Egypt

I've been fascinated with the uprisings in north Africa. YouTube is full of dramatic protest crowds. But there are also people on the street interviews which are inspiring:

Anyplace that does not have democracy, that has had the same dictatorial ruler for 29 years, SHOULD erupt in protests. On NPR this morning the analyst said this will not affect the US unless somehow these protests infect Saudia Arabia... OK, well, that is one self-interested way to view human rights.

Fueling Your Freedom

I think it is worth looking closer at this advertisement on a gas pump. The weather beaten boards imply a western motif. And the west implies lawlessness, and open country. The handwriting of the words "fueling your" seems like it is the quill writing of Thomas Jefferson. The word FREEDOM is written as if it is a monument, the powerful eagle and the patriotic star... like it is your patriotic duty to buy from the Marathon Corporation or that somehow burning oil equals freedom. It's sick really.
 

Gas Taxes Lowest in History

The subsidy of the driver continues. In USA Today:

....drivers will pay less than ever at the pump for upkeep of the nation's roads — just $19 in gas taxes for every 1,000 miles driven, a USA TODAY analysis finds. That's a new low in inflation-adjusted dollars, half what drivers paid in 1975.

....Americans spent just 46 cents on gas taxes for every $100 of income in the first quarter of 2010. That's the lowest rate since the government began keeping track in 1929. By comparison, Americans spent $1.18 in 1970 on gas taxes out of every $100 earned.

Although the federal gas tax — 18.4 cents per gallon — hasn't changed since 1993, tax collections are down because today's vehicles go farther on a gallon of gas, cutting tax collections while increasing wear and tear on highways. Inflation since 1993 has eroded the value of the tax to maintain roads.

"The gas tax isn't going to work as the user fee to finance the highway system in the 21st century," says Robert Poole, transportation policy director at the free-market Reason Foundation...

Our Leaders Deny Our Oil Reality

'Americans are not addicted to oil, Americans are addicted to freedom - the freedom to move freely and independently where and when we want," - former Virginia governor, George Allen (said to a standing ovation from the crowd). It is hard to believe that we keep denying the truth: that our entire way of life is dependent on oil.

Visualize the Spill

The BP Oil Spill overlaid on Cincinnati, so you can visualize the scale of the disaster, found here:
 

UPDATE: But that is nothing compared to this visualization of the possible long-range spread:

Car Addiction and Oil Tragedy

Where is the outrage at the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?
Eleven men were killed, the water continues to be polluted, wildlife
is being killed, fisherman cannot fish, globules of congealed oil are
beginning to wash ashore, and most of us just shake our head say "what
a shame". And there is no outrage, because we know that the real
culprit is us. Our demand for oil, specifically cheap gasoline,
caused this tragedy.

Gasoline is subsidized and the price kept artificially low by
politicians that want to get the suburban and rural vote. Shortcuts
are taken on safety and oil companies are subsidized to keep oil
cheap. Lets be honest. If gasoline was priced to truly reflect the
external costs: the environmental damage caused by spills, the wars
waged to secure supplies, the human costs of the instability of
countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, the disease caused by
exhaust, the cost of the US Navy constantly patrolling the Persian
Gulf and guarding every tanker, and the surface excavation of
thousands of acres of pasture to procure tar-sand, and the smog, and
the carbon emissions, to the costs of local spills, local damage done
at refineries and gas stations etc etc...If all these costs were truly
figured into the cost, a gallon of gas would be totally unaffordable.
Yet, it is political suicide for a politician to call for even a
modest increase on the gasoline tax, even when the reason is that the
current tax doesn't even cover the costs of interstate road
construction and maintenance!

In the US, over the past half century, we have reconfigured our
patterns of settlement, our cities and our countryside, to a paradigm
that is fundamentally supported by one thing: cheap oil. And this
paradigm is so ingrained into us that we don't even see it anymore.
And there is no substitute, no affordable replacement to run our
254,000,000 cars. You cannot run hundreds of millions of
rubber-wheeled vehicles on used french fry oil or hydrogen or methane
or solar or whatever. Americans have a communal delusion that when
oil starts to get expensive, we will solve the problem with nuclear
powered cars of some sort that will allow us to continue driving
everywhere. But this is delusion. We have to wake up to the fact
that we made a mistake, a huge mistake in re-developing our country
around the automobile. It is time to kick the habit, time to live in
walkable places, and a modest start would include increasing the
gasoline tax.

Peak Oil vs Oil Shortages

I have been a latecomer to the Peak Oil theory. It's just not my bag. My problem with cars is their negative effects on urbanism and walkability etc, not how they are powered. That said, it is true that the one thing that is essential to the whole suburban sprawl enterprise is cheap fuel. And once it gets expensive, or even unobtainable, then the whole system is screwed.

Peak Oil is the time when global production reaches it's highest point. Many smart people have studied this and have predicted that peak production is at least a decade or two away.

But a shortage is different than peak production. A shortage could occur even as extraction is still rising if usage is actually rising faster, (as it is in many countries such as China and India). This would lead to a much earlier crisis. This report in the Guardian quotes a US Military report as saying shortages could be a problem in just the next 2-5 years:

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as ... the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis....

Hydrogen Rail Reality

A Statesville, NC paper reports on a paradigm shift. It will be interesting to see if hydro technology will really proceed like this scientist believes it will:

.... the biggest railroad in the USA, (just) presented to the world the first full-scale hydrail locomotive.

... the total supplanting of petroleum rail power by hydrogen is a matter of two or three decades at most ....

... rail and maritime applications were by far the easiest ways to move people and goods using energy delivered via hydrogen. ...named the new technology "hydrail."

...In 2008, because of our hydrail initiative, Proterra LLC wrote to the Town of Mooresville, Iredell County and the State proposing to build hydrail streetcars here, employing 200 to 500 people.

This summer, UNC and Mooresville focused the Fifth International Hydrail Conference on replacing overhead wire systems with wireless fuel cell streetcars (hydrolleys) as the new standard for urban rail, saving $5–to–6 million per mile of track construction. Charlotte is now studying that technology as one option for their proposed Beatties Ford to Eastland streetcar.

Voinovich Advocates for Gas Tax Hike

The highway trust fund is going broke.

I seem to remember that Voinovich has said he will not run for the Senate again. If that is true, then it seems that he is now free to say what he really thinks.

Las Vegas Aerials

A listserve associate of mine sent this interesting link at NASA. It is satellite imagery of Las Vegas from Landsat 5. It clearly demonstrates the explosive growth of Las Vegas, just since 1984. The first and last time I was there was in 1986, so I was fascinated at what these images show.

My curiosity was peaked, and I started looking on Google Maps. Below are some current images that demonstrate the state of the city today. Think of all the oil and water resources required to make such an experiment in the desert possible. How many of these are now in foreclosure?:

A new elementary school surrounded by new subdivisions:

A new high school with over 1,000 parking spaces, surrounded by freeway on two sides. The road frontage of this school is about half a mile:

A mile long earthen dam on the left looks like it is protection against rare water in the stream bed in which new houses are now being built:

Sprawling from right to left:

New streets being built:

All built since the 80s:

New desert home:

An "older" part of town. Every home has a pool:

Green Golf course in the desert

Below, each cul-de-sac has 4 houses. Each individual property measures approximately 150' x 150'. A block of 16 of these houses covers exactly 10 acres, thus 1.6 units per acre. But worse than that, these 16 homes require something like 144,000 square feet of publicly owned and maintained right of way (ie: asphalt):

I think these images are fascinating for several reasons. One is that the flat brown landscape makes the aerial photos very clear about what is happening. Of course there is similar development around all American cities, but vegetation and topography make for a less dramatic photo. Also, the development, although totally car dependent and suburban, is actually quite dense compared to midwestern sprawl.

For example, in the aerial below (from a northern Cincinnati suburb), the yellow box is one-mile square (640 acres) The red is a quarter section, and the maroon is the same dimension as many of the Las Vegas blocks above. The small blue square represents the 300' x 300' area used above for 4 houses in the cul-de-sac. In this case, there are about 300 houses per section which is 2.13 acres per house (NOT 2 houses per acre)! A square mile in the furthest exurb of Las Vegas has at least 1,024 houses, compared to 300 in this new midwestern suburb. Las Vegas sprawl is at least 3 times as dense as Cincinnati's:

I guess I would rather see this kind of sprawl in a desert than on prime Ohio farmland.

Lastly, here is a part of Over-the-Rhine, with a square drawn approximately 300' square. In the same space that Las Vegas is building 4 houses, and West Chester is building 1.2, OTR has over 50 apartments or condos*, half a dozen businesses, and all with no buildings over 4 stories high.:

* Note, the 50 apartment number varies greatly block to block now and has varied greatly over time too. A full block in Cincinnati's OTR is just under 400' square, and many of these blocks at one time had over 200 apartments, and maybe 30-40 storefront establishments. But all blocks now have either vacant buildings or vacant lots on them.

BTW, here is a good drawing showing the standard survey dimensions for townships, sections, quarter sections etc...

It's Time to Raise the Gas Tax

Time makes an argument for raising the gasoline tax:

As unemployment heads toward double digits, we can use this found money to encourage people to create jobs (by lowering the FICA tax), or we can use it to encourage people to use more gasoline. It's a pretty easy choice, don't you think?

FT Predicts $100 Oil

The Financial Times says that this low oil price is only a temporary lull until the economy recovers. They believe that $100/barrel oil will be the norm in the next decade, and that $200 oil will follow thereafter. It seems like now, when oil is cheap, would be a good time to prepare for this high oil future by developing the alternative sources of energy and means of transportation.

Indebtedness, Oil Dependence and the Resultant Crisis

Some quotes relevant to the current crisis:

The White House just asked the national debt ceiling be raised another $700 billion, for the proposed financial-sector bailout. If that happens, in 2008 alone, $1.5 trillion will have been added to the national debt: every penny borrowed from your children and their children. Stated in today's dollars, in 1979 the entire national debt was $1.5 trillion. George W. Bush and Congress have in a single year added an amount equal to the entire national debt one generation ago. And the year's not over!

"...deficits don't matter." - Dick Cheney

...the housing industry in the Midwest and the Northeast routinely floods local markets with new, ever-larger houses. ...more than 27,500 houses were constructed between 2000 and 2004, even though the population grew by only 3,000. In the process, older houses and many older neighborhoods … have become as disposable as used cars.

...We have obdurately resisted the reality of the energy crisis that hangs over everything we do (as slavery hung over the 1850s), from the way we inhabit the landscape to the way we do daily business in our 240-million-plus fleet of cars and trucks that ply the ribbons of asphalt and the lagoons of parking that now run from sea to shining sea where the fruited plain was replaced by the Wal Marts.

Mr. Obama isn't kidding either when he alludes to the change America faces, though history has not yet rhymed enough for his rhetoric to really set forth the terms of this change in its stark particulars. And even if he is able to articulate these things, he won't forestall the convulsion anymore than Lincoln held back a war between the states. That prior crisis was when America learned good and hard how tragic life could be, and it colored our national character for a century -- until we chucked it all to become a society of overfed clowns, with God Almighty replaced by Ronald McDonald. That pageant of happy idiocy is now ending. Like everyone else in this fraught and nervous land, I'm standing by to see what transpires in the days just ahead.
....
That said, there really IS a new economy. We may characterize it as we will, but what it clearly is NOT, is a manufacturing economy. The "old" economy (Made In America) has long since disappeared, and will never return to these shores. In its place we have the Post-Industrial Economy. We don't make anything anymore; we flip burgers. We don't even earn enough to buy what we import; we have to borrow ... $2 billion per day ... from foreigners!-Jim Kunstler

The long term crisis is about energy. And it a crisis only because we are such oil hogs. We spend hundreds of thousands of BTUs just to drive to the grocery. We have stick-framed houses with vaulted ceilings that take thousands of cubic feet of Methane to heat. We use petroleum based fertilizers to grow more corn on fewer acres. We cover the old farmland with strip centers and petroleum asphalt. Corn is oil. We are oil. Everything about who we are, what we eat, what wars we fight, how much our house is worth ...is about oil.

Expert predicts oil may hit $500 per barrel...

In fact, a lot of how we did things in the pre-oil era makes good sense for a post-carbon 21st century. Without cars to skew our sense of distance and place, we developed cities, provisioning systems and even cultural and social norms suitable to a lower-energy world. That doesn't mean we need to revert to some 19th century or anti-technology lifestyle. We simply need to rediscover those ways of running a society and an economy that don't completely depend on petroleum-powered engines. - Sacremento Bee