by The_Toecutter » Fri 12 Aug 2005, 20:37:51
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd he is correct. Conservation is not *sufficient* for a sound energy policy. If it were, you would not be seeing all the die-off postings here.
On the contrary, a dieoff is more likely to occur post-peak precisely because we didn't have renewables, which are viable today, in place and functioning as a means to cut oil consumption and save it for things important things, like growing crops. A properly implemented powerdown solution could free up time to prevent a dieoff and allow the population to stabilize and eventually fall. But it goes against the current economic system.
America accounts for 25% of the world's oil consumption, 45% of oil America consumes which is burned as
FUEL for its
automobiles. Just cutting that out of the equation for America's cars and only America's cars alone drops oil consumption worldwide by 9%. If every other country were also to drop this fuel consumption from their automobiles, we could already see about 1/3 of oil consumption eliminated. Electric cars are technically viable today, but various industries and an overbloated government stands to lose revenue should they replace our current fleet of maintenance whores and tax generators(see the following topic:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic8972.html). Eliminate airplanes as well for everything except travel from continent to continent, and you make even more reductions. Replace high speed travel for land with high speed electric rail as a substitute for airtravel, and to displace use of even more cars, bring back electric trolley systems to connect the inner city with the outlying areas.
Either way, either humanity will implement the solutions available, through conservation, or nature will do it for them. The time keeps ticking down.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson