On What Happens When The Party Ends

I have been reading Jeff Rubin's book Why Your World is About to Get a Lot Smaller. There is a lot there I already knew: World demand for oil keeps growing, available supplies are dwindling and discovery of new reserves is not nearly enough to replace what we are exhausting let alone keep up with demand growth. Also, no matter how you slice it, ethanol requires more energy in the form of fossil fuels to harvest, transport and process than you get back in the gas tank. Then there a lot of things Rubin said I did not know, when efficiency goes up this actually causes demand growth, if mileage standards go from say 30mpg (miles per gallon) to 40mpg, then the demand initially drops. The demand drop causes a price drop which causes people to drive even more, ever farther, even bigger cars. For example, consider before 1973 a "muscle car" might be a sedan with a 5L engine. In recent years who cares what the car has check out my Toyota Tundra! Or my BMW X5! (Notice I used companies not reputed to be gas guzzlers, and the Tundra is just the tip of the iceberg, what about another other Toyota creation, the FJ Cruiser? Or the BMW M series cars? And don't get me started on the lunacy coming from Detroit.)

Of course there are electric cars. They cost more to make than they sell for, the battery technology is not there and probably never will be as good at storing energy as gasoline. But the real problem with EVs? The electricity is just a way to transport the energy, all that electricity has got to come from somewhere. Nuclear? We won't need just one more nuc, we would need scores of them just to replace all that gasoline, in Ontario alone! Solar? Maybe if we put a large part of Nevada under a solar panel we would have enough electricity to cover expected demand growth without EVs on the grid. Wind is not reliable, it does not always blow, or sometimes it blows to hard. And as many rate payers already know, per megawatt, wind isn't cheap. We can power our EV cars on coal, if we do not mind the green house effect. Carbon capture with coal? Well add a $60 or $70 per ton of coal premium to the price.

The point is an era is rapidly coming to a close. The era of cheap energy, when it was possible for your average American to hop in the car and drive from Los Angles to New York in two days, is about to end. The new epoch will be marked by considerably more expensive food, people will have no choice but to live closer to work, and vacation will almost certainly not involve journeys of more than a modest distance, perhaps to the abandoned suburban cul-de-sacs, to watch as many of those monster homes get ripped down and turned back into that critical farm land close to where the consumers are.

I suppose my job is not very secure, will there still be enough power for computers? Maybe I should learn a trade like woodworking, or hey, bike repair! I'll bet cycling is about to enjoy an unprecedented surge in popularity.

Truth be told, I don't think there is a day that goes by when I don't long for $200 per barrel oil. The fact is when it is too expensive to drive I will finally be free to dedicate my worries to potholes and ignore the menace of miserable Toronto area drivers.

Anyway in the time between when I started this composition and now I went on a BCC ride up to Simcoe and back. It was a little more direct than the route I did with Aaron Arndt but still well over 180km. I love that route though, and have I become strong. Last summer Aaron pulled me almost all the way the home. This time I certainly did my share of the pulling all the way. That said, I wish Aaron could come with, I'm sure Europe must be an athlete's paradise compared to couch potato North America and our second rate drivers, but with guys like Aaron, Andrew, Ian, Laurie, Thi and myself we could have one hell of a hammer feast. If I could get the six of us in one pelaton for 180km, I have trouble believing we would be any slower than 35km/h average (probably more like 40km/h). Now that would mean bragging rights, except let's be honest, I'd be dropped in the first 10km. I have bursts of strength, but those guys are all much better than me.