http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_2.pdf
Anyway, the point is, you could eliminate ALL cars and you would only have made a sizable dent in our energy problem.
B. If you have a tight urban environement, you can cut the amount you drive, and reduce consumption that way. If you drive a Hummer to work, but only drive 1/2 mile, it is more energy efficient than driving a hybrid 20 miles, but at 1/2 mile you can also walk to work, which will outperform all vehicles. This isn't rocket science, it is basic miles per gallon math. The problems we face now is sprawl as much as it is inneficient vehicles like SUV's. Every time we 'double' the diameter of our suburbs, we 'square' the area. That means people have to drive exponentially further as the edge of the suburbs expand, and each car is on the road exponentially longer. Cars use more resource in that situation, not only in terms of gasoline, but also roads, bridges and the resultant taxes to pay for them. One efficient way to save energy is to live next to where you work. It is a lifestyle choice that offers benefits to a community, benefits to people who have more time for family now that they don't commute and we use less gasoline, helping the environment and making us less dependant on foriegn oil.
C.
Of our petroleum usage, which is about 20 million barrels a day, about .3 million barrels is from a renewable resource like ethanol or biodiesel.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec5_3.pdf
Our overall energy usage is huge.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_3.pdf
I don't know if alternative energy can make up for our high consumption. Here are the energy sources we have to pick from.
http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj09/youngqu1.html
D.
If you add both of the above things together, you start to get a better picture of the energy cost embedded in our national lifestyle. Basically, there are no easy answers. Our high consumption lifestyle is unsustainable. It may take 50 or 100 years, but eventually it will have to slow down. We are down to 50 years of oil reserves, and 100 years of coal. Unless we use nuclear energy and 'roll the dice' on an accident, we are left with no alternative but to reduce our energy usage overall, not just in transportation, but in all sectors of our economy. Issues like Personal Rapid Transit, bio-diesel, and the like would perhaps help in a small way, but don't seem like they could be tools that could deal with the massive scale of our current problems, they are mostly cosmetic, as are current tax breaks, ethanol subsidies (which is really a price support for farmers which I support) and most our other policies. LRT and heavy rail are good environmental solutions because they adjust the overall consumption pattern in addition to being highly energy and resource efficient, and they offer convenience to the user (which is their most important selling point). We also have to stop tearing things down, we need to design buildings and interiors that last 100+ years. The amount of energy it takes to process a single pound of structural steel is huge, the combined embodied energy used to process all the parts of a building are immense.
E.
We have already made huge strides in upping our efficiency levels in all sectors of our economy, but have recently abandoned most of our government programs to increase our energy efficiency, so progress has slowed to a halt. If we modify our lifestyle substantially, and make very large efficiency increases in all sectors of our economy we can get this problem under control. Either that, or events will force us to do the same things a few years down the road under much worse circumstances. I think we need to be realistic and hard headed about our policy solutions, there is a lot of fantasy, and emotion, floating around and it ends up throwing a monkey wrench into progress on this issue. If we just focus on cars and demonizing different ocnsumer groups we are missing the larger point, which is that we need to look at the total pattern and these are practical decisions which leave us all more prosperous, and with a better lifestyle in the long run if we sacrifice now.
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