We All Lose In The End

This piece is a reaction to columnist Dan Walters, who wrote that Americans are indeed sticking to their cars, but are not fixing the roads, and that trains are a bad idea. He is wrong of course, as are most of us. You might read up on the Mayan, the Inca, the Aztec, the Egyptian civilizations and what drove them to ruin: resources drying up and not adapting in time. We had plenty of time to adapt to peak oil, we have chosen to listen to greedy oil companies rather than to common sense, and so our very survival is threatened:

You are right and wrong about "We'll stick to our cars". You are right, that with present leadership and "conventional reality" we are doomed to stick with our cars.

You are right that after WWII, actually before it, Americans had a "can do" spirit, and committed billions of dollars to infrastructure building; dams, electrical grids, roads, canals; etc.

Then 1970 hit, and Prop 13, and me..me..me.

We have "enjoyed" conservative leadership for over forty years; our roads are ruined, the electrical grid outdated, and we persist in our reliance on auto transportation. And heaven forbid, we won't tax ourselves to fix anything.

In the 1960s millions of rail workers were laid off, passenger trains were mothballed, as we moved transportation to the interstate freeway system. And why not, oil was plentiful and cheap, we had just discovered that the Middle East had lakes of it, so we junked our trains and moved into our cars.

We built our suburbs, miles from downtown. We even moved freight to the highways, costing more to move, but faster.

And about 1979 or so, a oilman wrote a little known essay on "Peak Oil". He had the audacity, since challenged many times, to postulate that we will run out of oil sooner rather than later. And EVERY prediction he made has been right on!

Sweet crude is what he was talking about; not the impurity laden crap that is now the promise of tar sand fracking. Refinable oil reserves are now less than 50% in the world, and dropping fast.

Meanwhile, the world copied us. So the demand for what is left of sweet crude, has skyrocketed. And the price has increased in some cases a hundred fold.

So, we are running our of oil. Fracking is developing lots of natural gas, but the oil that can be refined to run cars, jets, and trains; not much developed so far; and very expensive.

And the tar sands: much of that oil has impurities in it of a molecular level that is not refine able, and will ruin an engine if used.

So, we are running out of oil. And, it looks like we are making the huge mistake of staying in our cars, decrying bullet trains as folly; and will suffer what all civilizations have in past when an essential resource "suddenly" runs out: ruin, devastation, war, death.

We should have started in 1980, moving back to the rails, building efficient mass transportation, taxing people out of their cars, and conserving oil, a wonderful, light energy source. We didn't, in fact we haven't really started yet!

Your are right Dan, conventional wisdom wins again, and we all lose in the end.