Economic instability, and car ownership

We're in an economic crisis and the news is full of stories about the need to restart consumer spending. Consumer confidence is a phrase often used and appears to be derived from trends in spending. If spending goes down then presumably individual people are less confident about their future and are saving their money. Some of the news coverage is focusing on the problems with the car industry and especially the bailout plans focused on keeping the U.S. car industry in business. It would seem the old adage about what's good for General Motors is good for America is alive and well, thank you very much. But do we really need all the crap we've been buying? Do we really need to buy new cars? But the problem is if slowing down spending, well, we can see the problem around us, it's impacting the health of the businesses that has sold us all this excess stuff.

The story being presented in the news is that our duty as citizens of this great country is to keep up spending. The same message is given to us every Christmas season when the news is full of stories gauging how good of a Christmas it is, and pondering the economic effect on businesses based on how much we spend buying gifts for each other. The same message was given in September 2001 after the terrorist attacks, remember that Pres. Bush told us all to go out and buy something? Over and over the message given to us in the news is: Consume, spend.

We can see around us the effect of a slowdown in consumer spending. It has resulted in an economic crisis which threatens to be a new Great Depression, as if anything about economic depressions can be great. Supposedly the path to avoiding economic calamity is to buy more stuff, because the stuff we buy has to be made by someone and buying stuff means jobs for the people who make, design, and distribute the stuff we buy. However it is a positive feedback loop. Normally investors give high valuation to companies with high projected revenue growth, meaning that businesses have a strong incentive to be continually growing. That, I believe, is what's behind the "keep buying" message we're being given. Continuing the cycle of buying that keeps businesses growing makes for a game we're all playing where the payoff is in the stock market. Stock prices continually rising because we keep buying more stuff, making for a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing rates of buying stuff to continue the game.

In the same context we have the Obama administration claiming that 'Green Jobs' and growing the 'Green Economy' is going to save our economy. The theory is that we all are living non-Green lifestyles, we all need to adjust how we live to be Green, because there is an ecological calamity facing us. An Inconvenient Truth pointed to that calamity, yes? If we all just used compact fluorescent lights we'll be greener than before and perhaps that will be enough to stave off ecological collapse, and oh by the way it means lots of jobs building the green infrastructure, green businesses, and green goods. However the Obama-Green message doesn't include rethinking whether we need to consume as much as we do.

But, is it Green to keep consuming resources at such a high rate? There's a fairly well known statistic: The US consumes 25% of the world's energy (with a share of global productivity at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%). The U.S. has the 7th highest percapita energy use among countries in the world beaten out by a handful of small countries, most of them oil producers and interestingly one (Iceland) who is also going through a severe economic meltdown.

The U.S. Department of Transportation National Household Travel Survey publishes a number of statistics about travel and vehicle use. Energy Use and Fuel Efficiency has data relevant to resource consumption. Number of Drivers and Miles per Driver shows the number of drivers doubling between 1969 and 2001 and that the number of miles per driver per year increased from about 9,000 (1969) to 14,000 (2001). Meaning that over the years the total number of cars has increased dramatically, and total traffic has increased faster than the increase in number of cars due to a higher rate of miles per driver per year.

This is "consumption" at work. We are all consuming more, we are driving more and probably buying cars at a higher rate than in the past. The ever-increasing number of cars mean:

• Because our cars primarily burn gasoline (or diesel) every car is a little greenhouse gas bomb spewing poisonous gasses for all those ever-increasing number of miles driven per driver per year.
• The need for bigger roads, more parking lots, etc.
• Ever-higher resources (metals etc) put into building those vehicles, especially as modern vehicles tend to be larger than in the 1960's (SUV's)

From a 'Green' perspective those are negative effects that we want to reverse. We want to reverse the environmental poisons emitted by cars, we want more park land, we want to reverse the negative effects that mineral mining has on the earth, etc. One way to reverse those effects is to buy 'green' cars that use less resources to build and drive. But perhaps a better way to reverse those effects is to buy fewer cars per capita. A car that isn't required doesn't cause minerals to be mined and converted into the car, and the car which doesn't exist cannot burn gasoline, and the car which doesn't exist doesn't require roads to drive on nor lots to park in.

A possible lesson to draw from relative per capita resource use around the world is that Americans are wasteful. There are plenty of countries who have good standards of living and use much less per capita resources than we do in America.

It may be more 'Green' to simply buy less stuff, to drive less, to live in a smaller house, to take fewer trips, etc. Less resources consumed per person will result in less ecological effect on the planet resulting in a better overall ecological climate for us to live in.

But as I showed above, decreasing resources consumed per person also will mean less stuff bought per person. That negatively impacts the economic cycle meaning a decrease in business activity. To be 'green' may mean going through an economic depression and downsizing of our entire business climate.

External Media

Chaos is an order we don't understand yet

Cars gone wild is a CNN news report about a change in traffic laws in Holland. The architect of the change is quoted in the report saying "Chaos is an order we don't understand yet, and order is a chaos where we put in the order later on". What they've done is to undo most of the traffic laws, take away most of the traffic lights, flatten the street curbs, and institute a pair of simple rules. First, drive on the right side of the road, and second those coming from the right have the right of way. The idea is to encourage self responsibility as much as possible.

Towards the end they quote a few people who are worried, they think this increases their danger, and (they say) they have to pay more attention.

Well, that last idea, that they have to pay more attention, will actually increase their safety. But most people don't understand it. Instead the populations have bought into this idea that it's externally imposed order (traffic laws) which create safety for us.

This last year I've been learning to ride a motorcycle, and it's reinforced an idea I'd already learned from elsewhere. In the motorcycle safety training class I took they reinforced over and over, when on a motorcycle the best way to create safety for yourself is to pay attention to what's going on around you. To look, evaluate, and plan your riding path and speed based on what you evaluate in the traffic around you.

In my life I've been in a couple dozen traffic accidents of all kinds. While riding bicycles, while being a passenger in someone elses car, while driving a car, and once while standing in the middle of the road. What I learned from those accidents is that the key common feature to all of them is this: That someone wasn't paying attention.

Speaking from my individual self, I can't control what the other drivers do around me. What I can do is control what I do, and at least if the other drivers aren't paying attention, I can do so if only for my safety. But it's interesting how people tend to zone out while driving in a car. I don't know what they're thinking because if they really think about it, driving in a car, going 70 miles/hr or more, that carries a tremendous amount of inertia, and if the car is in a collision that inertia becomes potential damage to the occupants of the car. I think of driving on the road, even very safe roads, as a very dangerous thing to do. The separation between cars on the highway is very small, most people are ignoring the safe following distance recommendations, and the rise of chatting on cell phones while driving is even further distracting the people from safe vehicle usage.

I think the best mechanism to increase road safety is for everyone to pay more attention.

And that's what these people in Holland are attempting to do. To remove the traffic laws and thereby causing the people to pay more attention.

Not Optional - a nice rant about the oil situation

Not Optional by Jim Kunstler with Clusterfuck Nation is right on the money, so far as I can see. Enjoy -- warning, it gets a little ranty.

The topic he's writing on is collective blindness on several angles. For example, how can the people really believe we can just pull out of this misbegotten war in Iraq. Regardless of how illegal that war is, we started a total mess there and pulling out now would only make matters worse.

The other blindness is about oil. The war is for oil, despite the protestations of the Administration. The Bush Administration has taken lying to the public to a fine art, and for that I must applaud them.

It's about oil because Iraq has a huge chunk of it, and the U.S. has very little. In order to keep our standard of living, which is one of the meme's the Bush Administration keeps mouthing, we must grab the oil wherever it is.

The problem is this is a fools quest. There's not that much oil left in the world anyway, and there are plenty of alternatives. The better route is to invest in alternative energy research in a big way. Not these piddly little bits here and there the Administration has been throwing out to keep the environmentalists happy. There's a real problem here, and with the direction the Bush Administration is leading the country the only result is a kind of world described in the Mad Max movies.

A meditation on the speed limit

Who was it that sang "I can't drive 55"? A Meditation On the Speed Limit is a project launched by a group of college students who wanted to prove 55 is a ridiculous speed limit.

I like this because I myself do the same thing, which is to drive the speed limit regardless of what speed the nutballs behind me want to drive. They are in Atlanta, and did this on the perimeter highway, getting four cars together to cooperatively drive the speed limit. And by cooperatively driving the speed limit, they could block all lanes and keep everybody at the speed limit. And, they filmed everything posting the result to the web.

They wanted to prove 55 is a ridiculous limit, but for me I think highway speeds are ridiculously fast. My thought is that at highway speeds death can come very quickly. Which just shows I'm in a different place than they are.

What was astonishing (well, not really) is the offensive reaction they got and the dangerous driving others got into. Apparently american drivers are addicted to driving fast on the highway. Watch the video for more details.

Re: The price of gasoline could get ugly in 2006

The "Hybrid Cars Blog" suggests that in 2006, the price of gasoline could get ugly. That is, the high gas prices seen in the U.S. last year could be as bad, or worse. See: The price of gasoline could get ugly in 2006

The story seems to be that the cause for last years oil price surge can be found in the gap between China having increasing oil use and weather related outages in oil delivery. This year China's surging oil demand is still there, plus we have several possible outages in oil delivery such as "rebels" in Nigeria attacking oil platforms, and the situation in Iran from which there could be several ways oil delivery could be blocked.

While that story is very true, it is also an example of short term thinking.

In the long term picture the price for oil can only go up. In the short term there will be fluctuations, but long term is a different story. Why? It's because the demand continues to go up in an unabated curve, and the Peak Oil scenario is looming out there.

The Peak Oil scenario is a model developed by oil company scientists that describes production capacity over time. The model shows that the world oil production capability will peak. Already discoveries of new oil fields has dried up with discoveries not at all meeting the growth in demand for oil.

UPDATE in December 2006 ... the price for oil and gasoline did get very high up until September. Then it curiously dropped just before the election, and then has curiously risen a little since the election. Makes one wonder if some kind of price manipulation was being tried by the oil industry to prop up the Republicans? If so, it didn't work.

Examining nukes to replace oil

I haven't caught up with President Bush's proposals last week in energy policy. I was traveling and didn't have time to read it as it happened.

When It Comes to Replacing Oil Imports, Nuclear Is No Easy Option, Experts Say (By MATTHEW L. WALD, Published: May 9, 2005 NYTIMES.COM)

Apparently one proposal was to promote the building of more nuclear power plants, as a way to balance energy needs.

Hmmm... The article above says this is using peculiar reasoning:

There is a problem, though: reactors make electricity, not oil. And oil does not make much electricity.

The problem facing us is oil. In the NOW, there is a high price for oil (in the $50-60 range, up from the $25-30 prevalent since 2000, and up from the $10-15 range it had been through most of the 90's). And we see in the near-term future an impact from the "Oil Peak" effect where it will become impossible to increase production of oil products, even in the face of rising demand.

Oil is used largely for fuel for vehicles (cars, trucks, airplanes, etc), which are largely not electrically driven.

Which just means that by proposing nuclear power to balance a problem with oil supplies is a ruse. Another lie from the Bush administration, this time intended to get more nuke plants out there for some reason.

The article does go into some useful figures:

According to the Energy Department, last year the electric utilities used about 207 million barrels of oil, or less than 600,000 barrels a day. (Total American consumption of oil is about 20.5 million barrels a day.)

This says that a mere 2% of the oil used in this country goes to electricity production. Hmmm, not much.

The article goes on to describe a sideways process that could improve the existing oil supply to be more suitable for vehicle use. It's a little complex, so let's take this one step at a time:

Gasoline is made of molecules with a certain ratio of carbon to hydrogen. Part of each barrel of oil consists of molecules with too much carbon to be useful in gasoline; instead, those molecules are used only in low-value products like asphalt and tar.

The technology exists for refineries to break up those molecules and add hydrogen, until the hydrogen-carbon ratio is suitable for making gasoline or diesel.

They go on to explain that heavy oil has a higher ratio of carbon, while light oil has a higher ratio of hydrogen. It is the light oil that we put into vehicles.

Hence, the idea is to convert heavy oil into light oil by adding hydrogen.

For example:

Canada has vast reserves of shale oil, now being converted to ingredients of motor fuel by using natural gas. The gas is used to heat the shale to make its oil flow more easily, and hydrogen, also obtained from the natural gas, is incorporated into the oil to make it suitable for use in gasoline. But a nuclear reactor could do those jobs, delivering both hydrogen and steam for cooking the oil out of the rock, Mr. Herring said.

Another strategy, he said, would be to break down coal, shale oil or other hydrogen fuels into a gas comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide. At high pressure, these materials could form molecules suitable for making gasoline or diesel. A reactor could provide the energy required.

The "reactor" in question is not the current design of nuclear reactor, but is in the process of being designed and will take another 20+ years to get ready.

The Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, which is owned by the Department of Energy, is working on ways to take very hot steam from a nuclear reactor, then run a small electric current through it to separate the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. If that can be done more cheaply than the current method of producing hydrogen, which uses natural gas, the hydrogen could be used at refineries to make components of gasoline.

Yup, use a nuclear reactor to make heat and with that heat optimize the electrolysis process used to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. That gives you some hydrogen you can then use to improve the heavy oil to create light oil.

This sounds like a lot of work, and a very circuitous process, all just to preserve the hold the oil industry has over the U.S.A. It will take a lot of R&D dollars to go this route, and I wonder "why".

Why not use those dollars to improve funding for alternatives like wind, solar, etc..?

NO NUKES!!!!!