Feeling the Heat -- EnergyBulletin.net

This article does a good job at tying together the looming crises of fossil fuel peak and environmental degradation/global warming.

http://www.energybulletin.net/16238.html

"Today, China — with its 1.3 billion people — is on the same path. Picture Shanghai’s many bicycles filling the streets. No more. China banned bikes on Shanghai’s main roads to make room for millions of cars. China also wants to build more than five hundred coal-fired plants. India wants more than two hundred, and the United States has plans for seventy-two more."

And it's impressive to actually see these sentiments coming out of sprawling, land use planningless, North Carolina:

"Our sustainability nightmare began with the American dream — suburbia. At the turn of the twentieth century, cities were crowded and polluted, which caused public health problems. The government subsidized cars, oil, and highway construction. Banks gave better mortgage deals for suburban development. “We subsidized our way into sprawl,” says Philip Berke, professor of city and regional planning and chair of environmental studies. From an economic standpoint, it made sense. Environmentally, the problems keep popping up.

“If we continue to settle the way we do — with people in suburbs working thirty miles away and shopping twenty miles away — forget it,” Crawford-Brown says. “We’re doomed to high levels of energy use. Redesigning our communities is the ultimate answer.”

Too bad North Carolina city/burbs failed to invested in public transportation when times were good.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I remember seeing Professor Albert Bartlett on a real player video a couple of years ago talking about Peak Oil and coal use. Using it at the same rate, we were going to last 250 years. When we started using it for other things, thus increasing the usage, we were down to perhaps 40 years.

I think Ken Deffeyes talks about this too in one, or both, of his books.

According to my envelope, China's reserves would be gone in about 50 years at that rate (assumming 1Gw plants and a similar consumption rate to western plants). And I'm ignoring "peak coal" - those last years are going to get really sticky...

I'm glad to know it wasn't my tinfoil hat needing adjusting and that I was, at least, thinking along the right track. :)