’Tis the season to be jolly. So let me wish you fine
wine—or your own wintry nog of choice—while I regale you
with a knock-knock joke.
Knock, knock (says I). Who’s there? (you reply). Yule Log!
Yule Log Who? Yule Log Fewer Miles A Decade Hence Than A Decade
Ago.
Jolly? Sounds like I’m predicting a lump of coal in your 2020
stocking rather than a diamond. But it depends. I’m actually
channeling common sense. Said common sense means dollars and jobs for
Nevada.
We’ll drive less in the United States of 2020 than we did in
2000. We’ll live in a different world. How so? Clues abound.
Billionaire Warren Buffet purchased Burlington Northern Santa Fe
because railroads will carry a large slice of goods at cheaper cost
than truckers as motor fuel costs escalate.
Consumers will drive less to run errands or shop, in part because we
are learning to bank, buy, etc., online and partly because motor fuel
costs will escalate even as cars downsize and go hybrid.
To earn money, more of us will operate home-based businesses or
telecommute.
Current caterwauling in Copenhagen over climate change may
accomplish little because the international community is in turmoil
over who gets what, as usual, but it highlights an accelerating shift
in this transition period.
In China, India and other emerging nations, the trend toward putting
vehicles at the center of life is on a roll. In the developed United
States and European Union, homes are recovering centerpiece status
because moving people around will prove less efficient than moving
energy around.
The individual vehicle, much like the single PC on one desktop in
the computing world, will remain in the mix. But both are becoming part
of a mosaic woven with different threads and in different hues. Less in
the red, let’s say, and more in the green.
Cars recede. Smart grid, non-petrol energy and networking gain
favor.
Despite this, a recent issue of the Economist magazine splurged with
three pages of analytic coverage and a full-page leader (what Brits
call editorials) on an automaker. “Toyota Slips Up” the
magazine’s cover blared in big type.
Media tends to look in the rearview mirror or overemphasize here and
now.
The magazine devoted a full page to Copenhagen climate change talks
under the heading “Filthy lucre fouls the air” but just
two-thirds of a page to coverage of the debate over peak-oil in a story
headed “2020 Vision.”
The latter story reported the International Energy Agency’s
chief economist, Faith Birol, sees peak oil as possible by 2020. To its
credit, the magazine nailed the meaning.
“Mr. Birol’s willingness to acknowledge that
conventional supplies may peak in a decade’s time points to a
subtle shift in policymakers’ attitude towards the ‘peak
oil’ debate,” the writer said. Deft Brit understatement
there, my good man.
Let’s cut to the chase. Peak oil means after all the cheap oil
is produced, a huge price spiral accompanies world economic recovery
because extraction costs keep increasing along with demand. But it
doesn’t even have to be reality. When policymakers and markets
believe it, petroleum costs will zoom. Behavior will change.
What about the Nevada largesse?
Shifting emphasis from muscular machines to greening of America
means much for the Silver State. Geothermal already is getting
millions, much of it in Nevada. Solar and wind development also are on
tap. Such development means money and jobs.
Time marks the difference between a lump of coal and a diamond. Stay
jolly and stay home to check your stocking in 2020.