World News Notes & Comment

Can You Spell "Carfree"?

Virtual Conference: Zero Emissions II

• Zero Emissions
• Telework
• Photovoltaics
• Deregulated Energy
• Remanufacturing
• Teleconferencing

http://www.the-commons.org/ze2/

In-the-Flesh Conferences

Organized by Transportation Options (which organized the second international conference on Auto-Free Cities) in partnership with the City of Toronto, the conference will explore the premise that sustainable transportation makes a positive contribution to a healthy economy. See http://www.city.toronto.on.ca for more information.

Creating Sustainable Community - Here, There and Everywhere
The Findhorn community, Scotland
17-24 October 1998

Speakers include Hazel Henderson (futurist and economist), Satish Kumar (editor of Resurgence), and others from the sustainable community movement. Findhorn is reputed to be a magical place where people are working to create a sustainable community. More information is available at http://www.findhorn.org/Edu/suscomconf.html

Suburbia Project

Car Free Day: 16 June 1998

Richard Rogers on Cars

My Lords. We can ignore the figures about increasing inequality; but it is harder to ignore the huddled figures sleeping in streets and doorways - or trapped in decaying housing estates. We may flee from inner city dereliction and pollution and take to the suburbs - but in so doing we extend the urban sprawl into the countryside. We may bemoan the decline in public transport while we sit in our cars and poison the air - but meanwhile urban air quality continues to decline; one in seven of our inner-city children suffer from asthma. In London, we've built more and more roads, yet they carry almost 50% fewer people than in 1956 - because fewer people take the bus and more and more go by car. As a result, the average speed has dropped to the horse-and-carriage rate of a century ago. This inefficiency is said to cost London £15 billion a year in wasted time and resources.

Geneva Motor Show?

Both Switzerland and Austria have seen their beautiful Alpine environments threatened by heavy-vehicle road traffic.

High-Speed Rail in Switzerland

If the energy targets can be met, this would be an extremely energy-efficient way to move people. The Swiss already have one of the world's best train systems.

Seattle Stems Suburban Sprawl

In truth, it's better neighborhoods and better public transport.

Real Video in Groningen

In Groningen, you may remember, half of all movements within the inner city are by bicycle.

Son, Can I Borrow the Car Keys?

Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in sprawling Florida, which has lured millions of people to its suburban retirement communities, but not put in place the public transportation to support them when they reach their 80s and 90s and physical or cognitive impairments force many of them to give up their cars or use them less. "You can't live down here without driving," Bentley Lipscomb, secretary of Florida's Department of Elder Affairs, said. "You can't go to the grocery store, the doctor, the hospital. You can't go anywhere."

Biking Along the Danube

Death in New York

Whole New Mall Game

Finally. We're lucky there's anything interesting left after 40 years of neglect.

Kyoto Accord Reached Despite Big Oil

This strategy failed and the accords were signed anyway. Greenpeace said, "The fact that a legally binding agreement was reached over the objections of the oil companies shows that industry's grip on governments and stranglehold on the process is finally loosening." Some oil companies are finally starting to make serious investments in renewable energy.

Recent action by the US Congress on road bills suggests that the USA does not intend to abide by the commitments it made in Kyoto.

Home Zones

The Dutch have been quite pleased with their several decades of experience with the "woonerf" system, which is the pattern on which the Home Zones concept is based.

Britons No Longer Suffering in Silence

Check out nonoise.org. It's an excellent source of information about noise.

More Bikes in Britain

It has worked in The Netherlands, so no reason it shouldn't work in Britain, too. In some Dutch cities, half of all trips are by bike.

Britons Want Less Traffic

The best of this is that the UK government may actually act on these numbers by adopting traffic-cutting measures. Tony Blair's new government really looks like it is taking action here, and Glenda Jackson is stirring up a storm in her capacity as transit czar in London.

Chinese Lawmakers Call for Auto Exhaust Controls

When I was in Shanghai about a year ago, the air quality downtown during the evening rush hour was awful.

Oh, Calcutta

Everywhere, leaders get around in cars, and everywhere, leaders want to improve the flow of car traffic. Not much attention gets paid to other street users, most of whom make fewer demands on the infrastructure and are not contributing much to pollution problems. Time for a wake-up call at city hall.

Capacity Numbers

Mode	Persons/hour
Car	900 - 2,300
Bus	7,000 - 10,000
Cycling	13,300
Tram	18,000 - 25,000
Walking	20,000
Rapid rail	40,000
Commuter train	50,000

You can move 25 times as many people along a single right-of-way if they are in trains instead of cars.

Density and Driving

This does not come as news to New Yorkers, many of whom do not need or own cars.

Evaporating Traffic

The net traffic reduction reduces regional congestion, but this comes at the cost of unmet transport needs. Reducing mobility is a crude solution.

Surprise: Public Transport Is a Winner

Now, about that $300 billion subsidy. . . .

High-Tech Solution to Train Noise

Neologism: The National Automobile Slum

I have recently arrived at a fitting description of the human ecology of America, and I urge you to adopt it: the National Automobile Slum. That's the name of what we are living in: The National Automobile Slum. Use this term in your local planning boards and your letters to the newspapers and debates with your friends, and before long there will be a widespread recognition about what we are talking about.

Buy This Car and Become... Wicked? Meaner?

Distant thunder, cold as stone,
a V8 screams down from its throne.
one by one, each car succumbs.
Something wicked this way comes.

Naught-to-sixty in 5.7 seconds: Once a figment of the
imagination, now a fixture of intimidation. All courtesy of
the 300-horsepower, 32-valve V8 which seethes within
this, the fiercest automatic sedan in the world.

The new GS
Faster. Sleeker. Meaner.

Faster. Sleeker. Meaner.??? The car is shown hurtling through a burned-out forest. Hit the deck - something wicked is seething our way!

Quote of the Month

A Scientific American Special Report

The March 1998 issue of Scientific American includes a special report on the prospects for a continuing supply of petroleum at prices low enough to use it as a primary energy source. The report comprises four articles.

The End of Cheap Oil

The situation is much more serious, however. In the first place, reserves are overestimated by about 200 gbo for a variety of complex reasons (mainly statistical misinterpretation and falsification by OPEC countries in order to obtain higher production quotas). Global discoveries peaked in the early 1960s and have declined ever since. New discoveries are now running at 7 gbo/year, so consumption outstrips new discoveries by a factor of more than 3. Despite this, reported reserves are growing, a clear impossibility. An additional 150 gbo of recoverable oil are predicted to be found, and the statistical basis for this prediction is quite sound. Further large discoveries of conventional oil are assessed as "very unlikely."

In 1956, US oil geologist M. King Hubbert forecast that oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in 1969, with an error of +/- 1 year. In fact, production peaked in 1970 and has declined since. Hubbert's method is deceptively simple: once half of the total reserve has been extracted, the peak of production has been reached. There is now ample evidence to prove the accuracy of Hubbert's method. The world will reach the Hubbert peak in about 2002. Even an optimistic estimate by John D. Edwards (2036 gbo remaining) shows production peaking in 2020. Oil shortages are thus nearly certain within 20 years. In 2000, the 6 OPEC nations in the Gulf region will produce more than 30% of the world's oil, rising to 50% by 2010. The authors warn of price shocks ahead, similar to those of the 1970s.

There are, however, large known reserves of "unconventional oil," mainly in the form of heavy oil, tar sands, and oil shale. The extraction of oil from these sources has been difficult, expensive, environmentally dangerous, and highly consumptive of energy. These sources probably amount to 1500 gbo equivalent.

The authors conclude that the transition to an economy not based on conventional oil need not be traumatic. They base this assessment on the probability of cheap liquid fuels made from natural gas as well as safe nuclear power, cheaper renewable energy, and conservation. They urge that nations begin planning now for the decline in oil production. Their concluding statement:

The world is not running out of oil - at least not yet. What our society does face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all industrial nations depend.

Mining for Oil

Oil Production in the 21st Century

Liquid Fuels from Natural Gas

Natural gas has the advantage of being plentiful and clean. It produces the smallest amount of CO2 per unit of usable energy of any fossil fuel. There is enough natural gas available to produce 500 gbo of synthetic liquid fuel, with the possibility of considerably more gas recoverable from coal seams and other sources.

Conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels has been feasible for many years, but until now it has been quite costly and wasteful of energy. New processes on the horizon might provide liquid fuel from natural gas at prices comparable to the current cost of oil. Even if a large amount of liquid fuel can be produced at a reasonable price, this only delays the world peak in petroleum consumption by about a decade.

Conclusions to be drawn: We may not run out of petroleum-based liquid fuels as soon as some projections show. Disaster can be staved off for another 20 or 30 years if we begin a massive program of petroleum production from unconventional sources, especially gas. It does appear, however, that declining petroleum-based energy is inescapable by the middle of the next century.

We have only to look at the great dislocations in the industrialized nations following the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks to see that the consequences of even minor interruptions in the flow of petroleum (or significant price increases) are grave indeed. We would be foolish to ignore this history in the face of the coming shortages.

Because fuel shortages may not arise soon, we should not pin the development of the carfree city solely on the basis of petroleum shortages. Indeed, this but one in a series of compelling reasons to remove cars from our cities.

The Lyon Protocol

As mentioned in Car-Free Times #4, a protocol for the conversion of existing cities to the carfree model was developed and presented during the "Towards Car-Free Cities" conference in Lyon, France, in October 1997. Final revisions to the protocol are now complete, and it can be consulted on line at:

http://www.carfree.com/lyon_protocol.htm

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