read Mike Ruppert's rant now and see if I have anything to add. |
