Transport

It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate change, the end of cheap oil, and policies to mitigate these two challenges.

... In addition to the corporate response, there is a second, more local, noncorporate response. This response is found in the Relocalization and Transition Towns movements now springing up in many developed countries. It is a bottom-up response that includes individuals and municipalities planning for a post-peak-oil future and altering their way of life.

The word "carpooling" usually conjures images from the 1970s: service stations warning "No Gas", lines at the pump, and bell-bottom pants. For many people, carpooling brings to mind quaint notions of penny-pinching habits that went out of style along with turning the thermostat down.

But the history of carpooling goes back almost as far as the invention of the automobile itself, and has endured well-beyond its heyday in the late 70s, according to a publication by MIT's Rideshare Research.

So familiar has the social economy of energy become in modern societies, so routine its extraordinardinary wastefulness, so toxic its effects, that the capacity for a better way can be missed. By questioning the how, why and what of energy use, new possibilities - of living, travelling, eating, working and buying - can open.

I don't particularly like cars. I don't like the way they smell, on the inside or the outside. I don't like the feeling of being trapped in a sheet metal-and-vinyl box, my body slowly warping to the shape of a bucket seat.

If any of this seems strange to you, then there may be something funny going on inside your head and you should get it checked out. Around the world, for over a century, people everywhere have used the bicycle to get around in every kind of climate and weather.

High oil prices ensured that profits at the major oil companies rose again in 2011 – Shell’s full year profits leapt 54% to $28.6 billion while Exxon’s increased 35% to $41.1 billion. With this kind of money at stake it is no surprise it is almost impossible to get a sensible debate about our energy future...

-Rails-to-Trails Conservancy Busts Myth That “Nobody Walks” in Rural America
-What’s the Best Way To Get Users To Embrace Mass Transit? - Make it pleasant? Or make it efficient?
-House Transportation Bill “a March of Horribles”

- How to run a PERMABLITZ!
- Ten lessons from the great cycling cities
- Cracking Open the Scientific Process (NYT on 'Open Science')
- De la cultura del 'pelotazo' a la inversión 'lenta' (Slow Finance)

- Could Ecuador Be the Most Radical and Exciting Place on Earth?
- El Mundo: Cómo bajar de marcha sin perder el tren
- Le “Peak Everything” (ou la fin des haricots)

The Australian Daily Telegraph published today a story on a leaked government report (BITRE 117) which (optimistically) calculated peak oil around 2017, followed by permanent decline. The report raises questions to be answered by the Federal Government.

An peak oil report for the Australian government has just surfaced. Although the report was finished in 2009, it apparently was never released to the public and does not appear on a government website.

Conclusion: "the prospects for the potential supply of world conventional petroleum liquids can be summarised as ‘flattish to slightly up for another eight years or longer (depending on the duration of the global economic slowdown) and then down’. Such a finding poses challenges for global transport and more generally, given the magnitude of the downturn foreseen for the rest of the century, and given the inertias inherent in our energy systems and transport vehicle fleets"

(Excerpts. Link to complete report.)

A school bus pedaled by kids, the world's largest bike-share, and other innovations that are changing how we cycle.

MARCH 21, 2008. The calender says spring is here, twelve hours of sunlight, seed catalogues, almost empty woodshed. Outside, Mother Nature will have none of it...

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 22, 2011. We’ve just had our warmest November on record. The woods and fields are brown and unfrozen....

Short of a supply disruption, it is hard to imagine U.S. gasoline prices going to $5 a gallon this year, although $4 looks like a good bet. The economic and political turmoil that would ensue as gasoline climbed beyond $4 without any obvious cause would be unprecedented. With the US in the midst of federal elections, pressure on the administration to do something as more and more people were forced out of work would be unprecedented.

For being such a seemingly ordinary vehicle, the wheelbarrow has a surprisingly exciting history. This is especially true in the East, where it became a universal means of transportation for both passengers and goods, even over long distances.

After being acclaimed as America's best city for biking, what can you possibly do for an encore? Well, in the case of Minneapolis, you do even more bicycling--and more walking too.