http://fcn.state.fl.us/fdi/edesign/news/9612/joyride.htm

Joy Ride to Global Collapse

Here's a prediction for you. In the next two decades millions of Americans will begin a serious search for an alternative to the gasoline-powered automobile. It is not going to be a happy search. If you think trying to wean gun owners from their passion for firearms is a hornet's nest, try talking to the great majority of us about reining in our passion for the automobile. Lordy! And yet, most of us agree there is a problem, vaguely phrased as, "There are too many other people out there clogging up the highways and slowing me down." Otherwise our attitude is similar to the rabid firearms bumper sticker: "You'll get my car when you pry my cold, dead fingers from around the steering wheel."

No one is talking to us about giving up cars today - even though there is hard scientific evidence that the freewheeling automotive world we know today will have totally vanished within the lifetime of most of us now living. A few idealists are talking about maybe getting us to constrain our use a little bit. None of them are running for any position of political influence in this country. They would be lucky to get their family's vote. We don't want to hear it.

Auto mania is not confined to Americans. The love affair is international and now grows fastest in the nations of the Second and Third World. Humanity burns 70 million barrels ( 85 million currently ) of oil a day. At the present rate of increase, it is projected we'll be burning 100 million in 20 years. But we'll never get there. We are close to that peak of global production which was foreseen almost half a century ago by Dr. M. King Hubbert, the foremost petroleum geologist of his day. The descent from that peak only takes a few decades. We know that petroleum is a finite resource. But even as gasoline prices begin to creep upward some time in the not-too-distant future we won't curtail our driving until real supply shortages absolutely force the issue.

Take a look at an ugly future scenario: The sudden, agonizing death of the private automobile is a wall that global society will hit full speed, pedal to the metal when a global petroleum crisis finally catches up with us. We will not accept any solutions that will soften the impact until the real shortage hits us at some time (early) in the next century ( this article written in 1996 ). If we continue to fail to take any reasonable steps to prepare for it, and it comes upon us thus, the constriction of the petroleum base of our global economy is quite likely to begin a plunging, bucking, gasping downward spiral towards a deep and lasting depression-with-inflation that could virtually end modern times as we now know them...................