MiKE: end of suburbia

So here I go with my own additions to serene's comments...

For many people around the world, the dream is to be able to live up to the 'America' standard of living, the 3 car garage, huge lawn, even bigger house, rooms filled with stuff which continually get replaced whenever the latest and greatest technology and fashion come out, 'better living through chemistry', and relatively peaceful, comfortable lives. Consumption of natural resources just becomes a bill which one pays every month, and stuff just magically gets made, with little or no sight of the costs, environmental, social, and economic, that go into the production of this stuff. One lives on 'private property', in lands cleared from tracts of nature[1], to give the (often caricatured) idyllic sense of being close to wilderness, away from the noise and bustle of the city, away from the closest neighbour even; and in order to get to work, play, school, and sites of consumption, one drives, often great distances (50-100 miles daily).

But then, what many people do not know, the dirty little secret behind all of this, is that this entire lifestyle (and this is the proper use of the term, not the warped sense of 'gay lifestyle' some people have co-opted) is predicated on the availability of cheap oil: Oil is refined for petrol for cars, natural gas for electricity generation, and the heavier fractions for the multitude of chemicals from plastics and other synthetic materials that are now ubiquitous in our lives.

And the oil is running out. Except that, unlike the situation where we are all familiar with, say, in cars, where, if the fuel tank runs out, the engine dies, and that's the end of it, with oil production, the graph of production over time follows a bell shaped curve, and past the peak, although oil will still be extractable, it will become progressively harder and more expensive to continue to extract. In the 1800s and early 1900s, oil was so abundant that it was even cheaper than water in Texas, but now, as serene has noted, oil just crossed the $100/bbl mark, and it does not look like we would be able to go back to the days of cheap oil.

What does one do?

One could, if one had a sufficiently developed sense of moral responsibility for future generations, divert funds away from war (and the military-industrial complex) spending into an R&D surge looking for alternative sources of energy, while at the same time, convincing the population of the benefits of new urbanism, in short, moving people into denser population centres, where one can work, play, spend time, create a sense of community, and be close to other people, without excessive claustrophobia or ills associated with excessive urbanisation and inner city decay. Convince people to stop using energy and petrochemical derived products as if there was no tomorrow - and that includes the 'green revolution' farming methods of using the earth as a sponge for our generous application of growth compounds, pesticides and other chemical products. Retool industries and prepare work processes to take advantage of technologies - for example, why not telecommute?

Or:

Start wars all over the world in an attempt to further secure hegemony and ensure continuity of oil supplies in the guise of a 'never-ending war on terror'; open up drilling in the Arctic and other wildlife refuges; continue pretending that it is 'business as usual', the corporations still need to get fatter and the most important thing is that the way of life of suburbia must prevail; continue externalising costs to parties outside the country, making other people pay in terms of environmental, social and psychological costs; all the while laughing to the bank?

Somehow, I am not optimistic that the first option is going to be taken up anytime soon.

[1] Ironically, the interviewee (I think it was James Kunstler) described how many suburban housing projects often name themselves after the species that have been murdered to make way for the project. James has interesting ideas. A concise summary of many points in the first part of the video can be found here: