:-)

Well, I can't reply to everything at the moment, so I'll take a chunk a time.

I never watched Bladerunner :-( , so I don't know which images are passing through your head.

"Are you by chance some perverse mutation of the "constant gardener"?"

Again, I'm not sure of your reference, found le Carre's book/movie with the same name, but is there something else behind it? (I'm beginning to feel pretty illiterate, or at least media-illiterate)

My point is, if you want to change the way we use (i.e. "exploit":-) our resources, you also need to change the way things work.
"Localizing" is a nice title, but it does not change the biggest problem:

MAKING SURE THAT EVERYBODY ELSE IS PLAYING BY THE "NEW" RULES TOO.

If "growth" is going to be reversed or channelled, then we have to make major, major changes on the free-market system, on the present world socio-economic-political system.

How do you do this? By taking away everyone's rights.
- Individuals need to be revoked of the right to consume at will (my example was the right of building anywhere, which is especially a US problem)
- Corporations need to loose the right to expand/operate at will in unregulated regions (moving offshore AND exploiting resources of 3rd World..)
- Nation/States have to be revoked the right to pass or not pass laws at will. Who's going to force the US to ratify Kyoto? Who's going ot enforce world wide laws??

The free market has its advantages. It however MUST be heavily, heavily regulated - which, on the global level, it is not at all presently...

--

My grandfather pumped oil with an engine-house,
my father pumped oil with a 20 lb. electric motor,
can't I just pump it online?

How about instead simply removing the legal concept of the corporation as "fictional person" (revoking corporate personhood) for starters?

Might help, but I'm not that fit in law to tell you what the consequences would be.

I think calling a corp. a person only means that you can deal with it as a separate legal entity..
Meaning, that it's the same thing as calling the corp. an "object", as you propose. Any lawyers here?

Localization is simply a natural part of the ELP triumvirate

Economize
Localize
Produce

And the question of Luis' post ist, does this make sense?

He puts it in question. On a personal level, it is certainly the thing to do: "simplify" !!

On a political level, I think this is exactly the wrong thing to do.

If you plan on avoiding dieoff on the level of the human race (which I don't think is anywhere near inevitable), there are going to be a lot of non-voluntary changes in everybody's lifestyle. And like I've been saying, these changes will have to be enforced, probably from above..

"War torn humans"

How would you propose taking away "rights" from individuals, corporations and up til now sovereign states? I'm afraid the UN is not a very good response.

You might be imagining the worst case. I'm just assuming that these three groups will all demand their own advantage during the reorganisation..

smashed into compact cities..

..if that's the way you see ending suburbia. If you want to "save" the earth in any acceptable way, it will have a lot to do with sacrificing living space on the ground.

with little or no resources..

as if we had a great choice.. Resources WILL be strained.

will have no will or inclination to produce.

And then you continue my example of Hong Kong. Funny that the Chinese there didn't roll over and suck on socialist teats.

Yes, Hong Kong is a good example of what will probably be a viable organisational solution, if not Cuba..

I'm not trying to push either way; Innovation or Social Change, both have its goods and bads. The all point is about "Silver Bullets", and how complex are the problems the Hubbert Peak raises.

Richard you’re misinterpreting what’s going on here. No one wants to “pull the plug”; we’re just wandering “what are we going to do when the plug is pulled?”

"Growth" won't be a binary on-off sort of thing (like a light switch). Thinking of it as "growth simply ends" or "pulling the plug" destroys all the mental elbow room for realizing how we can and will adapt.

Instead try thinking of the end of economic growth (as we know it today) in stages. Like a car accelerating up an incline that loses power...

Today we are using our power to accelerate up an incline ("accelerating upward" being = to economic growth). The vehicle would not normally go up an incline on it's own, much less accelerate, but the use of power lets it do these things. That is our growth today - of population, resource use, economic growth, and virtually all the things that do not fit the category of 'sustainable'.

Next the vehicle loses power - for whatever reason. First, it stops accelerating. Not that it stops going uphill - momentum keeps it moving upward - but it ceases to accelerate and begins to slow. In economics this would be called a "recession", a period of slower than desired growth.

Next, the momentum slips to zero and the vehicle momentarily stops on the hillside. This is a balance point between recession and depression.

Then gravity takes over and the vehicle begins to roll back down the incline - this is negative economic growth, economic contraction, depression.

At the bottom of the incline the car coasts to stop and becomes stationary - the mysterious "Steady-State Economy". A condition that is often feared simply because it is the great unknown.

Recessions shake the status quo. It is a rough time for people. Businesses that rely on growth fail, as do those that are over-extended, or rely on discretionary or frivolous spending. They are tough times, but not the end of the world. The do alter the status quo to favor "recession-proof" business models. This is the first stage of adapting, of changing.

Depressions are much worse. They wreak havoc on the status quo, and on the lives of many many people. They lay waste to so much of the economic landscape that a new status quo is virtually guaranteed - one that reflects the conditions at the end of depression.

Which brings us back around to that vehicle sitting still on the flat ground below the incline, the Steady-State Economy. If the changes in energy availability play out in the future like the tail of Hubbert's Curve, then the conditions will be so different from today that there is no chance that the status quo of today, the economic growth paradigm of today, or the ever accelerating trends in energy, population, globalization, etc of today will shape the creation of this new economy.

I don't know what it will look like, or how it will work, or barely even what to do to prepare for it. But that does not mean that a steady-state will not be created. Just because we can not imagine something does not mean it will never exist...

Yes, pedestrians should be protected from both bicycle and car traffic.
One major street north-south and one west-east reserved for bicycle traffic in a city would be a great start.

As a child, I and sibling(s) were sent for vacations to family in the South of France. As a small tot, I remember there being no electicity. These people were not poor - they owned land, and a car; they were not yet on the grid. Soon light came, though.

It was principally a flower farm. Children were prized, small, nimble and quick, as picking jasmine is easier for a child than an adult. Up each day well before dawn, we were, to work in the fields.

Heat was provided with wood or coal. Water came down the hill and was shared by the farms along the route in a complicated water-sharing / irrigation system. Small agricultural machines ran on gas for digging and spraying, all the rest was done by hand. They kept rabbits and chickens, and produced wine, nut wine, orange wine, fruit -dried figs amongst others-, vegetables, and olive oil. The car was used only to transport matériel/goods and for some rare outings. The neighbor had donkeys, which he lent in exchange for produce. Walking to the two available shops took an hour and the donkeys were cool. A bus to the town (Grasse, perfume industry) was available after a good long walk.

I learnt to count there. I would gaze at the vista - to the sea, the Med - then, it was almost always visible, and count the white or grey spots that were houses. 4...5... then I could count to 11! The 60’s hit and rapidly no human or machine could count the houses, and I of course lost interest. Today, the entire area is completely built up. Completely! From 50 kms. inland down to the Med, it is the French version of MacMansions. I was going to post a Google Pic but it depressed me too much. You cannot produce anything there - except maybe for tiny fruit/veggie garden. A few pigs perhaps. (It used to be populated by sheep.) That’s it. Maybe you could grow mushrooms in the swimming pools.

I think it is the other way around: when a threat is present, there is no time for discussion, only for following orders. In all days and ages the upper strata stayed far from the heat of battle, and let the paupers be the cannon fodder. If there is a typical example of a hierarchical organization, it's an army, no? (The only exceptions would be medieval knights, but in that case the idea was to capture, not kill the (heavily armored) noblemen and ask ransom. Samurai groups often compared their relative strengths and decided who the winner was without fighting.)

Driving in Montreal is friggin' crazy.

Less crazy drivers == a good outcome.

It's like there are no rules, and no nothing there.

As for death tolls, if you stopping from driving to work, and biking instead saves you 40$/week in gas, you can afford to eat when others cannot!

As someone who's cycle-commuted to school and work for over two decades now, this discussion has spurred me to make my first post on TOD. :-)

Gilgamesh: "People naturally yield to faster and more massive objects, using separated lanes codifies this and most/all will understand the function."

Correct. But that segregationist approach is counter-productive to useful, safe cycling. On that theory, you would also make separate lanes for motor scooters, cars, trucks, garbage collectors etc - clearly not workable. A better approach is to develop a culture of responsibility to obey the laws, uphold people's rights to use the roads and look out for the more vulnerable road users.

Gilgamesh: "If bikers stick to the separated paths, then use studies which examine the incidence of injury ONLY on separated paths, ONLY on sidewalks, ONLY on streets, and the combinations thereof."

My terminology: "bike lane" = a marked lane on the road dedicated for bicycles, "separated lane" = a lane between road and footpath, not accessible to motorists, and "bike path" = off-road bike path, probably shared with pedestrians.

Is there ever going to be a city where every home and business is fully connected by bike lanes and/or paths? I doubt it. The reality is that for useful transport, cyclists need to use normal traffic lanes on at least part of their journeys.

In my experience (mostly Melbourne and Sydney), the effectiveness of bicycle lanes and paths is very specific to local conditions.

Bike paths are useful alongside rivers, train lines, freeways etc, that have few crossing roads so the cyclist doesn't have to frequently give way to road users.

Bike lanes are most useful on streets with few intersections. As someone else already noted, cyclists in the bike lane are not so visible to motorists, and turning motorists will cross the bike lane, maybe without checking it first. Using a bike lane to under-take a queue of stationary vehicles past intersections can be dangerous due to poor visibility, and the chance that the queue might start moving and a motorist turn across your lane unexpectedly.

For a bike lane to be effective and safe, the street must be wide enough to accommodate it in the first place. Bike lanes painted alongside vehicle parking spaces often try to position cyclists in the "door zone", which is very dangerous. Another problem with bike lanes is that they are often blocked by parked couriers, construction activity etc. Being "stuck" in a bike lane or separated lane makes turning into a side street more difficult for the cyclist.

Segregating cyclists and motorists is not always the best approach. Riding the bicycle as a vehicle and part of the traffic stream may be a cyclist's best option, depending on:
- Rider skill and experience.
- Road conditions, eg width of lane, cross-roads.
- Current motorist speeds and density.
- Cyclist speed (eg downhill).
- Motorist attitude and behaviour.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_path
http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/index.htm

It's really "horses for courses". Up a long hill beside a park with no cross-roads or driveways I may ride slowly up the footpath like a pedestrian. In congested inner-city streets I often ride as a motor scooter rider does, in the centre of a normal traffic lane.

One skill that's important for vehicular cycling is being able to travel in a straight line while indicating for several seconds and turning your head to look at the vehicles behind you. Very useful for turning, merging and changing lanes.

I've ridden a bike in Hanoi in 1996. It was amazing, very few cars on the road, cyclists moving together like schools of fish. If a cyclist or motorcyclist ran a red light, the policeman on the corner had a stick to hit them with as they went past!

Look at pictures of western cities in the early part of the 20th century, up to the 50's. Cyclists all over the roads, very little space consumed by parked cars.

My vision for western cities as cycling makes a larger share of transport trips is:
- Bicycles given the status of roadworthy vehicle (if they aren't already).
- Free bicycle education in all schools.
- Subsidised/free adult training in cycling skills.
- Cyclist awareness included in driver tests.
- Driver tests must be renewed regularly.
- Government advertising to improve public awareness of cyclists' rights.
- Bike paths alongside all trains, freeways, rivers etc.
- Bike lanes provided where useful and safe.
- Take away "traffic calming" narrowings in roads.
- In residential areas, use long, wide speed humps to slow motorists.
- Road rules properly enforced on cyclists.
- Stiff penalties enforced for negligent/dangerous use of motor vehicles.
- Equalisation or removal of special treatment given for motor vehicles, eg tax breaks, parking, access to areas etc.
- Facilities to integrate cycling and public transport, including taking bikes on trains, trams etc.

Gilgamesh: "You seem to have an unnamed assumption that all bike lanes will be created stupidly. Let the engineers figure it out and it should all be fine."

LOL! The problem is that transport engineers currently seem to be focussed and prioritised on motorists, and have a very limited understanding of cycling needs.

I think that declining oil and gas will mean an end to building major new infrastructure, since building infrastructure tends to be energy intensive.

It might be a reasonable speculation if we were running out of energy, but we arent. Declining oil and gas will mean a boom in infrastructure development (nuclear, solar, wind, HVDC lines, pumped storage, CTL plants, and so on) and the big question mark is weather the boom will coincide with economic growth or if it will be simply inflationary.

But the notion we're at the end of big infrastructure is silly.

Peak oil per capita and peak energy per capita are in the past - 25 years ago or more for both. There are quarrels about the numbers, what you count and how, as has been discussed on TOD.

This parag. is snipped from “The imperialist world system” by J. B. Foster, in the Monthly Review, May 2007:

The recognition that there was a much more fundamental problem of development—what we would now call the “development of underdevelopment”—was thus slow to emerge even amongst socialist thinkers. It is true that European countries had colonized much of the world in the early centuries of the capitalist era, but systematic, persistent discrepancies in economic development were not as evident as they would be later on. In 1830, in Marx’s youth, the countries that make up what we now call the third world accounted for 60.9 percent of the world’s industrial potential. By 1860, the decade in which Marx’s Capital was written, this had fallen to 36.7 percent. By 1953, around the time Baran was writing The Political Economy of Growth, it had declined to a low of 6.5 percent. China’s share of world industry fell from 33.3 percent in 1800 to 6.3 percent in 1900 and 2.3 percent in 1953. As historian David Christian has noted, “The twentieth century term the third world could have made no sense in 1750, when today’s third world countries accounted for almost 75 percent of global industrial production. By the late twentieth century, they counted for less than 15 percent.”

Monthly Review

Besides considerations about imperialism, economic hegemony, post colonialism, and today the role of the IMF and the World Bank, the G8, etc. corporate supremacy, contractors (eg. in Iraq) etc. it is easy to see that ‘third world countries’ have done only what they could - ie. Localize - economize as well; produce what they could..

Unable to play on the world stage, for whatever reasons, lacking their ‘fair share’ of energy, or having it taken from them or not delivered in exchange for other goods - they became poorer and poorer. One need only look, for ex. today, at a large part of Africa, or Iraq (1920 to 2005.)

Now that PO has become a kind of semi accepted or semi denied reality, a matter of fact, the West (US, Commonwealth, EU, Japan..possible Russia..) it finds itself in the same situation as many ‘third world’ countries, so must Localize and Economize and so on. Unbridled development can no longer take place. The times of ease and plenty are gone; the ‘developed nexus’ can no longer keep up with its own aims, arrogant claims, dreams. It has resorted to war, and not only recently btw, to defend its position.