In years to come we will see an end to suburban sprawl when living "out in the country" becomes prohibitive as the costs per gallon of gasoline skyrocket. Many huge suburban malls will become eroding eyesores, following the small businesses and "mom and pop" stores that they eradicated, into oblivion. The future of Wall Mart and other giant chains will be at great risk as the significant reduction in ocean transport will interrupt their normally steady supply of imported products from China and other overseas nations.
The diminished oil supply may bring a feeling of pain to our lifestyles but it will have some positive benefits; it will result in the rebirth of the American manufacturing sector. As the entire world is forced to adjust to the decline in oil production and supply, this Peak Oil phenomenon will bring an end to our current failed system of Globalization. The amount of raw materials, manufactured products and other goods that are normally traded between nations will be severely curtailed, thereby creating a need to manufacture more products in America. Those same giant transnational corporations that outsourced multi-millions of American jobs overseas will have no choice but to pour huge amounts of capital back into American manufacturing and rehire American workers.
Some of the tradeoffs we will be making: suburban sprawl for city living or suburbs close to the city; long distance trucking for rail transport; long trips on interstate highways and expensive crowded airports and planes for fast intercity transit and maybe even bullet trains; congested bumper to bumper, 60-90 minute, one-way car commutes for suburb to city transit systems; giant outlying malls for in-town shopping; Chinese products in Wal-Mart for American manufactured products in independent, owner-operated businesses; planet-destructive fossil fuels for environmentally safe alternative energy sources; and last and best of all; the massive amounts of petroleum that fuel our wars will dramatically shrink and, hopefully, wars will be replaced by peace.
Therefore, there is no need to fear the coming era of Peak Oil because it gives every appearance of being a natural evolutionary change in how this nation and our society must adjust in order to function effectively in the future; the only danger will come if we continue to remain totally unprepared and be blindsided when it happens. But if we fully understand what is coming our way and begin the process of accepting and dealing with it, this change in our lifestyles might be the best thing that has happened in America for a very long time.
Michael Payne
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