I also don't know how you will change the minds of so many Americans
to embrace mass transit in a 25 year time frame without a genuinely
huge consciousness shift (these shift may be able to happen, but in
my lifespan I've not seen any of them, especially when they require a
change in what we all love because of our evolution: convenience.
By the way, I'm glad to see the "peak oil crowd" seems to have a
unified voice. Were that really true, at least with much of message,
life would be a lot easier. :)
The way we are living and consuming now is a big lie; without
lifestyle changes these arguments all become moot. Education needs to
go way beyond the Al Gore message of "change a lightbulb, save the world."
The major oil field in Mexico is now in big decline (they're our 3rd
largest supplier); the biggest field in Saudi Arabia is apparently
starting the same process. The longer we wait to create renewable
energy, not boondoggles for our convenience, the more these things
will cost, along with everything else. It's already way beyond where
it should have begun, if we operated outside of the delusional space
of "the way we live now is normal."
AND REALLY IMPORTANTLY, We also will not continue to inhabit the
planet in the numbers of people now here. I don't see anyway it is
likely to support us in 6 or 9 billion numbers with organic or
permaculture used as agriculture. This is the elephant in the room
that nobody in a political sphere dare touch, but talk to ecologists
or environmental biologists and read their science. Just lowering
birthrates so that actual numbers still increase, albeit slowly,
still impacts the planet with more degradation. We desperately need
to encourage very very small families immediately.
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