Karl Anderson writes:
> I'm not an economist, or an energy expert, though. Geege, do you
> really think that the costs of operating a car is not going to go
> through the roof as oil gets scarcer and scarcer? I only see two
> alternatives to that: clean nuclear power is discovered, or dirty
> nuclear power is subsidized even more than it is now.
There's also the development of liquid fuels which aren't
petroleum-based. I'm not usually one to take the Nazis as role
models, but their (coal-based) synfuel plants kept the death camps
going for a couple of extra years --- and there's also the possibility
of mixing up fuels based on plant products (possibly bioengineered;
that's likely to be a realistic possibility well before known fossil
fuel reserves are close to running out).
I don't own a car, and dislike car-based society, but this particular
doomsday scenario just doesn't seem believable anymore --- though in
the short term, while alternatives don't exist, we could easily be in
for some misery if the Saudis keep yanking our chain.
rst
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:14:22 PDT