What if Gas Cost $100/gal?
theoildrum.com
theoildrum.com
I'd use electronic means to communicate more and more and I assume others would as well. It would have to bridge the gap of distance that separates us. I'd probably get to know my neighbors a lot better as well. I'd go local for more than food. I'd have no choice.
A sudden surge to $100 a gallon gas destroys civilization.
Humans can take a lot more shit than they are given credit for.
Technology isn't so great if people cannot afford or even get access to food. A more productive exercise would be to imagine that we simply had to half our personal energy use. Merely shifting away from gasoline is not the answer.
Telecommuting FTW! I know I'd hate my job less if I could telecommute full-time. My equipment at home is better than what I have to work on at the office.
Eventually we'd be able to re-establish some kind of civilization (pseudo-steampunk?) with a severely reduced population, but there'd be all sorts of bad stuff to happen in between now and then.
I guess I should be worried, but honestly my first thought is always "finally we'll get rid of those pesky cars". I hate cars so much (swallowing their exhausts every day cycling to work), that I think my joy over car-free cities will outweigh most downsides of the expensive energy.
Personally I don't need a car, I could probably do without a fridge, and I don't really need long distance travel very much. Heating could be a problem.
It's all very well to be smug about how high gas prices hurt yuppies in SUVs, but they hurt lots of regular working folks too.
Carry on living in your self-absorbed little world, and wonder why the price of food goes up when the people who grow it and transport it to you have to pay more for fuel.
Edit: as mentioned elsewhere, of course cars are necessary for transportation of goods. But the majority of car travel is very unlikely to be necessary.
I don't know what that has to do with what I said, though: people who bought bigger vehicles than they needed are now finding out what a bad investment they were. On the other hand, farmers and tradesmen can and do pass the cost of fuel on to consumers. That may suck for me, but it is what it is. I don't blame them for it.
I'm pretty sure that the suburbanites commuting in big cars they don't need form the majority of complainers. And, as I've said, I have a hard time feeling much pity for them.
(To put it another way: get off your high horse about people up on high horses. I'm not one of them.)
Sure, but writing off expenses against profit only gains you the amount you'd have paid in tax on that amount, and not the actual amount itself. Writing off expenses doesn't make it a zero-sum game, it just puts 20-30% back in your pocket.
...which, of course, isn't a direct concern since many people bicycle for their health anyway. But it is a concern when it comes to more equine suggestions.
I am sorry, but most people could easily switch to public transport or cycling for their daily commute, and they would be healthier for it. That goes for European cities anyway - maybe in the US you are out of luck without a car.
Also, where I live there is a tax reduction for living outside of the city. Obviously that has to go away. If you decide to live outside the city, why shouldn't you have to pay for it.
Please list who am I hurting with my stance on cars, I would honestly be interested and would like to take it into consideration.
Oh, they might buy a smaller car, but they aren't going to start walking 3 miles to the store.
Of course nobody is going to walk 3 miles, that's stupid. However, riding 3 miles on your bike is trivial. You'll be there in 15 minutes. I do this about twice a week, and driving wouldn't be any faster than biking.
I think the reason people don't consider biking is because bikes in america are weird. Everyone wants to get a very cool mountain bike. Then it rides poorly on the street, and it can't carry anything, so they assume bikes are useless. I noticed that when I was in Tokyo, every bike on the street was of the useful variety. They all had chain guards, fenders, and racks, which makes casual riding an enjoyable experience. Maybe if you could go to a bike shop and see bikes like this, people would use them for grocery shopping.
In the US, it appears that most people think bikes are a fun thing to ride to kill time on the weekend. I wish we could change that perception somehow.
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What is stupid about that? Every day at lunch a group of 4 of us go on a three mile walk. Most days we stroll and it takes an hour.
If I had my own cart I could certainly do that once a week.EDIT
To clarify, it's ridiculous to just make a conjecture like this and build a case around it. The same thing could be done for anything else, not just gas and the current state of the economy. If the foundation of the article is this wild, then any of its conclusions are just as off-base and pointless.
2. Have you read the article? It's a thought experiment. It's meant to provoke thought and discussion. He's asking people to consider and share what they would do if gas hit a price where business as usual was clearly untenable and there would be no choice but to change consumption patterns.
On the other hand, the high shipping costs would make local labor a lot more economical for manufacturing, maintenance, etc.
Almost certainly not, unfortunately. That iPod Touch would be significantly more expensive due to the shipping costs and the massively increased production costs. Anything that contains plastic would be far more expensive (since we'd be looking at a circa $3000 barrel of oil).
I can't cite any great insights here, but I've tended to notice that when everyone jumps on the bandwagon of saying something bad is going to happen, some price is going to rise forever, or the like, the opposite tends to occur within a certain timeframe. It's now happening with property prices (and I remember the bulls just one year ago..) and it'll happen with oil. Same happens with memory prices too.
On the other hand, oil is a finite natural resource that has been pumped out of the ground for decades at an increasing rate. Only severely retarded politicians don't believe in peak oil or believe that oil is an infinite resource (they also believe in ghosts, so there). Thanks to China, India, and other countries deciding they want some basic level of civilization, the rate of increase in the rate of increase of demand means oil supplies and proven reserves are going down fast. That means there might not be a price crash and in a few years we will look at $6/gallon for gasoline as the good ole days.
It is typically very hard to accept that these things can have a big effect, but that doesn't mean they won't (nor, of course, that they must, but the odds are better that they will). The price of oil will be as "immaterial" within 50 years as the prices of horses or gas lamps were immaterial in 1940 compared to 1890.
The real question is:
What will be the economic and social implications if the current trend (up) of commodity prices given the timeframe (fast) were to continue.
Just to note: statistically, oil prices peak around this time. Oil prices do tend to be seasonal, so be on the lookout for that.
http://showtimeoncapitalism.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-defense-...
I got bored and quit because I thought it was pretty clear to anyone with relative intelligence exactly what would occur.