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Leila: Welcome to mojo.com, I’m your host, Leila. In our interview with the writers of Transport Revolutions moving people and freight without oil, Anthony Perl and Richard Gilbert tell about their relationship between transportation, oil, and conflict.
Anthony: It’s not gonna be a smooth curve in terms of escalating crisis, even though price have been basically trending steadily upward over the last 5 years now. At some point, there could also be other political crisis and that involves the military conflict over rather remaining oil resources at an international scale. And at local domestic scale, it involves local conflict and competition for access to what might not be reliable supplies. I mean, when people’s SUVs become empty and they have to walk away from and try to push them along the side of the road. There’s gonna be some potential for violence around refilling stations. People will try to push ahead in gas lines potentially as happened in the 1970s. The difference today, unfortunately in the United States, is there’s a lot more weaponry out on the streets. And that would prompt an adjustment by government away from just an open market like in the idea of rationing can't be ruled out under this concept of circumstances. And once you put in rationing, it can have some equity and if people allotment but then all of the innovation and efficiency that comes with a flexible pricing. And the market-based system is put on hold and it makes the adaptation to these transport revolutions even harder if we wait till we get to that crisis point.
Richard: We think about the United States being very dependent on Middle East oil and maybe having even invaded Iraq because of that and suddenly being concerned about Iran because of. But China is actually more dependent on that least oil than the United States, quite a bit more dependent in terms of getting imports from that part of the world. Also China which has historically had an armed forces that is very much focused on China and its borders is now very rapidly developing armed forces that have an international reach that is soon moving to have a navy as big as the United States maybe, which is huge. It is training its troops to operate in other parts of the world, Africa and the Middle East. The possibility of conflict over these resources that are vital both to China and to the U.S. is becoming increasingly high. We’re not near there yet but the possibility is getting higher. What we really need is this to come quite a way up on the international agendas so that there can be some rational discussion about it rather that it being the 800 pound gorilla in the corner that nobody’s talking about this matter of oil depletion. The climate change agenda has taken over. In Europe, they’re just beginning to say that people agenda should have equal time but the climate change agenda, worldwide that needs to be done too.
Anthony: We’ve put in some planning tools in the book that we think would be very valuable to redesign transportation systems based around energy. Right now the people who are trained and coming out and who are already practicing transport planning and policy analysis. The ones who advise the politicians and gives them often refill short sited or incorrect advice don’t really have the tools to understand the energy implications of oil depletion and what that means in terms of what has to change in the transport system.
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