Conflating American patriotism with car ownership

My Buddy sent me this image a couple of weeks ago and it got me musing about the average American's relationship to their automobile.  I ended up posing the following question to the KunstlerCast forum (linked in the header):

I've been thinking about the visceral reactions I get from people when I bring up peak oil and it's striking in its irrationality.  With most people, you can bring up the exhaustion of fish stocks or water scarcity in the West and they'll at least admit that there's a problem and that habits need to change.  But bring up an idea like 'Merica returning to a more efficient form of transportation based on rail and water and they'll look at you like you've committed treason.  For many Boomers, who grew up in the 1950's, the automobile is more than a form of transportation; it's freedom, it's the empowered individual, it's what makes America great.  In Detroit, where I grew up, America's greatness is seen to rise and fall with the fortunes of the Big 3 car makers.  The question is not, "Should we continue building cars?" but rather "What kind of cars should we continue to build?"

How do we get people to productively engage in a conversation about something as difficult as strategies to mitigate the effects of pending energy scarcity when the mere act of discussion triggers feelings of anti-Americanism?

Peak Oil Objections and Rebuttals

I especially like the discussion about Energy Alternatives:

Wood gave way to coal; coal gave way to oil; oil will give way to another source

• Both coal and oil were superior to their predecessors – they had more energy per kilogram and were more transportable. The replacements for oil only produce electricity or are inferior (like biomass) so do not follow that trend. There is nothing suitable to replace oil.

Gas will replace oil

• Gas, being a fossil fuel, is running out as well. While, at the moment, it would last longer than oil, if we switch from oil to gas, we would end up depleting it more quickly (see Natural Gas).

Coal will replace oil

• Coal produces far more carbon dioxide than oil and gas, therefore causing more problems with global warming and pollution.
• Coal produces electricity but cannot produce all of the products of oil. Coal to oil conversion is not very efficient.
• Coal produces less power per unit than oil so we would need to use far more to replace oil and gas.
• Mining is an energy-intensive process and most of the easily accessible coal has already been extracted.
• See the Coal page for more details.

Renewables will replace oil

• Developing and building suitable renewable replacements will take many years and much energy. There isn't much of either.
• Most renewables produce electricity, not the other products of oil such as plastics and fertilisers.
• They cannot produce the consistent and instant power output of oil and gas. We would need some way of storing electricity for the periods when the wind/sun/tide isn't available.
• See the Renewables page for more details.

Nuclear will replace oil

• Nuclear power produces many pollutants such as radioactive wastes and carbon dioxide. This will cost much money and energy to deal with.
• The high-grade uranium will not last very long if we switched to creating most of our electricity from nuclear power.
• Nuclear power only produces electricity, not the other products of oil and gas.
• See the Nuclear page for more details.

Fusion / thermal depolymerisation / Tesla / other exotic sources will replace oil

• We have been working on nuclear fusion for four decades without success. The other exotic sources are still theoretical. There is very little time or energy left to spend on something which may never actually work.
• They would only produce electricity, not the other products of oil and gas.

Hydrogen will replace oil

• Hydrogen is not a fuel, just a carrier for electricity created somewhere else.
• The creation of hydrogen always uses more energy than it produces.
• It would be expensive and potentially dangerous to use hydrogen to replace those situations where oil is currently used, such as air and road transport.
• See the Hydrogen page for more details.

Tar sands and oil shales will replace oil

• The production of unconventional oils is slow, expensive and polluting.
• Some unconventional oil uses more energy than it produces (EROEI).
• We could never produce enough unconventional oil to replace normal oil in the time left.
• See the Unconventional Oil page for more details.

Smart Growth

This is a great article about the recent trend towards urbanism. From an efficiency / return on investment standpoint, I thought the following was interesting:

"...local governments reap much more in taxes from urban centers than from malls or "big box" retail like a Wal-Mart, but pay more to build suburban infrastructure such as sewers and streets.
In the city and county of Sarasota, for example, 3.4 acres of urban residential development consumes one-tenth the land of a multi-family development in the suburbs. But it requires little more than half of the infrastructure investment and generates 830 percent more for the county annually in total taxes: that's $2 million from the city structure and $238,529 from the suburban one.
What's more, suburban housing takes 42 years to pay off its infrastructure costs. Downtown? Just three. "I'm preaching to Joe and Jane Six-Pack who want to be subsidized. These (city) centers produce a tremendous amount of revenue and then hemorrhage it out to the suburbs," Minicozzi said. "We don't have a rational discussion on the true costs of the way we manage land."

That is starting to change, as cash-strapped governments struggling with the recession's hit to tax revenue are starting to press developers to share the pain of paying for highways and other infrastructure, said Richard Rich, a director for Thomas Enterprises, whose 240-acre redevelopment of Sacramento's abandoned railyards is the largest urban redevelopment project in the country.
As a result, profitability will come to depend on higher-density construction, said Rich, his voice echoing through the cavernous stalls of the former transcontinental railroad being salvaged for a retail plaza. "Just as they evolved to start, they will de-evolve the product," he said, of suburban developers."

Death of the McMansion

It's about time.