Peak Oil And Why We Need A Better Rail System

In this past Sunday’s Buffalo News a writer by the name of Richard Florida penned an editorial column entitled “The Buffalo Mega Region: Bigger Than We Know”. He went into great detail about what Buffalo needs to do as a city to grow and prosper well into the 21^st century.

Florida makes many excellent points including the importance of building a light rail from Toronto to New York City of which Buffalo would reap unforeseeable rewards. The benefits would not only be for Buffalo but cities like Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany as well. Not to mention all of the cities located in between. One may argue that with quick routes to NYC and Toronto that too much local money would be spent in the said metropolises. I can see how that would be true. One could also argue that the only communities that would benefit, other than NYC and TO, would be those towns in with a close proximity to their respective metropolis. Sure, I could live in Buffalo due to the cost of living being low, but would I really want to take a 2 ½ hour train ride to Toronto each morning and evening? Why wouldn’t I just live in Grimsby or Stoney Creek? Fair enough, that is another valid point.

Well, thanks to our friend over at Master Caution I will tell you why the solution put forth by Mr. Florida is only part of the answer.

The reason being is that we have come to what is referred to as “Hubbert’s Peak” or, more commonly, “Peak Oil”. Simply put, this does not mean that we are running out of oil, per say, but that a peak in world oil production has or will soon occur. Once we pass the peak, there will be less and less oil produced every year. In addition, each year it will take increasing amounts of energy to extract the decreasing amounts of oil that already exist in the ground. Eventually, we will reach a breaking point when it will take more energy to extract the oil than what we will get from the oil itself. At that point, there will still be oil in the ground, but it will not be nearly as cost effective to excavate the oil.

Now, why is this important to building a strong rail infrastructure in America? Well, with oil prices continually on the rise it will not only be inefficient to transport goods by automobile or airplane but it will be nearly impossible due to the pre-industrial revolution political climate. To hand it over to James Howard Kuntsler for a moment

The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the “level of service” (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart.

America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Neither of the two major presidential candidates in 2004 mentioned railroads, but if we don’t refurbish our rail system, then there may be no long-range travel or transport of goods at all a few decades from now. The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish. The sheer cost of maintaining gigantic airports may not justify the operation of a much-reduced air-travel fleet. Railroads are far more energy efficient than cars, trucks or airplanes, and they can be run on anything from wood to electricity. The rail-bed infrastructure is also far more economical to maintain than our highway network.

I highly recommend reading everything that this man has ever written pertaining to this topic. He makes far better points that I could ever imagine making in regards to this upcoming crisis.

In the same article he also states

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not “services” like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

I am going to try to summarize a couple of his ideas here before I go ahead a copy and paste everything that Kunstler has written on the topic. He says that cities located near viable farm lands have a much better opportunity to survive with the impending post-easily accessible oil world. He also claims that rust belt cities are much better prepared than larger cities like New York or South Western cities like Phoenix. Again, please go and read this link to better understand his points.

As previously mentioned, this was all brought to my attention by Master Caution who has an excellent gathering of links on his blog pertaining to this very topic. He writes about ways to make a difference, be it though writing Mayor Brown or contacting you local congressmen or state senators.

Sadly though, this isn’t something that we can stop. The wheels have been set into motion long before most of us were born. All we can do now is prepare. Sure, going “green” and using less electricity are great things. But the most important thing that we must learn to do is how to be more self sufficient. We think about how great it is to recycle, but do you have idea how much energy it takes to recycle? Yes energy is saved versus producing new goods but between the trucks required to pick up your papers, plastics, and glass, you also have to add in the energy that it takes to melt these items down. Lest we forget, the transportation that is required in putting these items back onto store shelves. Now I am not saying that we should not recycle but we often times think that all we have to do is drive a Prius or buy our foods from a co-op, but the truth is that those are not always the best alternatives.

There is a lot to worry about. One of the first things that you can do is to buy local. It is imperative that we acclimate ourselves for the upcoming world in which we will have to live. Cities such as San Francisco ,CA and Portland, OR have already have an “Oil Depletion Protocol” in place that mandates that their cities cut down on oil usage 2.5% each year to better brace themselves for the upcoming oil shortage. This is something that we should be pressing out local government to put into place, too.

The energy crisis is real. It may not be here tomorrow, but it is coming. This is our opportunity as a city to band together and better prepare for change. Because, you know what, sooner than later we are going to NEED to be the City Of Good Neighbors or else, well, we could end up as Kunstler predicts the south to be.

I’m not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

So c’mon Buffalo, let’s rally together. Make phone calls; write letters, this is our chance to make a difference. Together, we might be able to be better prepared.

Tags: 1400 words not about sports, Buffalo News, Improve Our Rail, James Howard Kunstler, Master Caution, Oil Depletion Protocol, Peak Oil, Rant, Richard Florida