[Peakoil] James Kunstler on US oil, electric cars and trains

[Keith]

Here's an extract from this week's bulletin from James Kunstler.

Useful to keep in mind as we face the daily press releases about electric cars, and the corporately spun media events promoting US oil and gas.
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Keith Thomas
keith at evfit.com
www.evfit.com
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Reality Check

By James Howard Kunstler

on March 5, 2012 8:37 AM

http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/03/reality-check.html

<snip>

•       We're real confused about our energy predicament. Stories are flying all around the news media to the effect that the USA will soon be an oil exporter. That's utter nonsense, by the way. We still import more than two-thirds of the oil we use. Another story is that the Bakken shale oil fields will make us "energy independent." That is a complete misunderstanding of reality. Another widely-repeated untruth is the notion that we have "a hundred years of shale gas." These are stories generated by the particular stage of collective grief we have entered - the bargaining stage, where we attempt to negotiate a better contract with reality. Good luck with that. The truth is, we're nearly out of the good cheap oil and gas and what's left is so expensive and difficult to extract that we may not have the capital investment resources to get it. One byproduct of ignoring the disorders in our banking system is that we are also failing to pay attention to the absence of real capital formation. Meanwhile, the oil and gas companies are propagandizing tirelessly in TV commercials in order to get "other people's money" to sustain their Ponzi operations. (Translation: swindling retirees who cannot get yield from "safe" investments such as bonds.) Eventually we'll have to face it: the fossil fuel age is ending and there are no miracle rescue remedies waiting to come on-stage.

•       We're not going to "tech" our way through the array of mega-problems we face, in particular the energy predicament. The American mind-space today is clogged with cargo-cult fantasies about electric cars, nano-manufacturing, and "information" technology that would allow the trajectory of progress to continue just as we have known and loved it. This too, like the end of suburbia, will lead to vast disappointment. We're heading instead into a "time-out" from technological progress, duration unknown, which will probably also result in the loss of some tricks we've already learned. The leading wish-fulfillment fantasy, of course, is that we will change out all the gasoline and diesel cars for electric cars. This is not going to happen. We will be a far less affluent society. There will be much less capital available to devote to auto loans. Our towns, counties, and states are all going broke and will not be able to keep the stupendous roadway system in repair. That's a major reason why we have to return to living in walkable towns instead of disaggregated suburbs, and why we desperately need to repair the regular (not high-speed) rail system.