[Pizzuti]

Transit was never intended to eliminate fossil fuel usage. Here are some thoughts about petroleum usage in 2035:

We may very well have been at peak oil in 2008. Cultural and technological changes can cope with declining oil supplies We can pick up on fuel efficiency to get the same number of driving miles on less oil for quite a few years. Based on some very informal research, average fuel efficiency in 2006 was 22.5 mils per gallon in the U.S.. Toyota Prius gets 45.

We are already theoretically capable of getting twice what we get. In 25 years the only new cars will be hybrids, most of which will have improved systems for re-claiming breaking energy, and many might even have plug-in capabilities to recharge electric systems,and 25 years is also enough time four our entire fleet of cars on the street to be replaced. If oil prices increase we'll all be driving smaller, lighter cars. Say that in 25 years, the average car gets twice the gas mileage of the average car today - I'm going only by what is already feasible through existing technology.

That's a 50 percent reduction in petroleum usage for automobiles.

Secondarily, many, many people will work from home because of the Internet, and who knows what other technology will emerge to keep us from going out so often. Maybe we'll order groceries Online and have them mailed to us (something that seems terrifyingly sad but it could happen.) Again, people will be using less oil without having to get rid of automobiles. Lets say that 15% more people work from home or we take 15% fewer trips because of new technology.

We're down to 42.5 percent of current petroleum usage.

Third, ethanol will creep up in percentage in ordinary fuel you buy at a gas station. We now use 10% ethanol, even though ethanol is currently a waste of resources. If we gain the ability to get ethanol from cellulose, ethanol becomes economically viable without subsidies, and is environmentally friendly. Let's say we're at 30% by 2035 - that's another 20% decrease in needed gasoline.

We're down to 34 percent of current petroleum usage.

Fourth, we can have biofuels to make hydrocarbon-based gasoline from plant products. I don't expect this to be much; lets say that 5% of vehicles run on biodiesel or pure ethanol, mostly government vehicles and a few token privately owned cars.

We're down to 32.3 percent of current petroleum usage.

Then comes transit. Our population will probably be growing, I expect that to swallow up all of what we improve by shifting away from cars as the main way of getting around. Cities will grow a lot with new population, suburbs will stay about the same size, and rural areas will shrink though they were hardly significant to begin with. So lets say that, all told, increased transit usage swallows up all but 5 percent of population growth.

We're back up to 33.915 percent of our current petroleum usage. But that's still a third of what we use now.

Too optimistic? There's a lot of room for error and we'd still be decreasing our dependency on petroleum in line with 2008 being peak oil.

And that's JUST automobiles. By using less paper and going Online for news instead, we cut down on fuel. By recycling more, we cut down on fuel again.

I don't think anybody thinks we'll be completely done with oil in 2035. Nor does anybody think we can use as much oil then as we do now and get by. The answer will be somewhere in the middle, and the more we save now, the longer we will have some left over. Remember that getting off oil is possible, and since oil is a scarce resource, the rate at which we shift off oil will be the rate at which we are forced to do so by oil prices.

We'll never "run out" of oil, it will just become more and more expensive, until its cheaper to use something else altogether and whatever amount is left in the ground will be turned to plastics or left forever.