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Twenty years of delay

The negative consequences of the greenhouse effect on the climates of the planet are already widely recognised by the scientific community. Human activity is causing damage that is very difficult to repair, and its consequences may be catastrophic. In spite of the evidence, governments and international organizations react awkwardly and slowly, like turtles before an advancing fire. For decades there have been active minorities in all countries that have been very worried about the environment, but they have little influence on the unconscious majorities so that it is the latter that directs governments’ actions with regards to the protection of the planetary ecosystem.
As far as transport, which it is one of the most aggressive human activities towards nature, is concerned, we have been delayed by at least twenty years in the application of alternatives. During this time a technological trend that can be very beneficial in ecological terms has been spreading, but it has been restrained by an adverse socioeconomic circumstance: the low price of petroleum.
It is common opinion that the gradual increase in the price of petroleum is the most undesirable thing than can happen to the economy of a country and the consumers’ pockets. It is one of those ideas of wasteful economy that leads our civilization on the path to continuous wars and environmental deterioration. It is a basic axiom to maintain the blindness of the so called consumer society. Any true advance in ecological terms and in transport development comes from refuting it.

It is necessary to determine with objective criteria that petroleum is cheap and it has been so for many years in developed societies. Generally, whenever a consumer good undergoes a price increase, consumers have a subjective appreciation that this good is expensive. It is a constant phenomenon that happens with any product and any price, based on a relative valuation. As a very illustrative example we can look at the change that happened in 2002 when diverse European national currencies became one, the Euro. Since then, in any survey done in any affected country, the immense majority of the population will answer that the Euro has brought about a greater cost of living. Nevertheless, an economic analysis from a scientific point of view shows that it cannot be so since the same consumer goods are on the market, it’s the same population and the same distribution with the new currency as with the old one. It is impossible that all people lose in the change, since what those who pay lose those who receive win; and all consumers are payers and earners, since nobody can pay what he/she does not have.
As with this example, concerning the cost of petroleum and its derivatives, the subjective appreciation of the consumer is always that they are expensive. How then are we to find an objective criterion to determine if in certain economic circumstances they are cheap or expensive for the whole of the society?

There is no criterion as objective as the observation of the degree of waste. Somebody who has an authentic diamond necklace does not use it three or four times and throw it away later, because it is expensive. With petroleum and its derivatives there are very well-known signs of waste, at least in developed countries. Let’s see some examples:
- In region A, a producer of cow’s milk, great amounts of similar milk coming from region B 500 kilometres away are sold. In the second region great amounts of milk from the first one are sold as well. The prices of both products are the same in one region as in the other. From this case it is inferred that the transport cost is negligible, it does not influence the price enough to deter such useless global scale transfers.
In this same way, toys, shoes, cars, motorcycles, televisions and many other articles made in the Far East flood the markets of Europe and America. The price of their transport is negligible. It does not influence enough to prevent such products crossing the planet to be offered at a lower price than the local ones.
- Night photographs taken from satellites show immense conglomerations of lights that draw the profile of urban zones in different continents. These points of brightness are greater in the cities of the rich countries than in those of the poor ones. Astronomers complain that light pollution harms their observations. The reality is that enormous amounts of light are reflected into space, which supposes a wastefulness of energy that comes, to a large extent, from petroleum. Not only by the deviation towards space is the waste of light observed. Generally, public and private illumination obey wasteful customs. Lampposts illuminating zones which nobody uses all night, light bulbs lit in unoccupied rooms, lamps illuminating offices and classrooms where the light of the day enters through the windows… are habitual phenomena. Football matches are played during nocturnal hours. To watch them, many flood lights of great power are necessary. The price of energy does not force play in daylight, as was formerly the case. This happens because the price of energy is negligible in relation to other factors.
- Conversion of electricity into heat is very ineffective. In order to secure the temperature required inside in winter direct combustion offers better energy efficiency. A society that for convenience heats up the great part of its rooms with electrical current is a wasteful society.

 

 

 

These statements of waste, together with many more that could be added to an interminable list, take us to a conclusion free of subjectivity and also of ideological prejudices: At present petroleum is cheap for the whole of society in developed countries. It is spent as if it were an abundant good, when in fact it is not. We know that the petroleum reserves of the planet are running out. Experts alert us to the catastrophic energy and economic crisis that awaits us when petroleum reserves start to dry up and prices increase quickly.

Therefore, as we argued at the outset, the low price of petroleum constitutes a very negative socioeconomic circumstance. We summarize the reasons to be as follows:
- It is negative from the economic point of view because humanity will have just a short time to adapt when petroleum has run out, and this may bring about a world-wide crisis with very serious consequences, among them a war of competition for the last reserves.
- It is negative from an ecological point of view because the massive combustion of petroleum and its derivatives is the main cause of the greenhouse effect and other serious environmental damage.
- It is negative from the point of view of international security because the peculiar geostrategic circumstances between the producing countries, the consumers and the intermediary companies combine to create a most dangerous instability in the already-punished zone of the Middle East.
- It is negative from a technological point of view because the artificial extension of the petroleum era restrains the development of  alternatives.

The twenty years of delay in the application of new transport solutions may be very expensive. Society has consumed petroleum unconsciously like the person who consumes too much sugar and  pays for it later with diabetes.

We said at the start of this article that a technological trend exists that can be very beneficial in ecological terms and is being restrained by the price of petroleum as far as its application to transport is concerned. That trend is computerization. For twenty years, all types of industrial, commercial and administrative processes have become computerized, whereas in the scope of transport the vehicles and systems of the mid 20th century predominate. If it were not for the price of petroleum, transport computerization would already be very advanced on the following fronts:

     
- The combination of supply and demand data of trips, that through phones and the Internet would generalize the agreement of the trips, long and short ones, between the travellers and the transport network, and would result in the achievement of the public trip with minibuses that would gather the various travellers at the door of their origin and deliver them to the door of their destination.
- Automatic guidance based on guide ways different from the conventional ones, and combined with speed separation by means of light elevation.
- The electrification of engines.
- The creation of specific narrow conduits for freight.
These elementary factors of transport computerization constitute the door that opens towards the transport of the future. It is urgent to open it.

 

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