soylent
Muse
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2007
- Messages
- 968
You just have to make sure there's a (small) glut of oil by reducing consumption. It doesn't matter how you combine substitution, efficiency, less consumption or increase in oil production to make that happen. Too much oil is what brought it down to $10/barrel in 1998; but of course oil can't stay that low without consumption growing at a brisk pace.
There's no shortage of ways to do that. "Commuter towns" could convert to actual towns with businesses, schools and stores to provide some local jobs. People could use heat pumps instead of heating oil. People could buy more efficient vehicles(seen the price of SUVs lately?). There could be a recession and less people might afford to vaccation on the other side of the globe. Public transport might be privatized and start functioning smoothly for a change. Goods might increasingly be transported by rail instead of trucks. Canada might start using nuclear power to produce oil from tar sands instead of natural gas. Nuclear power might provide cheap and clean enough process heat to make syncrude from coal gasification acceptable(doesn't matter if it's in the US or China). Railroads might be electrified instead of continuing to use diesel. Increasing cost of transportation might encourage buying locally produced stuff to some extent(I'm not too hopeful; giant container ships are monstrously efficient).
I can keep listing ways in which petroleum consumption could be reduced all day, but it's way too complex and I have far too little data to actually guess which will really happen and when.
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