" most people will be unable to finance long term debts and those that are able will be unwilling"..."from now on out we will be in a deep recession to depression that should be your basic economic assumption"..."once discretionary spending collapses "..."70% is fluff that could be massively cut"

But why do you think this will happen? On what basis? World GDP has grown 40% in the last 5 years on flat oil consumption. US GDP grew about 20%, with flat oil consumption. US oil consumption fell almost 20% from 78-82, while GDP grew a little. Why do you believe oil is magically essential to our economy? Heck, we could reduce consumption by 25% in 6 months just by wartime type requirements for carpooling, and lose no jobs at all.

"expectation of future earnings these expectations rest on assumptions of a cheap oil supply"

ah, no, they don't. We didn't need oil 100 years ago to run an industrial economy, and we won't 50 years from now.

"My contention is that most people will be unable to finance long term debts and those that are able will be unwilling."

Memmel, I see what you're driving at (and yes I've read Mish and the rest) but I still say 'taint necessarily so.

For example were I live there is a small operation with three principals who are wealthy enough to invest their money in hedge funds or what have you (and for all I know, they do). They have started a third-party financing company that's making it possible for any small commercial operation to install solar without being one dollar out of pocket on the deal. It's a no-brainer for the customer, a good deal for the financiers, and they're doing some good sized systems. They just financed a deal worth over $500K for a school district.

The same thing could be done in next-gen vehicles, in doing "green ups" on homes, etc.

With all that hedge fund money at risk and in flight mode right now, such a business model starts to look pretty attractive. There is very little risk in it and if you subscribe to the peak oil/energy thesis, it's a virtually guaranteed gain. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see hundreds of billions in private equity exit the hedge fund world and move into the energy/efficiency world.

Yep. Extensive studies have been done.
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204
PNNL: Newsroom - Mileage from megawatts: Study finds enough electric capacity to �fill up� plug-in vehicles across much of the nation
http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_conte...
Grid Will Handle Rechargeable Cars

Some main points to bear in mind:
We won't instantly be producing as many electric cars as ICE cars at present.
Electric cars are far more efficient and use a fraction of the energy of petrol cars - check out the comment that charging one overnight would use a quarter of the energy a plasma screen uses.
Only part of the capacity of the grid is used most of the time, so the Californian system of charging different rates for different times would mean that the grid was not under too much strain.

Dave their are no strawmans here I already stated that I'll only talk about solutions in the context of economic conditions I expect to occur if you don't agree with that then it makes no sense to talk about solutions.

Your correct about trolleys only on the main routes and I said I expect the only housing that will retain value to be on the main routes or in walkable distance of the main routes. This is effectively your trolley car suburb of the past.

Even with the dire economic conditions I envision public socialistic style programs can and do work and can be used to build out a public rail network and furthermore they can be used to build out apt flats if needed. Look at postwar USSR for and example or postwar Asia. Even with limited energy supplies we can do this.

We end up in the same point we do on all our conversations other means of transport are secondary.

The addition here is that you believe that homes have some sort of intrinsic value yet we have ample historical evidence and even contemporary evidence that without a robust economy and jobs the values of homes goes to zero.

http://www.trulia.com/for_sale/Detroit,MI/price;a_sort/#for_sale/Detroit...

http://www.trulia.com/foreclosure/2002309048--Spencer-St-Detroit-MI-48234

http://www.trulia.com/OH/Cleveland/#for_sale/Cleveland,OH/price;a_sort/2_p/

And example for California.

http://www.trulia.com/CA/Manteca/#for_sale/Manteca,CA/price;a_sort/12_p/

I'm sorry your making basic assumptions of some intrinsic value in suburban real estate thats simply not true.
These are cities in the US that have experience economic contraction today.

So your basic argument that somehow there is something to "save" in Suburbia is false. The fate of suburbia itself has nothing to do directly with oil and everything to do with the economy.

The future economy will be negatively influenced by high oil prices.

The electric rail proposals are the only solutions that are robust agianst economic dislocation.
Every single other solution I've seen makes assumptions about some sort of Business As Usual.
In your case its the assumption that building in places that have no local economy have some sort
of intrinsic significant worth. Why on earth does a house 20 miles from the town center have any intrinsic value ? A whole huge pyramid of assumptions underlie this and they are not robust against stress.

Feel free to look at links like I've posted your assumptions are already failing dramatically.
And we have not even started to have serious problems. I'd actually be surprised to see suburbia even
make it much past peak oil right now much less be worth saving. The way things are going suburbia will be dead before we even get worldwide acceptance of peak oil.

"we need at least a decade of reasonably high cheap liquid fuels for it to happen "

Well, the scarcer liquid fuels are, the faster it will happen. It would accelerate even with oil production at 50% of current levels (and no one is predicting that in 10 years) - the US, at least, could run the essentials of it's economy with 50% of current oil consumption. It wouldn't be easy or comfortable, but it could be done very straight forwardly - envision every highway 100% HOV. Don't forget, the world economy has grown more than 40% in the last 5 years on essentially flat oil consumption - it's not btu's that's the problem for the US, it's the current account deficit.

" a dedication to the project - right now its only happening around the edges"

Not just examples: the two largest car companies in the world, Toyota and GM, have built their business plans around hybrids and plugins - Toyota plans to hybridize every vehicle they sell in 10 years, and GM is literally betting its future on the Volt.

"I can give you examples of natural gas electricity expansion growing in absolute numbers faster than wind is"

That's true, but I'm not following you - why is that important? Just because we're overbuilding NG generation (or, more precisely, not growing other forms of generation as quickly as we should) doesn't affect the pace of conversion of transportation to electricity, or the fact that the US isn't faced with a realistic prospect of inadequate electrical generation overall. Sure, we could have serious short-term problems in areas which have become overdependent on NG, like California, but the US still only gets 20% of it's power from NG overall, so that's not a fundamental long-term problem.

Now, one might object that this is likely to cause non-linear, hard to predict problems, and that's true. OTOH, I'm trying to address one question: "is a scarcity of high E-ROI energy (for transport or otherwise) likely in the long-term?". I don't see it, especially for the US.

"Best hopes for you to be right"

Thanks - I appreciate the thought. I'm enjoying thinking this through with you.

You seem to be assuming that no alterations are made to driving habits at all, and also have left out a lot of the figures which give the basis to your calculations.

It also seems that the way you are treating the figures does not maintain clear distinctions between hybrid cars, which use the gasoline motor to charge the battery, plug in hybrids, which would use the grid power for a few miles and then switch to the petrol motor, and pure electric motors ( for those wishing for precision, I have elided the difference between series and parallel hybrids, and am assuming that they are all series hybrids)

To be clear, if you use the Volt (which is a series hybrid)for 40 miles a day and no more, you will use no gasoline at all.
When you go on holiday you would have to fill up.

Your 46% figure for gasoline as a percentage of oil consumption further confuses the debate, since most of the difference is made up of things like long-distance freight, which could be switched to rail, agricultural machinery which could use biodiesel, and sundry other items which are not relevant to the discussion on private vehicle fuel economy.

All electric vehicles would likely do around 80 miles a day, depending on the batteries fitted, and if those were leased as is currently planned the total costs would be less than running a petrol car.
When you go on holiday you would hire a petrol car. for long distances.