1. 10% in ten years isn’t bad, 20% by 2020. It’s a start. What happens when all resources are used up? Some can be recycled, a lot is going to last much longer than anyone’s lifetime on these boards.
2. The entire rail system, including one of the world’s largest urban railways uses the equivalent of 340,000 barrels of oil in electrical power, about 650 wind turbines. To electrify the rest you would need 1,000 wind turbines or one of those planned off-shore wind farms – which are being built, it‘s not a dream. To reopen what we closed in the 1960s you would need another 500 wind turbines. The light trucks of this country use 6 million tonnes of oil, with efficiency you could get that figure down to 4 million or less, even less feeding railheads. Most of this can be made up with biodiesel. Therefore you have a complete transport network to move food and passengers about. In the cities this network is very extensive.
And yes there is electric tractor and horsepower if needed.
http://www.renewables.com/Permaculture/ ... ractor.htm
Before the 1950s horses were used to bring goods to rail yards and shunt trucks.
This excludes any breakthrough in other areas, but more than provides a network to prevent die off.
3. Look I’m not interested in the rest of the world. The US could become 50% more efficient tomorrow but they aren’t interested in cutting back and feel it is quite okay to drive 15mpg SUVs about even though there are 60mpg cars on the market. I’ve got on about this to the point of tedium.
4. London, Paris, Milan, and most Japanese and European cities have sustainable transport networks that can be powered by renewables. I’m so sorry in America it’s limited to the NE corridor, New York, Boston and Chicago. But you all wanted freedom of your cars.
5. 70% of oil in the US, UK and Europe is used by cars and planes, things that hardly existed before the war, please get a grip, they are not necessary for life.
6. No, the problem is not solved, it’s psychological. But 1) Oil will be coming out the ground for 100 years or more, same with gas. 2) Pebble nuclear reactors could supply a secure power source for 500 years. 3) There’s enough coal world wide for at least 100 years. 4) No one has any idea what might be invented in the next 100 years, it’s like predicting the telephone in 1750. 5) Climate change is probably a more serious problem anyway.
7. Look I could go on and on and on about this, sadly you (and others) have been reading too much of MQs doom to think outside the box. I’m not interested in backward US views, get on and lobby people to do something about it, we have 1000s of pressure groups here that lobby government, I don’t suspect where you are is any different.
For a more detailed breakdown on something similar to what I have wrote, see below
http://www.after-oil.co.uk/