Technological Narcissism: Pay No Attention To Those Bumps In The Road

[peristaltor]

For those of you still unfamiliar with M. King Hubbert and his now-famous theory of "peak oil," do look up Wiki entries on his name and theory. If you don't, not only will this entry seem curious (if not completely unhinged), but so will reality.

If you're still curious about what this might mean for, well, everyone on earth,

Comments

[peristaltor]

Interesting. We recently had a cut-back scare here as well, one that didn't go through. The list of cut runs, though, was pretty evenly spread throughout the county, probably to get as many vocal protests to the council meetings as possible.

I agree, the forth is the most likely long-term option, and the one that will be fought the hardest. The segregation opportunities brought by cheap petroleum-fueled transport are found frickin' everywhere. There's a parkway in New York deliberately built with 9-foot overpass crossings, too low for buses, to deter the bus-riding black folk from visiting the beach.

For another more local example, here in Seattle we are now tearing down The Alaska Way Viaduct over our waterfront, built back in 1949. It was built to re-route traffic passing through downtown from the North end (north of the Ship Canal) heading to build airplanes at Boeing (just south of downtown). Why didn't Boeing workers simply move closer to the factory (other than airplane noise, I mean)? Boeing jobs were white and good-paying back then, even on the assembly floor. . . .

. . . And houses north of the Ship Canal were sold only to whites. A friend's grandfather from Croatia couldn't even buy north of the Canal back in the 20s, and today Croatian is considered quite white indeed. I still have (somewhere) the original codicil for our 1942 north-of-the-canal home that stated which races (other than live-in servants) could be in the homes after sunset.