I've noticed a few comments in the recent threads that has me thinking. It seems we are continually blaming the American Suburanite for thier consumeristic ways. But I wonder how fair that is.
Someone from Peraguay (?) posted how they don't have AC there and they get along fine.
Sailorman mentioned how farmer kids don't want to farm any more becuase of the hard work and low pay.
My thesis is that, anyone, given the opportunity, will take comfort over hardship.
Look at the quote at the top of The Oil Drum today.
"A third of humanity doesn't want to ride bikes anymore; that has profound geopolitical implications."
--Anne Korin, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (May 1, 2005)
We have just had the ability to purchase (although with debt) the cars and a/c and houses and avoid the hardships of heat and humidity and biking etc. So I don't think this is just an American mistake. As the Chinese middle class grows, won't they be doing the same thing? Doesn't anyone once they have the money to do so?
I absolutely agree that there is no point in blaming suburbanites for living their lifestyle. They simply reacted to their environment. Bought houses where they were cheap, used lots of gas because it was plentiful, ect. I'd argue it was a lack of leadership that created that environment. But don't the people deserve the leaders they elect? If no one was clamoring for change why would the politicians push it? Chicken or the egg? Maybe they are both rotten.
A more insightful question might be how Europe has positioned themselves better than the US for Peak Oil. They've had high gas taxes for years. So now they have an infrastructure of public transportation, towns where you can walk to shop, and a fuel efficient car fleet. Why did they do it? This is not a rhetorical question. Who was lobbying for high energy taxes?
As to why Europe is different, I would argue that it is a function of history. They are simply older nations that have cities from hundreds of years ago, thus they are still compact and don't require cars. Notice that our older cities (NY, Boston) are more like Europe. But our younger cities are more auto-centric.
As for our political leadership. I am rather cynical on this topic. I look at our last Presidential vote. Both Bush and Kerry were members of Yales Skull and Bones. My point being is that it is all beyond our control. We really have no say in who runs, wins, or the decisions they make afterwards. Just my opinion.
Hell, I don't have AC in my place. "But, you live in Alaska where it's cold" you say...yes it is cold in winter...like -50F in Jan. BUT our highs in the interior get into the 80s regularly and we have a week or two of 90s every year.
Interestingly I have found out that petroleum fuel tax was first imposed in UK on 30th April 1909 at a rate that reflected 35% of the retail price!! This percentage dropped when fuel became more expensive to about 20%. On this basis I suppose the politicians got stuck in to it so early on we never got the chance to protest!!
I don't think Europe is that much better to be honest, and I live here! It's marginally better but at least in the UK our public transport systems are still viewed by many as being inferior to cars.
How has Europe done it? Put it this way - "free market capitalism" can't handle problems of a qualitative nature. Policy can, IF you have competent folks making it.
My impression of my own country, Sweden, is that we have positioned ourselves for other problems then peak oil and that hase given us a basic infrastructure suitable for peak oil.
The most important reason for petrol taxes has for a very long time been fiscal. It gives a lot of money to the state budget. The main reason to implement the tax were to finance road building and maintainance. But since we more or less withouth interruptions have had a socialist governmnet that tries to implement socailism by raising taxes and enlarging the government sector they have allway been raised. During the last 4 years the increase have been quicker due to our greens demanding it for enviromental reasons.
We had early on an advanced electromechanical industry, we imported coal but had plenty of hydro power. We started early with railway electrification to save coal and expensive locomotive maintainance and get larger capacity for exporting ore.
WW2 kind of worked in our favor. We were lucky and licked ass to avoid being attacked and during the war we had a massive crash program for almost complete electrification of our railways to save coal wich we imported from nazi germany in exchange for iron ore, ball bearings, etc. Car use and road building boomed during the 50:s end especially 60:s but most of the rail infrastructure were kept and some investments done. It has become clear to mee that a large reason for this were Swedens militarization after the second world war and during the cold war. We were second only to Israel in war preparations to avoid being destroyed as our neighbours had been during WW2 and to avoid being forced to again lick dictator ass to save our own. Railway infrastructure were kept and maintained for the potential of fuel efficient transportation if WW3 would be like WW2.
The 70:s oil crisis probably saved some of the railway infrastructure and gave a major boost to our nuclear program wich replaced most of the fuel oil use for small house heating.
In the late 80:s we started to build new railways. I am not sure why, it was probably a combination of enviromental reasons and the recognition that it is good for commuting. New rail links started to be a lifeline for small and medium sized towns that almost were close enough to large growing towns. This building trend continues but only 1/3 of the projects on the wish list are being built within a few years. We will have an outstanding railway network in 2030 or later. :-/
One factor might have been that our capital Stockholm is built on granite rock ground on a set of icelands and creek(?) divided ground. It was expensive to build roads but fairly inexpensive to build subways and it has for a fairly long time relied on railway commuting.
The popularity of fairly dense towns is not easy to explain. We industrilized and urbanised late being a mostly rural country. One component might be that most large industries built during the industrialization had housing built within biking distance giving us manny fairly dense towns that then were enlarged generation for generation.
Perhaps some of the longing for suburban living were satisfied by having summer cottages? Often in connection to an old family farm or so. It has been and still is very common to have a flat in the town and a summer cottage or caravan. Areas with summer cottages fairly near large towns did later transform intor suburban all year housing.
Peak oil is probably now becomming a major factor for city and infrastructure planning. One idea in my home town Linköping that I realy like is to build new bus roads with a geometry suitable for future trolley tracks when the economy starts to favor them.
As a North American, I had it explained to me that Swedes also have a national character trait attributed to "Jante", which as I understand it means one should be seen to have "only enough and not more".
Which gives way to more collectivism - more willingness to make sure that others have enough, and no-one gets too much. If a Swede had too much while others went without, it would result in envy, which in Sweden is a very bad thing (although from what I've heard, there's LOTS of envy in Sweden). Whereas in North America, having others envy you is sold as a great thing -something to aspire to.
So, here there's more resistance to doing things for the common good. Here, your fancy, big car parked in front of your mortgaged-to-the-hilt house is a good thing, but taxes to invest collectively in transit or compact, social housing is bad. In Sweden, the tradition is the opposite, thanks to "Jante's Laws" and the national character.
In school in Norway we would learn about this law, and it was common to have the students make posters featuring the "anti-Jante-law", wich is a bit more positive, to hang in the classroom. I always thought the law had something positive in it aswell as being very depressive overall, since it disencourages people from joining the "arms-race" where your goal in life is always to have a more expensive car and fancier house than your neighbours. I think the Jante-law might have been a reason why I grew up believing there really was no difference between people in a socialdemocratic country, and rich/poor people only existed in places like Africa and South America.
Anyway, the Law in itself is pretty thoughtprovoking.
the following is from the link at the top of the list after a google serch on "jantelov":
You shall not believe that you are somebody.
You shall not believe that you are as worthy as us.
You shall not believe that you are any wiser than us.
You shall not imagine that you are any better than us.
You shall not believe that you know anything more than us.
You shall not believe that you are more than us.
You shall not believe that you are good at anything.
You shall not laugh at us.
You shall not believe that anyone cares about you!
You shall not believe that you can teach us anything!
Aksel SANDEMOSE 1899-1965 (famous Danish writer)
The "Anti-Jante-law"
You are exceptional.
You are more worthy than anyone can measure.
You can do something special.
You have got something to give to others.
You have done something you can be proud of.
You've got a bundle of unused resources.
You are good at something.
You can accept others.
You've got the capability to understand and learn from others.
There are someone who love you.
I want to sincerely thank both of you for your comments about your countries. I believe that it is vitally important for those of us in the US to see what other countries have done and are currently doing.
My wife spent her junior college year at the University of Madrid (almost 50 years ago). It had a profound impact on her and she still maintains friendships developed then.
The jante law is a criticism of a national character that sometimes can be quite destructive. The competition for status has allways been fierce but it has had to be more subtle.
I think much of this is from our country being rural and quite cold during wintertime. You absolutely have to have your house in order, stockpiled food and stockpiled firewood otherwise you die. You have too take very good care of your animals otherwise they die and then you. You have to cooperate with youir neigbours for defence otherwise the Danes or Russians come and steal your stockpiles. You need consensus and working solutions for your problems otherwise nature kills you. This gives that people can be neighbours their whole lives hating each others guts but still get some things done togeather if they must be done.
We also had no nobelity to speak of. Our farmers have allways been an independant class and we have most of the time had an alliance between the king and the farmer class to ballance the small nobelitys power. This and very orderly and logically run state have for most of the recent history made us efficient. It can however backfire into extreme militarism that has bled us white a few times. Authority has been very respected although after a sufficent period of incompetence it is usually replaced, Swedes are very obidient as long as things work well. This has probably been eased by our town, corprorations(bruk) and even state being fairly small.
We logically tore down a large part of our regulations and liberalised in the mid 1800:s to industrialize and attract foreign capital. We had untill the late 1960:s almost exactly the same kind of development as China is halfway thru right now although it took us a hundred years, not two generations.
Our national character with jante, consensus culture and respect for authority was very susceptible for socialism. Communism was rejected as dangerous, probably due to the civil war in Finland. The liberal ideas lingered and influenced our politics and the early generations of socialists were practical people that realy did work for the common good, at least for large scale capitalists. Nobody complained since we had enourmous growth fueled by hydropower, oil, innovation and not being bombed out during WW2. It started to rot fast in the 70:s some years after the original socialists were replaced with career politicians. Now we have a socialist nomenklature that works for maximizing our state to provide jobs for them and their friends.
The local politics are right now quite intresting. I think our socialists are breaking down, more due to internal incompetence then the opposition. Market solutions and pseudo market solutions have for some years penetrated some sectors and the consensus regarding how to run things have started to change. I think we are due for a total state renovation as the one we had in the mid 1800:s.
I am not terribly worried about local large scale prepartions for peak oil. Our authorities are usually logical and we will do the right things if people encourage them to do so, a little late but before most other countries. And there is a small engineer inside most swedes that I am sure will survive our generation of dumbing down culture.
"have to have" I mean "had to have", and "hase" instead of "have". I embarass myself by not reading it thruough before posting, I have to apologise for my bad writing. I realy should start using a spellchecker but it is so much fun to write spontaniously.
Magnus,
I'm a yank, but am still a Tomte deep in my heart~ MorFar was from Lincoping..
I spoke with a Swedish woman in NY a few years ago who was annoyed that America's 'Conveniences' weren't at all convenient. She said in her town, (which I think was ALSO Lincoping!) that she would ride a bike into town, and then walk around to get to everything she needed. Thought I was watching a Disney movie! I'm hoping I can help Portland, Maine get a fleet of small Electric Shuttle buses to connect our main areas, otherwise, it's mostly walkable.
The bicycle lane network has continued to grow. http://kartan.linkoping.se/lkkarta/default.htm tick off "cykelleder" for bicycle lanes, whole drawn are for biking and walking, dotted line is mixed with car traffic, circles are tunnels. The map is unfortunately not complete some tunnels and bicycle lanes are missing from it.
I live in Skäggetorp, Tornby is the mall area with IKEA and so on and I bicycle to the university in västra valla. Tick off "hållplatser" to see bus stops, it looks better then it is since the bus traffic only is dense along a few routes.
Other kind of green infrastructure is almost complete coverage with central heating. Most of the heat comes from a garbage incineration plant that also produces electricity. There is also a heat and power plant with three boilers, one for biomass, one for coal and one for oil to diversifie the fuel use to optimise for changes in the market and tax system. And there is a small combined heat and power plant in the form a a marine diesel that is part of the cities electrical icelanding capability if we get national grid problems. It was originally built as an emergency powerplant for meat processing food industries and I think it still can provide them with steam. There is also a fairly large central cooling network wich uses excess heat from summertime garbage incineration to produce chilled water with large centralised absorbtion heat pumps.
All of the busses and most of the taxis and a lot of other cars run on biogas from a local plant that mostly ferments waste from the food industry. The second generation plant is now being built in the neighbouring town Norrköping where it will use left over protein from ethanol fermentation and fresh grass and cereals as feedstock. Yesterday it was decided that the ethanol plant owned by cooperating farners will increase its production from current 50 000 m3/year to 200 000 m3/year in 2008.
Linköping is not conciderd to be an especially green town exept for the biogas where we are a few years ahead of most of Sweden and we have one of the best bicycle lane networks.
Most of the transportation infrastructure money goes to new roads and we need some more roads since a 4 min stop is conciderd a queue problem worthy of solving. People from Stockholm laugh at this where an about 15 min stop is regarded as a real problem. I guess Californians etc laugh or cry at us all. It is nice to have parallell infrastructures for public transportation commuting, car commuting and bicycling, how could you otherwise get it to work efficiently?
We need to invest more in the raiway infrastructure to get parallell high speed double track alongside the current double track that soon will be full with traffic. We have some fairly unused railtracs that could be renovated and replace a fair ammount of car commuting giving a lifeline to some smaller towns. It is unfortunately very expensive but the investments last for decades, if I remember right the normal design lifetime for large road and railway bridges is 120 years. (If that is correct, a lot of the bridges from the 60:s have needed realy major maintainance after only 30 years. I hope that gives lessons learned. )
The main industry in Linköping is not as green. Saab Gripen fighter planes, but it might become a popular product. It is at least the most fuel efficient fighter in its generation and well suited for cost efficient national self defence. :-)
Magnus Redin, your comment about taxing to cover the cost of infrastructure is excellent. I've often thought that the simplest and fairest way to cover the costs of driving is to completely balance gasoline taxes with the actual cost of driving, i.e figure up the cost to build and maintain roads and bridges; mowing; lighting; state highway patrol; etc., then figure out how much to tax gasoline to cover 100% of these expenses. We pay for all of this in taxes anyway, why shouldn't it all be levied at the gasoline pump so that we pay for what we use. If you commute to work 50 miles in a hummer, your gasoline tax would cover your actual use. and if you use a prius sparingly, you would pay your much smaller share as well. People would start to make smarter choices. Furthermore, if a community wanted to add a new road to create a new suburban neighborhood or shopping center, all they would have to do is increase their local gas tax another penny or two a gallon to cover the expense of building new roads. They'd actually have to think about whether it's worth it or not. As it is, Americans do pay the full amount in taxes but we don't feel the full amount because it comes out vaguely from our federal, state and local income taxes and what we pay in taxes for car infrastructure varies with our income rather than with our driving habits.
I am sure we will have to change our system from a fuel tax to a km fee.
With todays world price on oil and the current taxes biofuels have become cheaper to use then oil based fuels. A mass replacement of oil based fuels have started and if the trend holds it will be complete in less then 20 years. This will destroy the tax base financing our roads and silently funding other parts of the state budget. The biofuels can handle the general sales tax but nothing more and how do you regulate fair tax levels between half a dozen biofuels and industrial feedstocks? The only way to solve this in an easy to regulate and efficient pseudo market way is to have a fee related to road wear and roadspace use. This would also make it harder to siphon off money for other uses within a state budget, that is good since our state is too big and inefficient.
This can be compared to the fees on railway use. The cost for running a train is the cost for the additional maintainance needed when one more train is run on the tracs. New investments are financed with the state budget, the pseudo market only finance the upkeep. The idea is that very expensive "structural" infrastructure is decided by the political process but the running and upkeep of present infrastructure is too be run withouth a political process.
This works to about 50% since the fees are a too small and the state budget for the additional maintainance is too small in favor of large new projects. I hope this will change so that we dont have to have infrastructure maintainance on the day to day agenda.
Furthermore, if a community wanted to add a new road to create a new suburban neighborhood or shopping center, all they would have to do is increase their local gas tax another penny or two a gallon to cover the expense of building new roads.
The cost for such roads is mostly charged from the people building a mall or other development. General improvements of the road network in municipialities is paid by their part of the income tax. Large improvements are conciderd a national priority and are bult after 5 to 70 years (and counting...) in the nation road building queue with money from the state budget. Rich municipialities jump this queue by lending money for building major rodas from their own budget and then wait a number of years for their place in the national queue to get the loan back without intrest. The same system is used for railway investments.
Local fuel taxes would only result in manny petrol stations right at the municipialities border.
To the extent that Europe is slightly better prepared than America for peak oil, I suspect that this is in part due to a more collectivist political centre of gravity. Although there are great arguments about how much should be done by the state and how much should be done by the individual, the middle ground of these arguments is way over on the collectivist end of the spectrum throughout Europe.
Few mainstream political parties fail to accept that it is the state's duty to provide medical care largely free at the point of use, free public education for the vast bulk of children, support for nurseries, a minimum state funded pension and state funding for the arts. To the left many want far higher state involvement.
To this end it is accepted that there will be high tax levels. People complain about taxes here as they do everywhere but what is grudgingly accepted as reasonable by the broad mass of people would cause riots in America. Here in the UK income tax of 20% rising to 40% for income over $57,000 pa, sales tax on nearly everything at 17.5%, property tax of an average of $1700 pa per house, fuel tax that takes gasoline to nearly $7/US gallon, Inheritance tax of 40% of estate value over $500,000, $35/litre on spirits (in addition to sales tax) and corporation tax of 30% on profits over $M2.7 p/a are not a major political issues. The right wing Conservative party has decided to drop commitments to cut taxes as they were not popular in the political centre ground. The left wing Liberal Democrats are generally thought to have won more votes than they lost at the last election by promising to raise the base income tax from 20% to 21%
Thus we accept state intervention on a scale vast sectors of the American electorate would not countenance. The augments are about how much the state should subsidise energy conservation. Once it is accepted that energy conservation is needed it is assumed that the state will play a major role in this. The mayor of London's proposal to mandate solar energy on all new buildings in the city has met with wide approval as has his implementation of a charge of $12.55 per day to drive into the centre of the city. Paving over streets to form pedestrian areas is common and popular , Cycle lanes are spreading rapidly.
In addition to this there is the advantage in some countries, such as the UK, of there being little space for urban sprawl. You cannot live 30 miles outside a UK city, cities are not that far apart. We also have a history of building out of durable materials, brick, slate and stone and a romantic attachment to old buildings. Whole areas of 150 year old buildings are common and 200 and 300 year old buildings are not rare. Compact city centres are rarely demolished. Old buildings are refurbished and the city centre patterns remain the same. As such many are not well suited to private cars and public transport is more easily accepted.
We still have long way to go and most energy conservation is largely based on climate change which is now very widely accepted and not on peak oil. Sweden is the exception in accepting peak oil at Government level. Still media awareness of peak oil such as on the BBC and UK papers such as the Guardian and Independent seems to be much higher than the main stream media in America.
In Europe cities are with reach history and people have generally used with the dense building pattern. In addition it is much more crowded and the land is expensive. For these reasons transitioning to car-centric cities was considered undesirable/impractical by both citizens and the government in all Europe. The lack of oil reserves at the time cities were (re)built (after WWII) also played a significant role in the policy making - European governments were concerned about their energy security and the impact on balance of payments.
As a consequence to all of this, in Europe the car is considered a luxury - a point I want to stress upon. The primary mode of transportation is mass transit (very good to excellent in all countries) and the personal car is accepted as a complementary luxury for those who can afford it. In all countries luxuries are taxed and are an important milk cow for the governments. In exchange (in countries with good policy) the governments have been investing heavily in the mass transit infrastructure even though from purely economical perspective mass transit is generating losses in most cases. The states and the individuals have rightfully unaccounted that the gains from saved land, preserved neighbourhoods, reduced traffic and pollution far outweight the subsidies needed.
There was an "artists and global warming" think on CSPAN2 earlier today. I was surprised to hear (scifi author) Kim Stanley Robinson say that his personal approach was to get back to paleo diet and exercise, as an answer to fossil fuel and global warming problems. Frequent readers may remember that I've been looking at it the same way.
Robinson said something like, if you look back and user your body like your paleo ancestors did, you find you are using less oil.
That works for me, though I don't expect everyone to choose that path ... buy hey, it does appeal to a certain hedonism/vanity to suggest that responding to peak oil will give you bigger biceps.
Since the major use for petroleum is transportation and the most likely paleo-friendly alternative is bicycling rather than rope-climbing, I think it's more likely to give people better legs.
That's why it's good (and paleo) to "carry stuff." ;-)
Biking definitely works the legs more, but there is some ... is "dynamic tension" the right words? ... as the grip on the handlebars is leveraged to the pedals. I can feel it in my arms after a long mountain bike downhill ... but that's less car replacement than motocross replacement ;-)
Biking is great. It has to be the most efficient machine ever invented for transportation. I have a collection of 4 electric bikes that I use for exercise. The hybrid design uses an electric motor, powered by batteries, to give you a boost when you need it. I am amazed they haven't caught on in America. They are taking over in China. They will be the next step up in transportation.
The US Senate has recently passed a bill which defines a clear legal definition of what an electric bicycle is in the USA. This is now a new law which has been signed by the president (Public Law 107-319, 116 Stat. 2776), and gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission the responsibility for governing the safety of new production model electric bicycles.
The law basically states that electric bicycles with fully functioning pedals, no more than 750 watts of motor power output, and a top speed of 20 mph on motor power only, are to be treated as "bicycles", and are not subject to motorized vehicle laws.
Electric bicycles that fall under this category are not generally required to be registered or licensed as motor vehicles, and a drivers license is not generally required to drive them. They are, however, subject to all the rules of the road, and additional laws governing the operation and safety of electric bicycles may be extended by state or local governments. This new law offers the freedom of being able to use an electric bicycle on public roads and bike trails to people in every state.
I read the link to the law you provided. It sounds like more of a giveaway to oil companies by outlawing any innovation on the part of home inventors. The awful low speed can't compete in traffic (until everyone abandons their cars anyways!) so it will have limited recreational use. But very limited commuting use when SUV drivers can't see anything smaller than an Abrams Tank.
Worse, the law makes it a Federal Crime to posess an electric bike that doesn't comply. i.e. one that attains 21mph even with a low power enough motor. It's a "controlled substance" like all manner of industrial chemicals!
It would have been nicer if the 750W rating was the only compliance criterion, allowing people to play around with gearing, add a fairing, etc. to get better efficiency. What a disappointment. But that's the Bush regime for you!
Let's face it. A Lance Armstrong makes half a horse at best but can do a lot better than 19.999mph. The motor power is two Lance Armstrongs at full speed. The bike if geared right would thus outrace Lance!
OK, you have your point. My pet point is that what we want is innovation. To do this, you want an electric-only law similar to the ultralight aircraft law. In that case, if the plane
Someone from Peraguay (?) posted how they don't have AC there and they get along fine.
Sailorman mentioned how farmer kids don't want to farm any more becuase of the hard work and low pay.
My thesis is that, anyone, given the opportunity, will take comfort over hardship.
Look at the quote at the top of The Oil Drum today.
"A third of humanity doesn't want to ride bikes anymore; that has profound geopolitical implications."
--Anne Korin, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (May 1, 2005)
We have just had the ability to purchase (although with debt) the cars and a/c and houses and avoid the hardships of heat and humidity and biking etc. So I don't think this is just an American mistake. As the Chinese middle class grows, won't they be doing the same thing? Doesn't anyone once they have the money to do so?
Ok, I'll be quiet now. :) Thanks for listening.
A more insightful question might be how Europe has positioned themselves better than the US for Peak Oil. They've had high gas taxes for years. So now they have an infrastructure of public transportation, towns where you can walk to shop, and a fuel efficient car fleet. Why did they do it? This is not a rhetorical question. Who was lobbying for high energy taxes?
Help us out Europeans...
As for our political leadership. I am rather cynical on this topic. I look at our last Presidential vote. Both Bush and Kerry were members of Yales Skull and Bones. My point being is that it is all beyond our control. We really have no say in who runs, wins, or the decisions they make afterwards. Just my opinion.
The most important reason for petrol taxes has for a very long time been fiscal. It gives a lot of money to the state budget. The main reason to implement the tax were to finance road building and maintainance. But since we more or less withouth interruptions have had a socialist governmnet that tries to implement socailism by raising taxes and enlarging the government sector they have allway been raised. During the last 4 years the increase have been quicker due to our greens demanding it for enviromental reasons.
We had early on an advanced electromechanical industry, we imported coal but had plenty of hydro power. We started early with railway electrification to save coal and expensive locomotive maintainance and get larger capacity for exporting ore.
WW2 kind of worked in our favor. We were lucky and licked ass to avoid being attacked and during the war we had a massive crash program for almost complete electrification of our railways to save coal wich we imported from nazi germany in exchange for iron ore, ball bearings, etc. Car use and road building boomed during the 50:s end especially 60:s but most of the rail infrastructure were kept and some investments done. It has become clear to mee that a large reason for this were Swedens militarization after the second world war and during the cold war. We were second only to Israel in war preparations to avoid being destroyed as our neighbours had been during WW2 and to avoid being forced to again lick dictator ass to save our own. Railway infrastructure were kept and maintained for the potential of fuel efficient transportation if WW3 would be like WW2.
The 70:s oil crisis probably saved some of the railway infrastructure and gave a major boost to our nuclear program wich replaced most of the fuel oil use for small house heating.
In the late 80:s we started to build new railways. I am not sure why, it was probably a combination of enviromental reasons and the recognition that it is good for commuting. New rail links started to be a lifeline for small and medium sized towns that almost were close enough to large growing towns. This building trend continues but only 1/3 of the projects on the wish list are being built within a few years. We will have an outstanding railway network in 2030 or later. :-/
One factor might have been that our capital Stockholm is built on granite rock ground on a set of icelands and creek(?) divided ground. It was expensive to build roads but fairly inexpensive to build subways and it has for a fairly long time relied on railway commuting.
The popularity of fairly dense towns is not easy to explain. We industrilized and urbanised late being a mostly rural country. One component might be that most large industries built during the industrialization had housing built within biking distance giving us manny fairly dense towns that then were enlarged generation for generation.
Perhaps some of the longing for suburban living were satisfied by having summer cottages? Often in connection to an old family farm or so. It has been and still is very common to have a flat in the town and a summer cottage or caravan. Areas with summer cottages fairly near large towns did later transform intor suburban all year housing.
Peak oil is probably now becomming a major factor for city and infrastructure planning. One idea in my home town Linköping that I realy like is to build new bus roads with a geometry suitable for future trolley tracks when the economy starts to favor them.
Which gives way to more collectivism - more willingness to make sure that others have enough, and no-one gets too much. If a Swede had too much while others went without, it would result in envy, which in Sweden is a very bad thing (although from what I've heard, there's LOTS of envy in Sweden). Whereas in North America, having others envy you is sold as a great thing -something to aspire to.
So, here there's more resistance to doing things for the common good. Here, your fancy, big car parked in front of your mortgaged-to-the-hilt house is a good thing, but taxes to invest collectively in transit or compact, social housing is bad. In Sweden, the tradition is the opposite, thanks to "Jante's Laws" and the national character.
Anyway, the Law in itself is pretty thoughtprovoking.
the following is from the link at the top of the list after a google serch on "jantelov":
http://www.bearcy.com/janteloven.html
http://www.bearcy.com/janteloven.html#Anti-Janteloven
the "Jante-law"
You shall not believe that you are somebody.
You shall not believe that you are as worthy as us.
You shall not believe that you are any wiser than us.
You shall not imagine that you are any better than us.
You shall not believe that you know anything more than us.
You shall not believe that you are more than us.
You shall not believe that you are good at anything.
You shall not laugh at us.
You shall not believe that anyone cares about you!
You shall not believe that you can teach us anything!
Aksel SANDEMOSE 1899-1965 (famous Danish writer)
The "Anti-Jante-law"
You are exceptional.
You are more worthy than anyone can measure.
You can do something special.
You have got something to give to others.
You have done something you can be proud of.
You've got a bundle of unused resources.
You are good at something.
You can accept others.
You've got the capability to understand and learn from others.
There are someone who love you.
I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.
I want to sincerely thank both of you for your comments about your countries. I believe that it is vitally important for those of us in the US to see what other countries have done and are currently doing.
My wife spent her junior college year at the University of Madrid (almost 50 years ago). It had a profound impact on her and she still maintains friendships developed then.
I think much of this is from our country being rural and quite cold during wintertime. You absolutely have to have your house in order, stockpiled food and stockpiled firewood otherwise you die. You have too take very good care of your animals otherwise they die and then you. You have to cooperate with youir neigbours for defence otherwise the Danes or Russians come and steal your stockpiles. You need consensus and working solutions for your problems otherwise nature kills you. This gives that people can be neighbours their whole lives hating each others guts but still get some things done togeather if they must be done.
We also had no nobelity to speak of. Our farmers have allways been an independant class and we have most of the time had an alliance between the king and the farmer class to ballance the small nobelitys power. This and very orderly and logically run state have for most of the recent history made us efficient. It can however backfire into extreme militarism that has bled us white a few times. Authority has been very respected although after a sufficent period of incompetence it is usually replaced, Swedes are very obidient as long as things work well. This has probably been eased by our town, corprorations(bruk) and even state being fairly small.
We logically tore down a large part of our regulations and liberalised in the mid 1800:s to industrialize and attract foreign capital. We had untill the late 1960:s almost exactly the same kind of development as China is halfway thru right now although it took us a hundred years, not two generations.
Our national character with jante, consensus culture and respect for authority was very susceptible for socialism. Communism was rejected as dangerous, probably due to the civil war in Finland. The liberal ideas lingered and influenced our politics and the early generations of socialists were practical people that realy did work for the common good, at least for large scale capitalists. Nobody complained since we had enourmous growth fueled by hydropower, oil, innovation and not being bombed out during WW2. It started to rot fast in the 70:s some years after the original socialists were replaced with career politicians. Now we have a socialist nomenklature that works for maximizing our state to provide jobs for them and their friends.
The local politics are right now quite intresting. I think our socialists are breaking down, more due to internal incompetence then the opposition. Market solutions and pseudo market solutions have for some years penetrated some sectors and the consensus regarding how to run things have started to change. I think we are due for a total state renovation as the one we had in the mid 1800:s.
I am not terribly worried about local large scale prepartions for peak oil. Our authorities are usually logical and we will do the right things if people encourage them to do so, a little late but before most other countries. And there is a small engineer inside most swedes that I am sure will survive our generation of dumbing down culture.
I'm a yank, but am still a Tomte deep in my heart~ MorFar was from Lincoping..
I spoke with a Swedish woman in NY a few years ago who was annoyed that America's 'Conveniences' weren't at all convenient. She said in her town, (which I think was ALSO Lincoping!) that she would ride a bike into town, and then walk around to get to everything she needed. Thought I was watching a Disney movie! I'm hoping I can help Portland, Maine get a fleet of small Electric Shuttle buses to connect our main areas, otherwise, it's mostly walkable.
Bob Fiske (nee; Johannson)
The bicycle lane network has continued to grow. http://kartan.linkoping.se/lkkarta/default.htm tick off "cykelleder" for bicycle lanes, whole drawn are for biking and walking, dotted line is mixed with car traffic, circles are tunnels. The map is unfortunately not complete some tunnels and bicycle lanes are missing from it.
I live in Skäggetorp, Tornby is the mall area with IKEA and so on and I bicycle to the university in västra valla. Tick off "hållplatser" to see bus stops, it looks better then it is since the bus traffic only is dense along a few routes.
Other kind of green infrastructure is almost complete coverage with central heating. Most of the heat comes from a garbage incineration plant that also produces electricity. There is also a heat and power plant with three boilers, one for biomass, one for coal and one for oil to diversifie the fuel use to optimise for changes in the market and tax system. And there is a small combined heat and power plant in the form a a marine diesel that is part of the cities electrical icelanding capability if we get national grid problems. It was originally built as an emergency powerplant for meat processing food industries and I think it still can provide them with steam. There is also a fairly large central cooling network wich uses excess heat from summertime garbage incineration to produce chilled water with large centralised absorbtion heat pumps.
All of the busses and most of the taxis and a lot of other cars run on biogas from a local plant that mostly ferments waste from the food industry. The second generation plant is now being built in the neighbouring town Norrköping where it will use left over protein from ethanol fermentation and fresh grass and cereals as feedstock. Yesterday it was decided that the ethanol plant owned by cooperating farners will increase its production from current 50 000 m3/year to 200 000 m3/year in 2008.
Linköping is not conciderd to be an especially green town exept for the biogas where we are a few years ahead of most of Sweden and we have one of the best bicycle lane networks.
Most of the transportation infrastructure money goes to new roads and we need some more roads since a 4 min stop is conciderd a queue problem worthy of solving. People from Stockholm laugh at this where an about 15 min stop is regarded as a real problem. I guess Californians etc laugh or cry at us all. It is nice to have parallell infrastructures for public transportation commuting, car commuting and bicycling, how could you otherwise get it to work efficiently?
We need to invest more in the raiway infrastructure to get parallell high speed double track alongside the current double track that soon will be full with traffic. We have some fairly unused railtracs that could be renovated and replace a fair ammount of car commuting giving a lifeline to some smaller towns. It is unfortunately very expensive but the investments last for decades, if I remember right the normal design lifetime for large road and railway bridges is 120 years. (If that is correct, a lot of the bridges from the 60:s have needed realy major maintainance after only 30 years. I hope that gives lessons learned. )
The main industry in Linköping is not as green. Saab Gripen fighter planes, but it might become a popular product. It is at least the most fuel efficient fighter in its generation and well suited for cost efficient national self defence. :-)
With todays world price on oil and the current taxes biofuels have become cheaper to use then oil based fuels. A mass replacement of oil based fuels have started and if the trend holds it will be complete in less then 20 years. This will destroy the tax base financing our roads and silently funding other parts of the state budget. The biofuels can handle the general sales tax but nothing more and how do you regulate fair tax levels between half a dozen biofuels and industrial feedstocks? The only way to solve this in an easy to regulate and efficient pseudo market way is to have a fee related to road wear and roadspace use. This would also make it harder to siphon off money for other uses within a state budget, that is good since our state is too big and inefficient.
This can be compared to the fees on railway use. The cost for running a train is the cost for the additional maintainance needed when one more train is run on the tracs. New investments are financed with the state budget, the pseudo market only finance the upkeep. The idea is that very expensive "structural" infrastructure is decided by the political process but the running and upkeep of present infrastructure is too be run withouth a political process.
This works to about 50% since the fees are a too small and the state budget for the additional maintainance is too small in favor of large new projects. I hope this will change so that we dont have to have infrastructure maintainance on the day to day agenda.
The cost for such roads is mostly charged from the people building a mall or other development. General improvements of the road network in municipialities is paid by their part of the income tax. Large improvements are conciderd a national priority and are bult after 5 to 70 years (and counting...) in the nation road building queue with money from the state budget. Rich municipialities jump this queue by lending money for building major rodas from their own budget and then wait a number of years for their place in the national queue to get the loan back without intrest. The same system is used for railway investments.
Local fuel taxes would only result in manny petrol stations right at the municipialities border.
Few mainstream political parties fail to accept that it is the state's duty to provide medical care largely free at the point of use, free public education for the vast bulk of children, support for nurseries, a minimum state funded pension and state funding for the arts. To the left many want far higher state involvement.
To this end it is accepted that there will be high tax levels. People complain about taxes here as they do everywhere but what is grudgingly accepted as reasonable by the broad mass of people would cause riots in America. Here in the UK income tax of 20% rising to 40% for income over $57,000 pa, sales tax on nearly everything at 17.5%, property tax of an average of $1700 pa per house, fuel tax that takes gasoline to nearly $7/US gallon, Inheritance tax of 40% of estate value over $500,000, $35/litre on spirits (in addition to sales tax) and corporation tax of 30% on profits over $M2.7 p/a are not a major political issues. The right wing Conservative party has decided to drop commitments to cut taxes as they were not popular in the political centre ground. The left wing Liberal Democrats are generally thought to have won more votes than they lost at the last election by promising to raise the base income tax from 20% to 21%
Thus we accept state intervention on a scale vast sectors of the American electorate would not countenance. The augments are about how much the state should subsidise energy conservation. Once it is accepted that energy conservation is needed it is assumed that the state will play a major role in this. The mayor of London's proposal to mandate solar energy on all new buildings in the city has met with wide approval as has his implementation of a charge of $12.55 per day to drive into the centre of the city. Paving over streets to form pedestrian areas is common and popular , Cycle lanes are spreading rapidly.
In addition to this there is the advantage in some countries, such as the UK, of there being little space for urban sprawl. You cannot live 30 miles outside a UK city, cities are not that far apart. We also have a history of building out of durable materials, brick, slate and stone and a romantic attachment to old buildings. Whole areas of 150 year old buildings are common and 200 and 300 year old buildings are not rare. Compact city centres are rarely demolished. Old buildings are refurbished and the city centre patterns remain the same. As such many are not well suited to private cars and public transport is more easily accepted.
We still have long way to go and most energy conservation is largely based on climate change which is now very widely accepted and not on peak oil. Sweden is the exception in accepting peak oil at Government level. Still media awareness of peak oil such as on the BBC and UK papers such as the Guardian and Independent seems to be much higher than the main stream media in America.
As a consequence to all of this, in Europe the car is considered a luxury - a point I want to stress upon. The primary mode of transportation is mass transit (very good to excellent in all countries) and the personal car is accepted as a complementary luxury for those who can afford it. In all countries luxuries are taxed and are an important milk cow for the governments. In exchange (in countries with good policy) the governments have been investing heavily in the mass transit infrastructure even though from purely economical perspective mass transit is generating losses in most cases. The states and the individuals have rightfully unaccounted that the gains from saved land, preserved neighbourhoods, reduced traffic and pollution far outweight the subsidies needed.
Robinson said something like, if you look back and user your body like your paleo ancestors did, you find you are using less oil.
That works for me, though I don't expect everyone to choose that path ... buy hey, it does appeal to a certain hedonism/vanity to suggest that responding to peak oil will give you bigger biceps.
Biking definitely works the legs more, but there is some ... is "dynamic tension" the right words? ... as the grip on the handlebars is leveraged to the pedals. I can feel it in my arms after a long mountain bike downhill ... but that's less car replacement than motocross replacement ;-)
There are lots of links here:
http://www.massbike.org/bikelaw/bikelaw.htm
The law basically states that electric bicycles with fully functioning pedals, no more than 750 watts of motor power output, and a top speed of 20 mph on motor power only, are to be treated as "bicycles", and are not subject to motorized vehicle laws.
Electric bicycles that fall under this category are not generally required to be registered or licensed as motor vehicles, and a drivers license is not generally required to drive them. They are, however, subject to all the rules of the road, and additional laws governing the operation and safety of electric bicycles may be extended by state or local governments. This new law offers the freedom of being able to use an electric bicycle on public roads and bike trails to people in every state.
I found that information on the website for an electric bike conversion kit.
See also the "Safe And Complete Streets Act of 2005
...and the To encourage energy conservation through bicycling.
Worse, the law makes it a Federal Crime to posess an electric bike that doesn't comply. i.e. one that attains 21mph even with a low power enough motor. It's a "controlled substance" like all manner of industrial chemicals!
It would have been nicer if the 750W rating was the only compliance criterion, allowing people to play around with gearing, add a fairing, etc. to get better efficiency. What a disappointment. But that's the Bush regime for you!
Let's face it. A Lance Armstrong makes half a horse at best but can do a lot better than 19.999mph. The motor power is two Lance Armstrongs at full speed. The bike if geared right would thus outrace Lance!
It's scary enough that an unlicensed and unskilled electric bike rider is going to be sharing the bike lane with me at 20 mph.
If someone wants to go 30, 40, ... , let them go be a "motorcycle" under the law. That is compeletly reasonable.