Reply #11: The problem is, how do you pay for all the new development

[NickB79]

When you're knee-deep in the middle of the next Great Depression? We face a conundrum:

-People won't spend the trillions of dollars needed to gain us energy independence until prices are sky-high. Even at $3/gallon this summer there wasn't some mass awakening and outcry from the general populace. There was a lot of grumbling, a lot of finger-pointing, but very little acceptance of the fact that our car-based mode of living must be discarded for something better and more efficient. People cling to their cars and trucks and SUV's screaming "From my cold, dead hands" ala Charlton Heston even while they're paying $50/week on gas.

vs.

-By the time it actually does sink into the collective consciousness of the American people that we are hitting Peak Oil, we are already beginning to enter the next Great Depression. Unemployment skyrockets, businesses falter, and the government loses massive amounts of taxes we need to fund the building of trams, trains, nuclear reactors, solar cells, wind turbines, livable communities, etc. The resources needed to build all these things will also cost more to extract and refine without cheap energy like we have now. The US government will also be forced to pump up spending on police as crime rates shoot up, and on welfare programs to keep millions of newly homeless people from starving on the streets. I doubt banks will be very forgiving to the millions of unemployed suburbanites who bought or built houses outside their means with 30-40 yr loans and variable interest rates.

I agree with you that it won't go from idyllic suburban life to urban street fighting overnight. However, it may take decades to return to anything resembling a stable economy and social order. Even with technological fixes, you need the capital to impliment them. No other nations will borrow us the money when our economy is tanking and we're already swimming in national debt. Even the Great Depression of the 1930's took a decade to fully dissipate, and they had the benefit of cheap energy, more livable communities, far less dependance on oil, and a fairly low population on their side.