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

[Johnny Rico]

"It's just standard procedure, if the animal cannot be quickly and safely recaptured it will be shot,"

Curious Fucking George. They couldn't just leave him alone in the jungle in the first place.

"What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some chimps you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."

- The Man in the Yellow Hat

[XER]

I made a post about this stuff last week. This article was written last year. I just saw it for the first time today at LATOC. People need to realise that war is coming our way in America. This is a hard fact to swallow for the Clusterfatfuck's. Never the less, it's already being prepared for by the rich and famous. "Oh, it will never happen here." Famous last words.

"Warren Buffett's NetJets--will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next. Members of the middle class will follow, taking matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security--as they do now with education--and shore up delivery of critical services. These "armored suburbs" will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems. As for those without the means to build their own defense, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America's cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/103/essay-security.html

[PeakOilBoy]

This weekend I was a panelist at a screening of "Escape From Suburbia", in which our own Mr. Kunstler plays a major role.

I decided to take a "Choo Choo" train from Portland to Eugene, only to be placed on a Charter bus instead (with two stops along the way).

The round trip was $42.

So... the trade offs?

It would have been much less expensive for me to fill up my paid-off car and drive to Eugene, enjoying the freedom of also driving around the city when I got there.

Now, I'm experimenting with a behavioral sense of consumer choice. As Jim points out, as long as Americans have access to cheap energy, they will use it and keep their convenient lifestyles running.

I feel we'll only see massive behavioral changes when we get the next major shock to the system.

Other than that, you are preaching to the choir, and many singers also still choose to drive themselves around.

- PeakOilBoy

www.lawnstogardens.com

[Johnny Rico]

XER,

Naomi Klein just wrote a book about it. "The Shock Doctrine."

Here's the economist Stiglitz reviewing it in the NYT Book Review yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ref=books

[XER]

Thanks for the lead. "Economic Hitman" was a good book on the topic as well. I think Ms. K can only reach a kike minded politco audience. Once branded a politico in the CFFN, one is a leper to the rest not sharing the the ideology. Writers in America today would be smart to steer clear of the fucking politico's.

[XER]

"Kike minded" was meant to be "Like minded" I never make corrections unless it is a major fuck up on my part, and this is a major fuck up. I don't ever use words like this, ever.

[oneEyeOpen]

"I don't ever use words like this, ever."

Yet with the surnames of Stiglitz and Klein one does tend to wonder......Ah fuck it. The "k" and the "l" keys are pretty fucking close together so I'm going to take it that XER is not anti-semitic. What do the rest of you think?

[EEofDC]

"What do the rest of you think?"

Having a combined Scottish, English, Irish, Lithuanian, Jewish heritage and commensurate motley sense of humor, I interpreted XER's original remark as a deliberate switch-up of the letters and thought it was hilarious.

It was spot on in a perfectly subversive way.

[thal]

I'd best surmise that XER is anti-fat-cluster-entitling, nothing more. Who was this QWERTY dude?

[thal]

All things being equal, I'd rather spend 12x the time musing looking out the window of a railcar, than spend 1x the time musing looking out the window of a 757 at 30,000 feet. If it got to pulling the cord 'ding ding' lemme off this bus, I think it gentler to the constitution of my well being to jump out the window in the former.

[Ross]

It actually did occur to someone that we should run trains as an alternative to short haul flights. An former airline executive, actually. Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, noted a month or two ago that really what needs to happen to reduce airport congestion is run high speed rail between cities 300-500 miles apart.

I think almost everyone recognizes the need for HSR in this country, however I haven't yet seen the national leadership needed to undertake such a project.

[Nudge]

Hello Perfectscotty .. sorry, but I take exception to something you wrote above. Was it a typo (after all, this /is/ TypoPad) when you wrote about train service: “It would not however be the most efficient form of mass transit - widebody jets filled with passengers are the winner there.”

While fixed-wing aircraft are not the absolute worst in terms of fuel efficiency, they're darn close to the bottom of the pile. According to the numbers (linked below, and see the many references and footnotes on the page) helicopters are the worst, followed by hovercraft, then SUVs, then fixed-wing aircraft.

http://strickland.ca/efficiency.html

If you meant cost efficiency instead of fuel efficiency, however, I might be inclined to agree with you on the above comment.

[Nudge]

Err, to correct the “cost efficiency” comment above, that means only costs as they're taken into account at the current time. The true cost of airline travel is hidden behind a lot of subsidies that go into funding airports and all the things that go with them, keeping the cost of the fuel artificially low for the airlines, and so on.

[Holmes, I presume]

Mr. QWERTY may have had bigger fish to fry in relation to designing the perfect keyboard to accommodate the potentiality of fingers veering off course.

thal, if you haven't already, please see my last message to you on the prior thread. thanks.

[thal]

Holmes, I shall. One takes one chances close to midnight on Sunday, that a post is the very last and probably never seen. I'll get back to you.

[thal]

Holmes,

last post from a week ago, try that.

[thal]

Still, wouldn't it be cool to set aside an acre or two to make some bio-fuel to fire up a powered ultralight for an hour or two every other week, for a cruise at 200 feet to check out the local scenery?

[Nudge]

Thal, an ultralight is an appropriately human-scaled thing that goes not much faster than a really fast bicycle racer and doesn't use gobs of fuel. Don't know if biofuels would be energetic enough to power one of those things, though.

[thal]

Yeah it would. We don't have to rule the world in an F-whatever, but low powered flight has been demonstrably demonstrated (dept of redundancy dept).

[Nudge]

An ultralight would also have some utility for spying out distant zombie hordes .. err, hungry citizens looking for the next free meal.

[thal]

Well there is that consideration

[thal]

Step 1. Have air to breathe.
Step 2. Have water to drink.
Step 3. Have food to eat.
Step 4. Have shelter from the storm.
Step 5. Have wits enough to have some fun.
Step 6. Have enough wits to share it with whom you might commune.
Step 7. Enjoy Life On Earth.

[Rob]

It has long struck me that one of the problems with Amtrak is that it continues to try to do continental length runs. It is true we should have some ground transportation doing these but very long thin runs do not match rail's strengths. My solution is that Amtrak should buy Greyhound. And upgrade it. Rail does good commute, and up to about 3-500 mile runs. Longer ground runs should be by an improved bus system, two classes, with premium class three abreast seating, and far better security. We have been quite grossed out by unacceptable behavior on Greyhound. I would be quite willing to practice all sorts of conservation on commute/shorter run to have the freedom to do long runs on planes.

[thal]

this country runs on oil.
this airportcisity runs on a subset of oil.

Movenonup said it succinctly, "oily to bed, oily to rise" as "children of oil"

Personally, I think we should be happy to be walking more, or bicycling more and saving our jismus to let JHK be flying more, because his message is worth it. Consistency be damned.

[Nudge]

Thal, ditto on JHK's message being well worth it. You'll be proud, I have gotten one of the VP's (at the place where I work) onto this whole PO thing, and now he's currently reading my copy of TLE. Cannot wait to hear the questions from him, since he already had a lot of the proto-thought process done, just not the dot-connecting part. He's high enough up in things there that we can run a project to see how well we could realistically deal with our suppliers and service our customers using rail or freight-to-rail transportation most of the time.

I maintain that making it through TLE will be a whole lot easier if you can manage to hang onto a job with good benefits throughout as much of the process as possible.