Getting Around
While Tom Whipple tries to predict the future of personal transportation:
The very nature of the car will likely evolve to a smaller more utilitarian device to compensate for declining incomes and high gas prices. Consumer perceptions about what constitutes a desirable car that grew up in last 50 years will no longer matter. Various forms of government intervention into the automobile and oil industries - ranging from tax policies to ownership — will have a major influence in the evolution of cars during the coming decades. In Europe, 30 years of high liquid fuel taxes have resulted in a civilization that uses about half the oil per capita that we use in America. There are already calls in the U.S. for much higher, possibly varying, gasoline taxes to stem roller coaster gasoline prices.
… Richard Heinberg wonders if we will have anywhere to go:
Everything we thought we knew about the economy is suddenly wrong. Regarding China, we are accustomed to hearing of a new power plant being constructed each week, of energy consumption growing at a rate of 10 percent per year or more, of hordes of farmers from the western provinces rushing to the coastal cities to get manufacturing jobs so they can buy refrigerators and cars. The current reality: Chinese factories are now closing by the thousands, workers are rioting and leaving the coastal cities to return to their farms, energy consumption is actually declining.
In the US, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are falling dramatically for the first time since records have been kept. During past recessions or gas price spikes, people bought smaller cars or drove slower; now they’re just not driving. Explanation? The use of public transit is up, but so is unemployment: people without jobs don’t commute to work. And deliveries of raw materials and finished goods are way down, so trucks are driving less, too. Gasoline and diesel consumption is down. Nobody’s buying cars—large OR small—and as a result GM, Ford, and Chrysler are on deathwatch (even the Japanese automakers are reeling). Retail businesses are closing so fast that it’s tough to keep track of who’s still open and who isn’t.
I suspect that once authorities bow to necessity, we’ll see the same variety of cheap and casual transportation we see in the third world.
Some idiot put out a commercial (i think for ins) telling us that most car accidents occur within ten miles of one's home. Maybe that is because most of our cars are within ten miles of our home or actually home at any given time.
I do not know why I had to add that.
Good feeds. How do we get around? Why do we need a car to go one mile to the corner store? When your co-worker lives four blocks from you, why not ride in one car? Save on gas and parking fees?
We need change. Transformational change in our technology, in our habits, in our brains.
Great Asian Pic, buy the way.
January 8, 2009 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, just when the last Yugo rolled off the line in Europe this past fall...
Here's an article I read a few days ago concerning the VMT.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090103/ap_on_re_us/mileage_tax_10
Tax revenues are down and the road taxes are what fills in the potholes.
There was a time when we were a four car family. We're down to one small pick up, basic transportation, to and from work, one trip to the grocery store about every 10 days. I do not miss the big Buick, the mid-size SUV, or the sporty thing we had. I don't miss the 18,000 miles a year we put on each one either. If I lived in a city I would definitely use the public transit system. But, it's a 42 mile round trip to the nearest grocery store for me and I don't think I'd make it there and back with a bike in one day.
Although, I wouldn't mind being toted around in one of those rickshaw things. That almost looks like fun. Not for the puller guy. For the rider guy.
January 8, 2009 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
One size does not fit all. And 21 miles is a long way to get groceries.
January 8, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
We don't have any "authorities" re cars, anymore. Not sure what standards are enforced, with the stump of CAFE being skewed by calling an E85 SUV high-mileage since it can run on 15% gasoline.
My current lament about the selfishness of city drivers using purported off-road imitation trucks is that they, along with glitzy cruisers like BMWs, have headlights that are both viciously bright and aimed high. Why has the aiming standard drifted toward "fuck your eyes, I need to light up a football field for my personal safety"?
When my ceiling is lit up by the car ten lengths back, those lights are wasting energy lighting up emptiness (until I move into that area). I feel it is simply more of the "to hell with others, I'm getting mine" tone brought to us by Reagan and "There is no society" Thatcher conservatives.
January 9, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are still such things as chauffeur licenses and inspection stickers, which preclude the jitneys and rattletrap cars you find elsewhere.
January 9, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think those bright headlights might be the LED version that are available on the elite cars. Pure frippery as far as I can tell and I hate 'em for the same reasons you do.
http://hubpages.com/hub/LED-Headlights
January 9, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom:
I agree with your irritation -- you articulated something I have grumbled about privately for a while. However, when you write:
I think you miss the point. Reagan is dead, Thatcher is long gone.
Remind me how long it took the Germans to get over Hitler, or the Japanese over Tojo?
We are a piggy nation because we are a piggy nation and blaming it on our leaders from several decades ago only shifts the burden. As you saw from the discussion just a few days ago, there are even people left-of-center really don't want to deal with sacrifice that can affect them personally. That's the real issue here. When are people going to wise up that it is no longer about abstractions?
January 9, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Reagan is dead why does nearly half the country still talk about him? For that matter, we talk about FDR.
I blame the concept that the conservatives sold the more gullible among us on, that wealth is virtue, regardless of the way it is acquired, and that consumption is our right, regardless of who it deprives. It exploits the commons to the benefit of the first come, and says to the late ones, "sorry, but you're a chump."
So do not paint us all with that brush, since the mandate that Reagan and allies drew on was only a few percent of the popular vote. It may help you to feel superior, but you're not the only one that feels this way.
We have not all been piggy, and many of us never will be.
January 9, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can't have it both ways, Tom:
First you say don't paint with a broad brush but you also made the comment that a "tone was brought to us" by Reagan.
Well, if most people were tone deaf, there wouldn't be an issue.
As far as "wealth is virtue no matter how gotten" -- hell, that's been with us since we began pushing the indigenous peoples farther back to gain from the natural resources the country had to offer.
You can continue to blame gluttony on Reagan if you wish but you sound about as convincing as Rush Limbaugh blaming our loose sexual mores on Clinton.
While we may not be all piggy -- and I never said we *all* were, the state of the country is presented by the average. Regardless of political persuasion. NASCAR is tremendously popular, for example, and a total waste of a finite resource. Try explaining that at your local pub, however. We are piggy and have a sense of entitlement in this country that most other countries find astounding. Again, the debate yesterday about population limitations is exhibit "A".
Don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. But, just as I live within my financial means, the country, as a whole could do the same. Unfortunately, we live in a country where the savings rate and debt rate are well known and irresponsible.
January 9, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
No argument about savings rate and living within our means.
But it's not identical to say Reagan supporters all felt that way, and that America as a whole is piggy. I'm not having things both ways, as we can certainly say that people who agree with a proposition all agree with a proposition, eh? And while there was a previous era of greed, or two, the most recent version dates from Reagan/Thatcher.
Gluttony is a constant in history, but its standing is variable. In the Gilded Age of the late 1800s everyone had a scheme, depending on legislation in Congress, in the 20s everyone had an oil lease, maybe also including Congress, so yes greed ain't new.
Bush is even more recent, but his bunch always references Reagan, so I'll do the same.
January 11, 2009 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink