The drum beat is on to find huge funding for new highways. Chicago Tribune headlines shout “Area Gridlock Taking its Toll.”  Media elsewhere also call for major new, multi-billion dollar programs.

The end of cheap oil and the need to reduce carbon emissions will prevent any such large endeavors. Rather, as well as requiring that resources to to other critical needs, they will require huge reductions in travel that virtually eliminate the need for any major new highway construction. The loss of cheap oil will throw all aspects of our lives into a tailspin: living standards, life styles, government and economy.  This requires that urban settlements in the post carbon world be far more self sufficient, balanced in use, compact, of greater density and have high levels of pedestrian and environmental amenity.   

Neither the nature, magnitude or urgency of the inevitable changes are seriously recognized.  They will make obsolete much of the base of the economy, physical form and governing structure of the world, particularly that of the United States. In no more than ten to fifteen years the impacts beginning now will accelerate to create conditions we will hardly recognize and that will seem unthinkable. The evidence cannot be denied. Yet many in the oil industry and governments are doing exactly this. And the media, unfortunately, is confused and mute.

Finally, the evidence is emerging. The bottom line: we will face intense competition for increasingly scarce oil much sooner than we expect. Will find that there are no effective alternatives for oil. And will learn that few in power are yet willing to think realistically and plan for the future.

Available evidence is overwhelming. Two sources provide an excellent summary:  First, The Last Oil Shock, by David Strahan. The words of it’s subtitle, “A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man” project the urgency of the subject. The book documents both the magnitude and timing of the changes required as well as many impacts of the loss of cheap oil. It also affirms conclusions of another important book, The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler and the film “The End of Suburbia” (obtainable from NetFlix).

Kuntsler goes much further in describing ways our lives will likely be changed by the loss of cheap oil. These will clearly shock many of us into denial and disbelief. The authors agree that we and our governments must act now to avoid debilitating chaos. (For more see “Peak Oil”,  “James Kunstler”, “The End of Suburbia” and related links on the internet.)

Impacts

Strahan provides reams of highly relevant information about the impacts of the loss of oil (at any price). Most of these cover aspects of exploration, discovery, extraction and other aspects of its production and delivery affecting supply, availability and cost. He also deals with the limits of potential substitutes to oil. His observations about prices, shortages and likely crises are tempered but supportable. And his suggestions for saving fuel are down to earth.  But he only hints at the upheavals in financial markets, the economy and community and personal lives that will be the ultimate effects of downsizing.

His suggestions for responses at the international and national level are these:

• Undertake a massive public education campaign that will convince people of the gravity of the crisis and the changes needed and to provide “cover” for decisions that public officials must make.
• Legislate or strengthen fuel efficiency standards and/or tax measures that will drive tax gas guzzlers out of production and off the road as soon as possible.
• Remove exemptions of  taxes on jet fuel and assure that they are reflected in the costs of aircraft and ticket sales.
• Scrap all airport and road network expansion. (Avoid building facilities for highway or air travel that will not be needed or that may increase sprawl and carbon use.
• Shift savings from above to public transportation.
• Develop and apply a “cap and trade” system world wide and locally to reduce chaos from emergencies of availability, and assure equity and  fairness in the allocation of diminishing supplies.

                
Kunstler deals more with consequences of lower supplies and higher costs such as impacts on availability of fuel for transport and agriculture and other critical purposes and resulting social and economic stress and conflict and what we must do. It is a sobering prospect. He says:
 
“The salient fact about life in the decades ahead is that it will become increasingly and  intensely local and smaller in scale.... We will be compelled by the circumstances of the Long Emergency (read “post-carbon” era) to conduct the activities of daily life on a  smaller scale, whether we like it or not, and the only intelligent course of action is to  prepare for it. The downscaling of America is the single most important task facing the  American people (emphasis added). As energy supplies decline, the complexity of  human enterprise will also decline in all fields, and the most technologically complex  systems will be ones most subject to dysfunction and collapse—including national and  state governments. Complex systems based on far-flung resource supply chains and long-  range transport will be especially vulnerable. Producing food will become a problem of  supreme urgency.....”

“We spent all our wealth in the twentieth century building an infrastructure of daily life that will not work very long into the twenty-first century. ......

“Suburbia has a tragic destiny.  More than half of the U. S. population lives in it. The economy of recent decade is based largely on the building and servicing of it. And the whole system will not operate without liberal and reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural  gas. Suburbia is going to lose its value catastrophically as it loses its utility....

“American life in the twenty-first century has the best chance of adjusting to the Long Emergency in a physical pattern of small towns surrounded by productive farmland.  I am not optimistic about our big cities — at least about them remaining big.... The industrial cities will never again be what they were in the twentieth century. They require too much energy to run and the industrial activities they were designed for are already defunct.
....”big cities will not be suited to the reduced scale of life in the post-cheap-oil future.... What’s more, the superdynamic suburban metroplexes of the past five decades – places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, and so on – will decline even more rapidly...

“In The Long Emergency, the focus of society will have to return to the town or small city and its supporting agriculture hinterland. Those towns and cities will have  to be a lot  denser.....It won’t be easy. But they have the potential of coming back to life at a scale that the new economic realities will require....”  

No one knows how accurate Kunstler’s assessments will be.  But it is easy to see that we must vigorously
implement the settlement model he described. Anything we do will be made much more difficult by the
extreme competition for resources.  But the potential of this model to save energy will make it essential.
But it’s many additional benefits – economic, social, environmental, health, convenience and  job access
–  will make it acceptable, even attractive, as a necessary choice as a place to live as well as to work and
do business.

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

The challenge is to make sure that what is done in the name of “mixed use” provides  all the benefits of which it is capable. This means, among other things, not allowing – and certainly not subsidizing – projects that are mixed use in name only, offering very little of the convenience, energy and travel saving, balance and other benefits that true mixed use affords.
                                
What We Must Do
                                
We should, of course, make every effort to forestall the most severe consequences contemplated by Strahan and Kunstler not only by improvements in gas mileage, alternate energy sources, “cap and trade” distribution and changed mode choice but perhaps most importantly by creating an environment that reduces the need for travel and facilitates alternate travel modes.
                                
To do this we must capture the real benefits and attraction of good mixed use to the fullest by energizing and stimulate the revival, “morphing” and building old or new centers, cores, downtowns, villages, and amenable existing “single-use attractions” into “mixed use”settlements to the fullest extent possible.  
                                
The opportunities are plentiful. For example, the regional plan for Chicago recognizes some 280 existing city or suburban or centers which it believes could and should be turned into the model desired. A relatively few already largely fit this definition. But the rest -- and many more, not yet targeted -- have this potential. Some are as large as “Edge Cities” which, with a heavy make over of new housing, transit, public services and pedestrian amenities, could become far healthier and more efficient places to work, conduct business and live.
                                
Others, consisting of mainly one or two strong potential anchors – major  offices, research or medical centers or similar attractions – could likewise be “morphed,” through the addition of housing and complimentary uses and amenities, to the new, higher level of efficiency and self sufficiency needed.
                                
And hundreds more in the region, probably smaller, could also be remodeled to reduce travel and add new   efficiency, life and focus to communities or neighborhoods.
                                
Beyond the Chicago Region there are hundreds of smaller cities and towns that may also have the potential to serve as the self sufficient community envisaged by Kunstler. Not all such communities will. But those that do may help to sustain much higher levels of economic activity and services in rural areas than could otherwise be achieved.
                                
There are, of course, many more things that must be done to remodel and remake our environment on the
scale needed. Most action must be local. But collectively, it constitutes an effort comparable to overcoming
the 1930's  depression, building the Interstate System or perhaps even some of the wars in which we have
engaged. It will require tremendous imagination, creativity, coordination, leadership and commitment. The
work required is another story to which I hope we will soon turn our attention.