But cars running on biofuels and electricity don't solve our dependence on oil. They only mask it! Biofuels can only be grown in the vast quantities required if we dump tons of petroleum-based fertilizers on our otherwise dead farmland, and truck the resulting product all over the continent, rendering the energy gains from the whole process very small.
Biofuels are in a continuing process of improvement, and the outcome here is nowhere near as clear as the detractors point out. The energy gains of corn ethanol may be non-existent, but cellulosic ethanol and algae biodiesel and ethanol are all but some of the possibilities.
Electricity in North America is almost entirely generated by coal-fired plants, which spew more greenhouse gases than cars do. The best alternative for electricity is more nuclear generators, but it will be at least a decade before more of those come online, longer if many people continue to oppose them due to some fairly reasonable fears.
Almost entirely? About half of electricity in US is coal-based, and 1/5 in Canada. Opposition to nuclear is a dead end, and the governments know it. We will be seeing more reactors, certainly, whether Green Peace likes it or not.
It's not about being a "dictatorship" and "telling people" how to live. It's about looking objectively at our lifestyles and having those that choose to use the most resources pay for the true cost of their choices. Yes, you are free to live 100 miles from your workplace in an enormous McMansion and drive a fleet of Lincoln Navigators; but you should have to pay for that privilege, in terms of both money and convenience.
So who is not paying, exactly? Suburban municipalities have done a good job at taxing property. The developer pays for all the infrastructure, and the resulting maintenance is paid using municipal taxes - which are far more realistic than sustainable Toronto's, for example. The person driving the Lincoln Navigators is paying taxes and licencing fees for that car that equal billions of dollars in this province alone. Is some of this lifestyle subsidised? Yes. Is some of the urban city dweller life subsidised? Yes.
Right now that lifestyle is still cheap and convenient due to massive government funding of the highway infrastructure, free parking, low gas taxes, lack of tolls, etc.
All something that the car users pay for. I'm not sure why this keeps getting brought up in various threads and forums. Car users pay a substantial gas tax that is redirected to road repairs, among other things. I've no idea how gas taxes are low... They produce billions of dollars in revenue, of which about half go to road repairs.
Meanwhile sustainable car-free living is more expensive and inconvenient due to poor zoning laws that force businesses and jobs away from the homes we live in, as well as chronic underfunding of public transit.
This is an oversimplification. The underfunding of PT, I completely agree with.
But the zoning equation is much more complicated. The problem lies in the fact that still much of our employment is industrial in nature, requiring warehouses, factories, and similar. Though our industry is suffering, it's unlikely to die. Now when the separation of uses entered the original vernacular when zoning itself was introduced, it was not a bad thing. It evolved to be a bad thing, but separation of uses between industrial and residential lands was not a bad idea. Those old neighbourhoods in which people walked to the factories they worked in - it wasn't such a heaven living there. And though our factories are not as polluting as they once were, the industrial land use is guaranteed to lower the price of residential land considerably. If zoning was to die off tomorrow, we wouldn't suddenly live in Brussels or Zurich. There are real market concerns that are also at play here which are extremely difficult for planners to control.
The era of cheap gas that made unsustainable suburban living a "normal" state of being seems to be coming to an end, or at least evolving. Now we have an opportunity to fix some of the mistakes we've made in the past and revise the American/Canadian dream accordingly.
Some points here briefly:
- there is no indication that suburban living is unsustainable, except in a scenario where fossil fuels are the only was of powering a car. Otherwise, suburban living is sustainable, if not as efficient. HOWEVER, suburban homes can, in fact, be more efficient than inefficient urban environments.
- while gas is expensive, it's far from being unaffordable; I expect little change until it actually starts burning people's pockets. For now, I expect to see less SUVs on the road and fewer frill trips, which is nice.
To me, the end of suburbia as we know it is actually optimistic, not apocalyptic. I feel that if we play our cards right and stop clinging to outdated ideals of an unsustainable lifestyle we can end up with better, healthier, more sustainable ways of living. To simply ignore all these issues and stick with the status quo until we reach collective economic and environmental ruin is the truly depressing apocalyptic scenario.
Well, I think it represents some sort of wish fulfillment which I do not quite understand. I dislike suburbs, sure, but I get no sense of titillation at the thought it may fall like a house of cards. Why would I? Smarter planning can be achieved with suburbs very much in place. I'm not sure where this 'collective economic and environmental ruin' comes from, to tell the truth.
Economically, suburbs face similar risks to the inner city: they may rely on the industry slightly more, but if this sector completely folds, expect severe economic recession and poverty in the province of Ontario as a whole.
Environmentally, the issue of car ownership is important, but it's far from being the only pollutant; more importantly, the car need not be an environmental problem it is. It's not a lifestyle anybody is
forcing on you. You have a choice in the matter. Nor is there any reason why suburbs can't grow smarter -- in fact, that's where many interesting planning ideas are happening today.
I agree strongly with PukeGreen's well elucidated points.
I will add to each of them:
Electric / biofuel cars - How many cars need to be plugged into Ontario's energy grid before it collapses? How expensive will electricity get when this starts to happen? How will Ontario obtain electricity from sources other than fossil fuels? I don't see any of this happening now (except for Nuclear) so the option of plugging in our cars works on a micro scale, but is not currently extensible. And gas prices are currently cheap.
If EVERY single car in the United States switched to electric, using currently available technology, a vast majority of them (75-80%) could be satisfied using existing production. Of course, the grid can be extended; nuclear power, for one, is quite cheap, aside from (relatively) high capital costs. If electric is the future, expect electric refueling stations to tax electricity at a cost far higher than normal in order to ensure stable capacity. Energy is not (very) expensive, and capacity can be added at a reasonable cost. Although nuclear, I guess technically, is not sustainable, we have enough supply for a few hundred million years. It's just not that big of a problem.
Suburbs - While nothing is going to make suburbia go away quickly, a permanent energy crisis will undermine the current value of properties in the suburbs, so the market itself will render deep burbs increasingly unprofitable and undesirable. Most prefer to buy houses in the burbs because they are affordable, but that "affordability" is being leached away. What will happen to them? I don't know, but I also don't care to see it.
Exurban property - I rather like the phrase 'deep burbs' - is already a choice of the upper middle class; it's not the affordability that makes people flock to the exurbs, even in the United States (with some exceptions). Gas prices, if they continue at present, will most certainly modify behaviors, at least in the short term. But expect smarter suburban growth and planning, not the disappearance of suburbs.
