Here’s the thing. Everyone will bike like the Dutch and the Dutch will bike even more. It’s not a question of “if.” We are already past peak oil. There will only be more wars and more climate change. Those who survive will be relying on bikes because petroleum won’t be an option anymore and electric cars are not a real solution. Cities will become more dense, suburbs will decay, in all likelihood huge parts of the US will completely collapse because life will be impossible without cars. We know petroleum is finite and there is no other technology that will replace this.
We can prepare by rolling out infrastructure now, or we can just keep going and crash as hard as possible in to a wall. No matter what we do, we’re going to stop using gas. I hope we do it on our terms rather than waiting for tons of people to die before we fix it, but I honestly don’t have a lot of hope. But hey, some people are starting to wake up so maybe we can keep that going.
I agree we’re probably past peak oil, but i think i disagree a bit on cities becoming more dense - i think video conferencing and remote work put much less impotus on people to congregate like we once did, and yes that likely will mean more strain on the roads, but i also think the electric cars will be more like a spreading out of electric storage and transmission than 100% used for transportation. (Again due to increasing popularity of remote work) having a store of electricity will be posh and help guard with the rolling brownouts due to climate change and terrorism interrupting the grid.
Here’s the thing. Everyone will bike like the Dutch and the Dutch will bike even more. It’s not a question of “if.” We are already past peak oil. There will only be more wars and more climate change. Those who survive will be relying on bikes because petroleum won’t be an option anymore and electric cars are not a real solution. Cities will become more dense, suburbs will decay, in all likelihood huge parts of the US will completely collapse because life will be impossible without cars. We know petroleum is finite and there is no other technology that will replace this.
We can prepare by rolling out infrastructure now, or we can just keep going and crash as hard as possible in to a wall. No matter what we do, we’re going to stop using gas. I hope we do it on our terms rather than waiting for tons of people to die before we fix it, but I honestly don’t have a lot of hope. But hey, some people are starting to wake up so maybe we can keep that going.
It’s an interesting scenario, but why count out electric cars?
I agree we’re probably past peak oil, but i think i disagree a bit on cities becoming more dense - i think video conferencing and remote work put much less impotus on people to congregate like we once did, and yes that likely will mean more strain on the roads, but i also think the electric cars will be more like a spreading out of electric storage and transmission than 100% used for transportation. (Again due to increasing popularity of remote work) having a store of electricity will be posh and help guard with the rolling brownouts due to climate change and terrorism interrupting the grid.