[lbo-talk] U.S. oil production soars

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 08:10:48 PST 2011


[WS:] 'Laziness' was a shortcut. I know a lot of people who do not use transit because they 'want to hop into their cars and drive when they want it instead of learning how to navigate the transit system" - as one person explained it to me. Some of it may be laziness, some of it cultural preference for private space (car) over shared space (transit) and some of it discomfort interacting with ethnic minorities who are the main users of transit in the US.

As to the relative absence of transit urban and regional planning - this is a multi-layered problem as well. Some of it is lack of funding, but a great deal of it is public opposition to transit projects, most of it for thinly veiled racist reasons. I worked for local government and attended enough public hearings to know that for a fact. Housing and transit are two main pillars of the US informal apartheid system.

Wojtek

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 10:23 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> [WS:] Actually, the "unconventional" oil reserves are much larger than
>> a conventional ones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
>> At $100+ per barrel for WTI (or $115+ for Brent) the prospect of
>> extracting these unconventional resources looks 'economical." So from
>> that standpoint, the oil reserves are not likely to "peak" any time
>> soon.
>>
>> Otoh, extracting "unconventional" oil is a far dirtier than the
>> conventional one - so the prospect of trashing the planet is far
>> greater.  However, that has never been a consideration  if the money
>> is to be made or if the Americans will have to move their lazy asses
>> out of their cars.
>>
>> Wojtek
>
>
> Worthwhile, until the end.  The voluntarism of laziness is sociologically
> and politically problematic.  Car culture, at this point, is utterly and
> completely embedded in the built environment of the US just as mass transit
> was built out of it and bike/walking routes were never built in.
>  Furthermore, the laziness argument suggests that, somehow, all those folks
> taking mass transit around the world are less lazy.  Living in and around DC
> you are surely aware that where there is good mass transit in the US people
> almost everywhere use it very intensively... often to the point of degrading
> the experience if not the public resource itself.  And yet neither urban or
> regional development plans usually include aggressive expansion of mass
> transit through existing development or as a component of urban renewal or
> new development.  Last, I know any number of people who use their cars all
> the time and work out, whether running or biking on the roads or on hills or
> in gyms, pools, fields or court complexes (public or private) like fiends -
> they work hard and play hard, its not about laziness its about regional
> growth machines and national power relations.
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