Two Clues for the Clueless

October 1, 2007
     The first clue came during a routine NPR news broadcast on Friday, which had presidential candidate Mitt Romney retailing the shopworn idea that our nation "is dependent on foreign oil." We've heard this a million times, of course, and we accept it without thinking. But if you venture forward mentally one baby step, you will quickly come to see that, no, this dependence on foreign oil is not itself the problem. The problem is that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land.

     In other words, the problem is not the fact that two-thirds of the oil we use comes from other nations, but is about our own behavior in our own nation. In a reality-based existence, it is more effective to modify one's own behavior than to try to govern the behavior of other sovereign individuals and entities. It ought to be a test of anybody applying for the position of president to realize this, and to communicate it to the public. One might expect a Republican candidate to artfully avoid this reality -- since car-dealers and suburban sprawl developers are among the heartiest Republicans. But it's disgraceful for the Democratic opposition to ignore this reality.

     The gravest problem this nation faces, therefore, is the inability of the American public and its leaders to confront the fact that we can't continue to live the way we do -- and, by the way, when I say "leaders," I don't restrict myself to political leaders. Our failures of leadership are comprehensive, including leadership in my nominal sector, journalism. For two weeks in a row, the price of oil on the futures markets has closed above $80-a-barrel, and for these two weeks The New York Times Sunday Business Section has failed to run one story on the consequences of oil rising into this uncharted territory of high price. Are the Times editors on crack? Surely $80-plus oil will thunder through the American economy.

      The second clue for the clueless came over the weekend when President Bush declared that the chaos reigning in America's airports had reached such an intolerable level that the federal government might have to step in and whip the airlines into shape by regulating routes and apportioning flights. Again, the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem is really striking. It's as if the entire nation had suffered a lobotomy -- and perhaps we have, through the agency of excessive TV-watching.

      Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart -- say from Cleveland to Columbus Ohio -- we could decongest the airports overnight? That, by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often? It certainly hasn't occurred to anybody running for president, or any of the editors-in-chief in the news media, or even any executive in what remains of the the railroad industry. But I'll try to boil it down to a digestible sound byte for them: the best way to relieve the current agony of air travel is to get the passenger trains running again. Let the airlines do what they do best: really long-range trips. Let trains do the rest. We will consume less foreign oil. The jobs now hemorrhaging out of the US auto industry could move into the passenger rail and rolling stock sectors. Everybody will be much happier.

      The people I know complain endlessly about how stupid President George W. Bush is, and how badly he has lied to the public about this or that. But a casual observer from Mars would have to conclude that President Bush perfectly represents a nation that shows such a thoroughgoing incapacity for thought, and such an aversion to the truth about its own behavior. A people so hopelessly unwilling to get its act together deserves to suffer.

Comments

[johnmeanswhatever]

I've spent the last three weeks in Europe & the UK on tour and I have to fully agree about train service problem. Norway, which is where we spent a goodly amount of time on tour, features some quite speedy trains that offer both comfort and beautiful scenery. I've taken Amtrak a number of times in the states and while I am a fan of them (on principle alone, occasionally), it is a very inefficient and frustrating system. I don't think we have very long to reorganize our transportation infrastructure and watching the US dollar fall below the Canadian dollar should be a wake-up call to everyone that the US is in rapid decline and total freefall. Good thing I am returning to BC once this tour is over.

[Nudge]

Oh, so El Presidente is going to “fix” the “problem”? For someone who comes from a party that's nominally about the separation between church and government, the need to make government smaller, and the need to keep Big Government out of things, he's doing a very good job of doing all the opposite stuff. It's almost as if his play book was written by George Orwell in a foul mood.

Other problems “fixed” or still being “fixed” by El Presidente include New Orleans, Iraq, Afghanistan, our dependence upon vast imported flows of oil and gas, and so on. Does anyone see anything getting “fixed”?

More to the point – if things in the airline industry are so bad that El Presidente feels the need to send in his “crack” administrators (err, administrators on crack is more like it) to fix things the same way they've fixed other things, this should serve as a firm and clear warning to all those who depend on air travel for any facet of their lives or their business ventures: it's high time to Make Other Arrangements.

[DaveL]

fuck trains. the bath rooms smell bad. when they stop, i stand between the cars and piss outside. that dosen't work on all trains, so i recommend carrying and empty soda bottle for emergencies.

seriously JHK, did you ever ride amtrak long distance? i didn't think so. let me tell you, it sucks.

i reccomend bicycles and row boats; time to go fishing.

DaveL

[steve duncan]

"Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart........ we could decongest the airports overnight? ... by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's what happens: Someone slips a bomb onto a train and it goes off, killing several dozen people. Security precautions similar to those in airports are instituted, requiring arrival at the train station and registering of luggage 2 hours before train departure. Searches, scans, sniffing dogs and cavity probes ensue. People die in train station holding cells for having had a conniption fit over all of it. What should have been a pleasant, cheaper alternative (albeit slightly longer in terms of travel time) has turned into a rail based nightmare version of air travel. Someone suggests it's all gotten a bit out of hand and everyone needs to take a deep breath. They're roundly denounced as being unserious about the terrorist, godless brown marauding horde just waiting to rape babies and spray anthrax in the dining car. Wash, rinse, repeat.

[Laura Louzader]

JK, did you notice the little news item in the papers over the weekend?

A $15 Billion bailout for the major legacy carriers is being arranged by Congress, to keep unprofitable airlines aloft, the justification for this Corporate Welfare package being that the nation's economy is endangered by the increasing failure of the airlines.

"Economic development" and "saving the economy" are the cover-all excuses for the trillions dispensed in corporate welfare over the past twenty years.

Do our leaders ever notice that this never does the trick, and that 10 years later the same players in the same industries need another shot in the arm at the expense of taxpayers whose jobs are being lost and who are not in thier turn, 'bailed out'?

Did any of our political leaders ever consider that if they just let the airline industry collapse of its own weight, that the traffic would go elsewhere, and the passenger rails would revive without government assistance?

Without inept government interference, the airlines would have collapsed by now and passenger rail would have blossomed again, because short hop air travel MAKES NO ECONOMIC SENSE.

But we insist upon subsidizing the inefficient and wasteful while erecting obstacles to the efficient and economical. We have subsidized auto ownership extensively at the expense of its vastly more efficient competition, public transit. We have subsidized suburban sprawl at the expense of more efficient and convenient cities and small towns. We have erected insurmountable obstacles to passenger rails in the form of punitive taxes and byzantine regulation while throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at airport construction and maintenance, and at all the other systems necessary to support civil air travel.

I totally support you in your call to our policy makers to restore rail travel, ramp up the construction of nuclear power plants, restrict immigration, and revamp our city and town planning.

I only question you in the notion that the government can, or should, direct our course in the future, for our powers have shown themselves to be totally incompetent to fine-tune our economic development and steer a course through the depletion of resources and the growth of the population. I am of those who believe that a government cannot steer economic development without making colassal mistakes that produce disastrous misallocations of resources, like the interstate highway system, our white elephant airports, and the suicidal wars over economic dominance and control over natural resources we have been fighting for 50 years.

It would be better to de-fund all the transportation right now and let the public sort it out according to their means. That will, I know, be a really messy process, but ultimately most people will have the reality of the situation stuck in their faces and just have to deal accordingly, and that reality is that most people cannot and never really could afford the wasteful, car-centric, high-entropy lifestyle we now prop up with our taxes and our future wealth, if any.

[Kickaha]

Five or six years ago, the NY Times did a story about Amtrak having to pay for damages caused by commercial railroads. It's kind of tough to break even, when you have to pay for your competitors' overhead. Also, a more level playing field with the airlines would make passenger rail ever so much more attractive without the massive government subsidies critics say are needed.

And what a co-inkydink . . . Today's Salon.com has a story about the clusterfuck that has become parking in America. It even uses the phrase "geography of nowhere." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/01/parking/

[msjanket]

Steve Duncan has it right. Moreover, we seem to think refabricating rail networks is child's play. It isn't. The only answer is....ugh....duh...I forgot.

[msjanket]

Steve Duncan has it right. Moreover, we seem to think refabricating rail networks is child's play. It isn't. The only answer is....ugh....duh...I forgot.

[Dave]

The rush to the exit on the dollar may well happen this week. If it does the Long Emergency could be formally announced by next Monday.

[Patrick]

It's kind of sad that all those Silicon Valley guys who profess interest in energy-saving technology for the good of the country and the good of the environment seem to be putting their apples into plug-in hybrids and Tesla electric cars. Both of those are fine, but just imagine the energy savings on a decent high-speed train between large American cities.
I know CA is working on a high speed system, but I don't really hear any buzz from the young, rich, techno-crowd about supporting TGV-type trains here in the US. Instead, their energy is being almost wasted on $100,000 electric roadsters which will end up in the garages of the Jay Lenos of the future.

[artiefacts]

In other words, the problem is not the fact that two-thirds of the oil we use comes from other nations, but is about our own behavior in our own nation.

This kind of semantic hair-splitting can only mean that Kunstler's out of ideas again.

We are dependant of foreign oil. If you're expecting a GOP or any other candidate to give a full-blown PO treatise on every stump speech, you're as clueless as they are.

On the other hand, thanks for recycling your rhetoric.

[Gulland]

Kickaha,

Great link to Salon on the parking issue. In college, I worked as a parking enforcement officer at the university. Everybody hated me, of course, but way back then I got a picture of what the relationship to people and their parking habits were all about. We want it here and we want it now.

The univ. newspaper interviewed me once and photographed me in a vacant weed filled lot on the 'fringe' of campus at 8:30 AM, peak parking time. It was a 3 minute walk from a lot where people were double parked and driving around in circles looking for that elusive 'close spot'. I was quoted with a comment to the effect of, "We don't have a shortage of places to park, we have a shortage of people willing to walk for 3 minutes instead of driving around in circles for 15." I laid low for a few weeks after that.

Amtrak's route finder puts me on a train from Madison, WI to Birmingham, AL (a 900 mile drive) going through Washington, DC. Madison is 900 miles from DC, and DC is 900 miles from Birmingham. I takes the better part of 3 days on the train, one way. Not a good option. Flying's faster by far, and cheap, if you consider lost days sitting on a train, but I gave up flying a couple of years ago for all the right reasons.

Admittedly, I don't have to travel home to see my family and old friends; it's a luxury that wasn't affordable in the past by everyone. It's a shame, but we're coming full circle. Oh, well, what were we expecting, really?

Gulland

[carfree]

Governor Richarson here in New Mexico has been pushing for a commuter train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We don't often go to Albuquerque, but we have been looking forward to the train.

It seems, however, that citizens of Santa Fe don't want the train. Originally, it was set to run through a subdivision to the south of town. The people in the subdivision didn't want that, so now it runs up the middle of the interstate before entering the city. This past week, they began to build the stations and lay the track, but two city councilors are trying to halt construction because their constituents, they claim, are concerned about the train's causing increased traffic congestion. Not to be rude, but do these people have their heads up their asses? People are also complaining about noise, and they're concerned about safety. God save us if they happen to get hit by the train as they're driving along talking on their cell phones.

People get what they deserve indeed.

[David Mathews]

DOW 14,000!

Didn't I say that this world happen two weeks ago, after Ben Barnanke dropped the Fed funds rate?

No one should ever doubt my skills as a prophet!

But this story doesn't have a happy ending. The end still hasn't happened. The end of the world is behaving like a tease. But it will happen soon enough.

***

Trains aren't going to save America. Anyone who claims that trains can save America is seriously self-deluded.

Electrified Trains, passenger trains, any trains ... these will not save the United States of America.

I am so sick of hearing Peak Oil people claim train-salvation. Trains aren't going to save us!

[Loveandlight]

Keep in mind, $80 a barrel for petroleum is more like $40 in 1981. So while it is approaching the all-time high, it isn't quite there yet. That point will probably be when we reach $90 a barrel.

[Hank]

I have taken Amtrak from Mpls to Chicago and from Mpls to Portland.

It is very easy to do, the food is good and the people are friendly.

The people who ride the trains are usually more laid back and intelligent. I sat next to a NYC school principal on my last ride.

I enjoy every train trip. I pick a window seat, put the cell phone away and read the newspaper.

I read that it takes more fuel to get a 747 to 30000 feet than it does to move a train from the East coast to the West coast.

If your trip is overnight, consider a roomette, it is a small room (for 2) and the price includes all meals.

Also, you are not stip searched, you don't have to stand in a line for an hour, you don't have to put your toothpaste in a zip bag, and you can enjoy the countryside at ground level.

[Jim]

Gulland,
You just have to be a little resourceful. You can go from Chicago to Memphis on Amtrak in 10.5 hours. From there you should be able to reach Montgomery by bus in a few hours (or maybe it would be better to go to somewhere in Missippi on Amtrak and take the bus from there.) I'm sure you know you have several options for getting from Madison to Chicago by bus.

[montysano]

Gulland,

I feel your pain. I live in north Alabama, and have family in Indiana, and in Madison, WI. The lack of passenger rail along the I-65 corridor is a major hole in Amtrak's service.

Maybe others here can verify this: I recently read that most European passenger rail runs on tracks dedicated to that purpose, as opposed to the USA, where passenger and freight must share the same tracks. If this is true, then we are unfortunately a long way from having a passenger rail system that makes sense here in the USA.

What about improved bus service? We recently used a service called MegaBus to travel from my parent's home in Indiana to Chicago and back. It was inexpensive, clean, and fast.

[inquisitivemind22]

Hello,
On the railroads, has anyone looked at a 2 year chart of CSX or UNP? "The Oracle of Omaha" made a large investment in BNI. The sector has been on fire; sooner or later passenger rail will catch up.
Even among oil men, there is conflict over peak oil. The CEO of XOM, Rex Tillerson, told Maria Bartiromo that in 14 years when XOM's reserves have been depleted they will replace them. Rex was called out by T. Boone Pickens, who responded that Exxon will not be able to replace those reserves, even with enhanced recovery, due to the amount of oil remaining under ground. Until there is a consensus within the industry on peak oil, the public, journalists, politicians, and pundits will fail to take it seriously.
On CNBC a host asked 4 qualified economists, "At what price does oil become destabilizing?" and all of them dodged the question. The so-called experts are not in the know on this one.
Its great that the so called experts are in the dark. It keeps the good investments under bought. I can't think of anything better to do in advance of the long emergency, which will be capital intensive, than to make money.

[umass1993]

But a casual observer would have to conclude that President Bush perfectly represents a nation that shows such a thoroughgoing incapacity for thought

Have to agree with this statement. GWB represents the American people and their culture very well. The commoners that I speak to still think that if we could just drill a few more holes in Texas , Alaska or the Gulf of Mexico, then our energy problems would be solved. It's just those damn enviro-terrorists that's keeping America down. What a bunch of sophomoric egocentrics!

Lee in Pittsfield.

[teicher]

Given our capacity for long-term planning, public transport in the U.S. will probably be provided by recycled school buses running at 30 mph so they can dodge all the potholes.

[RJG]

re: the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem..

Indeed Jim..
and even beyond the obvious trains solution..
there are actually really quick answers that we just don't utilize..
why?
because we don't HAVE TO yet..
all these important business people flying all over the damned country each day..
could simply teleconference..
stay home people..
get over yerselves..
and I reckon 75% of everyone who trudges off to play out in the great rush hour autodredge every Godless day..
can simply work at home..
why these people in accounting, payroll, business etc..
drive 20 miles to sit in front of a high-speed computer and telephone..
when they have a high-speed computer and telephone they just left at home..
and then, even at that..
everyone works M-F..
everyone goes in at 8..
everyone goes to lunch at noon..
everyone goes home at 5..
dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb..
oh.. and everyone of course goes alone..
one to a vehicle..
it's impossible to feel sorry for people..
who are simply suffering victims of their own dumb.
we all drive.. one to a vehicle.. miles and miles.. to all be together.. in the same place..
and then?..
we sit and send e-mails and voicemails all day..
it's really dumb..
the only people who need to really be out here..
are the police, firemen, doctors, delivery guys, repairmen and technicians etc..
but all these business and admin types? acctg, payroll, HR, mktg etc..
all these people can stay home..
we're so proud of our damn technology..
and then we don't use it wisely to our advantage at all..
why?
cuz we don't HAVE TO yet..
we're like whiney selfish children..
and we're only gonna comply with reality, when mumzy and dah-dah put us in a corner and MAKE us..
etc..
it's coming..

[David Mathews]

Oh my. This world really is coming to an end:

When Downtown Is in the Suburbs
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/realestate/30nati.html

"Residences at the 12-story Natick Collection range in price from $425,000 to $1.6 million, depending on size and location (some have views of the Natick wetlands). Buyers are given a private entrance to the mall, along with access to a gym and Club Nouvelle, a social club with a screening room, game room and wine bar. Perhaps the most coveted amenity is a private parking spot, erasing the misery of searching for a car in a sea of parked cars.

"The development group is banking on what it perceives as women’s love of shopping at the mall, so its target market is decidedly female. Tamara Roy, the architect of the project, loaded the design with what she feels are women-friendly features, like full-length mirrors in the bathrooms, curving plaster walls and flowers dotting the facade of the parking lot."

"It was Ms. Sandell’s solution. “It’s going to always be a place to people watch and get an ice cream cone and go to the bank,” she said. “You can still go into Sears and buy a screwdriver. You can still go into CVS and buy a toothbrush.”

***

If this world isn't coming to an end it still should end.

[montysano]

"Residences at the 12-story Natick Collection range in price from $425,000 to $1.6 million.... Buyers are given a private entrance to the mall."

Ya know......... it seems.... ahh, screw it, I got nothing.

[AlbuquerqueGuy]

Carfree wrote:

Governor Richarson here in New Mexico has been pushing for a commuter train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We don't often go to Albuquerque, but we have been looking forward to the train.

It seems, however, that citizens of Santa Fe don't want the train.

--The failure of people in Santa Fe to see the writing on the wall is not a good indicator of dealing with reality is it? I live in Albuquerque and it's hard to imagine a more delusional, truck-fantasy based environment. I can't tell you how many individuals are complaining about the cost of their truck payments not to mention the rising cost of gas.

The failure to imagine any alternatives is going to get expensive in New Mexico.

I previously lived in Seattle where there was a vigorous fight to prevent further development of public transportation. Again, the fact that they have the education and resources to move forward yet won't is yet another step down clusterfuck road.