$20 per Gallon Wrap-up

I've recently finished reading $20 per Gallon by Christopher Steiner. My original 2 posts on the book can be found here and here. While the book remained relevant, my interest did wane starting from Chapter $12 onward. I think this may have been because the predictions were further into the future, and thus by nature more general. Essentially, it was mostly stuff that anyone with any environmental education would consider common sense, without any real surprises or very many interesting facts along the way. Still, for the sake of completeness, I'll summarize the remaining chapters.

Chapter $12

This chapter started with an overview of New York City's subway system, and how efficient it is as a form of public transportation. The start-up cost would be huge for every major American city to follow in NYC's footsteps, and part of the reason for NYC's density is because the city naturally evolved to be efficient at density, before the invention of the automobile. Newer American cities, by contrast, have virtually no design at all, and are essentially just haphazard sprawl (some examples given are Atlanta, Phoenix, and Houston).

Going along with the theme of city design, the author summarizes the planning of Songdo, a city in South Korea being built entirely from scratch. Seoul is hemmed in by the sea, mountain, and North Korea on all sides, so South Koreans are used to being efficient with their space as the city has expanded with no additional land to do so. Songdo (40 south of Seoul, on a man-made island in the Yellow Sea) will essentially be a super-green, super dense city designed from scratch. Lots of high rises, solar panel, greywater systems, passive heating (through floors, for even heating), etc. Very interesting stuff.

Other than that, the rest of the chapter goes on for quite some time to simply describe the phenomenon that our cities will re-emerge as cultural centers as people start moving back into them to be closer to their jobs, and the suburbs will die. And good riddance. A lot of eastern and mid-west cities (Cleveland being one of them) currently have the infrastructure to re-invigorate the downtown/inner city, potentially giving them a jump-start over newer, poorly-designed cities (or rather, cities that lack design because their sprawl was simply a result of cheap oil).

Chapter $14

This chapter was similar to the previous one, though it instead focused on small towns. It opened by describing a "ghost box," which is a term used to describe abandoned Wal-Marts (usually because a larger property was secured nearby, so the franchise simply left the old structure to build a new one). The take-home message is that "ghost boxes" will start becoming more numerous, but for a very different reason. As gas reaches prices of almost $14 per gallon, Wal-Mart's business model of utilizing cheap Chinese labor and cheap oil for long-distance transportation will no longer be relevant. Simply put, the additional cost of transportation will eventually make the whole system unprofitable, despite the cheaper labor. Hah! No more cheap junk floating around!

With large chains no longer being as profitable, smaller, local business will prosper again. The population of small towns will migrate back to the area surrounding the old Main Streets, and away from the new subdivisions on the fringes that were close to the Wal-Marts built on those outskirts. Goods will cost more, but people will also value them more. If your vacuum cleaner breaks you'll no longer just go to Wal-Mart for a new one, you'll go to the repair shop in town and get it fixed. In general people will be (forced into being) less consumerist, and goods will be of higher quality (not to mention less dangerous, as they'll be crafted in the U.S. where the environmental and safety regulations are stricter). Jobs will be lost as Wal-Marts suffer, but as manufacturing returns here new jobs will open up.

The chapter also mentions a reduction in the amount of asphalt being used. Metal roofs will replace asphalt shingles (they'll cost more initially, but they're more efficient at temperature regulation and they'll last a lot longer, not to mention a reduction in waste). Concrete will become a more attractive material for roads (it's more resistant to the frost wedging that tears up asphalt roads every winter, so it lasts longer). Finally, we'll be forced to drastically reduce the amount of garbage we throw away, because when gas reaches these prices it will simply cost too much to have as many garbage trucks driving around as we currently have. Garbage trucks average about 2.8 mpg, in case you were curious.

Chapter $16

This chapter was pretty much a no-brainer. Food will become more local because transportation costs will be so much higher. What used to be suburbs surrounding our major cities will become farmland that is much less homogenous than the millions of square miles of monoculture (corn, wheat, etc) that are the mainstays of our current agricultural system. While this isn't mentioned in the book, an increase in smaller farms will provide a lot of new jobs, as more Americans become "farmers" (or at least farm workers). The rise in local (and likely organic) foods will mean that our produce will taste better too, as it will be grown for freshness and taste instead of a long shelf-life. In northern climes, hothouses will be used to grow produce in the winter (through a combination of passive solar heating and compost underneath it, they'll stay warm enough for crops to grow even during cold nights).

The chapter mentions invasive asian carp that are harvested in the Illinois river and shipped to China, where they're a delicacy (American's don't eat them). Sushi (particularly, bluefin tuna) will also suffer, since it has to be eaten very fresh but it's often caught halfway around the world from where it's served (thanks to cheap oil).

Fertilizer is also discussed; specifically, some guy in Iowa who is in the process of setting up an outfit where nitrogen is fixed using the electricity from wind turbines to harvest Hydrogen from water (instead of natural gas), producing carbon and pollution neutral ammonia. The byproduct: medical grade oxygen. Neato! Though admittedly I'd prefer to see agriculture move toward re-invigorating the soil where crops are grown, it's probably unrealistic to expect large-scale agriculture to continue to function (and feed a growing population) without our fertilizer applications. And at least this is a clean way to produce fertilizer.

Chapter $18

Light rails for the win! This chapter tells the tale of how we were progressing very well with our railroad system until the automobile became widespread. With driving becoming increasingly expensive, and the skies being largely emptied of airplanes, light rail will make a comeback (I just wish they'd get a head start on it already). This means more federal money needs to be spent to re-build our rail infrastructure, at the expense of our road systems. Not likely to happen until people actually start driving less en-masse.

The military will also have to make a lot of changes at this point, because a lot of their machinery (the B-52 Bomber and the Abrams tank being especially big offenders) is horribly inefficient. The tank's fuel efficiency is actually measured in gallons per mile (it takes three gallons of fuel to go one mile), largely because it hasn't seen efficiency upgrades since the 1960's.

Chapter $20

At this point, the chaos resulting from rising oil prices will begin to settle down. We'll generate a lot of our electricity by harnessing waste heat from a lot of our factories, etc. (it's currently not recovered because it's cheaper to just let it go to waste). Several different types of alternative energy types are discussed, and it's clear that Steiner doesn't think much of renewables. Hydropower is reliable, but there's not much room for expansion and most environmentalists don't like it because of the habitat degradation that it causes (I'm with him on this one). Solar is useless at night supposedly (though later on he mentions that energy can be stored in batteries during the daytime and used at night). He really should have given solar more thought. He also talks about wind, geothermal, natural gas, and coal. And finally, the energy source that he's put the most stock in, nuclear.

I'll give him this much, his prediction is likely to be fairly accurate. In terms of the sheer amount of energy that can be produced, nuclear is the clear front-runner. Of course he seems to dismiss the safety issues involved with nuclear (stating that 3-mile Island was our only major meltdown, and Russia aside nuclear plants are currently running pretty safely). My problem with nuclear is that while accidents may not be common, a single accident has absolutely devastating effects. Plus the fact that as global oil supplies diminish, eventually every country is going to have to develop nuclear power plants, and this means that they'll also have access to nuclear weapons. And while we're on the subject of national security, if we think that 9/11 was bad, imagine what would happen if terrorists attacked one of our nuclear plants! Plus, you know, the whole nuclear waste issue. Again, less pollution overall, but if containment for nuclear waste fails then you've created a disaster at a site that will not be mitigated any time soon.

I guess we'll just have to see where the technology takes us. If the risks associated with nuclear can be diminished to acceptable levels then it will become a very attractive source of power. I'm just very wary because one mistake has huge consequences, and one dumbass Monday detail missed by a Homer Simpson somewhere could have catastrophic effects.