The Oil Drum

You seem to be very angry.

Certainly not angry; skeptical, but perhaps a bit too dismissive as you seem to be still in the early stages of denial. Let's just say your measures won't simply make impacts from PO disappear unless most do them. And a main point is that the infrastructure won't change overnight to enable a full shift away from air transport to rail, and we are stuck for at least two decades to come with the current new auto fleet's dismal fuel mileage.

To respond to your questions: I don't have to convince anybody. The price of gas will do that for me.

Note that even with gas prices high, demand keeps climbing. Don't underestimate lifestyle inertia. Too many people will cling to what they know and how they were raised, until the pain becomes too great. By that time, the economy will be in the tank.

For instance: People keep their car on average for 5 years, so next time they buy a new one, they can decide: A big one or a small one. I'm very sure they will choose a small one, when gas prices are high.

Car last on average 18 years now, so that means someone would buy your car (as you said you would sell it). Your 'old' car will be in use for another 13 years to come. If not, a new car would need to be purchased. If this were the trend for all of the SUVs, Pickups, and less than economical cars on the road, automobile production would need to ramp up more than double, which we all know is not going to happen.

One small remark: Why is every PO'er convinced that when oil supplies dwindle, we will have mass unemployment? We didn't have mass unemployment in the middle ages. Wouldn't it be more logical that we will have less unemployment, because productivity gains will be smaller?

Massive shifts in employment modes (i.e., back to the land), would mean a tremendous flight from the city and tremendous amounts of new homes close to the fields where people would be working. Knowing that PO will result in inflation, likely stagflation, with all of the inferred economic impacts, where will the money come from for all of this new investment in homes for newly converted farmers? Certainly not from selling the homes they had to practically abandon.

Everybody wants to believe that a shift over to non-petroleum based fuels will be a painless one, but we have to face the fact that PO won't allow us to live in a such a fantasy world. Can people take steps now to insulate themselves from the worst of it? Absolutely...