by dub_scratch » Fri 26 May 2006, 11:53:21
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'Y')ou have to expect car enthusiasts to hold on to the last. They'll be wishing and hoping for nothing to change right to the bitter end, poor schmucks. As a car nut myself, I have to say that I don't blame them for trying to maintain their delusions. I understand.
They won't be able to hold out for very much longer, though. Harsh reality will intrude, and it's going to be very tough on them.
This will sound a little smug on my part, but I'll say it because it is true: car enthusiast tend to be the most energy stupid people out there. Here is a great article by Kunstler that demonstrates that:
link.
I think auto use distorts the human understanding of energy greatly. And the more you use a car the less you understand about the scale of energy.
Before industrial society, agrarian or pre-agrarian humans straddled the edge in terms of energy. Every bit of surplus would be used to either grow the population or to expand the food gathering capacity further. People did not know what the thermodynamic laws were per-se, but they understood it intuitively. They had too otherwise they were dead. If you were to time transport a F-15 pick-up with a full tank of gasoline into a 15th century agrarian village, they would have used that pickup to plow the fields-- not to have some asshole to zip around town in.
Fast forward to the great industrial age in the US, and we have millions of people who squander loads of energy every day hauling around their mobile living-rooms over vast distances. It is as if the energy supply behind it was free and endless.
The shock and awe-- and the part I am looking forward to-- is when the motoring masses learn the truth about this folly in thinking. That not only are we going to have to give up driving big vehicles, but we are going to have to give up driving and either hitch a ride, take a bike or walk. It's going to be a monstrous fall with a thunderous thud.