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Two factors mean the end of air travel as we know it
Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun
In crafting policy around air travel, governments both here abroad are flying by the seat of their pants.
The world is starting to be affected by the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil, but many involved in transportation planning are looking the other way.
In fact, it’s easy to believe air travel will keep on expanding, given all the jam-packed airplanes, delayed flights and crowded airports. But cracks are appearing.
in the first two weeks of April, the following airlines went belly up or sought bankruptcy protection: Aloha Airlines; Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, ATA, Skybus, Frontier Airlines and Champion Air.
For now, it’s the budget and regional carriers that appear most vulnerable. But Italy’s national carrier Alitalia is in dire straits, and Delta, reacting to high fuel prices, this week announced a merger with Northwest Airlines.
(17 April 2008)
The Automotive Energy Revolution
Byron King, Whiskey & Gunpowder
EVERY AUTOMOBILE ON THE ROADS of the world reflects a long and complex chain of industrial production and energy usage. Yet we live in a world where many of the highest quality resources and energy supplies have already been exploited. And lower quality resources are more expensive to extract and exploit, if they are even available. So the world’s automobile industry is in the midst of a revolution in both resource availability and energy consumption.
… So there have been significant improvements in automobile power train efficiencies over the past couple of decades. But have these improvements translated into any overall reduction in demand for fuel? No. In 2007 motor fuel consumption in the U.S. was high as it has ever been. (Although according to the American Petroleum Institute, demand for motor fuel may be at a plateau due to price increases at the pump in 2006 and 2007.) In the past 25 years we’ve seen more people driving more cars for more miles. But compounding the fuel issue, the cars that people are buying and driving tend to weigh more and offer higher performance.
As I’ve said over and over again in Whiskey and Gunpowder, we live in a world of peaking oil output, and of energy and resource scarcity. So the trend lines for fuel usage by automobiles simply cannot continue for much longer. The first, most obvious sign is the rising price for oil and by extension for fuel at the pump. Something has got to give, and the energy markets are sending signals of long-term high prices for motor fuel. Where do we go from here?
… And criticism of the automobile culture is not confined just to social commentators like Kunstler. Another remarkable indictment comes from no less an automotive insider than Prof. John Heywood, the director of the MIT Sloan Automotive Laboratory. He has stated that “cars may prove to be the worst commodity of all.” According to Prof. Heywood, cars are “responsible for a steady degradation of the ecosystem, from greenhouse emissions to biodiversity loss. What’s worse, even if we improve vehicle efficiency, turn to fuel hybrids or make rapid advances in hydrogen-based fuel technologies, the scale for slowing down the degradation may run to the decades. Turning the curve won’t be easy.”
(15 April 2008)
I’m glad to see Byron doing some longer pieces again. -BA
Two pedals, three feet: Give bicycles some space
Carl Etnier, Barre Montpelier Times Argus
I was commuting home, bicycling up the County Road hill in East Montpelier, a little above Center Road, when a car pulled up along side of me and the passenger side window rolled down. “How come you’re cycling in the middle of the lane?” asked the driver. I couldn’t tell from his voice or face whether he was letting off steam or genuinely curious.
Trying to make it sound like a friendly question rather than a challenge, I asked him, “Do you really want to know?” He said that he did. Keeping an eye out for traffic, conscious that an oncoming car would cut off our conversation very quickly, I explained that I valued his safety and mine.
I condensed into a few sentences the theory that the League of American Bicyclists has trained me to teach, about why cycling in the middle of the lane on roads like County Road improves safety. The driver didn’t reply; he just appeared to consider my comments for a moment and then sped off.
The beginning of the spring cycling season is a good time to explain at greater length why I often bicycle in or near the middle of a lane. The roads are thawed enough that I’m ready to take the studded tires off my bike, and the number of cyclists being passed by cars is growing daily.
The first principle of road cycling is that bicycles are vehicles. Vermont statutes give the bicycle operator the same rights and the same responsibilities as the operator of any other vehicle. There are a few exceptions, like use of limited access highways, but the general principle is that a bicyclist is operating a vehicle and must follow traffic law.
The law also specifies that the bicyclist must ride “as far to the right as practicable.” How far to the right is “practicable” varies quite a bit with the road situation, and it can even mean “all the way to the left.” …
Carl Etnier, director of Peak Oil Awareness, blogs at vtcommons.org/blog and hosts radio shows on WGDR, 91.1 FM Plainfield and WDEV 96.1 FM/550 AM, Waterbury. He can be reached at EnergyMattersVermont(at)yahoo.com.
(13 April 2008)
See the original for the rest of the text. Carl Etnier is an EB contributor.
