urban rider

My preferred method of travel is bike or take the bus. As it becomes more expensive to drive more people are looking at alternative forms of transportation. I am seeing more middle aged women on bikes which makes me feel good. The costs of insurance (for those who have it) and maintennce of a car makes bike riding for short distances makes sense.

fietsbob

given everything you buy comes off a truck , the cost of living,
and everything you buy .. will spike up in cost.

joewey

If gas prices affects the cost of products i will mind...

BarracksSi

We'll let you know by mid-2008 or so. I think it will happen by then.

Heh..

A serious point about horses, though, was made near the end of that video I linked way back in this thread, where Jay Leno was talking about how the car benefited the horse. Sounds strange to say it that way, but his point was that, prior to cars and trucks doing the transportation, horses were suffering as work animals, getting beaten, dying in city streets, stuff like that. When people started using cars instead, horses were left to become more of a hobby, and owners could take the time to appreciate them for the beautiful animals they are.

What I'm saying is, I don't think we'll be willing to put up with having herds of horses working, pooping, and collapsing in our cities.

DataJunkie

Horses are amazingly expensive from what I hear.

LeeG

we're more delicate. Other parts of the world took the oil shocks of '73 and '79 to heart and increased fuel taxes. We encouraged the purchase of SUV/light trucks.

tjspiel

That and Europe is more densely populated making walking, biking and other alternative forms of transportation more practical. Until recently in the town I grew up in you had to travel about 15 miles just to buy a pair of underwear.

ianbrettcooper

That's true in the short term. But I see it as a good thing in the long term, since it will give a huge boost to all local suppliers. Finally we'll be buying local, as we used to before the automobile came along. This will deal with huge environmental and even some social problems. More essentially, it will result in employment opportunities for those who have fallen victim to the recession/depression. It will also make communities more self-sufficient and therefore much more robust and able to deal with emergency situations when they occur.

tjspiel

+1 , if it actually works out that way.

DataJunkie

It won't.

wunderkind

+100.
Otherwise we'd never see companies like Wal Mart or Home depot flourishing. Heck Amazon.com too! Let's get our @$$ ***** by the local monopolizing store.
Our vast continent makes it difficult to mimic the transportation method employ by EU countries.

People really need to learn some macroeconomics and look further than their brake cables.

tjspiel

Locally is relative. If fuel costs go up to the point that shipping things half way across the globe adds significantly to the price, then you might see some stuff being made closer to home. That doesn't mean there won't be a Walmart, just that they'd be getting more of their stuff from manufacturers located on the same continent.

ianbrettcooper

It will have to. After all, when gasoline costs over $50/gallon (as it eventually must), we won't be getting produce from anywhere more than a couple of hundred miles away, unless we're willing to pay through the nose for it. The alternative is essentially mass starvation through simply refusing to start growing locally. I don't see that happening.

ianbrettcooper

Erm... Walmart makes its profits from cheap oil combined with cheap sweatshop labour in places like China. Do you really think that Walmart will have a hope of continuing to buy Chinese if it costs them more to transport a Chinese T-shirt than it costs to buy one here in the US? This is indeed a case of knowing economics, but I'm not the one exhibiting myopia here. All transportation, whether it's in Europe or the US, relies on cheap oil. Once the oil is no longer cheap, it becomes far cheaper to make the things we need close to home.

Seattle Forrest

That doesn't sound the least bit strange or surprising.

Jared Diamond talks about being old enough that his college professors told him about the cars replacing the horses in American cities. They were seen (at first) as a huge improvement because they were quieter, and less polluting, in that they didn't poop and pee wherever they happened to be standing.

That describes San Francisco and New York pretty well. I haven't been to Europe, so I can't say how similar the outcomes are.

Seattle Forrest

Channeling the spirit of umd: You can say ass.

DataJunkie

I'm going to start stockpiling bananas.. if I can figure out how to keep them from going bad. I will make a killing when gas at long last hits $50 a gallon.
Oh and kiwis.

DataJunkie

I forgot guns and ammunition.

ianbrettcooper

You think it's far off, LOL. Actually, it is pretty far off. My 7 year-old daughter will probably be an adult by then, but I doubt she'll have reached 40 before it gets to $50.

Anyway, we'll still be able to get bananas. We got them before gasoline fueled everything, so we'll get them afterwards. They'll just be a lot more expensive, and not quite so fresh.

ianbrettcooper

You won't need guns and ammo. We're not turning into Road Warrior world. We just won't be driving cars and stuff will have to get to us using coal rather than oil.

DataJunkie

Darn it!

no motor?

I can't see Road Warrior on bicycles, but it would be interesting.

One thing the local movement would do is to make our food supply safer. Less reliance of factory farming reduces the chances of the food recalls we've seen since big ag got so big.

ews

Uh . . . why can't we drive cars powered by coal/natural gas/nuclear power (aka electricity)? They sell them today.

JPprivate

Agreed (I just don't think oil will be used for transport any longer).

wunderkind

If WalMart does not have a hope in importing cheap products, do you seriously think that local convenient shop can for that box of laundry detergent?

Our global economies simply doesn't allow that. Despite all the green fear mongering about limited oil resource. Or maybe these propaganda are actually paid by OPEC in order to stimulate fear and drive up oil prices (Conspiracy theorists unite!) there are still untapped areas in the globe where oil & gas are abundant. When push comes to shove, penguins be damn.

US simply has too much investment in the global market to simply shrink to intra-country trading. This is not the 1700s. Hell back then the British Empire was already trading with other countries around the world!