We already have a national power grid which gets us much of the way to abstracting energy sources away, but there's still a lot left. The biggest "built-in" oil costs are in transportation/motility whether that's automobiles, tractors, or what. The obvious solution would be to make them battery powered, but there are problems with that. The biggest problem is that it's difficult to get batteries to the necessary specifications (size, weight, capacitance, discharge rate, recharge rate,...), though there are other problems about the costs of creating/replacing them.
The important thing to change here is making farming equipment able to run without oil, for which some sort of wiring (as per electric trains, either in tracks or overhead) could be employed. The second big step (and another reason politicians shy from the topic) is to get everyone out of their damn SUVs. Can you fathom how much more it costs to haul around an extra ton or two of steel on your daily commute (which is quite long thanks to people's unfathomable love of suburbia), even just comparing it to a compact car?
And while we're getting rid of the SUVs we should get rid of all the other cars too. Move all city personal transportation infrastructure into public transit (whether bus, train, or whatever). Cargo transportation will need some other mechanism, though it could probably use the same tracks/wires/etc. Increase urban density to reduce the suburbs to reduce the areas of necessary coverage. Have another system of low energy transportation between cities (i.e. trains not trucks or planes). Some sort of individual personal transport will still be necessary for things like heading out of the city, though this should be done in a system like car rentals of flexcar rather than allowing personal ownership.
In short, to get rid of the built-in oil usage we need to get rid of the car culture, which will be a prodigious task though in some small places we seem to be making progress. And, given how ingrained the car culture is in the US, that means some major overhauling of all cities' layout. Basically suburbia has to go (another American treasure) and all cities need to be built up, as in vertically. If we manage to get rid of the cars we could narrow a lot of the streets and reclaim some density that way. Taking a look at Japanese cities like Tokyo will give a good idea of where to aim for.
But unless/until we're willing to massively reduce human population to a sustainable level there's only so high you can build cities. In which case, provided the technology and the energy, the way to go is building arcologies. Which, I hear there was one underway near Shanghai a few years back; I wonder if that's still in progress? In other countries that aren't so tied to the notion of the car and the suburban house things'll be easier, but the goal is the same.
But I think the biggest reason politicians don't discuss this is because we don't force them to. People look at the "oil crisis" and think that means we just need to find a new hole to dig in, they don't look at it and ask how their lifestyle consumes energy and how that's got to come from somewhere. So when we ask how the politicians are going to deal with energy, we ask them how they're going to guarantee the oil supply, not how they're going to help control energy expenditure. Genius stroke or no, now that the idea's been brought up the only thing is to go in and ask them, make them give us answers to the new question.
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chiming
part II
Date: 2006-02-18 11:07 am (UTC)From:The important thing to change here is making farming equipment able to run without oil, for which some sort of wiring (as per electric trains, either in tracks or overhead) could be employed. The second big step (and another reason politicians shy from the topic) is to get everyone out of their damn SUVs. Can you fathom how much more it costs to haul around an extra ton or two of steel on your daily commute (which is quite long thanks to people's unfathomable love of suburbia), even just comparing it to a compact car?
And while we're getting rid of the SUVs we should get rid of all the other cars too. Move all city personal transportation infrastructure into public transit (whether bus, train, or whatever). Cargo transportation will need some other mechanism, though it could probably use the same tracks/wires/etc. Increase urban density to reduce the suburbs to reduce the areas of necessary coverage. Have another system of low energy transportation between cities (i.e. trains not trucks or planes). Some sort of individual personal transport will still be necessary for things like heading out of the city, though this should be done in a system like car rentals of flexcar rather than allowing personal ownership.
In short, to get rid of the built-in oil usage we need to get rid of the car culture, which will be a prodigious task though in some small places we seem to be making progress. And, given how ingrained the car culture is in the US, that means some major overhauling of all cities' layout. Basically suburbia has to go (another American treasure) and all cities need to be built up, as in vertically. If we manage to get rid of the cars we could narrow a lot of the streets and reclaim some density that way. Taking a look at Japanese cities like Tokyo will give a good idea of where to aim for.
But unless/until we're willing to massively reduce human population to a sustainable level there's only so high you can build cities. In which case, provided the technology and the energy, the way to go is building arcologies. Which, I hear there was one underway near Shanghai a few years back; I wonder if that's still in progress? In other countries that aren't so tied to the notion of the car and the suburban house things'll be easier, but the goal is the same.
But I think the biggest reason politicians don't discuss this is because we don't force them to. People look at the "oil crisis" and think that means we just need to find a new hole to dig in, they don't look at it and ask how their lifestyle consumes energy and how that's got to come from somewhere. So when we ask how the politicians are going to deal with energy, we ask them how they're going to guarantee the oil supply, not how they're going to help control energy expenditure. Genius stroke or no, now that the idea's been brought up the only thing is to go in and ask them, make them give us answers to the new question.