[Peakoil] James Howard Kunstler this week: Electric cars - fergeddaboutit

[Keith Thomas]

Here is this week's column from James Kunstler.

He explains in two paragraphs why electric cars are simply impossible 
as a "solution".

He also says: "agitation seems pretty inchoate for the moment -- still 
resting on vague, poorly-defined wishes for "change."  "

But here Kunstler misses the point. People want change, but not for 
themselves personally, and certainly not just now. The populace, led on 
by the politicians, want the same, but much more of it for themselves.

When I checked there were 57 comments on Kunstler's blog - worth 
reading through for a glimpse into the American mind.

--------------------------------------------
Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
--------------------------------------------
Wobble Time
  By James Howard Kunstler
on July 13, 2009 6:59 AM
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/wobble-time.html#more

     The cat coming out of the bag this week -- a frazzled, flaming, 
rabid, death-dealing cat -- is the news that Goldman Sachs will 
announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion 
or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of 
course, not evenly distributed among them).  There probably are not 
fifty-three people in the USA who can explain how this development 
figures in with last fall's bailout gift from the US treasury, or the 
$13 billion GS received on the backside of US gift payments to the 
failed AIG insurance company, plus the reams of necrotic securitized 
debt paper rotting in the back of the GS vaults. This is a company 
playing with the fire of world history.

     It brings back the question, which has loomed dimly at the margins 
of America's collective consciousness, as to whether we can get through 
the long emergency ahead without going through a wringer of domestic 
political convulsion. At this rate, sooner or later, anything 
identified with wealth could become a target for the wrath of the 
unemployed and foreclosed. The first rock that flies through an East 
Hampton window, or the first firebomb tossed into the lobby of Goldman 
Sachs Manhattan headquarters could ignite a chain of events that shoves 
all economic policy out of the political arena and quickly divides 
everyone at the center of power into armies out for blood. 

     What the nation -- including President Obama -- can't seem to get 
through its head is that the USA has entered a period of epochal 
economic contraction.  Instead of growth, as measured in conventional 
econometrics, we can only expect (in the best case) transformation to a 
different economy within the limits of real contraction. The president 
has got to stop promising renewed growth.  While this would affect the 
perceived "standard-of-living" as measured in things like shopping mall 
sales and vehicle miles driven, it would not necessarily mean 
diminished "quality-of-life."  It would mean different ways-of-life for 
a lot of people -- for instance, young adults who had expected lifetime 
employment as corporate executives but who, instead, find themselves 
ten years from now working at farming. We have an awful lot to get real 
about.

      A genuine reorganization of the US economy seems beyond the ken 
not just of all US politicians but of the entire US news media and 
business leadership. A wonderful example last week was the idiotic 
press conference by General Motors marketing chief, Bob Lutz, who 
thinks he can revive the American Dream with electric cars. (By the 
way, this is pretty much the same thinking I encountered at the Aspen 
Environmental Forum among the Green celebrities.)

     From a purely practical standpoint, the electric car is absurd.  
If they were produced on a mass basis, they would crash the electric 
grid -- assuming that the masses could afford to buy them, which 
assumes a lot. We simply don't have the electric generating capacity to 
run even one-quarter of the current car fleet on volts, and building 
the necessary nuclear or coal-fired power plants in five years is also 
an absurdity. (Don't expect wind, solar, biomass, or anything else to 
pick up the slack.) If electric cars were produced as just a niche 
product for the elite (e.g. Goldman Sachs employees), they would soon 
provoke the resentment of the non-elite left to the mercy of the oil 
markets.

     Anyway, America's motoring dilemma has gone beyond the issue of 
how we power the cars -- and even beyond the insanity of blindly 
maintaining our extreme car dependency per se.  The continuation of 
Happy Motoring now hinges on two other big quandaries: 1. the 
likelihood that there will be far less capital available for car loans, 
and 2.) the likelihood that there will be far less government money for 
road maintenance. The problem of Peak Oil -- and the prospect of 
price-jackings and shortages -- is just the cherry on top.

     By the way, for practical purposes Bob Lutz of GM is an employee 
of the US taxpayers now, since the US owns 60 percent of the "new" 
General Motors, so he must be considered a spokesman for national 
policy. Since a transformation of the US car fleet to electric vehicles 
is absurd, what would be an appropriate response to profound economic 
contraction? How about walkable communities connected by public 
transit?  Why is that not a focus of the "new" General Motors?  In 1941 
the company made the transformation from cars to armaments in a matter 
of months; why can't it produce the rolling stock for a renewed 
passenger rail system?  Or trams?  Is this not enough of a crisis? The 
answer is that there is no leadership in this direction. If President 
Obama declared this to be a policy objective, and stuck to it for more 
than one business day, he could drag the sleepwalking American public 
in this direction, and the rest of national leadership in government, 
business, and media with it.

     This kind of thing is what prompts casual observers to wonder if 
the president is a cynical shill for business as usual, or a victim of 
the worst conventional thinking with no real vision, or just another 
clueless sleepwalking bozo with a charming veneer.

      In circles that pass for "progressive" these days, the natives 
are getting restless. Their agitation seems pretty inchoate for the 
moment -- still resting on vague, poorly-defined wishes for "change."  
These vague promptings need to be focused on specific action that is 
realistic within the context of comprehensive contraction and 
transformation.  A big piece of this would be the recognition that our 
suburban sprawl economy is dying, and that we now have to bend our 
efforts to reorganizing American life on the most fundamental physical 
terms.  We have to inhabit the landscape differently, move around it 
differently, generate food out of it differently, and make things on it 
again.  Whatever remaining real capital there is in the system can't be 
squandered on cash bonuses for Wall Street employees.

       I'm not ready to capitulate to cynicism. There is something in 
the political wind this summer. I think events will force Mr. Obama to 
assert some real leadership and take the national debate on our 
predicament in another direction, even if it is an uncomfortable 
direction for him and everybody else. Despite the massive 
disappointment being expressed by so many Obama voters these days, I 
believe the president will redeem himself before long.

     Attorney General Eric Holder announced over the weekend that he 
will commence an investigation into the Bush regime's misconduct with 
terrorism suspects.  His department is capable of running more than one 
investigation at a time. Why doesn't President Obama direct him to open 
an investigation of Goldman Sachs's behavior in the area of securities 
fraud, insider trading, and misuse of government funds?  Without an 
official inquiry into financial misconduct of this company, and others, 
I believe public anger will overwhelm any attempts to transform our 
contracting economy and the president's ability to manage it.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 9056 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://act-peakoil.org/pipermail/peakoil/attachments/20090714/2639dc15/attachment.bin