The Blinding Ubiquity of the Automobile
Posted by a virtual unknown on October 27, 2007
The Value of Energy
An adult can exert about 100 watts of effort for a reasonably sustained period of time. Over a 10 hour work day, this would result in one kilowatt-hour output. At $5 per hour, that would be $50 per kwh. You probably pay about 10 cents for one kwh of electricity, or about 1/500th the price of human effort.
One barrel of oil is the same as 20,000 man-hours of labour (or $100,000 if you paid a $5/hour wage). 100,000 divided by 1500 = 66.666…
There are 3,412 BTUs in a kilowatt-hour and over 6,800,000 BTUs in a barrel of oil. If a barrel of oil were $67, this would be approximately 1/1500th the cost of human effort.
The comparison of energy costs above has been paraphrased from:
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2006/11/what-is-energy-worth.html
The potency of energy contained in oil and gas is of such a high concentration that it is essentially “free” energy, even at $2 per litre of gasoline. What we are paying for at the pumps is merely the cost of extraction and refining. We pay nothing for the material/fuel itself. That is what is meant by “free” energy.
Machinery can be designed to do tasks that humans cannot do as effectively, efficiently, repetitively, continuously or on the same kind of scale with regard to size and weight. When is the last time you hired a rickshaw that could take you somewhere 350 kilometers away, at a speed of 120 km/h for most of the trip, without taking a break?
Oil also has uses other than as a fuel for personal transportation. We depend on the petro-chem industry for every part of our economy and for every part of our lives: Transporting goods and materials, processing goods with machinery, fertilizers, cosmetics, lubricants, pesticides, plastics, heating. Most products (cars, computers, televisions) take 10 times their mass in fossil fuels to be produced and delivered to the consumer.
The Debate about Peak Oil
I have often wondered what is truly at the heart of the environmental debates of recent years. “Global Warming” is at the heart of every business, political and environmental discussion; but is there a more immediate danger than global warming?
The risk in the potential energy shortage is to the ability for developed and industrialized nations to continue operating at the status quo. The status quo for the world has been exponential growth in population and resource harvestation to support the economies of developing nations whose populations are growing to consume more while catching up with Europe and North America.
World peak oil production has been estimated to happen within the lifetime of this generation. Canadian Natural Gas production is estimated to peak before 2017. The effects could be devastating.
Perhaps the message hidden within the global warming debate is simply this, “stop burning fuel so rapidly.”
That change would seem to address both problems. We have more than one good reason to make a difficult change.
Various organizations have predicted 2006 as the year for Peak Oil production.
http://energywatchgroup.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,2196435,00.html
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/1/3402/63420
http://www.oilpeaks.com
Interesting (but not very convincing) counter-points from your friendly neighbourhood ExxonMobil Company:
http://exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/OpEd_peakoil.pdf
The problem with the Exxon argument (in the above link) is that they state that there was estimated to be 3.3 to 4 trillion barrels of oil in the earth and that we have only used about 1 trillion barrels so far in all of human history… so we have nothing to worry about.
This argument contradicts itself in a couple of ways:
1) If we have used between 1/4th to 1/3rd of the Earth’s crude reserves, we have done so mostly in the past 300 years, we have probably consumed more than 1/2 of all oil consumed by humans in history in the past 100 years due to the developments of personal automobiles and the green revolution. Our usage through time is growing exponentially. Also affecting this change was the move of military machinery from coal to oil, catalyzed by conflict between the Germans and British (and the Berlin to Baghdad railway project), as well as the development of massive outsourced manufacturing that requires energy for transportation of raw materials and goods around the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_revolution
2) It is proven and accepted that when an oil well has been produced, it begins as a pressurized liquid that is easy to extract, and over time it becomes increasingly more difficult to extract. All wells production appears as a bell curve. The argument here is that we are not running out completely; but that we are at about halfway. Peak oil is about easy recovery of oil. The problems presented are not about the total depletion of oil. The idea of production cost increases, or an energy net loss to produce hard to reach oil is not mentioned in the Exxon assessment. Only world totals are reported, without describing that much of that supply is contained within tar sands and shale, which present complications in production.
3) The article itself names heavy oils and oil shale as resources that are available to offset peak oil from occurring. This is a delusion. Oil shale is more energy intensive and time consuming to produce than tar sands. Peak oil means a discrepancy between the growth in usage/demand and the ability to produce, resulting in shortages, high prices and a need for conservation measures. Resorting to harder to refine heavy oils, tar sands and shale indicate that we have reached peak. It is as if the author of the strange propaganda does not understand supply/demand concepts.
Additional information about Peak Oil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Middle_Eastern_reserves
Please note that in the link above, the reported reserves for many OPEC nations have not declined at all in many years, despite massive production. How is this possible, unless they are discovering almost exactly the same amount in new reserves as they are producing, on an annual basis?
Is Access to Vast Amounts of Cheap Oil and Gas a “Right”?
… and if it is a right, is it a right that only applies to citizens of developed nations? Does it justify wars and western supported regime governments?
I value and respect the vehicles and machines that we use to do work. I understand their importance in the history and the future of the development of the industrialized world. The automobile has its place; but that place should not be in lengthy daily commuting. The currently necessary overuse of cars and inefficient appliances is what causes people to forget to respect that our high potency energy supply is finite and limited. It is through perceived infinite abundance of energy and low prices that we have built cities and chosen residences that require daily overuse of cars and machinery to conduct business and to live our lives. Some people drive more than an hour to work each day. As long as this remains affordable, there is no need to redesign or relocate.
We have been oblivious to the fact that the fossil fuel form of energy is not limitless. Some people lobby for lower prices so that we can burn more fuel, and then in the same breath turn around and complain about smog and gridlock. Oil is a non-renewable resource that took millions of years and potentially thousands of generations of life to produce. We will have burned through the bulk of the accessible supply, in less than three centuries. Historians of the future will look back on our society and think we were stubborn hypocrites.
We of course are not. We have been blinded from the fact that there are alternatives to an urban/suburban automobile lifestyle. The personal motor vehicle was not always such a popular idea and did not always exist.
It is very important to note that North American cities have generally implemented the weakest public transit systems and that street car lines that previously existed in the United States were purchased by General Motors and destroyed.
http://moderntransit.org/ctc/index.html
We have been marketed the automobile and the government has been lobbied by private business to use public tax money to perpetuate the alteration of the urban/suburban landscape such that life would be unthinkable without owning a personal motor vehicle.
Per capita, citizens of Canada and the US consume ~150% the energy of the G8 average. http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11-621-MIE/2005023/tables/table1.htm
North America contains only ~7% of the world population; but consumes an estimated 33% (1/3rd) of the world’s total energy output.
We are a society of indulgent, short-sighted, business-minded people who have the best and most leisurely lifestyle that any humans have ever, and possibly will ever have the privilege to take part in.
In the future, I see both mounting political pressure as well as wars over scant resources (this is already happening; but under the guise of ‘preemptive strikes on terrorism, followed by the installation of regime governments who are free-market and foreign direct investment friendly). I see massive unemployment due to a lifestyle based on plastics, automobiles and the transportation of goods. I see the prices of food and imported items skyrocketing. I see a re-localization of manufacturing that was previously outsourced overseas because the cost of transportation will offset the difference in labour costs.
It currently takes 5 units of energy in natural gas to produce 1 unit of energy from oil in the tar sands in Alberta. The world is taking a net loss on available energy overall… specifically to get crude oil. We continue on this trajectory even though there are only a projected 10 years left in the current reserves for Canadian natural gas. This is how addicted we have become to that single source and type of energy. We will throw away one kind in exchange for the ability to drive a car… instead of trying to harness natural gas potential. We actually have natural gas cars, in addition to furnaces and barbeques. This is just procrastination and a fear of change. Progress has been stifled by familiarity.
The Blinding Ubiquity of the Automobile
More than half of North American urban land use is solely for the purpose of automobiles. Roads, parking lots, garages, gas stations, and driveways occupy more than half of our developed land. The roads themselves create unwalkable distances between your home and your frequent destinations, corner stores, friends places, or workplaces. Having pedestrian walkways and automobile traffic on the same surface level creates intersections where pedestrians must wait, sometimes more than doubling the time it would have taken if the walk were uninterrupted by traffic and traffic lights. Busy highways and fast moving streets act as barricades to pedestrians in the city and to wildlife, outside of the city.
This mass of flattened and paved land not only provides a means for single passenger cars to traverse, inefficiently burning fuel; but the act of paving over useful land is itself pollution. Islands and curbs are also commonly found obstacles blocking even the passing of cars in this paved over landscape. The concrete and asphalt destroy potential habitat for carbon dioxide reducing greenery. Our city is growing in all directions and has already paved over some of the most fertile farming land in Canada. It threatens to sprawl out even further with each passing construction season.
People move to suburbia hoping to retain employment in the city and simultaneously raise a family outside of the hustle and bustle; but suburbia is a place that suffers the problems of both the city and the country, without the benefits. If you have more family members than cars, there is no convenient transit system. Recently built subdivisions are so huge and entirely residential that it is not a reasonable walk to reach shops, schools, hospitals or government offices. These destinations are decentralized and spread out amongst a variety of strip malls in all directions, with no distinguished business center for the town.
My Personal Urban Experience
When I lived in Brampton, I spent hours outside every day. I rarely saw neighbours outside in their yards. A small plot of lawn in the middle of a gigantic housing subdivision is no substitute for access to nature. The front yards are too close to traffic and parked cars for children to play safely, and the back yards are too small and enclosed by high fences. The suburbs are not an escape from the city because the entire environment is man-made and requires constant maintenance. It is not sustainable development. Artificial lakes have been dredged out from parks in subdivisions. These stagnant bodies of water are not part of a complete ecosystem. As a result dangerous E.Coli bacteria levels can be found in most of these ponds and lakes placed in recreational parks near subdivisions. There is not enough water flow or wildlife to keep the water clean and safe and in effect, the ponds are usually giant pools of geese feces.
Occasionally, I must travel across the 401 between The 427 and Yonge Street, with my colleague Jason Gillies. We discuss the inadequacy of the Toronto Transit Commission’s Subway system. Our work office is located near an important turnpike in Toronto and in Canada. We are located at the intersection of Highways 401 and 427. Also nearby are Highways 409 and 410. Across the 401 from the office is Pearson International Airport. The next major street to the west is Dixie, which is known to be one of the busiest industrial corridors in the Toronto Area. To the south of our work is Eglinton Avenue West, which is a busy street that supplements the 401 by running in parallel. I can’t imagine how toxic the air is at this convergence of roads, factories and the airport. My respiratory health seems to have been in decline ever since beginning to work in the Airport Corporate Center area. Maybe it is a coincidence; but maybe there are some statistics for people suffering from respiratory illnesses and spending most of their days in that area.
As Jason and I sit in the bumper to bumper traffic on the highway, or try to locate faster street routes across Eglinton, we sometimes imagine what the city would be like if rapid transit systems were to reach this part of town.
The Inadequacy and Lack of Urban Planning
The TTC has 4 subway lines, serving 69 stations. On an average weekday, 1.1 million customer trips are registered through the turnstiles.
Before comparing this to the mass transit systems of other cities, it should be mentioned that attempts to expand this system have been thwarted. Most recently the provincial Progressive Conservative government, under Mike Harris, canceled plans already underway to build a subway the width of the city from Scarborough Town Centre, across Sheppard to Yonge Street. On the west side, the same subway line would run underneath Eglinton (parallel the 401) to Airport Corporate Centre and to Pearson International Airport.
It was believed that there would be limited ridership of this new East-West subway line that traverses the entire breadth of the city, because of the proximity to highway 401 and the affluence of the car owning population that far north of downtown. However, it is possible that the persistently overwhelming flow of traffic on the 401 might indicate the opposite. The 401 is busy and people in North York drive cars on a daily basis because there are not any other options present – not simply due to affluence.
Upon examining the existing corridor of the Sheppard Subway line and building developments that have happened since, one thing is apparent. The density of building developments has increased near the new subway stations. The presence of mass transit has given land developers and prospective condo buyers the confidence to invest in large scale projects. Sheppard-Yonge Subway Station is the 4th busiest station on the TTC Subway.
Perhaps the expansion of the mass transit system is the prerequisite and catalyst for the development of large projects that will increase the density of the city, reduce pollution, reduce average commute times, increase green-space, and slow the outward sprawl of suburbia.
Here is a list of links to the Subway systems of other cities in the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rapid_transit_systems
Mexico City Metro is comprised of 11 lines and 175 stations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_Metro
The Paris Metro has 16 lines and serves 297 stations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_subway
Transit Should Remain Publicly Funded
Maintaining public control over essential life services has both pros and cons. I believe that we have all been frequently bombarded with the praise in favour of privatization (competition which is supposed to spur innovation and efficiency). Water, electricity, and transit are not systems that we need divergence in. The very nature of them requires a convergent and unified system, and the cooperation of all operators. Privatization would result in a monopoly and therefore nullify any of the intended free-market advantages.
Auditing must be in place to ensure that an essential service run as a public utility is running efficiently and not being mismanaged. Hierarchical structures are more easily hijacked in this way. In fact, the goal of free-market competition is to have more than one team working on the same problem. Distributed rather than centralized power is not impossible to implement within a public structure. That is the basis of the opposition concept (which works when private interests are not allowed to provide direct or indirect financial incentives to public servants – aka bribery/corruption).
There is a side benefit. Public utilities have a counter-cyclical effect on the economy. When a private business becomes unprofitable, it will shutdown the least profitable portions of business. If an economic recession occurred and no public funding was provided to the transit system to be able to run at a deficit, certain routes would have to be shutdown where there was limited ridership, to maintain profitability. This would compound the economic problems because the transit system provides a means for workers and students to commute. They would be cut-off from their workplaces. If the system were allowed to run at a deficit, it would allow people to continue working and to potentially recover from the instability.
Rather than take it from me, please feel free to investigate the effects of privatization of water and water services in Bolivia, the Netherlands, Ghana, Uruguay:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/50994
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/
More locally, we can see the effects of the privatization of electricity generation in Ontario:
http://www.ontariotenants.ca/electricity/hydro-news.phtml
http://www.ontariotenants.ca/electricity/ontario-hydro.phtml
Proposed benefits to electric privatization linked here:
http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/reports/ep210-20p_final.pdf
People Can Change… if they want to
I do not own a car and I have discovered that I can get by without one for most days. Obviously there are some things tasks that cannot be completed without a car; but I believe that with the help of proper city planning, the need for frequent usage can be reduced. This kind of conservation can be applied to other aspects of energy usage as well. Industrial and household appliances should be tuned for efficiency. Raising energy costs to be more realistic may spur people into adopting better usage habits. This raise in the the energy costs would not be arbitrary; but would be the result in a reduced oil production and a heavier reliance on renewable energy sources. This is not to say that every person will have to make the same drastic changes (a building contractor goes to varied jobsites and must lug tools around, so daily car commuting is necessary); but if the people who ‘can’ reduce reliance ‘do’, then everyone will benefit from the conservation that occurs.
Systems need to be put in place and then announced and marketed to reduce automobile usage. This is a responsibility of the government and also a responsibility of private business. Businesses we work for and who provide our goods and services can affect how energy is used to produce our consumables and at our workplaces. It is the government that can enforce regulations on the businesses to allow fewer externalities. The government must also provide the public with incentives and assistance regarding the transition, in order to make change a reality. This is a duty that is being overlooked in Toronto and in North America.
June 16, 2007 – Edit: Response to Ethanol E85 as a supplement or replacement for Crude Oil
I have observed on a number of Facebook groups lobbying for lower fuel costs, some people have cited Ethanol as the answer. The problem here is that the rising cost of oil will directly affect the cost to produce E85. At present, the processes involved in farming are totally dependent on the oil and natural gas for supplies of fertilizer, pesticides and other yield increasing chemicals. Remember that the green revolution happened because of all of these scientific advances that allowed us to artificially boost food production and lower costs. Food prices will be increasing at the same time we are trying to produce E85. There is a cost for mechanizing farming and food production. There will be contention for farm resources, land and hands, as we decide what is more important, fuel or food.
If someone can please submit a realistic idea of how much it costs to produce E85, and what the concentration of energy released from it is… that would be greatly appreciated.
Addition: October 15, 2007
New material from Avi Lewis’ CBC show, “On the Map” claims that corn crops take 3X as much fertilizer (natural gas based) as other crops.
Additionally, bio-mass fuels may not be a viable alternative at a time when our crops are no longer supplemented by petro-chem fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and cultivated by machinery that is currently gas and diesel powered.
Contention for arable land was also brought up as an issue. You see, the amount of biomass that would have to be grown in order to sustain current energy use habits is absurd.
A single fill up of fuel in an SUV would take (in crops) the caloric equivalent of one persons food, for an entire year. That is how much energy is in a tank of fuel. At that rate of usage, there isn’t enough land on earth, if we converted every piece of usable land, to supply our current energy needs, let alone the growing needs of the future.
My thoughts on what I learned from “On the Map”
If naturally occurring biomass could be used for fuel, I am also concerned that would lead to the further desertification of land (something already moving at a rapid rate due to man-made developments), as profit-driven organizations hack down anything alive to produce fuel; but do not do so at a rate allowing for regrowth. You would be amazed how much “stuff” must be reaped from the land to produce a single dollar of revenue.
Hydrogen is a means of energy “storage” and not an net addition to the energy supply. Are you aware of any pockets of hydrogen on earth? Hydrogen must be produced, and our current means of hydrogen production results in a net loss of energy overall. Here is a published, scientific article on this topic:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/zubrin.htm
Excepted from the link above: “[All hydrogen on earth is already oxidized]…the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.”
Reference Material
The Guardian, a UK Newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil
The following are links to interesting reference material regarding the TTC and future expansion plans:
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5111.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheppard_%28TTC%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_subway#Future_expansion
A very interesting read about all of the social issues facing Canadians and Americans:
Jane Jacobs – Dark Age Ahead
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Age_Ahead
The End of Suburbia – a highly rated, informative documentary on land and oil use in North America:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446320
A Crude Awakening – another highly rated documentary
http://www.crudeawakening.org
A US Government Website, reporting statistics on North American and South American energy consumption, production, imports and exports:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Archives/theamericas/theamericas.html
