The LA Times asks what such a world would look like. I think it's a difficult question to answer -- it will depend a lot on our policy response. Clearly, if we keep spending priorities and regulations in place that were formed when oil was cheap, but then oil becomes massively more expensive, then the results will be terrible. But not only would that be a bad idea, I'm fairly confident it won't happen -- it just wouldn't make sense. The question in play is when will politicians stop offering McCain-style gimmicks and start recognizing that relatively expensive oil (I won't make specific predictions about $200 / per barrel or anything else) is likely to be the long term trend so we should respond accordingly.
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$200 Oil?
29 Jun 2008 09:05 am
Comments (58)
Unfortunately human nature and politics means Otto has probably called it correctly. When filtered through large numbers of panicky people our policy responses are likely to only make matters worse. Over on The Oil Drum commentor Bob Shaw signs his comments with the question "Are Humans smarter than yeast?". I strongly suspect that the answer to that question is an emphatic NO! Just look at the current witch hunt for "speculators".
When? Too late, that's when.
I'm fairly confident it won't happen -- it just wouldn't make sense.
I bite my tongue.
I am convinced that oil will be over $200/bbl before President Obama is sworn in in January. Its the realization that Saudi Arabia can't pump as much as they say they can pump along with the general realization that the oil field that we get most of our imports from, Mexico's Cantarell, is for all intents and purposes, has all of a sudden run dry.
Saudi Arabia just raised its production 200k/bbl day. What was that in response to? An unprecedented attack by Nigerian rebels on a far offshore, deep water production well. Expect more attacks like that in the future.
I think the key phrase actually belongs to President Bush back in January -
On January 15, Terry Moran interviewed President Bush in Saudi Arabia on ABC's Nightline. When asked what he might say to the King of Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices, George Bush responded, "If they don't have a lot of additional oil to put on the market, it is hard to ask somebody to do something they may not be able to do."
Panic time for you mortals not following oil news or for those of you who believe that the center of the earth is a creamy nougat of light, sweet crude is closer than everyone thinks.
One can't help but wonder what the price of whale oil is right now.
Oh, but commentor James Robertson claims that Craig Venter is going to solve the problem by developing microbes that turn carbon dioxide into oil. Therefore, why worry about a development that's never going to happen?
"The question in play is when will politicians stop offering McCain-style gimmicks and start recognizing that relatively expensive oil (I won't make specific predictions about $200 / per barrel or anything else) is likely to be the long term trend so we should respond accordingly."
$200/barrel oil will bring about responses without any "help" from our politicians. High oil prices are the solution, not the problem.
You have only to look at what happened in response to the 1970's "energy crisis" to know that "gimmicks" are about all our politicians are capable of. And why does Matt think the gimmicks are confined to McCain? Obama's endorsement of the ethanol nonsense shows otherwise
I foresee lots of Bush Sr & Jr. administration officials ordering special interior jacuzzis which use money instead of water.
Dude, Dow Chemical raised all its prices 45% in the last few months, and is cutting production because it doesn't expect its customers to maintain demand at that price, and probably can't get the feed stocks it needs anyway. That's about plastic, man. Shrinkwrapped everything. Maybe your Starbucks cups.
Light rail & electric cars are a nice idea for 10-20 years down the line, but the shit is hitting the fan right now, and there are no policy options. You might want to think about sparing Obama the upcoming hell.
Uhh, all you dudes cheering & laughing the high oil prices should have to attend the funerals of the elderly in the NE who won't afford their heating oil this winter. People are gonna die, jerks. Many more will have their lives destroyed.
Ideally, it would have been like John Quiggin's plan, 2-3% a year for 20 years. An oil shock is a catastrophe, not any fricking kind of blessing.
High oil prices are the solution, not the problem.
Exactly.
Uhh, all you dudes cheering & laughing the high oil prices should have to attend the funerals of the elderly in the NE who won't afford their heating oil this winter.
Let them move to Florida.
We'll have to buy some of that oil that China's pumping off the coast of Cuba.
The end of our carbon based world is not near (bar any draconian environmental laws). Alberta has nearly as much oil as Saudi Arabia and it costs something like 30$ a barrel to refine (vs. like 5$). Last year this was still considered a risky investment (oil around 50-60) but as prices rise slightly (80-90) production of this oil will increase. Yes it won't be immediate (huge capital costs and volatile oil prices prevent that) but once it does don't expect price to jump to 200$ for a long time. Remember commodity traders are no fools. When prices double or triple in 12 months its usually because of massive capital inflows and not because of some intrinsic change in the value of oil. But if anyone can give me a good reason why oil is so much more valuable now than 12 months ago (i.e. unexpected changes in demand/supply) then maybe I am wrong.
"Let them move to Florida"
Let them eat cake.
For a supposedly liberal blog, the commenters here are a fiercely anti-poor sort.
FOOD, people. $200 oil will massively affect food production.
Everyone talks as if the issues were limited to transportation and heating.
FOOD, people. $200 oil will massively affect food production.
What, no cake?
This is the reality. Higher gas prices will reinforce the already repolarizing class divide. The middle class will disappear. The poor may be killed off. Of course, they may rise and build an army.
Heh. proletariat.
Uhh, all you dudes cheering & laughing the high oil prices should have to attend the funerals of the elderly in the NE who won't afford their heating oil this winter. People are gonna die, jerks. Many more will have their lives destroyed.
http://www.citizensenergy.com/main/Home.html
Thanks for bringing this up. I forgot I wanted to donate last year, so I just did now.
"I'd put my money on gimmick-type responses plus more military interventions in the Middle East for a good while yet."
I'm not sure what Otto is getting at here. Our intervention in the middle east depends on the amount of freedom being exercised there. Simply put--and American intellectuals usually do put it this simply--the less freedom there is, the more likely we are to intervene. What does oil have to do with it?
The impact of 200 a barrel oil?
1. The purchasing power of the American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything," said S. David Freeman, president of the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners and author of the 2007 book "Winning Our Energy Independence."
Pretty true. We have gone in less than two years from energy, and indirect energy-related costs taking about 10% of the median American's budget up to 36% this year.
Look for a big drop in GNP as Dow notes - (They had to jack all prices up 43% to combat negatove cash flow from impact of oil on base price, but are already significantly cutting back net production.
2. More and more as prices increase, there will be political pressure to suspend environmental laws that gridlocked new energy production in America for 30 years.
3. Drill more, drill now will soon mean not just drilling, but accepting that we may have to crap up a few rivers temporarily and lose an endangered mollusk or rare minnow from the wild until they go back in a restored river ---- as we gear up for massive oil shale and oil from coal projects.
4. We can talk about taxing the rich and then Obama-taxing the middle with all sorts of hidden fees, but it isn't enough given they are squeezed the other way on loss of income to subsidize the cheap energy lifestyle of welfare mommas, schools set at a toasty 75 degrees. Expect the poor to be colder and eat less or lower quality food until enough nuclear plants and new oil comes on line. It could be 10 years unless we get rid of the environmental obstructions and court delays.
5. For every 100 Americans that conserve 10%, that is completely negated by one immigrant and 9 of her spawn or grand-spawn - even if she and all proogeny also use 90% of former energy. Mass immigration has completely negated all energy conservation savings America made from 1973 to 2003, and added another 7% to net energy demand for oil. 200-300 dollars a barrel oil will force people to confront overpopulation outstripping resources.
6. China boom in low-value goods will be hurt badly, as will US bulk exports of grain.
7. The people with the oil will have trillions to come in and buy up America's most important mineral recources, real estate, most valuable industries that now spend their money here, not in Russia as it would under Russian oil owners purchase, to create economic multipliers.
And like the oil nations, China is also seeking to buy and lock up resources the West used to have access to...all the copper mines in the 3rd world, uranium, coffee and cacao acreage.
At some point, buying up the historical wealth of America and our ability to be productive or maintain critical US land and assets will be challenged and Oil might be with held.
8. At a certain point, the "free market" in oil may collapse. Oil, surplus food may go to a "barter" system - or go to global blocks controlling use of reserves under their borders or which they are in military control of. This would be accompanied by warfare and significant die-offs in high-breeding overpopulated lands that have nothing to trade or offer. A "lighter" form of this would be temporary rationing and restrictions. Oil goes to farmers, miners, military, critical services 1st, at a lower price. Oil may not be available in "end of the line" NIMBY states at any price. Schools in the North may have to be regulated to shut down in Jan, Feb to save "national energy supply", and do the schooling in the summer. Welfare families may be rationed along with productive citizens finite amounts of electricity, gas, oil per month and pay huge premiums if they go over - or they are shut off. No exceptions...
9. 200-300 a barrel gas might force us into a state of emergency where parts of the Constitution are suspended.
It could get quite ugly.
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bob Macmanus - Uhh, all you dudes cheering & laughing the high oil prices should have to attend the funerals of the elderly in the NE who won't afford their heating oil this winter. People are gonna die, jerks. Many more will have their lives destroyed.
During the 2nd energy crisis with the Islamic Republic arising, many people from energy-producing states had a phrase about New Englanders (and separate venom for Californians) who led the campaign to scrap oil shale, nuclear, drilling off the Coasts, drilling in ANWR, and locking up lands from coal use:
New Englanders. Let the bastards freeze in the dark.
Many of them were serious. Since then, New England has continued to be the Eastern USA home of NIMBYism. Every Senator is pro-mass immigration of tens of millions of new 3rd world energy users, every Senator is still vehemently against new drilling offshore or anywhere in Alaska. New Englanders led the "crusade" to shut down nuclear power, along with NYC types and Californian worshippers of the Sierra Club.
The elderly who die in the cold and dark in New England over the next few winters, and the freezing welfare mommas who can't ration energy use sensible in their households?
Their problem was created by their own elected leaders. Not us folks in states where enough off-limits oil, coal, oil shale, and uranium exists to keep America going 400 years before "exciting alternative energy sources like solar" have to be perfected, debugged, and come into mass production.
I recognize many environmentalists who typically come from liberal arts backgrounds and who work in areas most vulnerable to oil-related drops in consumer spending and future cuts in government are - are the ones especially gleeful about high energy prices - thinking that their social worker, law, teaching, environmental regulatory gov't job, or store clerk position is safe. With 200-300 a barrel oil, none of their jobs are safe.
You could see the US in real financial desperation ending various state and federal gov't jobs, need for lawyers, even cutting the teacher workforce by half.
Then the environmentalist activists will chortle a little less at high oil prices when they realize it will have a negative impact on almost everyone's life.
Is chris ford really Tom Clancy?
i don't know. Does Tom Clancy employ the parlance "welfare mommas"?
Higher gas prices will simply mean that people will buy smaller cars and move back to the city. of course, there will be nothing "simple" about this move and I for one, will experience some schadenfreude at the spectacle of folks selling off their overpriced "country estates" at a loss and giving up on their Hummers, but for the most part, people will survive. I expect electric cars will be in here a big way in the 5-10 year time frame. According to the Atlantic, GM expects to roll out an affordable electronic car in 2010 ( more realistically, 2012) and Toyota, Honda and BMW won't be far behind.
Higher gas prices will simply mean that people will buy smaller cars and move back to the city. of course, there will be nothing "simple" about this move and I for one, will experience some schadenfreude at the spectacle of folks selling off their overpriced "country estates" at a loss and giving up on their Hummers, but for the most part, people will survive. I expect electric cars will be in here a big way in the 5-10 year time frame. According to the Atlantic, GM expects to roll out an affordable electronic car in 2010 ( more realistically, 2012) and Toyota, Honda and BMW won't be far behind.
"Let them move to Florida"
Let them eat cake.
For a supposedly liberal blog, the commenters here are a fiercely anti-poor sort.
For people internet savvy enough to comment on a supposedly liberal blog, some commenters here have very poor snark detectors...
Hey KKKris Ford, don't forget:
...
10. Cut the burning of crosses by 75%, because, hey - as much as it may pain you, every little bit helps.
People who think that higher energy prices only effect the costs of heating, transportation and electricity are mistaken. An economist from a major bank the other day noted that $200 oil or higher could halt economic growth worldwide. High oil prices making the growth economy untenable is one of the tenets of peak oil theory.
Many people who think about oil and think they grasp the outcomes of high oil prices don't realize its scope. The US may spend almost half its daily oil consumption on transportation, but the rest of the world doesn't drive the way we do or the big SUVs, and only about 1/4 of the oil used worldwide is used for transportation (it would be much less if not for the US). Thinking that buying smaller / electric cars or moving to the city will solve the problem is pure ignorance. It will help. But will it stop shipping costs from China from skyrocketing? Will it enable any of the US airlines to turn a profit from flying? No and no.
And this doesn't even touch on natural gas, the price of which is linked to the price of oil. In industrial farming, fertilizer is made from natural gas. Not only has this led to a jump in the price of fertilizers, the increase in NG price has led to a halt in fertilizer production in some places. This has led to a drop in the amount of fertilizer at just the time that biofuels are leading to increased crop prices.
Oil and natural gas touch everything. If you see someone spouting a simple solution like "drive less and we'll be fine," don't listen.
The projected oil demand for 2008 back in 2004 was 89 million barrels per day, before 3 straight years of flat production. Consumption today is around 85-86 mbpd. There has already been ~3 mbpd demand destruction. Don't listen to the people, e.g. the Saudis, who say the market is adequately supplied. Sure, it's adequate at $140 because people are using less oil. If oil was $300 they could supply a lot less and say that supply was meeting demand. But demand destruction = loss of economic activity or worse (famine and freezing and death).
The presidential election will not go down as the most important event of this year, even if only the US is considered. 2008 is the year oil, really peak oil, became the single most important issue. A barrel of oil gets my vote as the "Thing of the Year" over Obama, who's going to win.
Hey KKKris Ford, don't forget:
10. Cut the burning of crosses by 75%, because, hey - as much as it may pain you, every little bit helps.
Posted by McKingford
Hey, McKingford, keep in mind red-blooded Canadians out West have have their fill of your Trudeau Multiculti and rule by PC fear. Much of Canada would love nothing more than to round up the whole pack of anti-West, effete assholes in Ontario, Quebec, and non-Asian parts of Vancouver and sell your willing butts off to be male sex slaves to the Saudis and Paks.
As a Nova Scotian said, there is little to distinguish whiny Lefty south Ontario men from women save their lack of tits.
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Ever wonder, now that ethanol has seen it's love affair crumble, solar photovoltaic hit insoluable issues of reliability and economics, whereforth wind power?
Why when all the ships on the globe once sailed on wind power has it been abandoned?
Because it is unreliable, has huge labor costs, and simply sucks compared to steam engines off coal or oil-fired boilers or diesel.
Why was "abundant windpower, almost free!!!" limited to water wells and occasional small grain mills in the wind-heavy Plains, Appalachia, and Rockies? Why was rural electrification deemed a national priority to hook America's most wind-rich regions up to coal or hydro electricity?
Because wind is erratic and sucks. Water mills had a thousand and one uses, like it's better sucessor fossil fuel electricity - because it was reliable power and able to ramp up and down on need. Some of the most self-reliant.innovative people in the world, 19th and early 20th century Americans (and the real Canadians), made thousands of uses for horsepower, steam engines, modern electric grids - but all shunned windpower for but a few small uses. The main reason is economics tied to low productivity for investment in wind.
Very soon the ranks of delusional liberal arts background environmentalist backers of wind will have to confront the ugly realities of science and engineering that conservation doesn't amount to beans with high population growth with much of it still being allowed to be dumped on the West, and wind and solar may provide little more than 3-6% of America's net energy needs by 2050.
Say hello to nukes! And cry your hearts out as the world concludes global warming is LESS IMPORTANT than meeting energy, and through that, food needs until we get through a 40-50 year transition period to get off fossil fuel and equip our civilization to do without it, as well as shrink human populations back to a sustainable 2 billion globally, the US back down to around 250 million.
Global warming is another grand misdirection by the Euro Left similar to their GM "frankenfood", no DDT ever!!, obsessions that killed millions in poor countries. There are risks and some negative effects from GM food, global warming, nuclear power. But we will have to live with all three.
And accept that 7 dollar a gallon gasoline and consumer prices rising by 30% and even doubling for some food and manufacturing goods heavily dependent on fuel - if it happens this fall - will dominate all other issues.
Forget Iraq, health insurance, Obama's billions for more teachers, the "sanctity" of areas containing energy that have been off-limits, global warming goes from a Gore "save the planet now!!" matter to a 40 year transition to reach goals and get half the world blowing off carbon restrictions to comply.
America will elect either a "reformed" Democrat pledging to end the energy mess the Left of his Party and environmentalists got us in with help from the Republican corporatists - or there may be enough change of heart if they don't go with "whatever it takes" - to see voters have a change of heart and conclude that Democrats cannot be trusted on the economy, energy, national security - trusted even less than Dubya was, or McCain runs to be.
Alberta has nearly as much oil as Saudi Arabia and it costs something like 30$ a barrel to refine...
First of all, the cost to produce it has nothing to with with what price the market will bear. That has everything to do with supply and demand.
And on that front the tar sands will be woefully inadequate and hugely damaging to the environment. The refining of tar sands into oil requires water ond it pollutes 3 to 4 barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced. There's just not enough water available in the region to allow production to exceed 4-5 million barrels a day. It will also take the better part of a decade to ramp up to that level of production. And even at current production levels of 1 million barrels/day, the ponds of fouled water produced are large enough to see from space.
Since the US alone consumes 20 million barrels/day and global production totals about 85 million/day its pretty obvious that tar sand will have a small effect on prices. And finally, when you subtract the 2 million barrels/day (and growing) that Canada consumes domestically that downward pressure on global prices will be even smaller.
When prices double or triple in 12 months its usually because of massive capital inflows and not because of some intrinsic change in the value of oil.
Or, alternatively, prices have been held close to the cost of production due to the presence of excess production capacity that could be brought online easily whenever prices started to rise. But when demand exceeds production capacity, a bidding war over existing supply is the natural result. This situation just is "an intrinsic change in the value of oil": from the cost of production to the worth of the value added by its consumption.
until we get through a 40-50 year transition period to get off fossil fuel and equip our civilization to do without it, as well as shrink human populations back to a sustainable 2 billion globally,
5 billion dead in 40 - 50 years. Some "transition". Think we'll do without your "planning", thanks.
asdf:
Well, welfare mothers do make better lovers.
5 billion dead in 40 - 50 years. Some "transition". Think we'll do without your "planning", thanks.
Hey, Chris Ford's not saying we won't get our hair a little mussed up!
Besides, any shrinkage of the population of gay men in Toronto has got to be worth 4-5 billion deaths. Cost/Benefit, baby!
[sarcasm alert, for the humor challenged out there]
Because wind is erratic and sucks. Water mills had a thousand and one uses, like it's better sucessor fossil fuel electricity - because it was reliable power and able to ramp up and down on need. Some of the most self-reliant.innovative people in the world, 19th and early 20th century Americans (and the real Canadians), made thousands of uses for horsepower, steam engines, modern electric grids - but all shunned windpower for but a few small uses. The main reason is economics tied to low productivity for investment in wind.
Isn't technological progress wonderful ... we've gone from the unreliability of free-standing, small radius, high revolution, wind generators with battery back up to the efficiency of utility grade Megawatt large radius, low revolution wind turbines within a single human lifetime.
While the US has allowed Europe, which has a much smaller resource per capita, to leapfrog us in the last twenty years, that also means that we have allowed them to prove out the technology, so that we can roll out wind turbines in complete confidence that each one will give decades of power without the risks of price blow-outs accompanying the unsustainable, nonrenewable energy resources.
Can anybody else tally up komrade ford's talking points? My excel has this floating point error and can't keep up with figures that large. It IS a breathtaking number, even rounded.
It's amazing to me that over 35 comments have gone by and nobody's even mentioned the word "efficiency." Energy efficiency has been the largest source of new energy supply since 1970 -- larger than nat gas, oil, and coal combined -- and we've barely scratched the surface. Public policy could easily remove some of the misaligned incentives, investment barriers, and market failures that prevent efficiency from growing even faster.
Nothing else -- not tar sands, not oil shale, not offshore drilling, not renewables -- offers as much energy, as quickly. To boot, a dollar invested in efficiency generates more productivity and more jobs than a dollar invested in any other energy source. It's an economic stimulus, whereas money spent on, say, oil is just burnt cost, sent overseas.
Until we get our heads around this we're going to flail about and, as others have noted, lots of lives are going to be destroyed. Efficiency has got to be at the center of energy policy for the coming few decades, at the very least.
Uhh, all you dudes cheering & laughing the high oil prices should have to attend the funerals of the elderly in the NE who won't afford their heating oil this winter. People are gonna die, jerks. Many more will have their lives destroyed.
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You know who helps out in that instance...? (Hint: FDR not Reagan).
Re Chris Ford
Apparently, Mr. Ford has not read the comment from his fellow right winger, James Robertson, some threads ago. None of the approaches mentioned by Mr. Ford are necessary because Craig Venter is going to solve the problem by using microbes/algae to make oil from atmospheric carbon dioxide. This, of course, solves two problems, namely oil depletion and global warming because it removes CO(2) from the atmosphere at the same rate that the oil produced from it is consumed so no net gain. It's all very simple Mr. Ford, you're just stupid if you don't understand it.
It's amazing to me that over 35 comments have gone by and nobody's even mentioned the word "efficiency."
Get with the program. We're supposed to pretend that Americans are incapable of replacing their current autos with smaller ones, or hybrid ones, or alternate-fuel ones, that will allow them to offset the effects of rising oil prices. We're supposed to believe that advances in auto technology will come to an end, and that further improvements in auto efficiency are imposssible. We're supposed to believe there's no such thing as telecommuting, car-pooling, compressed work weeks, or any other conservation measures that people can use to offset rising energy costs. We're supposed to believe that efficiency improvements in residential heating and cooling systems, home appliances, lighting, etc. will also come to an end.
We have to pretend all these things in order to indulge our wishful thinking that there will be a massive shift from private cars to public transportation, and a massive shift from sprawling suburbs to dense urban development. It's all part of a broader program of wishful thinking and denialism that afflicts the left, especially on environmental issues.
Well, it's a matter of numbers isn't it Mixner? If oil is $200/barrel, just how much does the 2-3 hrs/day commuter family cost rise over a year? What sort of price shock would that mean to living in a suburb of Chicago? And so on. It would be good to see some detailed scenarios. Of course, in the long run - say 5 years - things will adjust, but there's no reason to think that adjustment will only be in car efficiency etc, it's very likely that changes in the relative price of suburban/urban living will also take some of the strain, with some shift towards inner suburbs or even inner cities and consequent demand for mass transit.
Well, it's a matter of numbers isn't it Mixner? If oil is $200/barrel, just how much does the 2-3 hrs/day commuter family cost rise over a year?
The average commute time by car is about 25 minutes. (The median is even lower, because the small number of very long commutes skews the average higher. The average commute time by public transportation is almost twice as long, by the way).
So those "2-3 hrs/day" commutes are the exception. The vast majority of car commutes are much, much shorter. But the point is that, regardless of how long the commute takes, there's a whole range energy-conserving behaviors available to Americans that would be far less disruptive to their lives than giving up their big house in the suburbs for a small house in the city, and giving up the comfort, convenience and flexibility of driving for the unpleasantness of public transportation.
Of course, in the long run - say 5 years - things will adjust, but there's no reason to think that adjustment will only be in car efficiency etc, it's very likely that changes in the relative price of suburban/urban living will also take some of the strain
During the 1970s, the real price of oil tripled. Did this cause the decades-long trend of flight from cities to suburbs to end? No. It didn't even seem to slow it down. Did it cause a large-scale shift from private cars to mass transit? No. Transit continued to lose market share to cars.
You seem not to understand the huge advantages cars have over transit. You seem not to understand the huge value people attach to bigger housing and open spaces.
I don't misunderstand either of those things: I just think that they are constrained by price. And it's going to be relatively more expensive to live in a big house farther out. Why don't people live in houses twice as big with cars three times the size of the current ones? For price reasons. Those relative prices will change yet again, and so will the choices.
During the 1970s, the real price of oil tripled. Did this cause the decades-long trend of flight from cities to suburbs to end? No. It didn't even seem to slow it down. Did it cause a large-scale shift from private cars to mass transit? No. Transit continued to lose market share to cars.
I'd be interested to see a good analysis of how 1970s oil prices affected housing/transit choice decisions. Obviously a lot going on in the 1970s, but I doubt price of energy had no or even little impact on these issues.
Obviously lots of people don't commute much. They won't be so badly affected! But lots of people will be. Don't forget that many families have two drivers and that a 25 minute commute each way means 1hr 40 total per household. And you may enjoy this New Yorker piece even if we disagree ...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?printable=true
I don't misunderstand either of those things: I just think that they are constrained by price. And it's going to be relatively more expensive to live in a big house farther out.
That's the exactly the wishful thinking I just described. If oil prices rise and nothing else changes, then it would become more expensive. But other things do change. Other things are already changing. Already, for example, sales of SUVs and big cars are way down and sales of smaller vehicles and hybrids are way up. Americans are already making the kind of adaptations they need to make to preserve their car-based, suburban lifestyles.
I'd be interested to see a good analysis of how 1970s oil prices affected housing/transit choice decisions.
Well, I just told you the basic facts: mass transit continued to lose market share to private motor vehicles. And housing sizes continued to increase. The share of our total transportation needs that are provided by mass transit is now so tiny (about 1% of total surface passenger-miles, compared to about 96% for cars) that even a doubling of transit's market share, which isn't remotely plausible, would have virtually no effect on our overall land-use patterns. The car would still be overwhelmingly dominant, and our development would continue to reflect that.
Don't forget that many families have two drivers and that a 25 minute commute each way means 1hr 40 total per household.
As opposed to 3 hours per household by public transportation. Along with all its other inconveniences and discomforts: walking to and from the train station or bus stop in bad weather, having to wait for the train or bus (and dealing with the inevitable cancellations and delays that plague all such systems), crowding and discomfort while riding on the transit vehicle itself, and so on. Ever been on a busy bus or subway at rush hour?
Of course, commuting by car can also be unpleasant and frsutrating, due to road congestion and other problems. But overall, there's just no comparison. For the vast majority of commutes, cars beat the pants off transit in time, comfort, convenience and flexibility.
Mixner - Efficiency is nice, and like conservation, worth doing - in a range that causes no to a medium loss in standard of living - and that can be implemented quickly. After the 1973 Energy crisis, we, Europe, and notably the Japanese wrung oil use out of wasteful applications like power gen except emergency or rural diesels...and got major labor and energy savings efficiencies in industrial processes and household insulation, appliance use.
However, they were the easy ones that our civilization and economy could absorb without a lot of disruption or sacrifice. Europe and Japan kept much of their conservation and efficiency gains, but in the US, they were negated by mass immigration. We went from 225 to 300 million in 30 years, and the addition of energy users meant we had more net energy use, though everyone uses less except the Learjet crowd.
Unless we stop adding extraneous energy users by the tens of millions from foreign lands, and get our poorest and least productive citizens to have small, unsubsidized families - the future gains will be ruined as well. US Census forecasts 363 million Americans by 2030, 420 million in 2050.
If every American cuts energy use by 25%, with some painful sacrifices like mandatory car-pooling, air travel restrictions to 3 or less trips -pleasure or business a year, gas rationing..schools shuttered in the coldest months of winter and summer school with no AC?
120 million new Americans (90% immigrant, immigrant spawn driven) will eat all that up and drive net American energy use up 5-7%.
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Another myth that needs to be put to bed is all recycling saves energy. Nope. Recycling copper, aluminum and steel does. Recycling paper uses more fossil fuel, releases more CO2, and pollutes more than using renewable, fresh wood from sustained yield forests. And paper in landfills is basically a carbon sequestration process. The jury is out on if plastics are better recycled or burned in trash to energy plants with all the unwanted paper, given incompatable plastic types for 2nd gen plastic components as good as from scratch ones.
We keep to recycling though it all isn't good basically because powerful interest groups, chiefly the NEA, believe it indoctrinates children into noble habits...
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until we get through a 40-50 year transition period to get off fossil fuel and equip our civilization to do without it, as well as shrink human populations back to a sustainable 2 billion globally,
5 billion dead in 40 - 50 years. Some "transition". Think we'll do without your "planning", thanks.
Posted by BP
I don't believe anyone is calling for culling the human herd. 2 billion is what the World Bank Reports done in consultation with science academies and think tanks believe is sustainable numbers that will not collapse whole ecosystems. Deliberately shrinking that down by putting goals to overpopulated countries and with holding aid if they fail to stop geometrical multiplication is a lot more moral and humane than letting regions now on the brink of ecological collapse from overpopulation lurch blindly into Malthusian catastrophe.
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D Montheith - The refining of tar sands into oil requires water ond it pollutes 3 to 4 barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced. There's just not enough water available in the region to allow production to exceed 4-5 million barrels a day. It will also take the better part of a decade to ramp up to that level of production. And even at current production levels of 1 million barrels/day, the ponds of fouled water produced are large enough to see from space.
I'm sorry, but coal mining produces more disruption to the environment. The problems you list are essentially ongoing engineering problems of separating out volatile pollutants from steam condensate better, thinking about piping water in temporarily (cost is no barrier( during the 40 year transition period away from hydrocarbons we face, and remediation issues with man-made settling pond reservoirs that like all reservoirs, can be seen from outer space - until they can be restored properly.
These are the same engineering challenges we face in America with our 2 trillion oil shale deposits and 400 year coal reserves to synthfuel processes. And the Venezuelans have equally massive engineering obstacles to their 1.8 trillion barrel recoverable bitumin deposits.
No energy source, not even the Greenie technology illiterate's favorite, solar, comes without major environmental issues if it is constructed on a massive scale needed sustain civilization,
Re Chris Ford
Apparently, Mr. Ford hasn't heard of Craig Venter who is going to solve the energy problem by developing algaes to make oil from atmospheric CO(2). We don't need any of the crap he's proposing as, when Mr. Venters' algaes get going, the oil bubble will burst and Hummers will make a comeback. At least, that's what Mr. Robertson claims.
The right wing fucktards babble about oil prices, but support a war on Iran.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Here are some facts:
FACTBOX-The Strait of Hormuz, Iran and the risk
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=230964
Money Quotes:
Oil flows through the Strait account for roughly 40 percent of all globally traded oil supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The figure fluctuates with changing OPEC output.
Ninety percent of oil exported from Gulf producers is carried on oil tankers through the Strait.
Over 75 percent of Japan's oil passes through the Strait.
Heavy armour and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq and other Gulf countries pass through the channel aboard U.S. Navy-owned, U.S.-flagged and foreign-flagged ships.
Between 1984 and 1987, a "Tanker War" took place between Iran and Iraq, where each nation fired on the other's oil tankers bound for their respective ports. Foreign-flagged vessels were caught in the crossfire.
Shipping in the Gulf dropped by 25 percent because of the exchange, forcing the intervention of the United States to secure the shipping lanes.
Note: This time the US Navy is going to have a considerably harder time "securing the shipping lanes."
Re Richard Steven Hack
But Mr. Hack is missing the point. After Craig Venters' invention gets going, nobody is going to need Middle East Oil as the world will be awash in oil made by algae converting atmospheric carbon dioxide (snark).
The technology for $200/barrel oil exists ... after all, that's just $6/gallon - $7/gallon gas, while Europeans are today paying €6, US$9 ... and here there are people who have been driving 12mpg SUV's.
Because we abandoned the move toward Energy Independence in the 1980's under Reagan and kept it abandoned under Bush-I, Clinton and Bush-II, it will be a painful transition for some ... but it is not a transition into completed unexplored terrain.
I had this sort of discussion with my boss at work the other day. He lives 20 or 25 miles away, and he and his wife work about 4 miles apart, and are supposed to report in to work at the same time in the morning. Yet, he drives his Chevy Blazer by himself and his wife drives her Dodge Durango by herself. The conversation was sparked by a comment I made, something along the lines of "I don't think gas being $4.00 a gallon is as big of a deal as people make it out to be." I was going to follow with "...it's the $140 a barrel part that's the problem..." but the firestorm started before I could finish.
Anyway, it seems to me that people think we're just another boot in an Iranian ass away from cheap gasoline, with nary a eye on how we quite-likely will run into this problem yet again.
Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 29, 2008 7:05 PM
Note: This time the US Navy is going to have a considerably harder time "securing the shipping lanes."
Yeah, there's going to be some non-buyers remorse in never putting those VTOL runways on the battleships like they planned back in the late 1970's ... the Straights of Hormuz are not really any place to be sending an unarmored blue water carrier.
Actually I'm not that concerned about the carriers. As Colonel Gardiner IIRC once said, "You'll know the Iran war is on when the carriers start leaving the Gulf".
They'll pull those suckers back and let their aircraft do what they do. It's the smaller Navy vessels that will get hammered. It would be harder for a Russian Sunburn missile to drop a carrier than a destroyer.
And it would be really bad if one of those Marine amphibious assault ships gets nailed and dumps 1800 Marines in the water all at once. And the Marines WILL be there because that's the only way that the Iranian coastal defenses that will be closing the Straits can be dealt with effectively, since they're buried in bunkers and caves.
An Iranian swarm suicide attack on one of those Marine transports could kill a thousand Marines at once.
Backing up Mr. Hack, I just saw this cheery item.
Remember, what drives the price of oil is the export market. (Because we consume so much, the U.S. price is set by the export market even though we are still something like the third largest oil producer.) If Iran cuts trans-shipments through the Straits, oil importing nations--the U.S., Japan, China, most of Europe now that the North Sea is running dry, etc.--are going to scramble for the remaining oil available. It would make the 70s-era price spikes look like one big hot tub party.
Chris Ford might want to consider the story of the Jacquerie, (among many others), before he goes on any more with his callous attitudes towards the poor and their suffering from an energy crisis.
A quote from a primary source way back in 1358;
“(Peasants) killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by a miserable death.”
So…the gangbang / barbeque will be at Chris’ place…who’s bringing beer?
I don't believe anyone is calling for culling the human herd. .. Deliberately shrinking that down by putting goals to overpopulated countries and with holding aid if they fail to stop geometrical multiplication is a lot more moral and humane than letting regions now on the brink of ecological collapse from overpopulation lurch blindly into Malthusian catastrophe.
Whahaha!
There's no way you can get down from 7 billion to 2 billion people in 40 years without slaughtering people on a scale that makes Stalin look like Elmo's cute little cousin.
Compared to your plan, a Malthusian catastrophe would be paradise.
BP: Yes, this is the same brain dead notion that Paul Ehrlich was championing with his book "The Population Bomb" back in the '70's.
He claimed that we'd have hundreds of millions of people starving to death - by the year 2000 - if we didn't cut the population from what it was in the '70's to about 500 million.
Well, we have six billion and change now, and while hunger is still a problem, hundreds of millions aren't dying of it to the degree predicted.
Worse, in the book he systemically "explained" - with spurious arguments - how none of the proposed solutions - better farming, shipping people into space, whatever, any kind of technological solution - could possibly work. He left unspoken what was clearly the only option he viewed as possible - genocide. Genocide of an estimated two and a half billion people - justified by an intention to prevent a few hundred million from potentially starving sometime in the future.
Real logical.
And yet, this idiot was feted by just about everybody. Johnny Carson had him on his show frequently.
Well, he was utterly, totally, and completely wrong.
Re: Just look at the current witch hunt for "speculators".
???
Three years ago if we had pulled the rug out from under the housing speculators (or better: never rolled out the red carpet for them to start with) most people here would be praising that as wise and virtuous policy. Why should energy speculators be looked upon any more kindly?
Re: People are gonna die, jerks.
???
Maybe in the Third World (And see above-- you approve of commodity speculation that creatse that result?) but in the US people will muddle through. Most of our buildings are ridiculously overheated in the winter anyway and we can dial down to 68 or so while donning a second layer of clothing.
As with soe much, there seems to too many extremists of both sorts here: polyannas predicting microbe-belching bacteria and electric cars by New Years, and Chicken Littles squawking about falling skies and the End Of The World As We Know It (tm).
Re: 5 billion dead in 40 - 50 years.
Wow, "Chicken little" doesn't describe this sort of bloodlust. Even nuclear war wouldn't be that lethal. Nor would any plague known. In fact you'd need something like an asteroid strike or epoch volcanism (think: the Deccan traps) to produce that sort of casualty count. Geez, why not pull out all the stops and predict the collapse of space-time from the new supercollider? If you're going to go all the way with the catastrophism porn, what could top that?
Comments closed July 13, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Responding accordingly without disrupting the large-house-big-car&commute lifestyle of the swing voter in the American political system is going to be very difficult. It may be easier for these sorts of suburbs to more or less go bankrupt than for politicians to win elections with policies which would help address the problems via large infrastructure investments. I'd put my money on gimmick-type responses plus more military interventions in the Middle East for a good while yet.
Posted by otto | June 29, 2008 9:37 AM