tandempower

When the tobacco companies lost their big lawsuit in the 1990s, government and economy got a boon for a while by essentially taxing all the money that had been fed into the tobacco companies as a result of consumer addiction/compulsion. Arguably, this is the same thing that happened with the big BP spill settlements that occurred after years of expensive gasoline raised money for the BP coffers to be had as a settlement.

So what does the government/economy do about compulsion? Tolerate it and allow money to build up and then find a way to get the money and pump it back out into the economy.

Strangely, smoking seemed to be cut back for a long time after those tobacco settlements. It seems to be coming back into vogue now, but maybe I just notice it more lately, idk. I also don't know if gasoline waxes and wains in popularity. Motor-traffic seemed to be getting better for a while but now that gas prices have been going down, driving seems to be picking up again.

Current economic forecasts are noting a shift in supply-orientation with the Chinese recession. As long as China was growing, oil prices were being held low with the hope of stimulating growing demand. Now that global demand is forecasted to wain, we might see gas prices going up to take advantage of a more elite consumer base. Likewise, reports are emphasizing the US economy's strong momentum despite the Chinese crash, which implies investors will be pumping more money into that (US) economy, which will probably create an incentive to raise gas prices in the US.

Oil has already gained $10/barrel, supposedly.

Rising gas prices will indeed stimulate automotive demand shifts toward EVs and hybrids. Tesla was just lauded by consumer reports, which will supposedly promote its EVs. If EV and hybrid production markets become more competitive, falling prices on those vehicles could stimulate an even bigger increase in driving than the declining gas prices have, because electricity is cheaper than gas at the levels of efficiency enjoyed by EV drivers.

If motor-traffic is growing with EV growth, congestion will also increase and, at that point, governments will be faced with the prospect of having to further expand automotive infrastructure and/or expand non-motorized infrastructure and transit as an alternative. If there isn't a shift away from motorized transportation, 21st century population levels will make congestion and sprawl much worse than they were at 20th century levels as they peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.

That means that we could see the compulsion to drive resulting in worse consequences than were seen in the 20th century. If we don't stay the new course, things are going to get worse than they've ever been. That is a given of population growth. Even if more intense wars, killing, and disasters cause greater population reductions than in the 20th century, the aftermath will be even greater population growth than before. This is simply because technology and knowledge that allow faster population growth aren't suppressable, unless you believe in a future like Ayn Rand's novel Anthem, where even basic technologies like electric lighting are dogmatically suppressed in an effort to keep human life primitive. Even if that was good, I doubt it would ever be possible at levels that would prevent population from returning to pre-disaster levels and increasing beyond them.

We simply have no choice but to adapt human culture to higher levels of global population, including extraterrestrial migration, BUT the question is how many population 'dips' we will have to go through in the process of getting people to accept it without murderously resisting.