Ya know I really don't give a damn how high gas prices go.
I have prepared for this day years ago.
Scared? Ticked off? Pitchin' a you know what?
It's all whining to me
Here's what to do:
1. Stop buildin' and buyin' the following:
- Hummers
- All SUV's including the *##& Jeeps
- F150's, F2500's or any kind of BIG ASS TRUCK
- Minivans
- Cadillacs
- Anything that does not get at least 50 mpg - IN THE CITY!
2. WALK - ya know it's easy - heel-toe, heel-toe!
3. USE THE FREAKING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION - YEAH - THAT MEANS T-A-R-T-A
4. Get a super-fuel efficient means of personal transportation. The easiest to operate is a motor scooter. Millions of people in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa ride scooters to work or store, etc . . every day. SO CAN WE!!!
This is my ride BTW.
It gets 65 mpg in the City!!! It may look small - but it's got power too: 59 mph - not something you want to take on I-475, but it handles the Anthony Wayne Trail with ease.
5. Stop buyin' houses in car dependent suburbia! This gasoline issue isn't going to go away. The farther you live out in the 'burbs - the longer you're going to have to walk some day just to buy the staple foods.
Placing your bets on hybrid vehicles or on ethanol? Good luck! For the former you better have either the credit or a spare $30,000.00 lying around. The latter: it's a scam - all the corn/switch grass or whatever we grow wouldn't be enough to make enough ethanol for our needs. (We use 10,000 gallons of gasoline per second by the way - that's 36,000,000 gallons a day).
It all comes down to this: change the way you live (downsizing) and change the philosophy of exactly how to achieve the 'American Dream'. If you don't - better get ready to pony up more and more cash until you are pumping not just your disposable income into the tank, but the core stuff - you know - the money you use to buy the food to feed the kiddies!!
A NOTE ON 'DEMAND DESTRUCTION: What is it?
"In the context of the ' peak oil' crisis theory, demand destruction is the reduction (or "destruction") of demand for oil and oil derivatives."
"The heightened price of oil would certainly encourage conservation--i.e., demand destruction--but that conservation might come in the form of terrible hardship for millions and perhaps billions of people and possibly death for many. That would give a rather gruesome connotation to the notion of demand destruction. High prices would also encourage the development of alternative energy sources, but that's assuming that world society does not become so disoriented and chaotic that such efforts cannot actually be effected.
If one assumes that the oil peak is far off and that technology will allow us to make a smooth transition to the next energy economy (and solve other related problems that threaten to annihilate us such as global warming), then there is no need to worry about the effects of sudden demand destruction in the oil markets. But, if the peak arrives soon, say, within the next 10 to 15 years, then no bloodless abstraction such as "demand destruction" will be able to obscure the fact the it is people who are going to get destroyed, and lots of them."
From Kurt Cobb's "Demand destruction: who gets destroyed?"
YOUR CHOICE: CHANGE OR PAY THE PIPER!! IT'S ALL UP TO YOU!!
N.B.: Updated on 08/14/07: changed 'my ride' from 2005 Yamaha Vino to 2007 Vespa LX150
Updated on 10/17/07: added comment about 'Demand Destruction'
Updated on 11/08/07: added Gas Station Marquee Graphic
2 comments:
I've been using TARTA more regularly since Hurricane Katrina blew the scales off my eyes in September of 2005.
I used to use it all the time when I worked for the public Library back in the 1980's.
But I got lazy in the 90's and for the early 00's and drove a car almost everywhere.
But I have met the enemy and he is me (or us)!
I have seen the future and it is either the heel-toe express, bicycles, scooters, buses or trains. SUV's, Hummers, F2500's and Jeep Liberties and the lot are soon to be white elephants rusting in the driveway.
So, 09/2005 did it for me. I got myself a Yamaha Scooter - ride it when weather permits (and weather permits unless there's a hunderstorm/heavy rain, winds over 35 mph, ice or snow on the ground or it's at or below freezing). Under my self-imposed restrictions I can ride all but 1 to 2 1/2 months of the year - usually being early January to near mid-March. If global warming predictions are right (and I believe they are) I expect to be able to ride all year round in my life-time.
TARTA is my backup on the weather (or otherwise) scooter down days. When I ride TARTA I'm on the 17. And since ridership these days seems mostly to be rowdy students on the way to suburban academies or the disabled or the dirt-poor either stuck there or trying to climb into the middle-class or gang members or prostitutes and their pimps it can be an interesting ride. In terms of racial/ehtnic use: mostly Black and Hispanic folks use it. The whites, for the most part, look down their nose at TARTA. But I've have heard Black and Hispanic riders talk with the 'can't wait to get my wheels and get off this *$!%&! bus' attitude.
TARTA, provided I am willing to put up with its limited schedule (especially in between the 2 'rush-hours' and on the weekends) can get me anywhere I want to go in Toledo or Maumee or Perrysburg or Sylvania- up to 10 PM at night.
If we want TARTA to improve - all of us - especially those who go to work and really don't have to leave until quitting time - need to use it more.
And I don't give rat's-tush that Toledo is a car-town, either. Many working-class Toledoans fed their families by manufacturing buggy-whips and wagon-wheels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I haven't see any buggys or wagons on the road lately. That day for cars and trucks is coming too.
If single parents will find it harder to drop the kids off at day-care and pick up the kids in the evenings - well sorry - but those folks will have to depend on necessity to drive their means to invent new ways to handle it. This isn't cruelty on my part. I'm just callin' 'em as I see 'em - I can't help that the picture doesn't fit into their dreams.
And speaking of dreams - the American Dream needs reinterpreting. Suburbia isn't going to be part of it. Suburbia is not the dream place to go and I fear and know that a whole slew of local people (mostly 20 and 30-somethings), unfortunately, are going to learn that the hard way. And they are really going to be ticked off when it happens and looking for someone to blame. But they are the part of the problem, and won't admit it.
Let's face it: we've sown the wind and are going reap the whirlwind if we don't watch out. We can be like the Fundamentalists and stick our heads in the sand and pray real hard that Jesus comes back soon to save us Americans from this hellish world (of our own making) or we can count on scientific research and development to save our fannies or hope our military can kick-butt in the Middle East so we can control the source of oil. If any of those mentalities are our attitude - hope we can hold on during the socio-economic EF5 twister that's coming. If we want to be sheltered from that effect then we all need to do the sensible thing: change the way we live.
And part of that change is using TARTA or A.T. (alternate transportation) and the not the car. We need to leave our four-wheeled lover before she dumps us. It is as simple as that.
I may not care . . . but here's why YOU should:
From Wealth Daily.com . . . 10/18/07:
Slouching Towards Peak Oil
“ . . . we’re running out of time. I’m firmly of the belief that within a year or two Peak Oil will replace Global Warming as the issue we’re talking about . . .” –Matt Simmons, former energy advisor to George W. Bush, interviewed on Bloomberg TV
Dear Wealth Daily reader:
Yesterday evening your editor was interviewed on Bloomberg TV Asia. If you didn’t catch the interview, you can do so here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_u4gnbSKeSY
It’s a garden-variety interview . . . and I give the same peak oil sermon I’ve been preaching for years.
But this interview is a little different for the simple reason that Asia seems to take the issue of Peak Oil seriously.
Here in the States, if you say you believe in Peak Oil theory, you’re immediately castigated as a nut.
But as the price of oil moves ever-closer to $100 a barrel, more and more naysayers are being converted.
Asia already gets it. So does Russia. So does Matt Simmons. And trust me on this--so does the White House. They might not admit to it--but they understand the crisis we’re in.
In fact, last year, the White House sent a delegation from the US Dept. of Energy to Houston to meet with officials from Canada’s Natural Resources administration.
The purpose of the meeting was to “persuade” the Canadians to increase their oil sands production by 400% “within a short period of time.” And the Americans were even suggested that Canada should, ahem, bypass environmental regulations to get the oil pumping.
Sound desperate? Hell yeah it does. And for good reason.
Time is running out, folks.
You see, in December 2005, the Oil Age came to a quiet end. On that day, the world consumed its one-trillionth barrel of oil. In the blink of an eye, half of the world’s known oil reserves were gone.
With roughly a trillion barrels remaining, and considering the fact we’re consuming 86 million barrels every single day, the world has only about 30–40 years’ worth of oil left at present rates of consumption.
But as we shall see in the coming weeks and months, the reality of declining oil production will have much more immediate effects. Shortages and persistently higher prices are the first indicators, which are already here.
Higher prices will undoubtedly lead to reduced demand through “demand destruction,” and the oil that remains will last a little longer.
But it appears certain that within the next decade, and possibly within the next three years, we will be forced to start living with progressively less oil each year, every year, for the next century . . . with profound effects on the economy and just about everything in life as we know it.
This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced.
From our current vantage point, in the optimistic first years of a new century, most people believe that cheap and abundant oil and natural gas will continue to provide us with low gasoline and grid electricity prices for at least several decades more, just as they have in the past.
This is especially true for the pundits and analysts who regularly appear on television to talk about how improved technology will continue to lower energy costs and bring as much energy to market as we demand.
But, according to Matthew Simmons, the top oil investment banker in the world and an energy advisor to President Bush, the idea that cheap oil would “last forever” is a 21st century myth: “The religion was faith-based, not fact-based! It was an illusion!”
At the first ASPO conference in 2005, Simmons observed that the peak oil problem had started to look like a “theological debate,” and quoted Dr. Herman Franssen, saying ‘“It is time to leave ‘I believe’ inside a church.”’
Here are the facts:
• The largest oil reservoirs are mature, and their production is falling.
• Approximately three quarters of the world’s current oil production is from fields that are two or three decades old which are past the peak and beginning their decline.
• Much of the remaining quarter comes from fields that are 10–15 years old. New fields are diminishing in number and size every year, and this trend has held for over a decade.
• And enhanced drilling technology, rather than making ever-greater amounts of oil available, has had the perverse effect of simply allowing us to deplete the existing oil basins more quickly. Instead of creating future supplies of cheaper energy, they have caused us to sell the past supply of those high quality, nonrenewable resources as quickly and as cheaply as possible . . . leaving little for the future, and that at a much higher price.
To put oil depletion in context, consider these facts:
• For every calorie of food that we consume in the U.S., ten calories of fossil fuel input were needed in the form of fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides and herbicides (made from oil), fuel to run the machines that plant, tend, harvest, transport, and process the goods, and fuel to deliver them to your grocery store and keep them cold there. And that doesn’t even count the energy needed to transport you to the store, and you and your groceries back home, nor the energy used to cook the meal.
The massive inputs of fossil fuels into food production are what has permitted the world population to increase from around 1.5 billion people at the turn of the 20th century to its current level of around 6.7 billion people.
In a very straightforward way, food is oil and gas. According to noted peak oil author Richard Heinberg, food travels an average of 1,300 miles from the farm to the plate in North America, leading critics such as James Howard Kunstler to decry the “3000 mile Caesar Salad” that travels from California’s breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley, to his table in Scranton, PA.
But peak oil challenges more than our ability to feed ourselves.
The security costs alone of having the U.S. military protect the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf costs around $44 billion per year.
In fact, an in-depth analysis of the true total economic cost of the nation’s growing dependence on imported oil is estimated at $825.1 billion--almost twice the President’s $419.3 billion defense budget request. And much of that goes into the pockets of people who hate us.
Our dependence on oil--of which nearly two-thirds is imported--is a constant drain on the national treasure, not to mention the blood of our soldiers.
We need oil for nearly everything we do, and our entire infrastructure is built on the assumption that there will always be more when we want it, with very little storage or slack along the way.
We have a serious challenge ahead of us.
Don’t panic . . . but profit . . .
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Unfortunately - most of YOU out there ARE going to panic. Unless you change NOW.
YOU can longer sit back and think it isn't your problem because YOU will either be long gone or too far gone to care once the mud hits the fan.
This is something YOU 30 somethings and 20 somethings are going to have to address especially. YOU types are right in the middle of the peak child-bearing and rearing years. And because the terrible effect of peak oil is coming on like a great flood, YOU will be the ones seeing the direct effect of it: the swollen bellies and sunken eyes of your children.
If all you are going to do is sit there with your thumb up your butt and your eyes tightly shut - hoping and praying the deluge isn't going to come in your life time - then you and yours will be washed away.
If you want to avoid this - take action NOW - dump your gas guzzler(s); get out of the 'burbs and start living GREEN.
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