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Too many "technological" solutions these days. It would be a nice pork barrel project for someone I suppose. In terms of effectiveness, how about if we think about ancient technology instead? If houses were 1950s-sized and made of superinsulating hay bales -- hay bale houses from 100 years ago are still standing -- they would require virtually no fuel to heat. Build them within walking distance of local trains (150 year old technology) instead of scattered all over the countryside -- just look at any town/city in Europe built before 1950 -- and you wouldn't need a car. OK, I'll take compact-fluorescent lighting instead of whale oil lamps. No need to be too retro about it.
How about if we think about how the Romans lived in Rome? That was 2000 years before the internal combustion engine. Then we can add a sprinkling of new technology like the internet, solar panels, good plumbing, a decent rail line, etc. It's not really all that hard.
Concur---
If super athletes can ride across america(raam) in 7-10 days, on there bike's... then surely we could all live much better on 1/2, 1/3, even 1/8 th the oil., if we REALLY tried
Between the times of the Romans to 1910, the streets were choked with the toxic exhaust from everybody's personal transportation vehicles. Their engines of course are known as as a horse.
The idea that everybody was in walking distance to a train is just untrue. Everybody wanted and used personal transportation even before the automobile.
Everybody wanted and used personal transportation even before the automobile
Untrue.
I live in the Lower Garden District, the upper middle class area when developed 1830s-1860 (I live in a second building on the lot, built 1890). One can still see the occasional marble step imbedded into the sidewalk to make it easier to mount into a carriage (about 1/block). Presumeably, this was for a taxi of the day. There is only one carriage house extant in the district (but multiple slave quarters).
The Garden District was the home of millionaires (in 1840 silver and gold dollars !) and many of the homes look it ! Yet (and I have counted) perhaps 1/8th have evidence of a carriage house.
Why ?
The St. Charles Streetcar Line opened in 1834 (later the Prytania and Magazine lines as well). Plus a supremely walkable neighborhood.
Best Hopes,
Alan
First you build the railroad, and then you build the neighborhood around it. Then everyone is within walking distance of the train. This was the pattern of "suburban" development pre-Henry Ford.
If you go to urban areas in the rest of the developed world -- Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, Oslo, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. -- people may still have cars but most of the transportation is done by train or sometimes bus. They only drive the cars every other weekend. That's one reason why the rest of the developed world uses 50% the energy-per-capita than people in the US. They aren't shivering in the dark either.
As a boy in 1910 in Germany, my father collected the horse manure from the streets of his town and sold it to local greenhouses. Most people at that time moved about by streetcar, but horses were important in commerce.
There were just a couple hundred million human beings on planet earth during the Roman empire. That's the entire globe. Today there are nearly 7 billion. There is no feasible way to return to a level of living akin to the Romans without killing off about 97% of the population. If you fail to understand this, then you fail to understand the core problem.
And worse, despite the way the Romans lived, Rome still collapsed, largely due to resource issues. Rome is not a viable model for the world, even if you do remove 97% of the population.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett