Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?

An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit, would be different. It would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be open to the sorts of improvements that have been suggested in the expansion of rail and bus transportation in China, Japan, and France, for example, and in India by the information technology services companies. It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of “automotive” freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time, in Asia as in America. The improved public transport would be used for routine travel, such as the “work, school, and medical/dental trips” on which public transit use is already concentrated, according to the National Household Travel Survey.

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A bailout organized around urban and public infrastructure would be inclusive, in that it would provide opportunities for the people who have had the fewest chances in the new economy of the last thirty years, and who have suffered most from the new inequality of income, wealth, and amenities. It would include poor people in “nonmetropolitan” counties, for whom the costs of having no access to public transportation are extraordinarily high; and the rapidly increasing population of the “oldest old,” many of them living in cities that have been built, almost anew, since the 1970s, with little or no public transportation.

The inequality of income has been made worse, over the past generation, by the inequality of urban amenities. African-Americans who use public transit spend more than a third longer waiting for buses and trains than white transit users; they spend the same amount of time traveling, but travel for shorter distances; African-American men between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four spend even more time than white or Hispanic men in cars: 107 minutes a day. These inequalities would be further exacerbated by the increase in the costs of driving that is an unavoidable consequence of policies to reduce carbon emissions. The poorest fifth of Americans spend 31 percent of their income on transport, compared to 21 percent for the second poorest, 17 percent for the third poorest, 15 percent for the fourth poorest, and 10 percent for the richest Americans.

Investment in the infrastructure of a post-auto-industrial society would provide some compensation for the regressive effects of a carbon tax (or of the increase in prices that would result from a “cap and trade” scheme, as industries passed on the costs of compliance to consumers). It would be an investment in the technologies that are used by poor people, including buses, bus stops, and information about the departures of buses and transit vans. The innovations in information technology that could so dramatically improve public or collective transportation could be used first in the centers of cities: buses with free wi-fi, for example, or with free computers; better information about connections between buses and trains; or a program of scheduling journeys in which all patients with hospital or doctors’ appointments could be collected at home, in electric or hybrid vehicles. Public policy would enhance one of the resources in which people who are poor and black are richer than other Americans: the resource of living in densely populated and information-rich cities.

from Tom Whipple’s Peak Oil Review - Feb 2 on the ASPO website:

1. Obama’s stimulus

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan currently making its way through the Congress contains, among much else, the seeds of a multi-billion dollar overhaul of energy. As part of the efforts to sell the bill, President Obama gave a brief speech last week outlining his goals for revamping the supply and use of energy. Starting with the assertion that “America’s dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced”, coupled with the threat - “violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe” - of climate change, it is clear the new President clearly understands the seriousness of our oil problems. Moreover, he seems determined to do something about them after decades of inaction.

Once you understand that “energy independence” is a politically acceptable euphemism for peak oil, the details of the proposals such as doubling the production of alternative energy, 3,000 miles of new transmission lines, fuel efficient cars, and massive weatherization make sense. The primary purpose and justification for the expenditure of $800-900 billion envisioned in the plan is to create jobs quickly, not to prepare for oil depletion. While not optimum to prepare for peak oil (do we really need more new roads and more ethanol from corn?) and slow global warming, the plan is the best we have had in recent times and at the minute seems likely to become law. The major concerns about the plan are the massive cost and its effectiveness in creating jobs. Can borrowing on a multi-trillion scale be accomplished without triggering a period of devastating inflation and will disappearance of jobs be reversed quickly enough? These are the questions for which there are a thousand opinions.

Each of Whipple’s two dozen briefs are interesting, but these few jumped out at me:

On Friday January 16th, the Bush Administration’s Electricity Advisory Committee published a lengthy study in which it said the government needs to make a significant intervention in the power market, it’s completely failed to do so for the past eight years (and longer), and conservation needs to be part of anything we do.

Corporate CEOs predict that business will not pick up for three years and have shifted their focus from growth to survival, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Chinese car manufacturer BYD started selling a plug-in hybrid (F3DM model) last December 15th. BYD claims the car can travel 62 miles on battery power only, and a total of 267 miles using its range-extending internal combustion engine. BYD says they will start sales in the US in 2011, right after GM’s Volt enters the market.