Originally Posted by skijoring
MarkS' ideas of conservation, while maybe tongue-in-cheek, would never reach the House or Senate floors. Unless, of course, they are already in their fail-safe bunker pulling the levers of government. We've made our bed, it's time to sleep. The only option from a realists' perspective is to go 'secure' more oil fields.
What you're describing, I think, is what we probably WILL do ... not what we should do. There's a limit to how many 3rd world countries we can beat up to get oil. Other big, nuclear states will want their share too, and we'll have a harder time stealing from them.
Originally Posted by skijoring
All those personal vehicles with 10 HP would, almost by definition, be two-stroke engines which emit LOTS of CO and unburned fuel.
You're saying that we can send a shuttle 1/10th of the way to the moon (at $500,000,000 a pop), but we can't build a clean-burning 10 HP engine? It would be 10HP for internal combustion, but 20HP for electric, stirling, or bio-fueled vehicles.
You may think a 45MPH speed limit is silly, but the national speed limit was 45 when we were last in a real, bonafide, declared war. Hey! We're in a war now! Our president says so! So why is there no national speed limit? At 45 MPH, any form of public transportation becomes competitive.
Back when I was doing massive commutes, I found my average speed was more like 35MPH, since you could depend on there being a traffic-jam forming accident every 15 miles. At 45, we would save lives. I'd rather drive 45 non-stop then drive 70 and have to sit in stop-and-go traffic for 20 minutes.
Venezuela motto: Bush Country