Looks very "same old" to me... pretty tame too. But I could be wrong. Not a very promising trailer.

Don't worry, the real life event will be more interesting than the movie.

Another recent documentary about suburbia, with a much different tone and focus: Subdivided: Isolation and Community in America

Subdivided is a documentary film about life in contemporary suburbia: a personal study of isolation and the struggle to find and maintain community in an era of careless development, the uninspired design of the modern subdivision, urban sprawl, and the invasion of the McMansion.

American life is more divisive than ever, and poorly designed neighborhoods further encourage isolation and separation. With no sense of place or belonging, is this the new American Dream?

I'm STILL waiting to see Oil Crash. I've been waiting like a whole year, it looks really good.

http://oilcrashmovie.com/

The Renewable Fuels Association publishes an annual industry outlook about the status of the ethanol industry. They just published the 2007 document. It has some inaccuracies that I caught but it is a good summary. Check it out.

O.K., LET'S TALK-THIS "SUBURBIA" THING

So, we have another documentary with that word. The word that all "responsible" sustainable intellectual types love to hate in the title, the Antichrist of enlightened ecological efficient living, the source of all evil upon the Earth, SUBURBIA.

Of course, we have been there, done that haven't we? Remember the 1960's, anyone, when even pop songs railed against the horror of suburbia?
Here's an example...
Pleasant Valley Sunday
The local rock group down the street
Is trying hard to learn their song
Serenade the weekend squire, who just came out to mow his lawn

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care

See Mrs. Gray she's proud today because her roses are in bloom
Mr. Green he's so serene, He's got a t.v. in every room

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don't understand

Creature comfort goals
They only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away
I need a change of scenery

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday...
-------------------------
But, 40 years later, Suburbia has not only survived, it has grown. HOW? Remember, the boomers were a generation raised in suburbia, and who professed in their formative years their hatred for it! How could it be that the generation who knew "suburbia" best, who were most indoctrinated by the youth culture and the intellectual establishment of the time to hate suburbia and all it stands for, then return to be the ultimate suburbanites? Does this make good sense?

Of course, we should first attempt to define this hated THING, this horrific hell that is suburbia....what are the facets of it that make it so horrific and detestable?

Dictionary dot com has only two short definitions:
1. A residential district located on the outskirts of a city.
hmmm, now that alone doesn't seem to explain what would make this "suburbia" the equal in many intellectuals minds to Dante's inferno does it?
"on the outskirts of a city". Should that define evil and hell on Earth? If so, why? Should it explain massive energy consumption and waste? Again, why?
We shall return, but let's look at the second definition:

2. Suburbanites considered as a cultural class.

Ahhh, now we may be getting somewhere. A "cultural class".

Is there something about this "cultural class" that is somehow adhorrent, that is somehow the embodiment of evil?

Interestingly, the trailer to the film "Escape From Suburbia" actually does tell us a little bit when you think of the "suburbanites" in those terms, as a "cultural class". You see their cars, the look of their clothes, the homes, the children's little cultural celebrations.

These are the things that will be, that MUST BE destroyed soon. Now of course, no one (ahem) wants to see them destroyed, it is just "REALITY" (a word that is gaining in importance in the explanation of the coming destruction of "suburbia", and remember, we are not only talking about the destruction of a place "on the outskirts of a city", but a "cultural class", those who embody the cultural traits, mores, and habits of "suburban" existence.

But what are those traits? What will point us to the targets, the inefficient, wasteful, detestable "suburbanite"?

There are actually a pretty tight little subset of totems (or taboos, depending on your point of view) that will guide us to the "suburbanites". These are some of the main traits they have in common, and that must be ended, so that we can clear the path to "reality":

1. They own their own homes. The fascination that "peak oil" interested people show with home mortgage finance has always interested, amused, and sometimes annoyed me. I would come to talk about energy. The board would be filled from top to bottom with home mortgage news, all bad of course. Interestingly, there is no direct causal link between energy prices and home ownership rates, mortgage rates or default rates. But the two are tightly linked in the mind of the "peak oil" crowd. Why? It took me awhile to understand that it is because home ownership is perceived as the foundation block of "suburbia". If home ownership is ended, then the cultural class of "suburbia" falls apart, or at least so the logic goes.

2. The "suburbanite" drives. Car ownership of at least some type makes suburbia as a cultural and geographical entity workable. Due to their locale, "on the outskirts", they must drive. The railroads actually made the first commuter suburbs possible, and for many years the suburban worker taking the train into and out of the city to work was an icon (think "Mr. Blandings Dream House") The car, with it's anytime anywhere ability, simply expanded the range of suburban living.

Interestingly, many of them do not have to drive far. We are talking about "suburbia", not the newly coined "exurbia", meaning that vague area even further beyond the outskirts, defined almost magically by Dictionary dot com as,
"a residential area outside of a city and beyond suburbia"
One must assume that the denizens of exurbia do indeed have to drive far, being almost in a realm beyond the beyond, as the song says "Where the streets have no name".

But for many suburbanites, the daily drive will be less than double digit miles, and in the low double digits both ways. This would not seem to be technically undoable almost without gasoline or Diesel, or with a very, very small volume of it, if the need be. But what seems most evil and unsettling is that they do own their own vehicles, as well as their own homes, and this has become culturally associated with the "suburban" evil.

3. They have children. While it is not always true, suburbanites often have children. The exact number is not specified, but again, it is part of the suburban heritage, and in many ways, was why the suburbs were born.

The number of children per person in suburbia has certainly declined since the baby boom days, with the growth of "empty nest" homes, gay and lesbian couples, single people, and retired persons but children are still there. This is part of the "peak oil" aware folks fascination with population. If people did not have children, they could live in tiny apartments with no yards, and no need for schools. People could be "compacted" into the type of worker neighborhoods dreamed of by the German and Soviet "modernist" and "Bauhaus" architects of the 1920's and '30's, childless, carless, propertyless, stripped of everything except work.

Opps. We accidentally arrived at a solution much too soon, didn't we?

The "dream" answer to suburbia! And the ultimate conundrum:

If we assume that "suburbia" is the ultimate evil, the great horror that must, REALITY dictates must be ended, then we must look at the something akin to the socialist reality of the 1930's style modernist neighborhoods as the solution, as the "good" opposing the evil. Is this true for technical reasons?
I cannot find any valid technical reason that households and transportation in the suburbs must be any less efficient than in the heart of the city, and in fact, with more roof area to capture sunlight, and more yard area to grow garden, it could even be more productive, but that is, as we have seen, all beside the point. We are not talking about a "place" per se, but about a "cultural class" that social reality must dictate is unsuitable to live on into the future. This is a specific kind of "reality", a social reality. But, those are the only kind that matter.

In the culture of the Ancient Egyptians, lives and resources were laid down to build the pyramids. We now know that the pyramids served no "practical" use in the procurement of resources such as food, shelter, or water. But the "social reality" was that resources would be spent on their construction.

In the Middle Ages, Europe would be blanketed with what historian Michael Wood called "A White Veil of Churches", the great cathedrals that stand to this day. Again, they were not "practically" useful in gaining resources for life, but in fact, the excess resources provided by human sacrifice and labor were laid down for them.

In certain ways this is true of the "suburbia" we know in America (and now, more so throughout the developed world), but these are a different type of cathedral, a "democratized" cathedral, horizontal, spread out and shared in by the millions.

This is why they seem to draw the rage of the intellectuals, they represent private ownership, private freedom of movement, private space, private dreams and dramas. They are not "social" or "communal" in the correct way.

It is now foretold that the new "reality" will end them, will return the denizens of the suburban culture to a more correct way of life, and turn the property over to (?), perhaps a new elite class, who will enjoy it in it's pristine state of nature, perhaps just return it to nature until a future generation with goals and dreams and aspirations for themselves and their families decide they wish to use the space in some other way, no one knows for sure.

But, first, the elite will be confronted with a problem: They will have to engage in the super struggle to dislocate the current citizens of "suburbia", those hated and evil people who do not understand that they are being defined as "socially" not fit to continue. We are told that the "reality" will remove them, but if the reference is to the "technical" or "scientific" reality, there is no proof that the removal of these people will be needed, despite the words and rage against them of sages like JHK or Richard Heinberg.

We must accept that the suburbanites will fight. This is not a discussion about taking just their car, or their home, or their freedom. It is about taking it all. Everything. About losing all they managed to defend in World Wars. About losing all they managed to defend in the Cold War. About losing when there is no real need to lose. About being told they must surrender when they have not even been given the opportunity to fight.

It is about giving up to a small elitist minority who have proven nothing. It is about accepting words and conjecture on faith alone. It is about accepting slavery.

Given that choice, not that it is a choice, they will throw their efforts behind the ethanol, the tar sands, nuclear power, coal to liquids, solar, wind, photo voltaic electric power, hybrid and electric cars, and all the so called "silver bb's".

Wouldn't you? Would you not fire silver bb's rather than to accept the utter destruction of all you have and all you are? Would you want to go down without even breaking the tools out of the box to see if they would work?
To lose is permitted, it happens. To die is permitted, we all will. But to go to the slavery pens of the socialist beehives without even using our talent, that would be a shame that our generation would not want to live with, would not want our children and their children to remember us for, as they lived as slaves without us even trying.

We are all in a position of choosing: The "peak oil" aware community is in a special position. We know more. I say that not to flatter, sometimes it would be better if we did not. But we do. We think because we are aware of the crucial time in which we live as it relates to energy, everyone is. We think that these things, these writings, the people, Hubbert, Campbell, Simmons, Heinberg, Kunstler and the other sages great and small in this fight (and it is a fight) are known to all. But I tell you what you already may know, to most people, this discussion is on the edge, always in danger of falling off the table. We think that everyone studies the options, bio fuel vs. grid based, tar sand and oil shale, nuclear applied to syn fuel, or to produce hydrogen, renewable applied to hydrogen, hydraulic vs. electric hybrid, PV, thin film vs. silicon, thermal solar, methane recapture, ethanol vs. bio-butanol, light rail and urban and suburban redesign for mass transit, on and on...but they do not. These are all vague and fascinating concepts to most, but there is little study of them, even in engineering and technical schools.

We who, whether we like it or not, know more, are left in a crucial role. To keep alive discussion of the art of energy, and the many art forms it takes. To educate, to help explain, and, whether we like or not, to help decide which fork in the road we will take.

The biggest decision, we will help make: Do we surrender, go back to pre-fuedal existence or to the Soviet reality beehive houses, with only the freedom to work left to us, or do we make the fight? Do we think a world in which humans have freedom of mobility, freedom of ownership, freedom of deciding at least some of their own destiny is worth fighting for?

The camps are already beginning to divide, even here. The ones who see the "neo primitivist" path, the return to the noble savage as not so bad....we can do without.....what? Piece at a time, we can do without almost everything, and consign the next generation to the same fate....nations and peoples have been slaves for generations in some cases.

Or we, knowing more, can help organize the fight, organize the solutions, spread and diffuse the options and technologies, help diversify to a new level of freedom and aesthetic creation greater than we even knew was possible in the days of oil slavery.

To some, this is to be considered a sacrilege to even say, that human creativity can succeed, and it marks me as one who will never be fit to understand the need, the "reality", to accept the slavery without a fight, to consign our generation to a dark and declining age. The camps really are splitting, and we each may soon have to go and find those of a like mind, those with whom we can communicate, those who understand that the heart of this "REALITY" is the choice we make, the road we choose to take.

It is said that YAHOO has become an acronym for "You Always Have Other Options". There are those who look forward with glee to the destruction of our age, when we walk clean and untainted by the horrific work of the technicians, scientists, industrialists, and leaders who have brought us to where we are today. That is their right.

BUT YOU ALWAYS HAVE OTHER OPTIONS

Thank you
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
(But that refers to energy, and energy is not really what this is all about, is it? :-)

Oil Drum Readers

There is a policy option available that would almost immediately start to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and would do so without raising taxes, increasing the budget deficit, developing new fuels, building new refineries, drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, or replacing gas-guzzlers with hybrids. In addition, these policies would also put more money in most people’s pockets and reduce costs related to accidents, traffic congestion, local air pollution, and transportation infrastructure.

This combination of benefits can be achieved because the US transportation sector suffers from a market distortions that encourage excessive driving: unlimited-mileage per-year auto insurance.

Currently, car insurance is sold on an unlimited mileage, per-year basis. In their 2006 paper “The Accident Externality from Driving” (reviewed in the November 16, 2006 NY Times), Aaron S. Edlin of UC Berkeley and Pinar Karaca-Mandic of RAND show that drivers’ crash-related costs may be four or five times larger than what they are currently paying for liability and collision coverage. When accident costs are thus “externalized”, drivers receive an erroneously low price signal, creating a powerful incentive for all motorists to drive more than they would otherwise and resulting in subsidies from low-mileage drivers to high-mileage drivers.

William Vickery, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1996, proposed an alternative that bases premiums on miles driven in addition to existing rate factors. Within any rating class, the less you drive the more you save, so every driver enjoys an incentive to reduce those miles that provide the least benefit, while preserving the option of driving when the perceived benefit is great. Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute estimates that the introduction of per-mile auto insurance could reduce total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 15% of more, with corresponding reductions in gasoline consumption and CO2 emissions. And because a relatively small number of high-mileage drivers account for a large percentage of VMT, most drivers could expect to pay less for per-mile insurance than they do currently.

Insurance companies won’t voluntarily adopt the per-mile basis because any firm that did would bear all the costs of doing so, but its competitors would reap most of the benefits. Therefore, public policy measures requiring all insurance companies to offer per-mile insurance (at least as a consumer option) are needed to eliminate this market distortion.

The true beauty of this proposal is that, rather than merely transferring resources from one group in the economy to another, it would result in a net increase in consumer welfare by increasing the efficiency of the transportation sector.

"Are we approaching Peak Oil now?"

We may be approaching Peak Oil (as measured by total liquids - C&C, NGLs, biofuels, refinery gains,) but we may have already passed peak production of crude oil & lease condensate (C&C).

The C&C production forecast graph has been updated to include the ramp ups to the forecast C&C production peaks for each of 120 new projects. These projects have been derived from Chris Skrebowski’s Feb 2007 megaprojects database and other internet sources. The forecast assumes that Saudi Arabia has no surplus production capacity.

The forecast shows a C&C production decline rate of -0.5%/year from May 2005 to Dec 2011.

Using the latest EIA data, the graph shows that there are three peaks, one of which might be the peak C&C production peak of all time.