This is a guest post from Will Stewart. Will is a systems engineer in the DC area and previously has written several guest posts on The Oil Drum, including a series on Passive Solar Design.

As oil production falls and volatile oil prices in concert with a struggling economy induce a pattern of demand suppression/destruction, mobility choices will narrow and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) will decline. What should governments at all levels be proactively preparing for? What should individuals and their families be preparing for in advance? The choices are broad: at a high level, land use planners could refine cities into a series of compact, carfree urban districts interconnected with mass transit. For the existing built-out suburban and exurban communities, however, such choices are limited. Aside from telecommuting, transportation choices will increasingly include biking, carpooling/vanpooling, bus rapid transit, and other efficient means of transportation. Travel between cities and countries will also undergo a transformation, with air travel becoming less and less affordable.

This series will cover current and projected land-based vehicle energy efficiency and a high level overview of the factors that determine it, such as aerodynamic drag, weight, efficiency of motive force (e.g., engine, motor), rolling resistance, driver behavior, drivetrain losses, parasitic losses, environmental factors, Passenger Miles Traveled (PMT), etc. In this first article of the series, we will focus on energy losses associated with aerodynamic drag losses, or more succinctly, “drag”.

Tri Sled Avatar, a velomobile	Bus rapid transit in Cleveland

"Peak oil can be a very tricky topic, the way I talk about it and deal with it at the end of the day is: We need to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy... We need to really be the leaders in saying: the future for our children and our grandchildren as far as energy consumption and as far as production, it looks like this" with those words Colorado Governor Bill Ritter started his closing speech at the ASPO conference in Denver that took place from 10 to 12 October 2009.

Telling our children and grandchildren where they will draw their heat, electricity and liquid fuels from was not a topic of discussion in Denver. Nonetheless, much information was conveyed on the relationship between the economics crisis and the future of oil. This post is an attempt to summarize the main points on oil and the economy from the conference presentations--concluding that there are three distinct future trajectories as we go forward.

At the Denver conference, world oil production was discussed from both the supply side (what flow rate can be reached) and the demand side (how much can the economy afford). It is really the combination of the two that is important--so I bring together both in this post.

This is a guest post by Morgan Downey, author of Oil 101.

The US cash for clunkers program was designed to stimulate economic growth through the auto industry by encouraging individuals to trade in old vehicles for more fuel efficient models. The US$3 billion program ran from July 24 through August 24, 2009. The program resulted in an additional 690,114 cars being traded in. The average fuel efficiency of trade ins was 15.8 mpg and the average for the replacements was 24.9 mpg. Those receiving the clunker subsidy are supposed to be taxed on that benefit so the entire US$3 billion is not lost.

If you do the math, the saving in oil spending over the lifetime of the new vehicles could be great enough to justify the US$3 billion of taxpayer money spent. However, critics point out that the taxpayer is out of pocket for donating this one off efficiency saving to fortunate clunker owners without any benefit in return.

Now that the program is over, the data shows that there may be a single unexpected lesson.

Below is a guest post on the importance of Omega 3/6 for brain function in a post peak world from Michel Petit, MD, (awashinoil on TheOilDrum). Dr. Petit is a General Physician, has been Peak Oil aware since 1996 (Scientific American Campbell and Laherrere), with special interests in environmental medicine, human evolution, nutrition, brain health, and the biology of aging. Like myself, Michel believes that our environment and our nutrition are very important if we want a healthy population.