by Vernon Huffman

Created on: December 04, 2008   Last Updated: December 08, 2008

Our car culture is crashing because we cannot efficiently fuel individual vehicles for each person. How much money will our paid-off politicians borrow from our great-grandchildren in futile attempts to stave off the inevitable future? How much unnecessary human suffering will result from our inability to plan sensible sustainable lifestyles? We shall see.

This crisis was not unforeseen. Many credible critics, including geophysicist M. King Hubbert, have pointed out that the planet contains a predictably finite supply of oil. Burning it at a rate tens of thousands of times faster than petroleum is produced is not a practice we can expect to continue forever. Oh, yes, there's still plenty of oil - about half of all that ever existed - but extraction of the second half will grow increasingly expensive. In fact, the rate of price increases will continue to accelerate. Hold onto your wallets, folks!

Of course, there are alternative fuel sources. Each of these has benefits and drawbacks. None are a direct replacement for oil.

* HYDROGEN - the most abundant element in the universe is the perfect fuel. That's why it's been used to power rockets. On top of that, the only waste product resulting from burning hydrogen is pure water. Double win!

Unfortunately, hydrogen in pure form doesn't stay near Earth. It's so small and light, it slips out of containment and floats out of the atmosphere. Extracting hydrogen from any compound, water being the most common, will require expending more energy than we can gain by burning it. Perhaps someday floating photovoltaic desalinisation plants will produce hydrogen for use in flying vehicles, but don't hold your breath.

* BIO-FUELS - Diesel developed his engine to run on peanut oil. We can make biodiesel from soybeans and ethanol from corn. Surely American agriculture can produce enough fuel to run all our cars, can't it?

American agriculture is fuel intensive already. Big tractors and petrochemicals have been depleting longterm soil quality to improve short term production. It takes more oil to raise crops than you can replace by burning them. Other than low grade methane from waste products, fuels come from the edible part of the plant. As the chickens come home to roost, the big question will be "Do you want to eat or drive?"

* SOLAR - The sun will continue to shine and the wind will blow. Why can't we harness these forms of energy to replace petrochemicals?

We can, we should, and I hope we will. Passive solar energy could heat and cool every building, if we took time to orient the windows in the most efficient ways. Wind, combined with conservation strategies, could provide more electricity than coal and nuclear sources do now. But that doesn't mean we'll have enough for electric cars. Retooling will take at least a generation anyway.

The bottom line is "change is inevitable." The car companies that survive will do so by embracing inevitable change. Watch for those who diversify into bicycles, if you want to invest in a winner.

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