On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 01:18:35PM -0800, Shyam Visweswaran wrote: > Agree. Howard Kunstler is a rabble rouser and a > doomsayer. Though judging from the north american > media and policies cheap oil is apparently > inexhaustible. The US will have to go through
It takes about 20-30 years to switch over the infrastructure. Making things happen faster is exponentially more expensive. Our entire civilisation is hooked on cheap oil like heroin, and is in deep denial the cheap smack won't last forever. Withdrawal is going to be painful, especially if cold turkey. We blew our chances to start doing it in the 1970s, now demographics and health care is draining the government's coffers, so R&D funds will be scarce. If peak oil is truly about to start, it's going to catch us with our pants down. > massive pain to turn away from oil. The entire > suburbia / exurbia is unlivable without extensive You can make suburbia work with PV and solar thermal everywhere. It could be even net energy producer. However, it would take one third for today's PV prices for it to become cost effective, according to http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCosts.htm > motoring. No amount of alternative fuels is > likely to keep the suburbs and exurbs viable in > the near future. Hopefully, there will be > revitalization of the inner cities where people > can actually walk to shopping, schools, > entertainment and work. I live in a suburb, but I can do that. Things are much denser in a real city, agreed. You will need to import energy into a dense city core from the periphery, if the city is to be energy self-reliant, though. Suburbia would be self-reliant (but for the winter, especially if there's snow on the roof panels). -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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