Tomah Journal - Printable Version

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Published - Thursday, May 29, 2008

Editorial: Maintaining hyper-mobility won't come cheap

It was no fun paying high prices for gas during the Memorial Day Weekend (it was $3.929 per gallon in Tomah Monday), but Americans are finally being confronted with the high cost of mobility. Since 1974, the number of vehicle miles driven in Wisconsin has outpaced its population by a factor of five, and it’s becoming clear that such mobility can’t be sustained, either economically or environmentally.

The policy prescriptions for maintaining hyper-mobility all have limitations, including:

* Domestic oil. There are untapped reserves in the United States, perhaps enough to sustain 50 to 60 more years of current consumption. Unfortunately, they’re trapped in places that are hard to extract, ecologically sensitive or ruin somebody’s seascape. And when that oil is gone, what then?

* Ethanol. Even as corn-based ethanol finally begins to eke out some BTU gains, it’s still unclear how much land is required to grow all the plant-based fuel our cars require and how much food is sacrificed in the process. Ethanol wouldn’t exist without government subsidies, which should give policymakers a clue about its viability as an alternative energy source.

u Wind. It’s clean and renewable, but as the controversy in the town of Ridgeville proves, few people want a wind turbine in their neighborhood. Besides, there’s not nearly enough wind power to produce the electricity needed to power a hybrid automobile fleet (the same is true with solar power).

* Nuclear. It doesn’t generate greenhouse gasses, but uranium, like oil, is a finite resource. Uranium also generates toxic waste, and Congress can’t figure out a way to permanently store it.

* Hydrogen fuel cells. Perhaps this is the best long-term solution, but there is still the challenge of making, storing and distributing hydrogen on a large scale.

Here’s the reality: A society with 200 million passenger automobiles that average 15,000 miles per year will consume massive amounts of natural resources, and it doesn’t matter whether those resources are animal, mineral or vegetable. The only way to lower transportation costs is to live closer to our places of employment, cut back on discretionary miles and operate more energy efficient vehicles. There are no cheap and easy answers to keep all those cars on the road.