| Title | : | $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0446549541 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780446549547 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 275 |
| Publication | : | First published July 31, 2007 |
$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better Reviews
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So, in the future, when gas hits $16 - $20 a gallon, I'll still be able to have hot house tomatoes in January and drive an electric car. In fact, everything will be pretty much hunky dorey, just a bit more expensive. Well, we won't be flying much anymore and will have to revamp the rail system. Oh - and the U.S. will start manufacturing our own products and not import them for pennies from overseas. But, no violence. No real disruption or discomfort. Just a scaled-down, more local, even cozy future. In fact, we'll even be able to manufacture chemical fertilizer on a grand scale, thanks to wind power in Iowa. What?!!! The book didn't even touch upon the connection of oil and our jacked up food system - factory farming - which is a huge oil glutton. it did mention blue fin tuna. Alas, sushi will become a lot less common. Well, just shoot me now. This book was fluff - an attempt to gloss over the real and immediate problems that we're facing and sticker them with smiley faces. I like hope, but I also like reality.
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I picked this up at the library on a whim. I was a little bit worried that it would be a long political diatribe either about the need to drill, baby, drill, (clearly, I hadn't paid attention to the subtitle), or else a long political diatribe about hugging trees. Fortunately, it was neither.
The book is what it says it is - a summary on how increasing gas prices will force our society to make changes that will ultimately be good for us.
The book is ordered by gas prices, starting at $4 per gallon, which is the price that gas reached in the June-August months of 2008. I hesitate to call them the summer months because while it was Summer to most everyone I know, I was actually in New Zealand. It was the dead of winter. And I calculated the cost that we were actually paying for petrol at almost $8 per gallon. That includes both the conversion of litres to gallons and the U.S. dollar to the Kiwi dollar. I kid you not. Of course, the taxes in New Zealand are higher, and the cost of living in general for that nation is higher. But, no matter where you live, $8 per gallon is substantial.
Because of the high price, we made some really positive changes to our lifestyles, like walking and carpooling more.
Steiner's book doesn't really focus on those tiny changes, and how could he? If gas is four times an amount that most Americans considered absurd, tiny changes like riding a bike are just that - tiny.
His book is broken into chapters of $4 per gallon (which is the introduction), $6 per gallon, $8 per gallon, on up to the final chapter about gas at $20 per gallon. For the most part, I thought this was an effective way of telling his story. Sometimes it meant that he had to leap to some pretty eyebrow-raising conclusions, and I wanted to say, "Napoleon, like anyone can even know that." But, on the whole his arguments are sound.
Two things struck me the most - we use oil for a lot of stuff. A LOT. I had no idea how much of the rubbish that fills my apartment comes from oil. That means when the price of oil goes up, the price of all my junk goes up too.
Second, when the price of oil goes up, the price of transporting all our junk everywhere also goes up. There's just no way around it. You've got to have a way to get your goods to you from their source, and that way almost always involve gasoline. When the price of gasoline goes up, the prices of goods goes up. (We witnessed this last in 2008 as well).
I don't know if all of the things that Steiner believes will happen will happen. Like I said, it's hard to make predictions on something like gasoline being $20 per gallon (and everywhere in between). Most importantly, though, is that gas prices will inevitably continue to rise (he makes a very sound case for this fact at the beginning of the book), and when they do, Americans (and people in other parts of the world) will need to adapt. Hopefully, as Steiner predicts, those adaptations will indeed be improvements to our current lifestyles. -
The positive effect on road safety is mentioned early on: higher gas prices take many of the most dangerous vehicles off the road earliest.
The book has some interesting anecdotes and isolated economic speculation, but the worst part is that it doesn't attempt to analyze the effects based on the rate at which the price of gas might rise. There is just a single paragraph that mentions different possibilities for timing. Obviously if oil were to quadruple in price over a year it's not going to be good news for a lot of people, while steadily climbing over 20 years is more in line with the scenarios in the book.
The other economic analysis missing is the effect the high price of gas (or the expectation of a high price in the near future) will have on the production and price of gas. It's possible (though maybe unlikely) that we could conserve and switch to alternatives so effectively that the price would go down because of a lack of buyers, and few would care either way except those in the Middle East or Russia or other countries heavily dependent on oil exports.
The prediction of possible $6/gallon by 2010 has already blown by, instead we've had a steady state under $4 for the last few years- it could be that no one wants to spend much more than that and they'll steadily modify consumption in a way that keeps the price hovering there, barring any abrupt changes to the market.
One of the major points early in the book is that if production goes down, or even grows very slowly, a great deal of competing gas users in India and China will drive the price up. But they can't drive it too high because they can afford it even less than the already emerged countries can. (And what happens if consumption drops off in the first world fast enough that China & India can buy more oil, and become much more dependent on it than they otherwise would if the rest of the world were helping to keep the price high?)
Alan Greenspan has suggested a carbon/gas tax that would moderate the phase out of natural oil for transportation over a couple decades, but that possibility isn't mentioned here because the presumption that it will happen via the market is so strong. The tax is politically unlikely in the United States right now of course, but that might change in a few years.
Oil seems like a pretty good medium for energy storage and transportation, and perhaps carbon sequestration as well. If there could be giant solar powered plants that use all their energy on site to scrub C02 out of the air and manufacture long hydrocarbon chains from it there may be net advantages over electrical transmission lines and battery technologies. And maybe most of the produced oil could be pumped back underground. Coal is mentioned as the ultimate sequestration substance, if that could be manufactured it could be buried or even left in piles (though you wouldn't want to live near those piles). -
Saw this book referenced in an article on the energy situation from a blog I like, so I figured it might be a good read. I would not have figured on finding the single most Pollyannish book on the world's energy crisis that I could have imagined. I wanted to read this as a more moderate counterpoint to Kunstler's "The Long Emergency". Unfortunately it's so far afield in its optimism that I'm just not buying it.
The book is organized in a very cool way, with chapters done up by gas price, starting with Chapter $4, and jumping $2 each successive chapter. There's also some really cool business-mag-green-type stories about companies doing green things -- the writer is on staff at Forbes, after all. It is, however, unfortunately a lot like the "green issue" of your favorite business magazine extended to book length: big on hype and hope, not steeped in real thought about the future.
Also, since it's written by an engineer, you know that there's going to be a lot of boundless "techno-grandiosity" (Kunstler's term) -- the idea that technology will save us. When we got to a chapter on electric cars, I was just about lost. How do you extract and ship the incredibly expensive rare earth elements needed for the cars parts if petrol is crazy expensive? Well, don't expect an answer -- that's how techno-grandiosity works. For a book that starts by naming all the things in just a person's morning routine that are made or powered with oil, it certainly seems to leave the concern that without the oil, we can't have those things. But don't worry, Boeing is working on a carbon fiber-skinned jet that gets 20% better fuel economy!
It's clear right out of the gate that this is written for those who have very little knowledge of the energy problems we face in the near future, and as a result if you've done some reading and studying in this area, or even read Treehugger or Grist periodically, it can seem a bit remedial and get quite irritating at points.
I'm not saying that I don't think that some of the predictions in this book will come to pass -- I do think that, for instance, Wal-Mart and other huge stores are not long for this world once prices begin their Big Climb, and small businesses will rule again, and that we'll be forced to eat more locally and seasonally -- and I'm not such a Cassandra that I believe totally in Kunstler's incredibly dire predictions on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I just think that this is not a serious treatment of the subject -- simply a soothing pacifier for people who want to be reassured. And a false sense of security is what has us here in the first place. -
I ran across this in B&N trying to use an old gift certificate. I'm really looking forward to reading what looks to be the first optimistic peak oil book. It is written by a business-friendly, Forbes-staffer, capitalist vampire, so it may well be utter nonsense, but at least he acknowledges Peak Oil happening soon, now, or even recently.
The particular reason I say it may turn out to be nonsense is because the global economy seems to redline, flatline, and start suffering from terminal arhythmia at an oil price around $100 per barrel, so it doesn't seem likely industrial society will sustain $20/gallon gas for more than a few days, but it is remotely possible, and a very pleasant fantasy. I'll read that.
REVIEW:
I loved the subject matter and the fresh perspective on peak oil and sustainable energy. However, long tracts read like what they almost were: a long-winded, journalistic Forbes article. Entrepreneurship and unproven technologies are held up as the answer to all our ills. If I were being unkind, I'd say the whole book adds up to an elaborate "technology will save us" argument of a kind that has been thoroughly trounced by such peak oil luminaries as James Kunstler and Richard Heinberg.
However, that is too unkind and the book does has substantial value beyond these weaknesses. Foremost, it is refreshing to hear the doom and gloom, while acknowledged, put on the back-burner and an optimistic vision of the future economy trumpeted, with a profound sense of opportunity available for the far-sighted. Heinberg does this with one or two chapters out of each book, but he's a little too low-tech, granola-eating and business- and technology-averse for my taste. I suppose I'm looking for a happy medium.
Another strong plus was Steiner's treatment of the localization of future farming and produce production and delivery. Same goes for his examination of the future connection of our country by high-speed rail. I've read many authors' mention these things in passing, waving hands and leaving everything vague, but Steiner, in journalistic fashion, speaks to advocates on the front lines and paints a very detailed portrait of these and other processes, in glowing hues. -
I had much higher hopes for this one. It seems as though he captures what impact higher oil prices will have in the future, but his main focus on how it will make life better seems impossibly rosy. In addition, the singular focus on the price of oil (the incredibly cheap energy source we have built modern civilization on), loses the interconnectedness of energy, food supplies, entrenched interests, development aspirations, and perhaps the most glaring omission, the drastic impacts climate change will have on future society.
So, oil prices will climb and everybody will switch to electric cars (apparently lithium supplies will not be a problem in the future), people will drive less, and government will throw massive resources at public transport. All of this predicted as gasoline passes the $6 mark. Well, here in Australia, gasoline is already basically $6/gallon, the rail systems suffer from chronic underfunding while the Victoria state government's most desired project is a multi-billion dollar automobile tunnel under Melbourne, while at the same time, we are digging up coal like there is no tomorrow and increasingly fracking anything that might have any amount of natural gas. For Steiner's rosy smooth transition to our happier future, we needed to start the transition years ago, yet business as usual reigns.
Sure there is lots of good stuff in the book, much more localized food chains, a reduction in expectations for more stuff and endless mobility, the end of ultra globalizied businesses such as Wal-Mart shaving very tight margins off of extremely cheap transport, and more. He really only comes up with nuclear energy as a suitable replacement energy source for oil, ignoring the prospect of peak-uranium and scolding environmentalists for their disdain for the unsolved problems of nuclear energy (hello, Fukushima).
I'd love to believe the rosy scenarios presented in this book but given that we have more than enough easy coal reserves to burn through our carbon budget and up to now have still given almost no effort to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels (witness exploding fracking prospecting), I just don't see most of this happening. -
I liked this book but it wasn't very good. The proposition is interesting to think about and the writer offers a lot of consequential predictions. But his imagination was quite limited and constrained to his personal axes such as thinking people should live in cities, ride on trains and eat local food. His conclusion seems to be that well all be ultimately much better off and have better lives. He failed to discuss in any depth the devastating economic toll it would take on people and the geopolitical chaos that would likely ensue. I like books about energy and i've wanted to read a book about how energy has changed our culture, society, and politics ranging from our liberation from liberation from religion to our easy freedoms but this wasn't quite it. It came closer than the book Energy and Civilization which was a huge disappointment.
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Some day the $4 per gallon gas prices experienced in the summer of 2008 will be recalled as the good old days when gasoline was a bargain. In the long run, the author contends, the coming high prices for gasoline will be good for us.
Our addiction to oil, Steiner's research says, has contributed to all manner of ills, among them pollution, long and stressful commutes, poor nutrition, and insufficient exercises. As world demand for oil grows and supply plateaus or shrinks, the price will climb inexorably to unprecedented levels.
If Steiner is correct or even half-correct, then the direct hit to our collective wallets will become so pronounced that it will force most of us to change the way we live our lives and the way our country works. The good news is that we could eventually come out on the other side with numerous, significant societal improvements.
The inevitable effects the author foresees include the evaporation of demand for houses in far-flung suburbs, trains supplanting planes as the dominant form of long-distance travel within the country, and the gradual disappearance of disposable plastic items. In that context, Steiner sees healthier lifestyles, improved environmental quality, and many other benefits large and small.
The book takes time to describe some of the technologies that have (and don't have) a good potential to be of use in an economy where oil and its derivatives are expensive. It also speculates of which products and means of travel will be greatly diminished (hint: don't invest in airline stocks).
The book is divided into chapters discussing changes that will take place at each step along the way; $6/ gallon, $8/gallon, $10/gallon, and so on to $20/gallon. Predicting the future is not an exact science, so not everything is going to necessarily happen as described in this book. But the author provides enough statistics and reasons to back up his forecasts to make them very believable.
The author doesn't say much about how fast we will reach $20/gallon gas. One place he says we'll reach $10/gallon in ten years. So I suppose it follows that we can expect $20/gallon in twenty years. It is my own thought that the future will go in one of two directions. Either we will experience $20/gallon gasoline in the not too distant future, or we will have a depressed world economy. One thing we have learned from the past year's economic recession is that fuel purchases are greatly reduced when the economy crashes. That is part of the reason why current prices (late 2009) are less than $4/gallon. Viewed in this way, $20/gallon prices would be indicative of a vibrant world economy, which would be good news. -
The entire book can be summarised as follows:
"I predict that gasoline will reach the price of $20 per gallon even though gas prices are notoriously unpredictable, because we have to start running out of oil at some point. Now let me spend the remaining 99.5% of the book speculating wildly about what society will be like when it does, even though humans are extremely bad at making any predictions about the future."
While it was interesting to get a feel for how much we rely on oil, it's hard to recommend a book that makes so many far-fetched predictions that aren't really founded on anything. It's impossible to know how expensive oil will affect us in the future because we don't know what technology will exist then. Instead of recommending this book to anyone, I would recommend reading
Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway. -
A thought-provoking book. Our lives will be better with higher energy prices. The “inevitable” higher gasoline prices are, obviously, not here yet. This is our chance to implement a serious gas tax. My personal choice is an increase, in the gas tax, of ten cents per month for five years. (After one year, the gas tax would be $1.20 higher. After five years, the gas tax would be $6 higher.) People would know what is coming, and have (some) time to adjust.
Please spare me the species argument about disparate effect on the poor: we can use the Income Tax Credit and Payroll Tax adjustments to meliorate the effect on the poor, while preserving all of the incentives that come with higher energy prices.
This would undo the pernicious effect of Corporate Average Fuel (CAFÉ) Standards, which by making it cheaper to drive a mile encourage us to drive more miles.
The sixth book I have finished this year. -
I loved the concept of this book - How the world and society will change based on increasing the price of oil from $4 to $20. However, I was a bit disappointed in that his social desires (which I share) overshowed good research on some ideas. See my blog entry on this book...
http://sustainablesupplychain.blogspo... -
Some good information here on alternatives to oil - not only as a fuel source, but as a source for all the other things we get from oil. However, the author's Pollyanna-like belief that everything will work itself out smoothly, coupled with his out-of-hand dismissal of things like solar energy, and his refusal to recognize the potential dangers of widespread nuclear use, annoy me.
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My review:
I was disappointed in this book. I expected so much more from it. I had a lot of questions crop up in the beginning, but as I went on a lot of them were answered, so that was good. However I think the structure of the book really caused it problems instead of being helpful. Chapters are grouped by gas price ($4 gas, $6 gas, etc.) and at the beginning this makes sense, but the last chapter have specific topics (Food, Trains, Energy), which lend themselves less to this kind of grouping.
I felt like some of his remarks were too flippant. At $6 he thinks that school buses will stop running, but he comments that kids can just walk. He uses Southern California as an example saying that now kids can enjoy the sunlight and fresh air. That may work there, but in colder areas a 4 mile walk to high school would be much less acceptable. At $10 he says that moving cross-country will be too expensive so people will probably just sell their stuff and buy new wherever they relocate. He chides us for attaching sentimental feelings to our things. Some stuff is irreplaceable like photographs or family heirlooms.
In addition, some of his comments just seemed too Pollyannaish. For example, at $8 air travel will become too expensive for average people so they will no longer be able to fly around visiting relatives. The author proposes that this will cause families to stay together. The theory is if you can't come back to visit, you won't move away. Except that some people have already moved and can't move back, and some will still have to move, which will break up families.
I know the book was explaining how our lives would change for the better, but sometimes negative consequences were completely ignored or glossed over. Your small town isn't located in a convenient area? Oh well, it will become extinct and you can move to a nice, dense city! People will lose their home, their business, their whole livelihood in a situation like this. How are they going to move when all their equity is in their house/business/car and it's too expensive to take any of their stuff with them? Also, apparently small town will be full of people who want to live there so small town crime will diminish. We will save thousands of lives annually by taking SUVs an vehicles off the road. Yes automobile crashes will diminish, but public transport will be used more, so there will most likely be more of those accidents. Two cars colliding might kill a few people at a time, but two buses or trains would cause many more casualties. It would still be a net gain in terms of lives saved but to not mention public transport deaths seems misleading.
Finally, some parts seem unbelievable. I would think we would be able to innovate and create new technology before the death of all big box stores. He mention electric vehicles being the future but insists we will all happily give up our cars. UPS will use electric trucks to sustain their business model, but we won't have electric garbage trucks or school buses? I don't understand how we will make everything locally, especially growing our own food. A rooftop garden won't feed all its occupants, and you would need many greenhouses to feed super-dense NYC in the winter.
Recommended for those who are interested in green technology. Some stuff may be a repeat (I already knew a lot of the info about electric cars), but enough topics are covered to give you some new information. Nothing is covered extensively, but it will give you some things to do further research on if you are interested.
Summary below:
I definitely think that we will be facing an energy crisis and am very much concerned about the environment. Thus, I really didn't need the first chapter ($4) that explains that gas prices will DEFINITELY be increasing. There was some research, but I don't know if it was enough to change the doubters' minds (but will they even pick up this book?). As I said, I'm already convinced, so on to $6 gas.
At $6 we'll change our transportation: no SUVs, more walking, more public transport. Funding of roads will need to change (what we build roads with is made from oil, also higher gas prices=less gas purchased, which means less revenue from gas tax) and toll roads will become much more common.
At $8 air travel forever changes because air travel will become too expensive for most and nearly all of the major US airline will go bankrupt. Tourism massively declines, closing Disney World and half of Vegas. Overseas travel is only for the rich, like it used to be.
At $10 car technology will start developing more rapidly. Hybrids will make way for completely electric cars. Also air cars might be put to use and we will develop other kinds of fuel. Hydrogen cars will never happen. Also, biodegradable plastics will be invested in more fully. Oil makes plastic, so we will need other processes for making plastic.
At $12 cities will experience a revival. Outer suburbs and exurbs will die. Public transport will have to expand because of increases in cities' densities. Subways are the best way to go, though light rail and buses will also help. Small, local stores will also be resurrected.
At $14 Wal Mart and its big box ilk will die. Their business model will no longer be sustainable. Local goods will rule. Small towns will die out because it will be too hard to ship in everything they need. Those towns along railways and waterways will remain and flourish. They can get good from trains and barges, which are much cheaper to run than semis. Main streets will be the centers of small towns. Globalization will reverse because it will no longer be cheaper to use cheap labor abroad then ship things here. We will make less garbage because it will be too expensive to make wasteful packaging for products. Also, garbage trucks waste lots of gas. Aluminum roofing, wood flooring, and stone will be used in homes. Regional materials will be super important.
At $16 our food production will drastically change. We will eat locally grown foods. "Volume loses out to vicinity". We will used greenhouses to grow food in cold areas during the winter. Farmshares will increase. We will start investing in ammonia and wind power.
At $18 we will have a resurgance in using rails to transport people. Other countries have the technology and we could too, but automobiles have made us look at things improperly. Also, our military will need to innovate because we use way to much fuel. We ill hopefully use synthetic fuels and figure out ways to consume less in the airforce. We can have our navy convert ship to nuclear power. The army can use solar power to generate energy.
At $20 we will look differently at how we are using energy. Our power plants are operating at 33% efficiency. If we can use the same energy to make heat and power, we'll be twice as efficient (some companies are already "recapturing" energy used in heating to power their operations). The author thinks:
We will stop using coal.
Hydroelectric will remain but not increase.
Solar will be expanded but there's no sun at night,
so it will never be a 100% solution.
Wind power will increase steadily because it's so cheap.
Geothermal will be used where naturally occurring.
Natural gas will be used because it's cheap, but CO2 problems will
eventually decrease its use.
Nuclear should be used much more because we haven't had any problems yet and we can store all the waste in Yucca Mountain. -
Written 11 years ago, it is an interesting read in its predictions, although most of them seem to center around local is good and globalization isn’t. So while it’s interesting to think about revival of US manufacturing, small towns and local farms, even $20 gasoline wouldn’t do this because we have learned a lot about the benefits of these and don’t want to give all of them up so easily. And of course, there are substitutes for gasoline. He mentions electric cars as one, but brushes them aside as too expensive.
Overall, the sense I got was that the author abhors cheap foreign-made junk, suburbia and non local produce and blames cheap energy for these things. So then the conclusion is we will move away from these less desirable things when gas prices go up, leading to a better world.
But also gas prices aren’t going up like he predicted. Not even close
The worst part of the book for me was his discussion on public transit. It reads like someone who is completely ignorant of the inefficiency of transit and the politics that infects all decisions. -
After I read this book more than a decade ago I did a comedy sketch at an open mic at a coffee shop.
"If elected, I promise to raise your gas prices to $20 per gallon." (wait for the laugh)
"We don't know how high gas prices need to be, in order to reverse human-caused global warming. I promise to raise prices each year I am in office, until we see data that human-caused warming is reducing."
"The money we collect, will be given to the animals. They can use it to buy their own property . . " -
This book is organized into chapters by the price... Chapter $6, Chapter $8, etc. It's interesting and imaginative, but who knows if it's accurate. I mean, who would have theorized in a pandemic that toilet paper would be so hard to come by.
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A refreshingly optimistic look at the future of energy consumption in America. Would recommend for anyone interested in sustainability or the role that oil plays in our everyday lives.
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Liked it, but not in a couldn’t put it down sort of way.
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Synopsis:
Engineer Christopher Steiner argues that the petroleum will become more scarce in the future and that the price of gasoline and oil will similarly increase. He then proceeds to extrapolate how price increases will impact us individually, as a nation, and globally.
The book is organized in a clever manner - each of the ten chapters describes a different scenario based upon the cost of gas. To sum up, here's the list of chapters:
* $ 4 per gallon: The Road to $20 and Civilization Renovation
* $6 per gallon: Society Change and the Dead SUV
* $8 per gallon: The Skies Will Empty
* $10 per gallon: The Car Diminished but Reborn
* $12 per gallon: Urban Revolution and Suburban Decay
* $14 per gallon: The Fate of Small Towns, U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance, and Our Material World
* $ 16 per gallon: The Food Web Deconstructed
* $18 per gallon: Renaissance of the Rails
* $ 20 per gallon: The Future of Energy
Each chapter describes in careful detail the repercussions of drastic increases in the cost of petroleum.
Review:
In $20 Per Gallon, Christopher Steiner makes a compelling argument for the careful management of our resources while describing dramatic changes in the near future. The detailed research behind his statements makes the book an interesting and worthwhile read, but it is his extrapolations that make the book stand out.
Personally, while I was aware that petroleum is a limited resource, I enjoyed his analysis. For instance, he presents a coherent picture of how we can expect an increase in demand from different directions. Going beyond the usual list of how petroleum is used in many everyday products and the growing demand from China to meet its evergrowing production requirements, Steiner brings up technological and market innovations like $2,500 Nano by Tata Motors, increased prosperity in India and China, and increased petroleum consumption in the Middle East.
Here are just a few more of the ideas that caught my attention:
* At $8 per gallon, the cost of flying will be prohibitively high and airlines that have been under considerable financial stress will likely go under. The cost of flying will also decrease both domestic and international travel for business and tourism. Even college students may select schools closer to their homes and prefer local universities and colleges - which would have larger repercussions in the field of education.
* At $10 per gallon, Steiner suggests that the production and use of biodegradable plastic will become more attractive. While I had heard about biodegradable plastic, I enjoyed learning about Dr. Oliver Peoples and his company Metabolix which produces biodegradable plastic that is being used to package products with limited shelf life.
* Steiner described the current planning and construction of a new and technologically smart South Korean city of Songdo. 1,500 acres of reclaimed land, will be completely new and is being touted as the most energy and resource efficient city in the world. Water conservation will be critical and graywater will be installed on a citywide basis. Sustainable design will be apparent and has influenced so many different aspects of the construction from the elevators and concrete to the green roofs and solar cells.
* At $14 per gallon, Steiner predicts the decline of big box stores like Walmart. As China's eighth largest trading partner, the cost of shipping and distribution will grow prohibitively high while shoppers will be detered from the cost of driving 5 to 10 miles to the closest big box store.
As the above shows, Steiner has painted scenarios that likely to trigger interesting and important discussions. I believe most of us would benefit from reading $20 Per Gallon.
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (July 15, 2009), 288 pages.
Courtesy of Hatchette Books Group. -
I enjoyed reading the author's ideas of where we could improve and what we could do to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil on our country. However, I found him to be rather on the optimistic side. Never once did he confront the issues that those living in poverty and working poor are going to have with keeping warm/cool and fed when gasoline prices start climbing due to scarcity. The whole book was premised around a solid middle-class lifestyle. He talks about small towns becoming peopled by those who can telecommute to work, or those who can work in service jobs to support the telecommuters. But there will be a LOT of people who can't telecommute, and can't afford to leave the small towns and move to the utopia big cities that the author envisions. And he doesn't once touch HOW telecommuting will be done when producing computers and cellphones require a LOT of oil. We'll have all the tech we want, but without oil? Unlikely!
The view was overly rosy about the way our lives will change with oil scarcity, not taking into account the masses of working poor in this country who struggle every month to pay all the bills AND put food on the table, and how much harder that's going to get for that group. I think Sharon Astyk and Dmitri Orlov both have a more realistic view of how oil scarcity is going to hit the working poor and poverty-stricken of our country.
We see the author discuss ways of producing ammonia and nitrogen for planting, using depleted clean water supplies instead of one readily available supply that Astyk herself mentions in one of her books: urine. Mr. Steiner proposes that we use clean water supplies and wind-power, but fails to recognize that past societies obtained ammonia in the most basic way possible, which is a manner that was used even by the Romans to obtain ammonia for whichever needs they had (bleaching clothing being one of them).
Also found the timeline he seemed to be working from a bit laughable. This book was published at the beginning of 2009, and if I'd read this book back then, I'd probably have thought we'd be facing prices of $8 a gallon by 2016. Instead, prices remain between 2 and 3 dollars for most of our country. Eventually we may see those increasing prices on oil, and when we do, the chances for our country to mitigate the hardships will be even slimmer, given how much poorer our country's become in the last 7 years. I do wonder a bit what the author thinks, 7 years after the publication of his book, on our chances for the rosy picture he painted.
Finally, I found his view of the safety of nuclear to be very suspect after the events at the Fukishima nuclear plant after the earthquake in 2011 that caused such awesome damage to the plant. This also makes me wonder if the author has perhaps revised his glowing views of nuclear power as a safe option. I was heartened a bit by the energy reclamation project that is mentioned in regards to the Silicon plant in West Virginia. Have other places committed to similar energy reclamation projects in the 7 years since? I hope so!
Over all, I think this book is a good read for the suggestions it makes on where we could improve our, but it ignores many of the implications of using depleted water for fertilizer or continuing to use electric as wanted, rather than rediscovering old ways of doing without electricity. I think we are less likely to see society continue in much the manner it has, particularly due to our country's continued disregard for the hazards of doing so. As both Astyk and Orlov have mentioned in their books, but was scarcely touched on by Steiner, the longer we put off making drastic changes to our standard-operating-procedures, the harder it will be to make ANY positive efforts due to the lack of finances for doing so. -
In $20 Per Gallon Christopher Steiner examines the effects that rising gas prices will have on our lives. He does this by predicting the consequences of $4/gallon gas, then $6 then $8 etc. up to $20 and the changes that will occur at each stage. It should first be noted that demand for oil is increasing throughout the world due to rising population, economic growth and increased demand from the transportation sector. In fact, world demand for oil is projected to increase 21% over 2007 levels by 2030. Since oil is a limited resource it’s perfectly reasonable (barring some, as yet unknown, groundbreaking technological innovation) to assume that prices will increase over time (just as they have for the last 40+ years).
Exactly how this will play out is unknown, but Steiner takes a shot at it and his assessment is largely positive. He envisions a future where the air is cleaner, people are healthier, and eat better from locally grown produce. Industries whose business model relies on cheap fuel to succeed (such as the large big box stores) will go out of business and a diverse range of small retailers will again take their place. People will move from remote suburbs to cities, which will become increasingly walkable and livable as clean public transportation options including high speed rail proliferate.
On the downside, airline travel will only be affordable by the very wealthy, as will the mcmansions that dot the exurbs. The SUV will go the way of the LP and be replaced with small electric powered vehicles. Consumption will decrease while conservation and recycling increase. As transportation costs increase it will no longer be cost effective to import many items from across the seas, so manufacturing will gradually return to the US.
While it's impossible to predict the future, Steiner takes a decent shot at it. My main criticism of his analysis is that it is unflaggingly cheery and fails to take some of the darker aspects of expensive fuel into account such as:
1. As resources dwindle competition for the scant resource may become so intense that wars break out across the globe (we’ve already seen some of this already).
2. Extremely high fuel costs could create severe economic devastation around the world resulting in unemployment, malnutrition, starvation, and economic and governmental destabilization. This will likely play out in unpredictable, but unpleasant ways.
3. As oil becomes scarce, dirty fuels will become more attractive as we're already seeing with Canadian tar sands. If coal makes a comeback it will create more pollution and a dramatic acceleration of global warming.
Other than these minor inconveniences $20/gallon gasoline will be great, I'm sure. With that bit of sarcasm out of the way I think the bigger point Steiner is making is that expensive gas has the capability to create opportunities as well as hardship, and in this he is certainly correct. If we prepared in advance, the transition away from an oil based economy could be smoothed. But people are short-sighted, I suspect serious action won’t be taken until a crisis occurs. -
Interesting look at how the rise of gasoline will actually help our country! The higher the price rises, the more cost effective alternative energy becomes. Lots of suggestions here. MDI is producing a car that runs on compressed air, but is having a tough time getting it approved in the US as it is too lightweight. Detroit has been telling us that hydrogen powered cars are right around the corner, but that is a big lie as there is no readily available source of hydrogen. GM has already wasted a billion on this crap, thanks to American taxpayers....T. Boone Pickens touts natural gas, a dwindling resource. If we make hydrogen from natural gas, it makes carbon dioxide, and we all know we don't need any more of that!
Metabolix has a great idea, making plastics out of grain-based sugars rather than petroleum. It is also bio-degradeable, so it won't add to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a 1,000 mile patch in the Pacific Ocean that has more than 3 million tons of floating plastic trash!
The US Government has to step up to the plate and support our rail service. Instead of using out gas taxes to build and repair roads, why not put the money into the railroads? A rhetorical question, one that the powerful lobbyists have made moot. More than four times the amount of freight can be delivered per gallon of fuel by rail over trucks. Not to mention how efficient they are as people movers. All we have to do is look to Europe for examples....
We will also be moving away from petroleum based fertilizers. When you eat corn, soy, tomatoes or potatoes, you are eating natural gas as that is how our fertilizers are derived! Once the price rises high enough, we can go back to using electrolysis and water to make the ammonia that we need, rather than gas. We can also use that same ammonia for powering our cars. What comes out of the tail pipe after combustion is nitrogen and water.
I would definitely recommend this book to our current President. Implementing any of the ideas in this book would not only create tons of green jobs, but also clean our atmosphere and keep our money at home, where it belongs. Obama just came out in favor of rebuilding our electric grid, which is one of the first steps to creating a sustainable future! Wind and solar power needs to be consumed closer to where it is being made, as we lose lots of in on transmission. Also, if lots of us start driving plug-in electric cars, we are going to need that extra capacity.
Sounds like we really can have a bright future with gasoline at $20 per gallon! -
*INCLUDES SPOILERS*
Many points I disagree with as I read this book. Overall this book is innocently dangerous - the idea that super high gas prices will be great for everyone is a dangerous fallacy.
Overall he neglects the impact of gas prices on food until $16/gal - very incorrect. At even $3.50/gal there were food riots across the world, how long until those were impacting the US? Not much higher than $4-5/gal I would say - and I suspect my guess is as good as the author's, he never gave any mathematical reasoning behind his numbers.
He remarks on what a benefit fewer road deaths will bring at $6/gal - but are you kidding me? I think the subtle impact of low nutritional status on the most vulnerable populations will be a net negative.
Failed to mention pensions are weighing down old airlines - when those guys belly up who pays for all those old people in a country with little social safety net?
Heating oil only gets a quick mention in all of this - but it deserves more than a quick mention, people freezing in the winter isn't cool.
The most dangerous of all is declaring we have plenty of "spare juice" in our power plants - an excellent example of how much guessing the author did and how much he didn't research.
At $10, mentions a lot of trucking will decline - hello, food? Without trucking we're basically hosed.
Cost of adding infrastructure like new subway tunnels will also soar along with the price of gas, as the economy falters and tax revenue decreases.... How's the going to go smoothly?
Neglects that without cheap oil, much more of the population has to be involved in food production, not have cool hipster jobs.
At $18/gal the US will have trillions to invest in high-speed rail? Don't think so. The economy depends on cheap oil and will be in tatters. And are you kidding me comparing the Northeast corridor to the rest of the United States? It's a big country, with far less population density than the Northeast corridor.
I like how the author blithely talks about burning natural gas when gasoline is at $20/gal, as if the price of natural gas would not also be exorbitant. They will rise together.
Talking about moving to electricity, but neglect to mention electric trucks aren't a thing that are scalable.
Forgets to mention all the rare earth metals (which are finite) and other fossil fuel required inputs into wind turbines.
He also forgets to mention that if we convert most electrical generation to nuclear peak uranium comes much sooner than the projected 2030-2050.... Not so far away. HUGE problem with all this logic. -
Christopher Steiner's book "$20 Per Gallon" reads almost like really good science-fiction.
It starts with the premise that we've reached peak oil production (True.) and that we're not even close to peak demand because China and Africa are finally getting around to developing (True.), and that gas prices will go up pretty drastically when we reach peak demand (True, again.)
Steiner, a writer for "Forbes," looks at the likely consequences of the increases in chapters cleverly numbered with the dollar figure.
At $6 per gallon, Steiner says, the SUV will die (Yay!) and any car companies that can't produce fuel- and energy-efficient vehicles will die with it.
At $8 per gallon, he says, most major airlines will die (jet fuel ain't cheap, after all, and airplanes use a lot of it). Fewer airlines means fewer airplanes, which means higher ticket prices (Boo!). Most college students won't be able to afford to go to colleges a few states over and go home for holidays and breaks, and most people won't be able to fly to other states to visit friends and relatives. So, Steiner says, we're going to see more people living closer to home. Oh... and Disney World will die, too, since most of its patrons rely on planes to get there.
At $10 per gallon, Steiner writes, people will start driving exclusively cars that use electricity or alternative fuels. (That's great if my Corolla is paid off before then.) Cities will start spending huge amounts of money to improve their public transit systems (New York already is).
At $12 per gallon, he says, there will be a mass migration from the suburbs back into the cities.
I'm partway through the $12 chapter and Steiner seems to be missing something... The migration into the suburbs started in the 1950s and 1960s, and was planned to disperse the population so that there would still be plenty of people if the major cities got nuked. So, I'm hoping that by the time we reach $12 per gallon, all of the nations with nuclear weapons will have gotten rid of them somehow, because a bombing in the renewed urban environment would really suck.
Steiner's topic is certainly intriguing. His writing is excellent, as is his story-telling. And I'd be extremely interested to see someone try to dispute his research because it looks very solid. -
I haven't read the book. I ll probably will skim it.
Sounds more of the peak oil nonsense.
fracking has found enough oil and gas to keep America in fossil fuel until at least the 22nd century. cheap fossil fuel... and probably beyond if we don't choke to death or drown first.
we will use it. sitting around cocktail parties ( or pot parties ) as the case may be chortling about how cheap it is at the pump.
I use Bullfrog Power. only in Canada. Pity -
This was not the usual sort of read for me. I was drawn to it by the title. The book was slower reading for me than my romance novels, but I kept with it and finished reading it. I think this book was well thought out, well written and was wrapped up well with the epilogue at the end. The studies being done in the United States, and other Countries are studies I was not aware of, so I learned a lot. The author put a lot of work into this piece, and it became very apparant that our United States has a lot of changes to be made in the future or we are going to be in a mess. If you are interested in the studies being done for alternate fuel methods here in the United States this is the book for you to read. I think everyone should be more aware of the direction our world is going in and the solutions we ourselves can put in place to help make a change for the future that matters!
The only reason I did not give the book five stars, is due to author using some words that were beyond the scope of my vocabulary. My husband said, when I asked him what a few of these words meant, that the author probably looked up some words to work in here and there to make the piece sound as if it were written at a higher level. He told me that most authors will write at a level which would be easily read by most who have any kind education in their back ground. I have an associates, I could pronounce the words but had no clue. I would read the sentence and Tom would tell me what the word meant by the way it was used, which I should have been able to do, I suppose, it just didn't need to be done. The author could have gotten his points across without the fancy language here and there, just as easily by using words everyone would understand.
The book really is a must read for those interested in our economy, and our environment. Steiner does show that the rise in prices, when hey happen, will finally drive us to do things to make our lives and the environment much better. This is a very provocative look at what our future holds -- a future that is coming sooner than we think! -
This book takes an interesting turn in the energy debate. It bypasses the debate entirely. Instead of trying to convince the reader that global warming is happening, or that society is obligated to convert to clean energy, Steiner examines how America will react to the rising cost of a gallon of gasoline.
Each chapter is a price point ($4, $6, $8, etc.) highlighting the changes in American society at each. Steiner points out the effects of rising costs to fundamental industries and how the risiing costs of energy force change. Heads up, sell your stocks in the airline industry, soon tickets to Hawaii (or anywhere for that matter) will become unaffordable at $8 per gallon.
It I was to voice a criticism about this extremely enjoyable book, it would be that it is American-centric and paints too clean a picture of the future. Steiner's vision is a clear path to $20 a gallon with no bumps, pain, or suffering along the way. But, after I reminded myself that removing the politics of this topic was what made the book intriguing, I was able to look past this flaw.
I would recommend this book for its Utopian vision of the future.
