We would be able to run our domestic lives on clean power (0 emissions homes are state of the art and commercially sound investments allready) but including cars is really problematic. For now for some people it would be possible but I seriously doubt that goes for all the cars around. The 4 stroke democratised private transport, the electric car will not be able to sustain the democratisation and will turn itself into a luxury product. I would suggest a timeshare concept were a car is own by the community and rented by the user. Cars can then be swapped if batteries run out, and no more cars ar produced then are needed to serve the needs of the cummunity (public transport should be improved of course even in The Netherlands and especially in regions like LA this could keep everybody mobile).

Greetings, Ed Kuipers

mike moore’s out ahead of joe romm on the vision thing!
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/01

go “green belt” go!

Do CAFE standards matter? Yes, but not for the reasons you may think.

Mainstream political thinking seems fixed on climate change, tailpipe pollution and the big issue of reducing foreign oil imports.

In fact, rising oil prices may fix those issues long before the 2016 target for the new EPA CAFE rules do.

Tony Eriksen, who writes for The Oil Drum, attended the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston early in May and came back convinced of what he already suspected: Planet Earth passed peak oil around July, 2008. Gasoline prices, depressed by the the current recession, have begun inching back toward the historic $4-per-gallon high and will probably hit $2.50 during the summer driving season.

Worldwide oil production once more lags behind worldwide demand, and demand continues to rise in China and India while production can’t keep up. Eriksen now forecasts $100-a-barrel oil by the summer of 2010, $150 by summer 2012, and possibly $200 by the following winter. In recent years, the price of a gallon of gasoline has bounced around between 2.5 and 3.5% of the price of barrel of oil (today it’s about 3.6%). $150 per barrel implies gasoline at $4.50 a gallon.

At that gas price, the SUV is a dead duck regardless of CAFE standards. The plug-in hybrid will sell briskly, assuming $150 oil doesn’t kick us back into recession.

What Obama’s new CAFE standard will do is to ensure the survival of the Detroit auto industry. It will force the U.S. auto companies to have efficient cars available when demand spikes in two years, and if the cars are cool enough they might even be exportable. Wouldn’t that be a shift? Some similar mechanism should be developed to kick consumers off home heating oil before its price hits $4.50.

The U.S. car industry missed a big chance around 1975. That was when baby boomers (I am one) loved small fast cars. We liked V8 Mustangs and Camaros, but we also liked MGs, Triumphs, Fiats, Corvettes, early Thunderbirds, Porsches and BMWs. Even Karmann Ghias were selling. If Detroit had focused its considerable marketing power on making small cars sexy and profitable, instead of cheap, ugly and shoddy (Gremlin? Pinto? Vega?), the world would be a much better place today. GM’s Opel GT was a spectacular mini-Corvette and it might have become a cult car. Ford’s Cortina GT was an agile little sedan that might have knocked the socks off BMW. Detroit had the technology, but not a single clue. Instead, the Big Three decided that monster V8s were more profitable.

In ‘73-74 I worked briefly for High Performance Cars Magazine, and got to drive my share of muscle cars. I always preferred cars that handled decently, like my TR4 and, later, a Saab 99. Detroit didn’t seem interested in marketing to my generation. So we bought Volkswagens, BMWs, Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans.

The U.S. auto industry, thanks to Barack Obama, now has a shot at a do-over. If the factories don’t take it, there’s no hope for them. Oil prices will stomp them dead.

Meaning it will be too late. That is what I have been trying to tell you. Once the climate flips, it isn’t going to flop back for 1000 years. Civilization will have collapsed. You don’t have enough ammunition to survive a collapse of civilization unless you live in a US Army ammo plant. Otherwise, you are long pork.

[JR: You have been trying to tell me??? That's funny. But in any case, it won't be too late in the 2020s, especially if we get started now.]

It looks like: we’ve used half the oil, now half is left, not too bad …. but:

1) We’ve used the *easy* half, that is the half with the highest EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested), and what’s left is the other half of the oil, but nowhere near half of the *net* energy. Drilling deep sea wells costs more in money and energy than sticking pipes into East Texas did.

That curve *counts* on finding more oil, and it isn’t the easy kind. Consider what offshore drilling the Arctic might be like…

2) As the UK got rich by using coal and industrializing early, the US did the same with oil, but now imports more than half our us. Many oil *exporting* countries subsidize gasoline for their internal use, for various reasons. As their oil production turns down, their *exports* can and likely will turn down faster than the overall production curve, which means *importing* countries can face a faster downturn.

On the left side of the curve, a relatively small fraction of the world was actually set up to use a lot of oil, and we did. Now, there are at least a few more billion people competing for the use of the second half.

3) And, of course, if you overpump oil fields to try to keep production up, you can actually damage them, and get less oil out overall.

Sometimes this gets called a “net energy cliff”, where the downslope might be much steeper than the upslope was.
this, over TheOilDrum is a sketch of the comparison.

All this just *reinforces* Joe’s point.

Second, great work USA! You finally have a commander who can see the need for serious change and the ‘nads to make it happen. ‘Sorry if I sound patronising, but our government (Aussie) is not yet showing sufficient fibre, so I envy you.

Third I believe that because GM has had the conch in the US car industry for a time approaching 100 years, there is some kind of culture/corporate DNA that has led it to the sorry state of affairs that now prevail. If you agree with me on that, then a change of fortune for GM must include a change in corporate culture. From where I sit miles away, I have yet to see any sign of that, but hopefully I am uninformed. It seems to me that the creative spark that I believe is lurking all through GM has been stifled for too long. Witness the EV of the 90’s, and the overly subdued Volt. IMHO if GM is to be saved, it needs a new, vital and creative mindset.

Fourth (and lastly) I like electric cars. I don’t need to go over their merits. Our government here is dithering over carbon trading and a heap of measures that might make a difference. Even if they do get their carbon trading boots on it will take many years for the benefits to start showing.

Bring on the electric cars; in 5-10 years they will make a difference. So it is the timeline of electrics that make them so attractive to me, they can be on the ground fast. Electrics are a largely bottom-up solution, that can be driven (no pun intended) by market forces. Not perfect yet? True, but they are making great strides in battery technology and power applications. Viable electrics are so close now…