madpogue 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109370/

late

LittleBigMan
suppose you say we have a number of barrels left..call that number x, and that number will give us 50 years.
Now, double the amount of oil, and it will buy you 7 extra years.
Double it again and you get an additional 4 years. No, we don't have a bottomless well. But even if we had a well that was almost bottomless; it would not make much of a difference.

froze

Actually we can do it without invading, and both Canada and Russia would prosper. And the frozen tundra didn't stop us in Alaska! I say we get Canada and Russia turned on and turn off those other guys. Oops a thought just occurred; would we by giving Russia more money be in turn enabling them to build a better military to attack us with? Maybe not Russia then. We'll just give our trade over to harmless little China who just 8 years ago only had about 6 nuclear missiles aimed at us...but now they have over 100 aimed at us and growing...hmmm...what to do-what to do? Maybe Generals McArthur and Patton was right after all.

billwatson58

A couple of good comics on the topic:

https://cagle.slate.msn.com/working/040413/billday.gif

https://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/04/28/

Roughstuff

EEK!! beware of Arab cows!

roughstuff

ruirui

i love the calvin & hobbes one! if gas goes up to $8 per gallon.. everyone will be riding to work! what an awesome site that would be. then perhaps most people will become more healthier and slimmer and no longer a couch potato!

Dahon.Steve

There was a good article in USA Today. I’m going to summarize part of that piece:

Development Plans raise fears of more traffic and pollution as metro rethinks growth direction
by John Ritter
USA Today

Los Angeles - Plans for two of the biggest housing developments ever built here in the subdivision paradise make James Chang wince. The Changs camped outside a homebuilder’s trailer for five days and nights to land sight unseen - a new $500,000 four bedroom house. Never mind Chang’s hour and 15 minute commute to west Los Angels. The same house close to his job would go for at least $1 million.

But now Chang dreads an even longer commute if the two big developments add 140,000 people to the thinly populated northern edge of sprawling Los Angeles County. “the traffic is just going to e horrendous,” worries the law enforcement officer 37. Arid high desert north of the San Gabriel Mountains is the county’s last big chunk of developable open land after decades of relentless growth beyond the coastal core. In rush hour, the commute downtown is a minimum 90minutes.

The two proposals - one approved, one facing environmental studies have stoked a debate of the future of the nation’s second most populous metropolitan area. A culture revolving around the auto and the single family detached house with mass transit a Johnny-come lately, is forced to rethink whether that ethic can prevail much longer

The five-county Los Angeles metro area will add more than 5.3 million people by 2030, the Census Bureau estimates. Los Angeles County alone will add 2.4 million. Where will they all live? Will subdivision keep spreading into the desert? Could Southern California become one long urban traffic jam stretching more than 200 miles from San Diego to Bakersfield?

I’m going to stop right there because this is the problem. All these folks in LA and most of the country want to live in a single family homes that are detached with a built in garage so they can drive to work. These cities have no “Smart Growth” initiatives or plans for revitalizing downtown centers that have been abandoned for decades.

Basically, this outdated system of growth depends on cheap fuel to keep the engine running. Now you know the reason why California has huge energy problems because they won’t give up this policy of uncontrolled growth and urban sprawl.

I wonder if Mr. Chang will be living in their dream home once those two massive developments are finished. The additional 140,000 thousand cars on the same expressway he uses to drive to work should make the morning commute lovely!

Dchiefransom

Not only will we have gas problems, but the single family homes are wasteful in themselves. One of the guys I work with has a condo with just the front exposed to the weather, and his heating bill is about one quarter what a single family home would be.

late

LA is so screwed. They didn't do urban planing. And now it's too late. The physcial layout of the area is one of the most inefficient in the world. But that's not the real problem. The inefficiency does not rise linearly with population growth; it rises much faster. It's a mess.