The Dallas Morning News profiled some drivers in this morning's paper.
One driver, a suburban mother of two, said that you could have the keys to her SUV when you pried them out of her cold dead fingers.
On a somewhat more positive note, another driver, who had been making a 50 mile roundtrip per day to and from EDS in Plano (a suburb of Dallas), moved to the Shops at Legacy, a New Urbanism project, right across the street from EDS. He now walks to work.
I'm not implying a gender difference (the genders could have easily been switched), but these two case histories represent the dumb response and the smart response to Peak Oil.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the ratio of dumb to smart may be about ten to one--partly because of the concerted "Iron Triangle" effort to persuade Americans to keep buying and financing large homes and SUV's. In the NYT story on driving patterns a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the fact that just about the only people who had curtailed their driving were the ones that were financially incapable of buying more gasoline.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I see 3 points in time where you can respond.
Proactive Response - Taking steps to curb driving/fuel consumption, start carpooling, taking mass transit/ biking more often, moving closer to work, etc long before it hits your budget significantly.
Reactive Response - Waiting to do all of the above until it becomes "very expensive" to not do it (expensive is a relative term of course).
No Choice - Waiting to do all of the above until you absolutely have no choice - repossessing the car/truck, bankruptcy, unemployment, etc
I suspect most people will respond somewhere between Reactive and No Choice. That means demand destruction instead of efficiency.
THe #1 factor IMHO is having a positive alternative nearby - trains, buses, ferries, bike facilities, etc.
Furthermore, every suburban subdivision should be fighting for a nearby plot of land or vacant brownfield site to be converted to a grocery/drug store and/or farmer's market connected to sidewalks and mass transit - maybe even (god forbid) no parking lot.
westexas quote "One driver, a suburban mother of two, said that you could have the keys to her SUV when you pried them out of her cold dead fingers."
Jim Minter's eerily prescient assessment of the ramifications of peak oil back in 1996 in the classic piece Joyride to Global Collapse said; Here's a prediction for you. In the next two decades millions of Americans will begin a serious search for an alternative to the gasoline-powered automobile. It is not going to be a happy search. If you think trying to wean gun owners from their passion for firearms is a hornet's nest, try talking to the great majority of us about reining in our passion for the automobile. Lordy! And yet, most of us agree there is a problem, vaguely phrased as, "There are too many other people out there clogging up the highways and slowing me down." Otherwise our attitude is similar to the rabid firearms bumper sticker:
"You'll get my car when you pry my cold, dead fingers from around the steering wheel."
Fantastic article for 1996 (it could have been written in 2006). Having said that, certain parts of the oil depletion theory are not playing out as scripted. The theory that as oil goes up in price everything else goes up in price is simply wrong. In fact, as oil has gone from $10 in 1998 to $70 currently many expenditures have gone down in price. In Toronto currently for 1 barrel of oil you can buy: 1. a fine meal for two 2.a cheap TV 3.a DVD player. My point is that oil can go to $350 without everything going up in price. If everything went up in price as oil or gasoline went up, drivers would be faced with a different situation. As it is, the expense of driving a car is competing for the consumer's dollar with other expenses which are not increasing at the same rate. If this trend continues, it will affect driving habits. Everything (including driving) has a price. I know everyone loves to compare drivers to crack addicts but there is a difference between the two groups (hard as it is to accept).
There is a time lag for lots of goods/services for prices to rise because of underlying costs. I've seen many articles citing retailers who were straining to 'hold the line' on prices. The dam will break at some point and everything will go up.
Goods/services that stay relatively cheap will be those that have a high labor component. Labor is the essential ingredient that is getting cheaper. Look at the declining real median income in the US, not to mention all the outsourcing to foreign sweatshops.
The real crunch will IMO not be high gasoline price but unavailability of gasoline with increasing numbers of spot shortages. (ok, so it was more than a couple...)
The relativity is the important thing. Even though people love to drive, they only have one dollar to spend and at a certain price level they will decide that driving just isn't worth it (I am simplifying to make a point). Good point about wages- they are definitely not going to keep up with energy costs.
Yeah, relative income/purchasing power is sometimes forgotten in our focus on prices. If the unemployment rate goes up and/or wages creep downward, the effect is higher price for gasoline, etc. even if nominal price stays the same. If unemployment goes up drastically, even $1.50/gal could be expensive gasoline.
SaturnV -
Thanks for sharing this article. Fantastic! He states all the key elements of the oil depletion problem. I love reading articles from a decade ago that clearly see the problem.
I am stunned at this amazingly accurate prediction:
[As we reach the Peak] Vast windfall profits will be made by some, which will complicate the ability of leaders to explain the reality. And the supply-side religion will tune-up its highly paid chorus.
...
The economy will slow down but the prices of everything will keep on rising. We will then rediscover the age-old truth: money is not a real thing; it is only an accounting device. Congress can't print oil and they can't repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
These kinds of posts ignore the fact that in many parts of the country, long commutes are a result of people starting out in life, who can't afford to live near work and can't find a job that pays the bills near where they live.
I have been railroaded into a long-term, 100 mile a day commute. I originally agreed to do it for a limited time, but now face the fact that I stay at my current location, or lose my job completely.
Finding a new job in another part of the country and relocating is easier said than done.
It's sad that the incredibly intelligent people on this board still choose to blame the people for their energy-wasting commuting habits, when the fact of the matter is, even in densely populated parts of the nation, there is no meaningful public transportation. I would gladly choose public transportation if:
It was available.
It didn't take 3-4 times longer to get where I am going where it is available.
Sometimes it's not about dumb and smart, its about $$ and time. We need realistic alternatives and criticism doesn't get it done.
We need an organized effort to improve the public transportation systems in the US.
That's because many people are actively against mass transit spending, preferring their personal cars and low taxes. I know it's a tough sell in many areas even with gas prices over $3 a gallon. Take this example from a friend in Phoenix a couple of years ago.
It takes a significant investment from the public that many are going to fight, but without real alternatives to the personal automobile, the inelastic demand for gasoline will continue until it reaches a break point and real demand destruction occurs through bankruptcy, repossession of cars/houses, unemployment, etc.
"I have been railroaded into a long-term, 100 mile a day commute. I originally agreed to do it for a limited time, but now face the fact that I stay at my current location, or lose my job completely."
My guess is that a fairly old sedan probably costs you about 25¢ per mile, while a new large late model SUV probably costs about $1.00 per mile (total driving costs). So, I would put your monthly commuting costs in a range of about $500 to $2,000 per month.
Question: what if you reduced your current living space square footage by 50% and applied an additional $500 to $2,000 toward your rent/house payment. Could you then afford something within a short distance of your job? You should also consider the time involved in your commute--I assume about two to three hours per day. You could spend this time working--and making money--instead of spending time and money commuting.
When faced with seems like an insurmountable problem, it's useful to assume that you have solved the problem and then work backwards to "figure out" how you you solved the problem. What if you were paying $8 per gallon for gasoline. What changes would you make in your lifestyle?
In my case, and I feel I am not exceptional, the only option is to find another region of the country to live in (I am currently in NJ).
To answer your questions, my typical commute is 2.5 hrs a day if I speed. I drive a 2 liter 4-cylinder manual. My commuting cost is about $325 a month at average current mpg figures and 3$/gallon.
I already pay low rent: the other tenants are also young professionals, blue-collar couples, and recent immigrant families. My living space is modest, and to move near the central Jersey/NY metro area would raise my rent by about 25% for an apartment that is half the size of my current one (which would be something like a basic small studio). Being that I don't drive much outside of my commute because I live near the places I use for recreation (Mt. Bike trails, fishing ponds/lakes, parks, etc.) it wouldn't be cost effective to move because what i saved by moving near work would be offset by what i spent getting back out to recreational areas on the weekends. Here I have to admit that it IS a standard of living issue, however, being rural 'born and raised' means I would have to sacrifice my ENTIRE way of life to move to an urban area. As it stands, I dont use much gas or energy or even money in my free time!
My major qualm with the attitude on the site is that it tends to advocate only one real sustainable solution, which is urban living. At the current trend of rising inflation alongside reduced real wages, my young-professional paycheck does not allow me to live in a safe urban area in NY/NJ. I live in a rural area! That's what I can afford! Also, outside of my commute, the rural way of life is far more sustainable and uses far less energy than that of the urban way of life. My entertainment is outside, in the woods and around the lakes.
Getting back to the real issue:
There are plenty of major businesses within 20 miles, however, NJ is densely populated even where I live and the competition is fierce. Most jobs that I am offered are in NYC or in the area I currently work because thats where the majority of businesses are. There are no express lines to the city, and the train to NYC is 2.5 hours, one way. In what I consider to be the ultimate insult, there are no trains/buses running south/north, which would greatly ease my problems.
Only east/west.
The competition, and the ever-accelerating race to the bottom dictates that I must stay extremely mobile just to stay afloat. I could do this, and be more energy efficient, if there was better public transportation. Just one north/south line in western NJ would do the trick. Given the population density, it is not an unreasonable solution for hundreds of thousands of people!
I think rural areas are going to be hit hardest by peak oil, at least at first. Maybe not NJ, but the "red states." People tend to be poorer, and drive farther (because they have to). And if there are actual shortages, it will be cities - areas of higher population density - that get supplied.
Many peak oilers are preparing for the crisis via homesteads in the country, but that's not what most rural Americans have. They are not anything close to self-sufficient.
Leanan,
in some ways I agree with your predictions regarding rural areas but in other ways I have to disagree. If by "rural" you mean two counties removed from D.C. or Chicago, and you're really referring to the spread of exurbia into formerly rural areas, I completely agree. If you mean truly rural areas, I'm not sure that I do. I live in a county of only 60k people, less than half of whom live in a town or village. We still have lots of farm land (and un-farmed farmable land) to go around. we have a fantastic farmer's market. We have way more fresh water than we could ever need. There are tens of thousands of acres of forest. We have wild turkeys, deer and other game plus nut trees, wild berries, mushrooms just growing naturally throughout our county. Our rivers and lakes have lots of fish. Many people here still have their own "gentelman's farm", raise their own chickens for eggs or keep a dozen head of dairy cattle to carry on their families farming tradition. So unlike cities, those of us in rural areas at least won't have other natural resource and food scarcities to cope with as peak oil unfolds. Furthermore, as diesel fuel and pesticides/ fertilizer become more precious, crops yields will likely decline and we may see a reversal in the long decline of acreage devoted to farming in America and the number of persons employed in farming which will benefit rural areas.
The jobs we have here are farming, timber, gas/oil/coal and industrial. I don't see why those type of jobs will evaporate with peak oil. If I lived in a large city based on the banking, investing, service and insurance industries, I'd be more worried about my local economy.
Now, I'll grant that some people here do drive 100+ miles for work and they'll be hit hard. Also many rural areas have been wal-martized, by which I mean the small downtowns evaporated and there is literally no where else to shop for many essentials bc/ everything else went out of business bc/ they couldn't compete with walmart. That will definitely be a problem.
WOW! Tell me where you are, I'll buy some land and move there... most of the great plains (a whole lot of people live and farm here) are only inhabitable because of oil. NG pumps the water out of the wells, diesel farms the land and delivers needed goods, and you can only grow a very limited number of things. This of course doesn't take into account the waning supply of water from the aquifer... In Colorado the state just told 200 farmers to shut off their wells because of shortages to the cities, I think Leanan has a point.
Mojo man,
You've got a good point, I need to amend my above comment about rural areas doing better than some believe. Not all rural areas are created equal. I live in SE Ohio along the Ohio River. I guess the difference is that unlike the plains we get 40 inches of rain a year so crops grow without irrigation and if land is left untended forest, rather than grass plains, is the natural result. I guess I should say rural areas in the midwest/ east may do better after the peak. Another rural area that will probably do well is the northwest. Oregon gets tons of rain and crops/ timber grow very well there also.
As a midwestern raised person myself, I do know some good "towns" that might be good places after PO. One thing that has bothered me, is seeing what our government did after hurricane Katrina, I have to wonder if when food supplies start running short, the government will start bussing people out of the largest cities into the "survivable" locations for them to relocate, be cared for, and work the fields, perhaps as a "work program". Has anyone else ever thought of this?
Correction, Western Oregon gets tons of rain (~40"/yr) but has very hot, dry summers (July-Sept). I like the climate here a lot. Eastern Oregon is high desert and beautiful, if you like living in a water-starved area.
Moved here from Asheville, NC. Similar amount of annual rain here but almost all in winter & spring months and much lower humidity (ahhhhh!).
Asheville's climate is pretty moderate, never getting too cold in the winter nor too hot in the summer and gets a good amount of rain. The topsoil is thin as paper though. Propensity for afternoon showers basically every day in the summer. Something's always blooming so the allergies are problematic. Too many hills to make a decent longer-distance bicycle commuting area. Also currently falling victim to overdevelopment and ballooning house prices. But there are plenty of great places to go hiking and biking.
I sympathize with your situation, and I agree that sometimes it's easier said than done.
However, please don't spread fallacies!
Also, outside of my commute, the rural way of life is far more sustainable and uses far less energy than that of the urban way of life.
In 2004 the New Yorker published an article called "Green Manhattan: Why New York is the greenest city in the U.S." which convincingly presents arguments showing that your statement is off the mark. There may be advantages to living in rural areas, but amount of energy use is probably not one of them.
I appreciate your POV, but in no way does it prove that my statement is a fallacy. The article you provide does much in the way of proclaiming the virtues of living in NYC.....but this does not, on its own, create a logical case against my claim.
NW NJ is completely water-independant. The vast majority of homes use well-water and are within walking distance of lakes and rivers.
NW NJ was originally a river/mining economy with extensive canals and raw material reserves.
NW NJ has an astounding amount of arable land. Many farms are spread out over the landscape. Before the suburban sprawl the area was food independant.
My area provides NYC with most of its water and food. The NY Orange Cty black soil region is immediately north of me, and the Delaware valley is immediately to the west. The entire western half of NJ maintains major agricultural resources.
Most people native to the area do things like hunting, fishing and hiking for recreation. These activities are not energy intensive.
Most towns in the area still have main streets and a variety of markets, are are not McMall venues.
I just find it hard to believe that living on a crowded island is more energy efficient than living in the area that produces most of what the city dwellers have trucked in on a massive scale, on a daily basis.
is your commuting more efficient? of course.
is your space management more efficient? is your electric bill lower? yes and yes.
is this because you live in an economic black hole?
YES. it is artificially supported. it has a lot of gravity and sucks everything in, but ultimately, cannot sustain itself.
I think the important thing is to separate out the points about being "far more sustainable" and "using far less energy." Yes, cities are dependent on rural areas for food and water. So your statement about problematic sustainability I'd say may hold. But urban residents use less energy per capita than those of rural or suburban areas, as you alluded to with the commuting and space management points. So the sustainability and the energy use are separate matters.
The crowdedness is a virtue that makes energy efficiency possible. Yes, stuff is trucked it, but imagine if the 1.5 million people who live on Manhattan were spread out evenly over Northwest New Jersey. You'd have no space for the farms and you'd be trucking things all over every different direction, which is less efficient than going all to the same overall destination. Anyway, we should be using rail for freight, not trucks. Rail being less spread out than highways concentrates shipments into urban cores.
Interloafer, thanks for the well-timed interjection. The key is to put things in perspective and try and find solutions rather than tell people their way of living is at fault and needs to fall in line with someone else's way. I'm certainly guilty of being attached to one way of life and it shows in my bias. I'm just over-reacting to what I thought was the prevalent, urban POV on the sight.
If anything, I'm glad we got to see people chime in and give their 2 cents on the whole urban/suburban/rural issue in regards to the coming energy crunch. Its good to see people with different ideas jump in the fray and try and understand things the way I think people have just done here, because all ways of life need to change, and people have to understand the give and take of how its going to have to be done.
The way I am doing it is clearly going to become impossible soon, and thanks to this site I have begun to actively try and find another way to live.
I'm not sure that the overwhelming bias on TOD is for urban areas. If anything, I'd think that more people are in favor of the Kunstler-esque small town model where the size is manageable, there's farm land ringing the "urban" center, and people can get around more or less without cars.
Along these lines, I think that towns (not suburbs, but towns with a center and mixed residential/commercial usage) probably have the best hope since they might be more or less self-sufficient. Rural areas aren't going to work, because individual houses on 5 acre plots that are 5-10 miles from the nearest amenity are going to be too isolated. Yes, it's true that one can put up solar panels or a wind turbine (as Eric Blair criticizes me below), but that's not going to be enough for existence. One will still need goods and services from other community members, which will necessitate a somewhat denser living arrangement. This is my opinion.
For the record, I don't think that mega-cities like New York could survive a total energy blow out, if that's what ends up happening, but I might point out that there have been cities all over the world way before there was an industrial revolution or a green revolution. So a place like New York--like most other places--will suffer a big decline in population, but it won't be obliterated from existence altogether.
Which leaves this as a remaining question: if and when the population of New York City suffers a major contraction, will I be one of the survivors should I choose to stay here? Unfortunately, I can't know the answer to that right now.
Keep in mind that in urban centers, everything can be used closer to maximum capacity. An air conditioned theaters serves more in a day in NYC than it does in some exurb in the South. In an urban center each liter of water in your water system is pumped, on average a shorter distance, space is tighter AND the ratior of living volume to living area is higher, so energy expended on environmental control is lower, etc. etc. Oh and I'd imagine sewerage is dramatically more efficient than in so called "rural" areas. I'm sure you don't use a septic tank or composting of your fecal matter. That's getting helped out the door, so to speak. I'm from Louisiana and the infrastructure is remarkably similar in many parts of that backwards state to large urban areas, except all the service lines bringing natural gas, electricity, water, etc are longer and serve fewer, except for the very few places that are off the main grid. I think "rural" is Alaska or Montana, not many places east of the Mississippi. Oh, and don't forget school buses, patrol cars, etc etc etc etc. And POORLY those services are provided because they are spread so thin.
In 2004 the New Yorker published an article called
So you have opted to use a source that is all about talking about New York to show how New York is a fine idea?
Wow. that's like asking the Saudi oil ministry what they think about Saudi oil.
5 rural acres can feed a family with what is grown on it.
40 acres can provide enough trees in rotation to heat a rural home VS exactly HOW sustainable a New York apartment dweller is?
but amount of energy use is probably not one of them.
Ever tried putting up solar panels or, better yet a wind turbine in New York city? In a rural location you can do that. The wind turbine is why I want a rural location. (im my ideal world the wind turbine would have so much excessive power I would not be able to do the 20kw grid intertie, and I'd have to shunt power to big outdoowr water tanks.....)
I call it blissful liberation from the capitalists when my tribe and I will grow wonderful food and celebrate our humanity and rejoice that there is no more oil to make things as bad as they were in the first 6 years of the 21st century.
"To answer your questions, my typical commute is 2.5 hrs a day if I speed. I drive a 2 liter 4-cylinder manual. My commuting cost is about $325 a month at average current mpg figures and 3$/gallon"
I suspect that you are underestimating the true cost of your 2,000 mile per month commute. You need to include depreciation, maintenance, insurance and fuel. An average new sedan is about 50 cents per mile. Very large SUV's are in the 75 cents to one dollar pre mile range. IMO, your true cost is probably at least 25 cents per mile, or $500/month. I assume that there may be some parking costs also.
You also need to consider the time. 2.5 hours times 20 days = 50 hours. At $20/hour, this would be $1,000.
So, using the above assumptions, I would put your true commuting cost in the range of at least $1,500 per month ($18,000 per year). The more expensive your car (and the higher that gas prices are) and the greater your income earning potential, the greater the commuting cost.
In regard to your weekend leisure pursuits, why not move close to your job and then take the mass transit that is available to leisure activity areas. Or, if you have to, drive there on weekends.
There is one other factor. By driving 2,000 miles per month, you significantly increase your chances of dying (or becoming disabled) in an auto accident.
My #1 recommendation continues to be to try to reduce the distance between work and home to as close to zero as possible.
WestTexas:
I want to be clear with you and make sure you know I understand and agree with what you are saying. I am very well aware of the true cost of my commute, because although I own my car outright as I bought it very used, I have had issues with maintenance that cost a lot of money.
I also have come to the same conclusion that you are suggesting, although, with a different kind of connotation. I need to find another area to live in, one that isn't so metropolitan that the distances between the city centers and the rural areas aren't quite so large. I don't think I have been clear enough in pointing out that as time goes on, and students become more and more financially responsible for their own education finances and all the peripheral costs college entails, we are going to see a larger class of professionals who start out with the kind of debt loads usually associated with car or home ownership, but with no assets to speak of save for a degree. Therefore, these people will be forced to live where it is cheap, and work where they can make more money than they are worth (read: corporations, urban centers).
In NJ, you either put up with urban living, or you drive a lot. Just ask anyone from the area; the amount of people living in PA and commuting to NY or NJ has increased to ridiculous levels. Around
One driver, a suburban mother of two, said that you could have the keys to her SUV when you pried them out of her cold dead fingers.
On a somewhat more positive note, another driver, who had been making a 50 mile roundtrip per day to and from EDS in Plano (a suburb of Dallas), moved to the Shops at Legacy, a New Urbanism project, right across the street from EDS. He now walks to work.
I'm not implying a gender difference (the genders could have easily been switched), but these two case histories represent the dumb response and the smart response to Peak Oil.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the ratio of dumb to smart may be about ten to one--partly because of the concerted "Iron Triangle" effort to persuade Americans to keep buying and financing large homes and SUV's. In the NYT story on driving patterns a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the fact that just about the only people who had curtailed their driving were the ones that were financially incapable of buying more gasoline.
Proactive Response - Taking steps to curb driving/fuel consumption, start carpooling, taking mass transit/ biking more often, moving closer to work, etc long before it hits your budget significantly.
Reactive Response - Waiting to do all of the above until it becomes "very expensive" to not do it (expensive is a relative term of course).
No Choice - Waiting to do all of the above until you absolutely have no choice - repossessing the car/truck, bankruptcy, unemployment, etc
I suspect most people will respond somewhere between Reactive and No Choice. That means demand destruction instead of efficiency.
THe #1 factor IMHO is having a positive alternative nearby - trains, buses, ferries, bike facilities, etc.
Furthermore, every suburban subdivision should be fighting for a nearby plot of land or vacant brownfield site to be converted to a grocery/drug store and/or farmer's market connected to sidewalks and mass transit - maybe even (god forbid) no parking lot.
Jim Minter's eerily prescient assessment of the ramifications of peak oil back in 1996 in the classic piece Joyride to Global Collapse said; Here's a prediction for you. In the next two decades millions of Americans will begin a serious search for an alternative to the gasoline-powered automobile. It is not going to be a happy search. If you think trying to wean gun owners from their passion for firearms is a hornet's nest, try talking to the great majority of us about reining in our passion for the automobile. Lordy! And yet, most of us agree there is a problem, vaguely phrased as, "There are too many other people out there clogging up the highways and slowing me down." Otherwise our attitude is similar to the rabid firearms bumper sticker:
"You'll get my car when you pry my cold, dead fingers from around the steering wheel."
If things continued in terms of economic growth, by 2030 or so many countries will have passed us in PPP.
Thanks for sharing this article. Fantastic! He states all the key elements of the oil depletion problem. I love reading articles from a decade ago that clearly see the problem.
I am stunned at this amazingly accurate prediction:
I have been railroaded into a long-term, 100 mile a day commute. I originally agreed to do it for a limited time, but now face the fact that I stay at my current location, or lose my job completely.
Finding a new job in another part of the country and relocating is easier said than done.
It's sad that the incredibly intelligent people on this board still choose to blame the people for their energy-wasting commuting habits, when the fact of the matter is, even in densely populated parts of the nation, there is no meaningful public transportation. I would gladly choose public transportation if:
- It was available.
- It didn't take 3-4 times longer to get where I am going where it is available.
Sometimes it's not about dumb and smart, its about $$ and time. We need realistic alternatives and criticism doesn't get it done.We need an organized effort to improve the public transportation systems in the US.
It takes a significant investment from the public that many are going to fight, but without real alternatives to the personal automobile, the inelastic demand for gasoline will continue until it reaches a break point and real demand destruction occurs through bankruptcy, repossession of cars/houses, unemployment, etc.
My guess is that a fairly old sedan probably costs you about 25¢ per mile, while a new large late model SUV probably costs about $1.00 per mile (total driving costs). So, I would put your monthly commuting costs in a range of about $500 to $2,000 per month.
Question: what if you reduced your current living space square footage by 50% and applied an additional $500 to $2,000 toward your rent/house payment. Could you then afford something within a short distance of your job? You should also consider the time involved in your commute--I assume about two to three hours per day. You could spend this time working--and making money--instead of spending time and money commuting.
When faced with seems like an insurmountable problem, it's useful to assume that you have solved the problem and then work backwards to "figure out" how you you solved the problem. What if you were paying $8 per gallon for gasoline. What changes would you make in your lifestyle?
To answer your questions, my typical commute is 2.5 hrs a day if I speed. I drive a 2 liter 4-cylinder manual. My commuting cost is about $325 a month at average current mpg figures and 3$/gallon.
I already pay low rent: the other tenants are also young professionals, blue-collar couples, and recent immigrant families. My living space is modest, and to move near the central Jersey/NY metro area would raise my rent by about 25% for an apartment that is half the size of my current one (which would be something like a basic small studio). Being that I don't drive much outside of my commute because I live near the places I use for recreation (Mt. Bike trails, fishing ponds/lakes, parks, etc.) it wouldn't be cost effective to move because what i saved by moving near work would be offset by what i spent getting back out to recreational areas on the weekends. Here I have to admit that it IS a standard of living issue, however, being rural 'born and raised' means I would have to sacrifice my ENTIRE way of life to move to an urban area. As it stands, I dont use much gas or energy or even money in my free time!
My major qualm with the attitude on the site is that it tends to advocate only one real sustainable solution, which is urban living. At the current trend of rising inflation alongside reduced real wages, my young-professional paycheck does not allow me to live in a safe urban area in NY/NJ. I live in a rural area! That's what I can afford! Also, outside of my commute, the rural way of life is far more sustainable and uses far less energy than that of the urban way of life. My entertainment is outside, in the woods and around the lakes.
Getting back to the real issue:
There are plenty of major businesses within 20 miles, however, NJ is densely populated even where I live and the competition is fierce. Most jobs that I am offered are in NYC or in the area I currently work because thats where the majority of businesses are. There are no express lines to the city, and the train to NYC is 2.5 hours, one way. In what I consider to be the ultimate insult, there are no trains/buses running south/north, which would greatly ease my problems.
Only east/west.
The competition, and the ever-accelerating race to the bottom dictates that I must stay extremely mobile just to stay afloat. I could do this, and be more energy efficient, if there was better public transportation. Just one north/south line in western NJ would do the trick. Given the population density, it is not an unreasonable solution for hundreds of thousands of people!
Many peak oilers are preparing for the crisis via homesteads in the country, but that's not what most rural Americans have. They are not anything close to self-sufficient.
in some ways I agree with your predictions regarding rural areas but in other ways I have to disagree. If by "rural" you mean two counties removed from D.C. or Chicago, and you're really referring to the spread of exurbia into formerly rural areas, I completely agree. If you mean truly rural areas, I'm not sure that I do. I live in a county of only 60k people, less than half of whom live in a town or village. We still have lots of farm land (and un-farmed farmable land) to go around. we have a fantastic farmer's market. We have way more fresh water than we could ever need. There are tens of thousands of acres of forest. We have wild turkeys, deer and other game plus nut trees, wild berries, mushrooms just growing naturally throughout our county. Our rivers and lakes have lots of fish. Many people here still have their own "gentelman's farm", raise their own chickens for eggs or keep a dozen head of dairy cattle to carry on their families farming tradition. So unlike cities, those of us in rural areas at least won't have other natural resource and food scarcities to cope with as peak oil unfolds. Furthermore, as diesel fuel and pesticides/ fertilizer become more precious, crops yields will likely decline and we may see a reversal in the long decline of acreage devoted to farming in America and the number of persons employed in farming which will benefit rural areas.
The jobs we have here are farming, timber, gas/oil/coal and industrial. I don't see why those type of jobs will evaporate with peak oil. If I lived in a large city based on the banking, investing, service and insurance industries, I'd be more worried about my local economy.
Now, I'll grant that some people here do drive 100+ miles for work and they'll be hit hard. Also many rural areas have been wal-martized, by which I mean the small downtowns evaporated and there is literally no where else to shop for many essentials bc/ everything else went out of business bc/ they couldn't compete with walmart. That will definitely be a problem.
WOW! Tell me where you are, I'll buy some land and move there... most of the great plains (a whole lot of people live and farm here) are only inhabitable because of oil. NG pumps the water out of the wells, diesel farms the land and delivers needed goods, and you can only grow a very limited number of things. This of course doesn't take into account the waning supply of water from the aquifer... In Colorado the state just told 200 farmers to shut off their wells because of shortages to the cities, I think Leanan has a point.
You've got a good point, I need to amend my above comment about rural areas doing better than some believe. Not all rural areas are created equal. I live in SE Ohio along the Ohio River. I guess the difference is that unlike the plains we get 40 inches of rain a year so crops grow without irrigation and if land is left untended forest, rather than grass plains, is the natural result. I guess I should say rural areas in the midwest/ east may do better after the peak. Another rural area that will probably do well is the northwest. Oregon gets tons of rain and crops/ timber grow very well there also.
Moved here from Asheville, NC. Similar amount of annual rain here but almost all in winter & spring months and much lower humidity (ahhhhh!).
Why'd you move?
However, please don't spread fallacies!
In 2004 the New Yorker published an article called "Green Manhattan: Why New York is the greenest city in the U.S." which convincingly presents arguments showing that your statement is off the mark. There may be advantages to living in rural areas, but amount of energy use is probably not one of them.
is your commuting more efficient? of course.
is your space management more efficient? is your electric bill lower? yes and yes.
is this because you live in an economic black hole?
YES. it is artificially supported. it has a lot of gravity and sucks everything in, but ultimately, cannot sustain itself.
The crowdedness is a virtue that makes energy efficiency possible. Yes, stuff is trucked it, but imagine if the 1.5 million people who live on Manhattan were spread out evenly over Northwest New Jersey. You'd have no space for the farms and you'd be trucking things all over every different direction, which is less efficient than going all to the same overall destination. Anyway, we should be using rail for freight, not trucks. Rail being less spread out than highways concentrates shipments into urban cores.
If anything, I'm glad we got to see people chime in and give their 2 cents on the whole urban/suburban/rural issue in regards to the coming energy crunch. Its good to see people with different ideas jump in the fray and try and understand things the way I think people have just done here, because all ways of life need to change, and people have to understand the give and take of how its going to have to be done.
The way I am doing it is clearly going to become impossible soon, and thanks to this site I have begun to actively try and find another way to live.
Along these lines, I think that towns (not suburbs, but towns with a center and mixed residential/commercial usage) probably have the best hope since they might be more or less self-sufficient. Rural areas aren't going to work, because individual houses on 5 acre plots that are 5-10 miles from the nearest amenity are going to be too isolated. Yes, it's true that one can put up solar panels or a wind turbine (as Eric Blair criticizes me below), but that's not going to be enough for existence. One will still need goods and services from other community members, which will necessitate a somewhat denser living arrangement. This is my opinion.
For the record, I don't think that mega-cities like New York could survive a total energy blow out, if that's what ends up happening, but I might point out that there have been cities all over the world way before there was an industrial revolution or a green revolution. So a place like New York--like most other places--will suffer a big decline in population, but it won't be obliterated from existence altogether.
Which leaves this as a remaining question: if and when the population of New York City suffers a major contraction, will I be one of the survivors should I choose to stay here? Unfortunately, I can't know the answer to that right now.
Then you are going to debunk? Cool!
In 2004 the New Yorker published an article called
So you have opted to use a source that is all about talking about New York to show how New York is a fine idea?
Wow. that's like asking the Saudi oil ministry what they think about Saudi oil.
5 rural acres can feed a family with what is grown on it.
40 acres can provide enough trees in rotation to heat a rural home VS exactly HOW sustainable a New York apartment dweller is?
but amount of energy use is probably not one of them.
Ever tried putting up solar panels or, better yet a wind turbine in New York city? In a rural location you can do that. The wind turbine is why I want a rural location. (im my ideal world the wind turbine would have so much excessive power I would not be able to do the 20kw grid intertie, and I'd have to shunt power to big outdoowr water tanks.....)
where will you be?
I call it blissful liberation from the capitalists when my tribe and I will grow wonderful food and celebrate our humanity and rejoice that there is no more oil to make things as bad as they were in the first 6 years of the 21st century.
I suspect that you are underestimating the true cost of your 2,000 mile per month commute. You need to include depreciation, maintenance, insurance and fuel. An average new sedan is about 50 cents per mile. Very large SUV's are in the 75 cents to one dollar pre mile range. IMO, your true cost is probably at least 25 cents per mile, or $500/month. I assume that there may be some parking costs also.
You also need to consider the time. 2.5 hours times 20 days = 50 hours. At $20/hour, this would be $1,000.
So, using the above assumptions, I would put your true commuting cost in the range of at least $1,500 per month ($18,000 per year). The more expensive your car (and the higher that gas prices are) and the greater your income earning potential, the greater the commuting cost.
In regard to your weekend leisure pursuits, why not move close to your job and then take the mass transit that is available to leisure activity areas. Or, if you have to, drive there on weekends.
There is one other factor. By driving 2,000 miles per month, you significantly increase your chances of dying (or becoming disabled) in an auto accident.
My #1 recommendation continues to be to try to reduce the distance between work and home to as close to zero as possible.
I want to be clear with you and make sure you know I understand and agree with what you are saying. I am very well aware of the true cost of my commute, because although I own my car outright as I bought it very used, I have had issues with maintenance that cost a lot of money.
I also have come to the same conclusion that you are suggesting, although, with a different kind of connotation. I need to find another area to live in, one that isn't so metropolitan that the distances between the city centers and the rural areas aren't quite so large. I don't think I have been clear enough in pointing out that as time goes on, and students become more and more financially responsible for their own education finances and all the peripheral costs college entails, we are going to see a larger class of professionals who start out with the kind of debt loads usually associated with car or home ownership, but with no assets to speak of save for a degree. Therefore, these people will be forced to live where it is cheap, and work where they can make more money than they are worth (read: corporations, urban centers).
In NJ, you either put up with urban living, or you drive a lot. Just ask anyone from the area; the amount of people living in PA and commuting to NY or NJ has increased to ridiculous levels. Around