Suburban Illusions
Extraordinarily belated, Paul Krugman's recent (and nevertheless excessively qualified) admission that oil prices don't reflect some kind of market bubble may help the mainstream media come to grips with the present and future fact of permanently rising prices. And the sooner the media stops thinking in terms of spikes, the better. Regardless whether we've actually passed Peak Oil in physical terms, we seem to have passed effective Peak Oil: extraction capacity constraints; refining constraints; producers with new incentives to keep a dwindling resource in the ground for their own use; increased world-wide demand that picks up any production increase &mdash never mind that there haven't been any significant net production increases for several years, etc., etc. The oil just isn't there. When the Saudis told the snarky Tyrant that they won't increase production, what they meant was, "Get a clue, we can't." Not counting shifts to alternatives, our adjustment to price increases is going to have to come mainly from the consumption side.
By this time next year I would not be surprised to see $10/gallon gas at the pump, to be followed in relatively short order by $20/gallon gas and higher. If and when it happens that'll mean a lot of things must change, but one aspect of the problem particularly caught my attention the other day: the American suburb.
Normally I don't drive much. I take my 110 pound Black Labrador, Hugo, to Battery Kemble Park (an offshoot of Rock Creek Park) on most non-rainy days. That's about thirty blocks. And I drive to the grocery store. That's about six blocks. Every now and then I go downtown for some reason (there's a photography exhibit I want to see this weekend at the Wilson Center) or, though not if I can avoid it, into the vehicular nightmare of Northern Virginia. Occasionally I drive into Bethesda to shop, particularly for the outrageous — though very much non-organic &mdash coffee cake at Breads Unlimited, a bakery that has been in operation, that I personally know of, for over fifty years (under different owners but at the same location). Otherwise I don't much venture out. My 1994 Jeep Wrangler, with its back seats removed to give Hugo more room, has only 56,000 miles on it.
So it was truly unusual a couple weeks back when I went to a friend's family gathering in one of the furthermost DC suburbs, more than an hour away. Forget about the horror of driving on those roads, what about the gas? Lots of people who work in DC have chosen, for various reasons, to commute two or three hours a day. They're not all driving fuel efficient cars (not to mention the plethora of SUVs), nor are they all rich. The whole idea of these suburbs was built on an expectation of relatively cheap and plentiful gasoline, but reality is beginning to intrude. Paying for gas already hurts, and I wonder just how many families will be able to afford future gas budgets of one or two thousand dollars a month, or more? Probably not many.
Revived public transport systems will take up some of the stranded. Some people will telecommute. A few jobs may re-locate into the suburbs. Overall, though, I wonder whether parts of our national network of tract housing will gradually be abandoned?
Posted by George Kenney on May 17, 2008 8:40 AM 
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Comments
I'm a global warming skeptic, since I just don't think we're smart enough to predict something so complex. Nevertheless, we should sink billions into research to get us off of oil. For example, genetically modified organisms that harness chlorophyll for power production. There's plenty of sunlight, and it's already warming us. No more global warming from this source. And chlorophyll eats up CO2 and produces oxygen.
Then, with some of that energy, we could make cars that run on hydrogen reacting with oxygen. The by-product is harmless water! In both cases, we are using Mother Nature as a guide, and she doesn't run life on messy petroleum.
I don't use the big city that much. I get my 'culture' from books and the internet. I think I could be happy 'in the sticks', provided the people aren't too primitive, as in West Virginia. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's what makes me afraid of leaving the big, congested city!
We had a black lab. I loved him. Way better than golden, IMHO.
Posted by: benjamin777
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May 17, 2008 12:32 PM
we're to believe what big oil tells us? fool me once... you can't get fooled again. i doubt there is such a thing as peak oil. do a google on lindsay williams. this time, i'm going with williams. global warming? my guess is that we're in cyclic transition. methane from permafrost melt is most likely pushing the warming trend. destruction of the aquifers is probably our biggest problem. the male human condition sucks the life out of everything and they're proud of it. god help us and i'm not even a believer.
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis-ch17.html
Posted by: coyne | May 17, 2008 2:37 PM
I was just listening to a long and very interesting interview about the future of energy with Boone Pickens from this year's Milken Institute Conference. Now, this is not what you'd call a left-leaning or anti-capitalist group of folks, so I think some people might be surprised to find that a lot of big business is definitely not looking at the future through rose-colored glasses (Pickens says oil production won't be keeping up with demand, U.S. energy policy is majorly flawed, and due to a near total lack of leadership, the country is falling further behind in alternative energy, is paying for the war against itself via foreign oil, etc.). Overall a lot of good common-sense analysis.
I was at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting a couple weeks ago and both Buffett and Munger said they expect oil production to be down in 25 years, and pointed out that if that's correct, it's going to be a whole different world, considering how quickly demand is growing.
Both Pickens and Berkshire are developing substantial wind farms.
Posted by: Jason | May 17, 2008 7:47 PM