The End of Suburbia

[august948]

actually, we'll be affected more, check out that article I posted yesterday, there's 1.2 gallons of gasoline consumed daily per person in the USA. Compared with China who consume .05 gallons of gasoline per person per day. Or take a country like Belgium, they consume .15 gallons a day, and it also says that the average for all countries is .25 gallons of gasoline.

Is the 1.2 gallons direct consumption by consumers or does that include the amount used by industry as well? Reason I ask is that the percentages I have seen are roughly 80% of oil is consumed by business and industry and 20% is personal consumption.

[Slick Vik]

And so when the cost of everything goes up, as it has steadily for the past decade or so, the economy adapts. If it becomes too expensive to import manufactured goods from China then, guess what, companies will move their factories back to the US. Most likely they'll relocate to suburban locations because the costs are less and the workers are already there. Sounds like a win-win to me. As the cost of farm goods increases due to transportation and fertilizer cost increases, more local farms will emerge to satisfy the demand using more organically derived fertilizers and techniques resulting in healthier and tastier local produce on suburban tables. Sounds like a win-win to me. As commute costs go up, employers and retailers will relocate to the suburbs in greater numbers to be closer to their employees thus reducing both costs and travel times. Sounds like a win-win to me. Rising gas costs are just as likely to de-centralize large cities as they are to densify them.

 

Read Superfreakonomics, local farms are actually less efficient economically than bigger ones. Also, there's nothing you can do about higher oil prices and its affect on certain things like air fares. Those costs are immediately passed on to the consumer. Also, at this point stores are already all over the suburbs, so what efficiency can you add for all the products at your local walmart to lower the cost? If the cost of transport goes up, the cost will be passed on to people no matter what.

[august948]

Read Superfreakonomics, local farms are actually less efficient economically than bigger ones. Also, there's nothing you can do about higher oil prices and its affect on certain things like air fares. Those costs are immediately passed on to the consumer. Also, at this point stores are already all over the suburbs, so what efficiency can you add for all the products at your local walmart to lower the cost? If the cost of transport goes up, the cost will be passed on to people no matter what.

Proximity and size are two different metrics. As transport costs rise it will make more economic sense to have production closer to consumption. Air fares will no doubt rise unless additional efficiencies can be wrung out. So what does that mean for transport? More trains and buses. I would think you would look forward to that. The products at the local walmart are mostly made overseas right now. As I said before, as transport costs rise, production will tend to return to the US. Transport routes from factory to market will be shortened. In terms of suburbia, that's a neutral since the cost of goods at the Walmart on Yale will be the same as the Walmart in Katy. You may not understand this yet, but many people prefer life in the suburbs to life in the urban core. That preference isn't going to change any time soon and people will adapt to rising costs.

The only real danger, as I stated before, is that the changes happen in a very short time span and don't allow time for adaptation. Our supplies of oil are not going to run out today, or tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or even for decades if not centuries. As they do prices will rise slowly and we will adapt and overcome.

You are thinking in a very linear fashion as though things will always remain the same. As you get older and more experienced you will discover that change happens all the time and that people, economies, and governments change and adapt to the circumstances. You will also discover that just because something is in a movie or in print that doesn't make it the whole truth. I urge you to do some independent reading and thinking and learn to approach problems and issues objectively and without preconceived biases.

[IHB2]

Slick is it of any importance to your argument that suburbs - rings of development outside of an urban central city - arose because living in a US city whose rapid growth was fueled by the post Civ War Industrial Revolution/mass production was deemed "unsustainable" by Americans consigned to the nasty, brutal, short life expectancies of late 19th-early 20th century factory workers?

 

Chicago workers got the hell out of Packingtown as soon as they could afford it. Detroit's suburbs grew in lockstep with factory workers' wages and technological advance in transportation. They moved as far from the city center as possible given the range of available transit in the pre-auto era.

 

Your conspirators seem to have jumped into a process that had been underway for at least 40 years by the time your electric streetcar lines started getting ripped out.

 

Do you grant any agency to individual human actors?

[IronTiger]

Slick--you mentioned you were a world traveler. While I appreciate that experience, how does it gain credibility in your argument? (which is based entirely after a pseudo-documentary on a "what if we run out of oil and have no viable alternatives" scenario)

 

What I'm saying is if you fly to [any country], stay in a hotel for a week, and fly back, is that real experience there?

[livincinco]

livincinco, thanks for the blow by blow, sounds like it's much the same as the other 'documentaries' published that I referenced above.

based on this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/13/peak-oil-isnt-dead-an-interview-with-chris-nelder/

Saudi Arabia may not have peaked, but based on the article above, the supply is declining.

Agreed, but the statement made in the film was something like if Saudi has peaked than oil production has peaked everywhere. Has a huge assumption and they offered nothing to support it.

[jgriff]

I can't watch the video at the moment. I did see some talk here about "peak oil". I really find it hard to beleive that people are still talking about peak oil theory. Yes, we will stop using oil someday. That day is a long ways off though.

 

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/the-u-s-has-much-much-more-gas-and-oil-than-we-thought-20130430

 

The problem for oil producers now is that we could get into a situation where there is so much production that we have a huge price drop. Saudi Arabia reassured the markets just yesterday that they are not going to bring their spare capacity on line.

 

 

 

 

[urban909]

The problem for oil producers now is that we could get into a situation where there is so much production that we have a huge price drop. Saudi Arabia reassured the markets just yesterday that they are not going to bring their spare capacity on line.

 

And that's exactly what happened to NG prices. We have such an oversupply at the moment that prices have dropped dramatically. As a side benefit of this, CO2 emissions in the US have dropped to a 20 year low, as it’s cheaper for power companies to use gas, versus other, more expensive sources, such as coal.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/us-emissions-idUSBRE8710CB20120802 (one of many sources)

[samagon]

Fair points, but what really matters is gas as a percentage of their income.  They may spend a lot less but it's coming out of $5k/year income instead of something like $40k/year in America - so it could be a higher percentage of income for them and therefore are more impacted.

 

Right, but do the math.

 

Belgium, they make on average $117 a day, they use .15 gallons a day, for the price they pay for a gallon of gas, that's right about 1% of their daily income used for gasoline.

 

China, they make on average $18 a day, they use .05 gallons a day, for the price they pay for a gallon of gas, that's about 1.3% of their daily income used for gasoline.

 

USA, we make on average $140 a day, we use 1.2 gallons a day, for the price we pay for a gallon of gas, that's about 2.8% of our daily income used for gasoline.

 

So we pay a higher percentage of our income into gasoline costs than other countries, and remember the cost of living in other countries usually scales against the wages, so 15k yearly income in estonia isn't the same as it is over here.

 

Anyway, I'm sure there are different results for other countries all over the world, and different percentages of income go to commute expenses, but we're certainly up on the list.

 

I did watch (most) of this film last night, all they talk about is the assumption that the world production of oil has peaked, and that as a result all energy will collapse, they don't mention that our normal power grid is mainly coal, hydro and nuclear, so oil going bye bye would not really turn off the lights in the suburbs, but if it did, it would stand to reason that the lights would go off in the city as well, so this wouldn't wreck the desire to move to the burbs (which was the premise) it would wreck everything from our desire to watch teevee to modern company life that is all based on computer technology.

 

thanks to the age of the film, they aren't privy to a lot of the technology improvements we've seen that are starting to be employed, and those that are right on the cusp of becoming consumer ready. Least of all we went from a situation of running out of NG (as they reported it) to being in a world today that is filled to the gills with NG. It's an interesting what if movie, and gives a window into one possible future, but 404 documentary not found.

[livincinco]

According to the CIA World Factbook, per capita oil consumption in Belgium is higher than the US.

Belgium consumes 2.8883 gallons of oil per day per capita while The United States consumes 2.6400

This entry is the total oil consumed in gallons per day (gal/day) divided by the population. The discrepancy between the amount of oil produced and/or imported and the amount consumed and/or exported is due to the omission of stock changes, refinery gains, and other complicating factors.

Source: CIA World Factbook

[august948]

Ran across this...

http://www.mcoscillator.com/learning_center/weekly_chart/americans_really_are_using_less_gas/

The call to conserve resources and use less gasoline has been around for years. So it is interesting to get to see the actual data, and find out that we are using less.

This week's chart looks at the raw monthly numbers for total gasoline consumption in the United States. You can clearly see the strong seasonality effect of gasoline use rising in the summer months and waning in the winter. So to visualize the longer term trend, you need to somehow see through the sawtooth pattern to examine what the numbers are doing over time.

The highest single month number was 399 million gallons per day back in August 2005, when the housing boom was at its peak, and when unemployment was down at 4.9%. The collapse of the housing bubble and the associated economic slowdown has assuredly contributed to the drop-off in gasoline usage since then. The July 2012 number was 353 million, which is down 11% from that 2005 peak.

Another contributor to the decline in usage is the high price of crude oil, which gives motorists additional encouragement to find ways to consume less. More fuel efficient cars, more telecommuting, and even the re-introduction of electric cars (after a 90-year absence) have all contributed to reducing total gasoline consumption.

If we look at the per capita consumption of gasoline in the U.S., the picture gets even more interesting.

Gas Consumption Per Capita

http://mcoscillator.com/data/charts/weekly/Gas_Consump_per_Cap_2012.gif

This chart reveals that per capita consumption actually peaked all the way back in 1990, and thus a big part of the growth in total consumption toward that 2005 peak was a result of population growth. The Department of Energy data on gasoline use only goes back to 1983, so we cannot easily model this data over the entire history of the automobile. But since the 1990 peak in 12-month moving average of per capita consumption, we have seen a 15% drop in the average amount of gasoline that each person uses.

[samagon]

According to the CIA World Factbook, per capita oil consumption in Belgium is higher than the US.

Belgium consumes 2.8883 gallons of oil per day per capita while The United States consumes 2.6400

This entry is the total oil consumed in gallons per day (gal/day) divided by the population. The discrepancy between the amount of oil produced and/or imported and the amount consumed and/or exported is due to the omission of stock changes, refinery gains, and other complicating factors.

Source: CIA World Factbook

 

I guess the difference is gasoline use vs oil use.

[luciaphile]

So we will probably never run out of oil, as the cost of extracting it becomes uncompetitive. I have no opinion about suburbia. But I think you are a bit hard on the original poster and his concerns about the world gasoline has enabled. Even if hyperbolic, there is this kernel of truth: gasoline has been a miracle substance, and it seems like nothing on the horizon rivals it for energy storage. (I believe the world is still waiting on the private entrepreneur willing to assume the risks of nuclear power.)
I know that some people genuinely view the future as an interesting free-for-all, and are indifferent to the direction it takes. I don't take issue with that point of view. It is a feature of some of the world's great religions.
For some of us, though, there are things - or places, or simply ideas - worth conserving -- worth "sustaining" -- even if we don't agree on what they are.
I submit that the key sentence in the above excerpt is this:

 

This chart reveals that per capita consumption actually peaked all the way back in 1990, and thus a big part of the growth in total consumption toward that 2005 peak was a result of population growth

Whatever sustainability means to any one of us, population growth renders it moot, makes a mockery, really, of any efforts in that direction.
I am able to remember when it was a subject people discussed -- with no evil intentions -- before it became the one taboo subject, cynically filed under "racism" by people who took great glee in exploiting the confusion of the Left, and stealing a page from their book. The environmental movement has never really recovered.
Interestingly, it was about 1990, the same time we began realizing gains in efficiency again, as we had in the seventies.

 

[august948]

Whatever sustainability means to any one of us, population growth renders it moot, makes a mockery, really, of any efforts in that direction.

Even population growth isn't an issue long-term. The world rate of population growth peaked in the sixties and the UN estimates that the total population will peek at around 10 billion around 2100. After that, total population will start to decline, leading to less pressure on natural resources.

[RedScare]

Even population growth isn't an issue long-term. The world rate of population growth peaked in the sixties and the UN estimates that the total population will peek at around 10 billion around 2100. After that, total population will start to decline, leading to less pressure on natural resources.

 

The same effect will occur on Social Security and Medicare as the Baby Boomers begin to die off in greater numbers, beginning around 2030.

[august948]

The same effect will occur on Social Security and Medicare as the Baby Boomers begin to die off in greater numbers, beginning around 2030.

See, Slick, the future is already starting to look brighter.

[luciaphile]

august1948, if you think I'll happily spot you an additional 3 billion people by century's end, then you and I probably will be forever unintelligible to one another; I apologize for not being able to communicate well enough to even try to bridge that gap.

There is no question that population will eventually contract. We are animals after all. "Decline, leading to less pressure on natural resources" is a nice way of putting it. If, however, there is any possibility you have your causes and effects backward,  that contraction will not be pretty, and is something that even those with a human-centric viewpoint might wish to see avoided.

[august948]

august1948, if you think I'll happily spot you an additional 3 billion people by century's end, then you and I probably will be forever unintelligible to one another; I apologize for not being able to communicate well enough to even try to bridge that gap.

There is no question that population will eventually contract. We are animals after all. "Decline, leading to less pressure on natural resources" is a nice way of putting it. If, however, there is any possibility you have your causes and effects backward,  that contraction will not be pretty, and is something that even those with a human-centric viewpoint might wish to see avoided.

Whether or not you want the additional 3 billion, they're on the way. Really long-term the decrease might cause some issues but that's realistically centuries away. Since we're near the top of the curve already, you could project that in two hundred years or so we'll be back to today's 7 billion. If the curve on the downside is the same we'll be back to 1 billion in about 400 years. Tying the "peak population" back into the "peak oil" argument, we'll see a gradual decrease over hundreds of years which will make it easier to adapt and overcome problems that might arise.

[livincinco]

I'm not disputing that reliance on fossil fuels is a problem, I just think that the analysis and conclusions drawn from that documentary were particularly shoddy.

I'm less concerned about overall population and more concerned about the impact of economic development that's occurring in certain countries. Very difficult to begrudge them an opportunity to improve their lives, yet at the same time, the number of registered cars in China has gone from 2 million in 2000 to 233 million in 2012 and that's still pretty low given a population of 1.3 billion people. The impact of China and India moving to comparable levels of energy usage as the countries in the first world is a far greater concern to overall energy consumption than the sustainability of suburbia.

Let's face it, suburbia is urbanizing anyway. Look at The Woodlands as an example. It is rapidly becoming a self-contained community with a high percentage of residents living, working, and shopping in the immediate region. The explosion of office construction up there is just going to intensify that trend.

[luciaphile]

livincinco, I applaud you for returning the topic to suburbia, from which I had led it astray; but I have to say, my head aches from the idea that you are concerned about increasing consumption in the "developing" countries -- and yet you cite as an example the country that took population seriously, that successfully controlled its population. If its resource use is worrisome to you, what does that augur for the rest? Yet you are certain you are not concerned about "overall population."

[livincinco]

livincinco, I applaud you for returning the topic to suburbia, from which I had led it astray; but I have to say, my head aches from the idea that you are concerned about increasing consumption in the "developing" countries -- and yet you cite as an example the country that took population seriously, that successfully controlled its population. If its resource use is worrisome to you, what does that augur for the rest? Yet you are certain you are not concerned about "overall population."

I'm not meaning to minimize the impact of population growth, I'm strictly looking at it as it relates to energy consumption. I'm less concerned about the impact of overall population growth from that standpoint because the highest birth rates are generally in the poorest countries. Assuming that continues, their impact from an energy consumption standpoint is minimal. The impact of economic growth and moving people to a higher standard of living is much more significant.

If we assume that a high percentage of the additional 3 billion people are born into poverty, and I believe that to be a correct assumption because infant mortality is dropping in many countries, then their energy impact is relatively low. However, if China and India with about 30% of the current world population raise most of their population to something close to first world levels than there's a huge energy impact.

I've listed a couple of examples of per capita electricity consumption by reference. All are listed as annual usage - watts/person.

United States - 1,363 watts

Taiwan - 1,082 watts

China - 397 watts

India - 85 watts

Ethiopia - 5 watts

To use a really simple example that I know is full of holes, the energy impact of 1 billion people raising their electrical usage from China to Taiwan levels is about 700 billion watts. The impact of adding 3 billion people at Ethiopia levels is only 15 billion watts.

[luciaphile]

Thank you for taking the time to find those numbers. To be clear and candid, my interest is habitat loss.

I'm not sure whether you were thinking simply of diminishing fossil fuels, or of greenhouse gas production. If the latter, then electricity consumption, especially coal-powered, is the most important metric; it was eye-opening to me, though, to learn what a close second open cooking fires are:

 

http://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/august2010/cook-stoves.htm

 

The last time I was in a Luby's cafeteria, my kid was about fourteen years old, and not small for his age. When it came time to pay, I noticed they hadn't charged me for his dinner. I pointed this out. "Bébés eat free," she said.

"But he's --"

"Bébés eat free," she repeated stonily.

 

I'm not sure why this popped into my head. I guess it was the thought of 3 billion babies, placing no strain on the environment. Anyway, you went along with my wanting to discuss population today, and that was kind of you.

[livincinco]

Thank you for taking the time to find those numbers. To be clear and candid, my interest is habitat loss.

I'm not sure whether you were thinking simply of diminishing fossil fuels, or of greenhouse gas production. If the latter, then electricity consumption, especially coal-powered, is the most important metric; it was eye-opening to me, though, to learn what a close second open cooking fires are:

http://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/august2010/cook-stoves.htm

The last time I was in a Luby's cafeteria, my kid was about fourteen years old, and not small for his age. When it came time to pay, I noticed they hadn't charged me for his dinner. I pointed this out. "Bébés eat free," she said.

"But he's --"

"Bébés eat free," she repeated stonily.

I'm not sure why this popped into my head. I guess it was the thought of 3 billion babies, placing no strain on the environment. Anyway, you went along with my wanting to discuss population today, and that was kind of you.

I was thinking specifically about energy consumption along the lines of the peak oil conversation that we were having earlier in the thread. I agree that there's a whole host of problems that would come from another three billion people being on the planet.

[livincinco]

Since we haven't pounded this subject into the ground quite enough yet, some analysts are starting to forecast that demand for oil is reaching a plateau.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-01/peak-oil-is-back-but-this-time-its-a-peak-in-demand

[august948]

Since we haven't pounded this subject into the ground quite enough yet, some analysts are starting to forecast that demand for oil is reaching a plateau.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-01/peak-oil-is-back-but-this-time-its-a-peak-in-demand

From the article above...

Substitution with natural gas in several areas of the economy that have historically used oil almost exclusively, including light-duty vehicles (which are 95 percent petroleum-fueled), shipping, and rail, is another factor cited in both reports. It takes a prolonged period of large price spreads between commodities before consumers make the switch, says Eric Lee, commodities strategist and co-author of the Citigroup report, because of the significant capital investment required. This is happening now in the U.S., thanks to the shale boom, with fleets including United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx (FDX), and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), among others, moving to natural gas.

Someone should make a documentary about how "Peak Demand" is going to mean the end of poor companies like Exxon and BP. And look, all those Walmart trucks that are going to make the Yale Street bridge collapse are helping to bring it about.

[livincinco]

Sorry, I just can't seem to walk away from this thread. Below article titled "What if we never run out of oil?". It has a good analysis of peak oil theory and its flaws.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/

[RedScare]

Someone should make a documentary about how "Peak Demand" is going to mean the end of poor companies like Exxon and BP. And look, all those Walmart trucks that are going to make the Yale Street bridge collapse are helping to bring it about.

 

You didn't know that ExxonMobil is the largest natural gas producer in the US, did you?

[august948]

You didn't know that ExxonMobil is the largest natural gas producer in the US, did you?

Oh, darn! Now the evil oil companies are adapting to changing circumstances. How will we ever get rid of those pesky suburbs now?

I still think someone should make a documentary so we'll all know what the party line is.

[RedScare]

Or, you could simply buy their stock like I did.    

[august948]

Or, you could simply buy their stock like I did.    

Unfortunately, I invested all my money in Solyndra.