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[mainiac]

"Don't use oil" is not a ridiculous statement.  There's this little thing called trains.  They're actually a heck lot more efficient when they don't use oil.  The only thing they don't do is make suburban commuting convenient.  But I'm guessing that if it comes down to a choice between giving up the suburbs and starving to death people will decide they like living in cities.

If you think that we are in danger of mass starvation then I recommend you try looking at the price of meat sometime.  It takes a lot more farmland to feed people meat then it does to feed them vegetarian foods.  If we were on the verge of a collapse of food production then meat would start getting much much more expensive.  (Non-meat food would get expensive more slowly because so much of the cost is packaging and handling.)  But we don't see that.  Meat is becoming a larger part of diets worldwide and we have things like YUM foods investing billions of dollars in KFC joints in emerging markets.  This is the same YUM foods mind you that is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, an investment company that recently bought the largest freight train company in the US.

[Tellemurius]

"Don't use oil" is not a ridiculous statement.  There's this little thing called trains.  They're actually a heck lot more efficient when they don't use oil.  The only thing they don't do is make suburban commuting convenient.  But I'm guessing that if it comes down to a choice between giving up the suburbs and starving to death people will decide they like living in cities.

If you think that we are in danger of mass starvation then I recommend you try looking at the price of meat sometime.  It takes a lot more farmland to feed people meat then it does to feed them vegetarian foods.  If we were on the verge of a collapse of food production then meat would start getting much much more expensive.  (Non-meat food would get expensive more slowly because so much of the cost is packaging and handling.)  But we don't see that.  Meat is becoming a larger part of diets worldwide and we have things like YUM foods investing billions of dollars in KFC joints in emerging markets.  This is the same YUM foods mind you that is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, an investment company that recently bought the largest freight train company in the US.

which is in turn owned by Warren Buffet

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Don't use oil" is not a ridiculous statement.  There's this little thing called trains.  They're actually a heck lot more efficient when they don't use oil.  The only thing they don't do is make suburban commuting convenient.  But I'm guessing that if it comes down to a choice between giving up the suburbs and starving to death people will decide they like living in cities.

You can't put trains everywhere. Blaming the suburbs for the usage of cars is such a stereotypical thing to do I don't even want to address it, but since you brought it up: Cars are used in cities plenty and mass transportation as opposed to private transportation isn't a solution because it does not address the actual issue: energy. What we require is energy sufficient to transport people where they need to go to gather the resources they need for their personal subsistence. Gasoline engines provide that for most people right now, but they'll need to be replaced.

And as before, oil is necessary for a lot of things, not just gasoline.

If you think that we are in danger of mass starvation then I recommend you try looking at the price of meat sometime.  It takes a lot more farmland to feed people meat then it does to feed them vegetarian foods.  If we were on the verge of a collapse of food production then meat would start getting much much more expensive.  (Non-meat food would get expensive more slowly because so much of the cost is packaging and handling.)  But we don't see that.  Meat is becoming a larger part of diets worldwide and we have things like YUM foods investing billions of dollars in KFC joints in emerging markets.  This is the same YUM foods mind you that is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, an investment company that recently bought the largest freight train company in the US.

We still have oil to match our consumption, so the spread of meat is definitely not a valid metric. Come back when we can extract less oil than we need to consume and I'll accept that argument.

We are very much in danger of mass starvation if the oil isn't sufficient.

[Heron TSG]

"Don't use oil" is not a ridiculous statement.  There's this little thing called trains.  They're actually a heck lot more efficient when they don't use oil.  The only thing they don't do is make suburban commuting convenient.  But I'm guessing that if it comes down to a choice between giving up the suburbs and starving to death people will decide they like living in cities.

You can't put trains everywhere. Blaming the suburbs for the usage of cars is such a stereotypical thing to do I don't even want to address it, but since you brought it up: Cars are used in cities plenty and mass transportation as opposed to private transportation isn't a solution because it does not address the actual issue: energy.

There are a couple pictures you need to see.

Spoiler: Tokyo train system (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Major Japanese rail lines (click to show/hide)

My Japanese teacher apparently never had to use anything but public transit for the three years she spent living in Sendai, on her various trips to Tokyo, or even when she had to take the train from a station a few blocks from her host parents' house in Sendai to a college seminar in Nagasaki. Barely anyone in Japan uses a car in the cities.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's nice for Japan, but that isn't going to work everywhere. Japan is a highly urbanized nation with a relatively small overall landmass. Japan was practically designed for trains, given those cards.

Places like the USA or Russian Federation have a massive landmass and only moderate urbanization. Train networks that go everywhere aren't quite as viable. There is a reason only the largest cities in America have subways. Places like my small-to-moderate city of Raleigh could never support such a thing.

[alway]

That's nice for Japan, but that isn't going to work everywhere. Japan is a highly urbanized nation with a relatively small overall landmass.

Places like the USA or Russian Federation have a massive landmass and only moderate urbanization. Train networks that go everywhere aren't quite as viable. There is a reason only the largest cities in America have subways.

Well, yes, but using that as the reason overlooks the entire point in discussion: namely that making areas more urbanized (ie: like Japan) will work if systems are put in place which are already used in said highly urbanized places.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You can't "make" urbanization happen. It is a natural consequence of population migration and tantalization.

[mainiac]

Places like the USA or Russian Federation have a massive landmass and only moderate urbanization. Train networks that go everywhere aren't quite as viable. There is a reason only the largest cities in America have subways. Places like my small-to-moderate city of Raleigh could never support such a thing.

I live in a small town of 15k people.  There is an old rail line running smack dab through the middle of our town.  That's what people used for transportation before everyone had cars.  The tracks were first laid down in the early 19th century when the town population was only like 7k people.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure that Raleigh can afford a rail network.  Not only do much poorer countries afford them but American cities had them more then a century ago.  Yes it means the cities will grow denser but that's just people responding to economics.  One decade gas is cheap and people move to the suburbs.  Another decade it's expensive and they move back to the cities.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I live in a small town of 15k people.  There is an old rail line running smack dab through the middle of our town.  That's what people used for transportation before everyone had cars.  The tracks were first laid down in the early 19th century when the town population was only like 7k people.

[mainiac]

Yes, we could do it back then when we had much, much less resources.  If cars no longer are an option we won't just devolve into barbarism, we'll go back to trains.  It's not rocket science.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Less resources, less people to support with resources. Less people to transport, and a world that was very different from the one today. It isn't about devolving into barbarism or not, that would be the kind of thing that would happen after a catastrophe kicked off by the events caused by transportation and resource shortfall. For example, global total economic collapse. The systems of our society aren't unbreakable.

[mainiac]

Trains tend to benefit from economies of scale.  They also benefit from a century of technological progress.

Just because it's different doesn't mean that it's apocalypticly bad.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't buy that it is enough. Even in cities with large train networks non-train transportation is a necessity. New York has its massive taxi business, Tokyo's trains are pushed way past maximum capacity.

[mainiac]

I don't buy that it is enough. Even in cities with large train networks non-train transportation is a necessity. New York has its massive taxi business, Tokyo's trains are pushed way past maximum capacity.

Just because people chose the convenience of an automobile does not make it a necessity.  And the Tokyo thing is a real red herring.  I was stuck in traffic today.  Does that mean that roads are doomed because they are clearly way past maximum capacity?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It is my understanding that Tokyo's trains are pushed past maximum capacity every day, not some days.

Automobiles are more than convenient. Trains move when the scheduled says they move, a car moves when its owner wants it to. There are overall economic benefits to that because time is not wasted waiting.