Black Gold Fantasyland

After spending some time riding the rails and getting stuck in traffic in Japan, a country of 127 million people, stuffed on a geologically unstable piece of volcanic real estate a little smaller than the state of California, it hit me; these people, though still dependent on foreign oil (hence their involvement - unpopular involvement - in our Iraq adventure) for industry and their very small cars, have an incredible infrastructure of rail and just plain peddle power to fall back on. So while people drive, they drive extrememly fuel efficient cars as gas is sold by the litre for a little less than what we pay for a gallon. Tolls on their highways hover around 5 dollars and they come upon the driver with an astounding regularity, so as you can imagine, there isn't much gridlock on their highway system. Not so on the surface streets.

For example, to travel between two of the towns I was staying in, Yokkaichi and Tsu, takes a quick 30 minutes by express train (fewer stops than taking a local) though to drive the same distance took an hour, no matter what. Why? Traffic. So, as we move into this new millenium and try to build a better plan for our future, perhaps what we really need to be looking at is how to pull that rusty needle of oil out of our arms and truly seek better ways to fuel our crazy lives. I saw a lot of solar panels on peoples roofs in Japan - I never see this here in the USA. Anyway, here is a good piece I found in the Atlanta Creative Loafing concerning our current situation and how soon we might see a complete reversal as the suburbs become the new slums due to rising oil costs.

JUNKY TOWN

Also, check out this month's Wired magazine if you are interested in Hybrid technologies and how the Chinese may in fact leap frog all of us due to their willingness to accept hybrid and new eco-technologies. This is not out of any great tree-hugging love or respect for mother earth, but due to the economic damage that dependence on fossil fuels will do to their economic miracle. The Article. Our mother earth will not be spared due to any altruistic need to save her, the dementia of greed is far to powerful to ever harbor feelings for the well-being of "the other" but it is that same greed that may actually save her in the end, as the self serving industries of the world, being no slouches when it comes to seeing the bottom line, understand theoretically at least, that they have got to get off the dope and find new drugs to sate their apetites for money.