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Has the Industrialized World Reached Peak Travel?
Harperdog sends this excerpt from Miller-McCune:
"A study (abstract) of eight industrialized countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more cars and more driving — came to a halt in the early years of the 21st century, well before the recent escalation in fuel prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for car ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point. 'With talk of "peak oil," why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' asked co-author Lee Schipper ... Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in miles traveled by car per capita in recent years. The US appears to have peaked at an annual 8,100 miles by car per capita, and Japan is holding steady at 2,500 miles."
We simply either cant spend the money, wont spend the money or cant/wont approve new infrastructure projects that will ease the traffic burden. One prime example was ripping down the West Side Highway in NYC (instead of fixing or replacing it), and then "wondering" why congestion increased when "suddenly" the drivers who used to use the WSH are now on surface streets or migrating to the FDR drive.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
How(if at all) they are factoring in all the trucks delivering the stuff that I would historically have had to drive a car to the store to obtain...
A shift in the US from suburban material culture, where car transport is essentially necessary, and that necessity is self-perpetuating through the cultural and infrastructure spending priorities it creates, would be big news.
A shift from buying at bestbuy to buying at bestbuy.com might well drive down the number of car-hours/year; but would be fairly uninteresting. Ditto with things like Netflix and Amazon and pay-per-view cable movies and whatnot...
Ass exams over nail clippers certainly don't help
Table-ized A.I.
Is "peak" the new "-gate"?
A lot of work that used to require physical presence can now be done remotely. Not necessarily from home, but from computers at an office that doesn't have to be located at the site where the machine is. So offices move to where the people are rather than making people move to where the materials are. So you don't have to move groceries for those people as far either. Facetime, remote, telepresence will take over travel per capita as tech improves.
"Industrialised World" - The world is changing so quickly that the definitions of what is first world, third world, emerging markets, industrialised and so on are not clearly defined.
If that definition can be made accurately there can be concurrence as to if the peak travel levels have been reached or not.
Also, there has not in recorded history been any similar trends, except maybe for the peak and decline of rail travel - maybe a parallel can be drawn from that?
Given the above, the conclusion can only be "It looks like it, but we cannot be sure. Yet."
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Few people spend more than 1 and 2 hours a day traveling, unless their work itself is moving themselves or stuff around. So as speeds max out, so does travel.
Both car travel and air travel have slowed down. Even subsonic jets used to fly faster, but the fuel consumption goes up as Mach 1 is approached. Airport time is much longer than it used to be. Road capacity maxes out at 35MPH; faster, and the cars are spaced out more, so vehicles per minute drops. (California uses metering lights to try to keep freeways at 35MPH under heavy load. Japan just sets low speed limits on urban expressways.)
And, of course, we have such good communications that going somewhere merely to talk to someone is rarely necessary.
FTFS: "...why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' "
They are saying a possibility of it being a peak, and clearly said the evidence points to a plateau right now. Would appear what they are doing is speculation, but they got the terms right.
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1. Improved communications, including the Internet has helped make some forms of travel less necessary.
2. Optimized analysis of usage patterns have allowed businesses to minimize travel costs better.
3. A general drastic shift in income towards the more wealthy at the cost of growth in other income levels has minimized the ability for most folks to have the opportunity for leisure travel (time as much as money).
Those create a trend - but there's no inherent "peak travel" there. Start electing folks who will tax wealth in order to give meaningful freedom to everyone else again (see: 1940's to 1970's US), and you will see more frequent travel again as people have resources to start businesses, engage in leisure activities, and do more than just go to WalMart every long once in a while, rather than a few rich having exponential increases.
Ryan Fenton
But a lack of dollars to power the miles. Pocketbook saturation? Either that our we ran out of road.
The authors should have compared miles driven to median income instead of GDP per capita. While GDP per capita has risen in the US, median income has not.
"Peak-gate"
The outrageous scandal of uh, something vague maybe, or nothing much really, we're not actually sure about it, and might have made it up completely... but it's coming to your TV screen tonight!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Ever since the time that gasoline hit $4 here in the US, I've been keeping an eye on the DOT's Traffic Volume Trends. It seems to me that, once Americans realized how much gas could cost (and will permanently cost, eventually), they also realized how much auto travel is superfluous. In particular This chart of the 12-month average for all roads shows a clear pullback in miles driven. Perhaps some of this could be attributable to people being more efficient in their travel; taking care of multiple errands at once, using public transportation much more, etc. Certainly the downturn in the economy has an impact, too.
In the US and Canada for example, driving will peak based on how far you need to go to get things done. Two things have changed on that front, first being that things are closer. An example, 10 years ago if I wanted to go to a store like walmart I would have had to drive 30mins, it's 3minutes now. Same with a Canadian tire, but the size of my city has only grown by 5k people. The thing that really throws a wrench into this of course is if live out in the middle of nowhere Canada or US. In which case driving 2-4hrs twice a month to buy your groceries is still the norm, that's providing it's not dropped off by plane. Even having things dropped off by plane is getting scarce however, it's cheaper to do 5 months of deliveries by truck in the dead of winter for remote cities.
In most other places, notably japan unless you have the money to pay for private parking when you go to work you'll live the life of the 2hr rush, and be packed in, and leave your car at home. But everything you more than likely need is in walking or biking distance, and when it isn't you can get just about everything sent to your home. Sure that's happening in north america albeit at a slower pace. Japan can't dedicate space to roads, we can. Which leads japan to having more dedication to public transportation.
Personally to me it comes down to the whole space vs no space issue. We're not short on room in north america not even close. The only upper limit you have to that here, is the amount of space you can dedicate to roadways to ease conjestion.
Om, nomnomnom...
They reference miles traveled by car per capita. The US population grows by 2.5M people every year, which would lead me to believe the total miles driven is still increasing.
When I've seen peak oil discussed, usually they are talking about total oil output and not per capita consumption.
We travel to see stuff. Modern media has made much of that superfluous.
We travel to get stuff. Having stuff show up is less time wasted. Instead of going to buy tools, for example, I shop online and they show up. I can mix Ebay, Craigslist, and new vendors while I fap to pr0n and surf Slashdot.
We travel to see people. It's now more convenient to chat with a world of friends without bothering to meet in person very often.
We travel to learn stuff. Now information is at our fingertips.
Travel was a hassle before the TSA fondle-fest. Fuck travel.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Peak travel is an interesting concept but it applies only to a given technology level. My own situation is an example. I live in Texas and have family on both the East and West coast of the US. I would also like to vacation in Florida, Maine, and Northern California. But with 2 small children and the TSA increasingly repressive, I simply don't travel much beyond a one-day driving distance.
That would change instantly if fast, harassment-free transportation were available. That used to be the airlines, and it could be fast rail if it weren't for the fact that excessive govt regulation and problems getting right-of-way means that it will never happen. But we're one transportation revolution away from me making coast to coast travel plans fairly often, because that is where I would want to go if there were reasonable transportation options.
I can't be the only one who doesn't go anywhere beyond a 1-day drive anymore, either. If we're at a transportation peak, it is because of artificial suppression of travel due to airport harassment and because of other concerns that could be addressed by the availability of fast and easy transportation. Note that I don't mention cost - I'd be willing to pay quite a bit for quick and hassle free transportation around the country, but it simply can't be done right now.
As a nation, we're quickly heading towards loserville when we can't even manage to use available technology to let people travel freely without harassment. Car, train, and aircraft technology are all available to allow for reasonably rapid transportation, but our car speed limits are where they were 30 years ago, there is still very limited train service in most central and western states, and the govt is doing its best to harass people out of flying commercial air. We suck, and we're doing it to ourselves.
I know that there has been a lot of re-urbanization in North America; where people are moving back into the cities from the suburbs. People are realizing that there are actually benefits to living in a city. That and people wanting to live closer to work. I'm not sure how much that figures in. I know after a while, travel gets old. Even an extra half hour a day is a half hour that is not yours.
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A study of eight horse-using countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more horses, and more riding — came to a halt in the early years of the 20th century, well before the recent escalation in fodder prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for horse ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point. 'With talk of "peak manure," why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' asked co-author Jebediah Schipper ... Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in miles traveled by horse per capita in recent years. The US appears to have peaked at an annual 1620 miles by horse per capita, and Japan is holding steady at 500 miles."
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Interesting that travel dropped right about the time we really geared up the subsidized food burning.
Funny how historically high food prices and pitiful job and income growth can really dampen a decade. That's without mentioning gas prices. "Peak Travel" you say?? Whoever came up with this Peak Travel idea must live in vacuum.
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I travel way less then I used to. I can do a lot of what I used to have to travel for from home. "The commute" is also a mysterious phenomena that the US, who will collectively bitch at having to walk thirty seconds to a minute more because there wasn't a closer parking space, somehow put up with putting up with being in the hour range. It may be that it's starting to dawn on people that you know what, 1/8-1/16th of my waking time isn't worth a 10-20% pay raise. People may be starting to weigh their options and realizing having a 30" TV instead of a 50" one may not be such a bad deal if it comes with a side order of actually having enough time to watch it.
Said study authors should learn what a "peak" is and what peak oil means: after the "peak" there is a decline. So "scientists": come back if there is a steady, continous decline.
No.. a peak is just a local high point; there does not have to be a continuous steady decline just a VALLEY. There are different possible results after a peak has been reached.
It could be a flat graph after the peak is reached, e.g. only a small decrease, and then a straight line; indicating a "cap", after some time at the high point.
More commonly a peak followed by a valley and then another peak, the next peak might be higher or lower than the first peak, or it might be at the same level.
A peak does not indicate a top value reached followed by a continuous decline.
"Peak Oil", is a worthless flawed concept to begin with. Gauging how much oil exists based on how much we CHOOSE to pump isn't even starting to take reality into consideration. If there were no huge multinational interests trying to control gas prices, "Peak Oil" would be flawed to the point of being worthless. The fact that there ARE huge multinational interests involved in oil price manipulation means that "Peak Oil" is just a stupid idea.
"Peak travel" on the other hand could have some validity. Depending on what they are measuring for "Peak". If they are measuring it in time spent travelling. Obviously there is a hard limit on the number of hours that can be traveled. Just count the number of people on the planet, and multiply by 24 hours.
People are realizing that there are actually benefits to living in a city.
Well, that, and the cities got a lot safer. Go watch some 70s movies set in New York, and the predominant theme is dirty and dangerous.
In China, though, travel is going way up. Their National Trunk Highway System, very similar in road design to the US Interstate system, is up to 74,000 km and adding about 10,000 km per year, all built since 1988. That may do for China what the Interstate system did for the US - pull the country much closer together. China has historically had weak inter-provincial links and restrictions on inter-provincial trade. There are still trade barriers between provinces. Most provinces have their own auto manufacturers, protected by inter-provincial import duties. That probably won't last out this decade.
Clearly it stands to reason that if we have hit peak oil (the rate of oil production), the refineries are not becomming more efficient and if the efficiency of vehicles is not really significantly increasing, then the miles the vehicles travel have also peaked. * World oil production - 86 million barrels per day (Mbpd) - This has been pretty flat over the last five years. * US consumption of world oil - The US consumes around 1/4 of the world's oil. Due to the decline in the economy, US oil consumption has fallen some 9%, down nearly 2 million barrels per day (mbpd) from 20.7 mbpd in mid 2007, to about 18.8 mbpd in October 2009 * American Petroleum Institute reports that 1 barrel of oil produced 19.4 gallons of gasoline per barrel based on average yields for U.S. refineries.
I think at least in the United States, we've also hit the maximum commute times people are willing to tolerate. For a long time "drive till you qualify" (i.e. "drive outward from the city until you find a house you can afford") was the motto of the real estate industry. People found out how much the quality of life suffered when they were spending two hours in each direction behind the wheel of a car. They're now willing to make sacrifices in other areas (less living space, smaller yard, schools not as good) for more reasonable commute times.
I've been looking for a house to buy recently and there's a maximum commute time I'm willing to tolerate. Beyond that, I'll keep renting, thank you.
Many of the people who bought houses in far-flung exurbs "because it's where I can afford to buy" were also stretched pretty thin financially to afford those houses. The recent recession, with its layoffs and real estate bust, was not kind to those people. Many of them are not commuting long distances to work because they simply don't have a job anymore. Or they've lost their home and have moved back into a rental closer to the city.
I know one of the perhaps 20 industrialized countries in the Worl has an obsession with cars; but less cars means less travel? I say non sequitur. Ever heard of trains and planes?
Also, the 8k miles/car/capita in USA vs 2k in Japan is meaningless: in Japan you never need to travel very far because it is smaller and has a higher density.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
The oil plateau is clearly a fact. This means a fixed amount of oil is being produced in the world (86 Mbpd). The US consumes about 1/4 of that. Refineries are about as efficient as they can get. The overall mpg efficiency of passenger cars is pretty steady at 22.5 mpg. --> overall car mileage probably has plateaued.
The increasing number of people who work from home must have some bearing here (altho it could be negligible at this point). I expect in the next few decades this will have a substantial negative impact on the value of office space as well as reduce traffic. Where I work, there's actually no necessity for anyone to physically be present - it could all be done remotely, but I think the hold up is the shift in people's thinking this requires more so than any technological hurdle - there's the social aspect and the "get out of the house" aspect and the "I can't be around my spouse and kids _all_ the time!" aspect and just plain old inertia. In the meantime, our 500+ people keep congregating in large downtown buildings unnecessarily, for which we pay better than $250K/mo, and our front-line people conduct 99% of their business via email and phone.
For those who want to read the article before discussing it:
http://www.civil.ist.utl.pt/wctr12_lisboa/WCTR_General/documents/02455.pdf
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Not necessarily. As SUVs leave the road, the road becomes more attractive to people like me (in Honda Civics). The ton-mileage will decline, but the mileage could go up.
The moderator's silly is correct. Give us flying cars, and the demand for travel will increase. Travel distance, at least, not necessarily time nor energy use.
Overall car mileage plateaued because CAFE standards plateaued. Now that CAFE standards are (finally) rising again, actual car mileage will [be forced to] follow suit.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There may be another reason: we don't have any more money or time to spend on travel than we are already spending. This is not "peak demand", because we may still want to travel more (demand still present) but simply cannot.
The leveling has little to do with money or infrastructure and everything to do with the composition of the population.
The per-capita mileage has leveled because we have a lower percentage of people in the younger, more mobile age groups. The baby boomers are reaching an age where they stay home more than in the past. The less-populous generations behind them are still working, traveling, driving as much as ever... there are just LESS of them as a PERCENTAGE of the population.
Peak oil being reached does not mean that there is a peak demand of energy. We will always need more energy, from oil or other resources, and , we will never seize to stop having the need to travel, faster and further.
Hence, NO, we did not reach "peak travel", we just reached "peak car sales".
The lunatic is in my head
And watch the news today... which portrays the cities as just as dangerous as ever. i.e. what we see on TV, movies, etc. is rarely close to reality; since they are all geared to selling.... and people won't pay for mundane.
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"And people still like to buy big, heavy cars that can accelerate to 60 mph in less than four seconds."
Sure, I'd like a 911 Turbo or a 458 Italia, but the roads are not exactly teeming with them.
Peak oil by the graph of oil production was in 2008. Economic factors had a lot to do with that since some of that oil is very expensive to extract and people were buying a lot less oil, so the more expensive to extract oil was left alone for a while. There may be another peak but for the moment production is at less than 2008 levels.
Oil is of course finite but that's not the only thing that decided when we started using less oil.
It is the point on the graph of oil production over time where it stops rising and goes sharply into decline.
We had one in 2008 due to economic factors.
We may have another some time due to problems with scarcity.
Please define "cannot sustain itself". The only evidence you provided is residence owenrship rates, which is not a valid comparison within the topic of debate.
Property markets vary worldwide, not just due to demand or supply, but also due to the local legal frameworks. North Continental Europe tends (as a generalisation across its many countries) to give a fair amount of rights to those renting. Redecorating, for example, is a right that my Continental neighbours have which as a UK resident I don't have as easily. If a UK renter wants to redecorate, they usually have to seek their landlord's approval - but if they were living in France, they wouldn't.
With greater rights and protection for tenants, many people in Germany and its neighbours probably never feel as great a need to own property. It's a simple trade-off - you own it, you get benefits like equity, but have to deal with all problems with the property. Don't own it, and you never get equity but your landlord has responsibilities.
Now, in the UK, we have more restrictions as renters so ownership is more attractive. But in Germany or France, my understanding is that the better protection of tenants means that ownership is less attractive. Not unattractive - just not as attractive as in other territories.
So residence ownership isn't a good statistic to compare, as it has reasons beyond city design or population sustainability.
Although to be clear, I don't understand what either residence ownership or population sustainability have to do with the conversation here either. It seems like you're just clutching at straws to justify the American city design of Suburban Sprawl, rather than attempting to understand how other countries that are more land-constrained have dealt with the issue of city growth and the transport requirements it brings...
(See? We got back on topic!)
With respect, these arguments above all miss the point that not just one system (i.e. my car, my house, my transportation situation) will be affected by a peak-oil rise in energy prices. Rather, all systems will be affected and they will cascade into an entropy of economic breakdown. It will, of course, happen at different rates for different people. But the economic dislocations caused by $150/$200 a barrel oil will filter through the entire economy making it impossible to sustain a 50-mile-a-day commute to an $65,000 a year job. At a sustained level of $150 a barrel oil, it will take about ten years to knock out the upper-middle class technological -based economy that most Slashdaughters either live in or aspire to. But it will happen much sooner for most everyone else.
I don't think that peak travel is currently driven by the price of oil but rather by the means of alternatives to travel. Only in recent years has video conferencing and mobile communications become ubiquitous. While a face-to-face meeting is still far better this has to be offset against the cost in money and time of travel to and from the meeting plus the currently less than pleasant experience of flying.
Even as little as 10 years ago video conferencing was still relatively novel and not particularly trivial and so travel to meetings was required. Now that communication has become a lot simpler there is an alternative to travel in many cases so is it surprising that the amount of travel has levelled off? As communication technology improves, and airport security moves towards requiring a full body cavity search, I would imagine that it will continue to reduce the volume of travel required.
I took a few minutes to search, but wasn't able to find it. What percentage of oil use in the US (of worldwide) is by personal vehicles? Few vehicles have tanks over 50 gallons of gas, a small fraction compared to an airliner or train or ship. I don't have any concept over how much is used on oil-fired power plants. How much of the US use is dependent on personal vehicles? How much is used in power generation? How much is used in factories?
I guess my point is, if we all stopped driving cars and started using bicycles, how much would oil consumption in the US drop?
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> Even subsonic jets used to fly faster,
The airlines started doing that what in the last decade prior to the fee-bonanza-mania they have discovered to reach profitability. Oh! I remember, it was during 2005, 2006 during the President G.W. Bush historic $2+, $3+, $4+ per gallon of gasoline rise. They noticed that flying around free food cost lots of money, as did bottled water, blankets, and lots of overhead carry-on luggage. Charge for that shit, my son and ye shall prosper, they said. =) Lower flying speed vs increased travel time was the bargain they struck.
> but the fuel consumption goes up as Mach 1 is approached
Yeah, but what commercial airliner wants to go near Mach 1? The Concorde was a dodo bird walking since its 1950s birth and tech. And if anything transonic civilian is where it'd be at. And what does it matter. Supersonic is the realm of military flying, and supersonic varies by altitude, and military jets reach stratospheric heights that commercial jets can not reach. It's all so moot.
Supercruise, now when is that going to come form military application to civilian use?
Isn't it a bit misleading to say that Assen has a density of 2000 per square mile ? That's measured over 32 square miles. But if you look at a map, you will see that most of the population lives in an area of 2.5 miles by 3.5 miles. And my guess is that that area is quite flat, making it ideal for cycling.
* About three billion people do not have the ability to travel farther than 20 or 50 km more than a few times in their lives. Have you been to _rural_ India, Turkey, etc? I have.
* As new, cheaper & more efficient transportation emerges, more people will travel more.
* In a financial crisis, both leisure and business travel takes a dip. This is obvious.
* As people work fewer physical jobs, they have the time, ability and hopefully money to travel if they want.
* People traveling to/from the USA will naturally travel less as the security theater is becoming too much of a burden. I have been on all continents except Southern America. Never, not even at the most corrupt backwater guard outpost in the middle of nowhere, have I been treated as badly as in the tourist magnets of the USA.
I think you are right, but this is also mentioned in the discussion of the graph -- there's a two-mile unpopulated donut around the town, it looks like to me. Note, also, that the town noted on the graph with most similar density -- Lexington -- includes two family farms, some serious highway right-of-way, and several office parks. We play that trick, too.
And that density pattern cuts both ways -- if your destination is not in town, then the minimum distance is 2 miles, because you've got to cross the donut. My understanding is that kids (11 and older) from surrounding villages ride in to school in Assen, and it's 5 miles.
For me, the more telling comparison, that I discovered after writing that post, is Groningen, versus Cambridge-Somerville-neighboring. Similar weather, similar student populations, relatively flat, greater density here, yet they have the 57% ride share.
GPM as in Gallons per Month, that is. Attaching a media-friendly buzzlabel to it is unnecessary.
I drive a powerful car with a large-displacement V6. On average, I get about 17MPG and this fact is shown in bright orange letters on my dashboard computer. A friend commented on my this horrible mileage, and he's right, on the surface. Fact is, I drive about ten miles a day on average and live 2 miles from where I work. He drives fifty miles round trip just for work. This is in a car that averages 25MPG (GM 3800 V6). When I used to do that kind of driving, I averaged 28MPG (GM 3800 SeriesII V6, newer engine).
Our cars weigh about the same and it's generally the weight of the vehicle that determines city gas mileage.
Each day, we burn:
Him: 50mi @ 25MPG = 2 gallons of fuel (I'm sure the drive for work is the largest part of his travels)
Me: 10mi @ 17MPG = 2.35 quarts of fuel (I count my total since work is just 4 miles of it)
Granted, my wife still drives fifty miles a day at 25MPG, but we're working on that. With the economy improving and jobs opening up, that commute will be reduced as well.
The future is going to require shorter commutes, which is going to require people to live closer to where they work. While that will surely cause problems in large cities back East, the Western states like Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado have a lot of dead space between cities and that's going to become some very important real estate.
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We are at the threshold of true tele-presence, and the need or even desire for physical presence may soon be relegated to the dust bins of history. There are fewer and fewer places one "Has" to be, which means that one is left with places to be by choice. That suggests working from home a lot (and we need to begin to teach our children the need for self discipline, and the likely remote visibility that employers will demand.) For a little while, the haves will be able to game the system with cheap third world labor, but in the end a global ,flat playing field will allow an engineer in California, the opportunity to make a serious contribution to a project in Mumbai, just as easily as a doctor in Singapore, can perform a robotic surgery on a patient in South Africa.
I guess my point is, if we all stopped driving cars and started using bicycles, how much would oil consumption in the US drop?
So 3 hours to work, 3 hours to get home every day? No thanks. Actually, it would take me longer since bikes are illegal on the interstate (80 of the 100 miles a day I drive). The average commute in the US is 16 miles, which would be an easy hour or more considering traffic stops, turns, etc. Its a nice thought, in a tree hugging way, but Americans aren't going to switch in significant numbers. They might drive less, but it won't be to bike that much more.
But to answer your question, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbblpd_a.htm is a good place to start.
In 2009, we were down around 10% from our peak at 18,771,000 barrels per day total oil consumption (peak 2005, 20.8m). Around 9m barrels were for gasoline (not counting motor oil and other uses in cars), or just under half. 3.6m went to "Distillate Fuel Oil" (mainly diesel and a little for home heating oil I believe). Another 1.4m went to aviation. The rest goes to petrochemical, plastics, lubricants and other uses.
You might note that total oil consumption has dropped much more dramatically than gasoline consumption. My guess is that this is due to the gutting of manufacturing in the US. Total consumption is around 1998 levels, while current gasoline consumption is around 2003 levels, or down less than 3% of peak levels in 2006. Even the biggest recession since The Depression didn't change that much.
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Maybe we won't have another and it may be the peak for all time. We've got the two factors of increasing difficulty (thus expense) of sustaining such high levels of oil production and demand that has decreased. I don't have a crystal ball and neither do the oil industry journals (others in my workplace read them).
Some people highjack the term peak oil as the nightmare cross-over point of very sharply increasing demand combined with very sharply decreasing production. It's a lot simpler than that. It's just the point of maximum oil production and we may have already seen it. It's getting a lot harder to find the stuff and a lot harder to get it out of the ground.
It's getting a lot harder to find the stuff and a lot harder to get it out of the ground.
Maybe we'll find nifty new ways to get it out of the ground, maybe we'll find nifty new ways to make it. My issue is more with peak sustainable oceanic acidification :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I believe you are correct about the reasons for the oil consumption figure. Much of our heavy manufacturing in the midwest has disappeared, thanks to relatively cheap labor available in other countries. What many don't seem to realize is that all those plastic doodads and sub-assemblies that go into larger products require oil, and if you're not making that here (the USA), oil consumption will fall in this country -- but not elsewhere.
You make a very good point about distance transportation, which really needs to be emphasized further in these kinds of discussions. Out where I live (east-central Texas), discussions of "practical" electric vehicles, mass transit and things like using a bicycle are greeted with well-deserved derision. Farm equipment as an example, cannot be powered by anything but a concentrated, portable energy supply that is easily stored at the farm. Batteries just don't cut it, and even if they did, getting the electrical infrastructure capable of handling high-volume charging requirements would be prohibitively expensive in rural areas. Running out of battery off-road is not good; try carrying enough battery capacity in your arms to get going again versus five gallons of gasoline. And, the idea of using a bicycle to go get reasonably-priced groceries 30 miles away (not uncommon in this area) is ludicrous, not to mention hauling 1,500 lbs of feed. A go-kart powered with a lawnmower engine is a paragon of practicality by comparison. Urbanites often seem to forget that most of the country is empty space, and for many applications, there is a stark choice between limited human or animal power, and something that gives you the energy density of diesel or gasoline. Diesel being far less difficult to handle and store than gasoline. Gasoline with ethanol added is an incredible headache, since it destroys engines that don't get run every day: Farm equipment is not cheap, and destroying it with dodgy fuel just to satisfy someone's need for a subsidy or an obsession with ethanol is just criminal. And people wonder why food prices are climbing.
If policy-makers spent less time in their little insular world of suburban life (and watching the talking heads on the evening news), they might have a different perspective on things. I know that growing up in Los Angeles during the 1970's (I left in 1978), I had no idea what effect reasonable-sounding energy policy had on the rest of the population. Now I do. Bottom line, attempting to legislate the use of certain technologies because they work well under specific circumstances is an invitation to all sorts of problems. You cannot anticipate all needs, requirements, and problems. But, Congress seems to think this is possible and so we are stuck with things like massive ethanol subsidies; money that could be better spent elsewhere improving technologies that actually work.
For example, I have my suspicions about motivations with fuel economy. A diesel four-banger compact gets extremely good mileage; Honda's 2009 diesel Accord achieved better than 50 MPG and met the European "clean diesel" standards. Why can't we buy them here (along with counterparts from Nissan, Toyota and others)? My 1996 Cadillac DeVille (which some consider a "gas guzzler") gets 24 MPG highway/city combined (actual measured value), and I can get 30 MPG (actual) on 2-hour highway trips at 70 miles an hour, cruise control engaged. This is with an emissions system that needs repair -- my mileage will improve after it is fixed. My 1999 Honda Accord (4 cylinder VTEC) gets 30 to 38 MPG depending on the type of driving, and on long trips I've achieved 40 MPG. The point I'm making is that if we really want to reduce transportation's consumption of oil, the technology required to do so is already proven and available, and would not require gutting the livelyhoods of people that have to drive long distances or use petroleum-powered equipment for vital things -- like growing and transporting food.
Peak travel, like some other problems, vanishes if we're willin
With respect "nifty new ways to make it" ignores the problem and is talking about a different one. Oil is cheap because we drill holes and the stuff comes up without much effort. Once other sources are mentioned (eg. oil from coal etc) it's not peak oil anymore and getting into a far more complex argument. Peak energy production is a very different thing to peak oil.