[PRCo] Re: Another "Shoulda Coulda - could it be?

[Fred Schneider]

Valid question and I am not sure how to give a valid answer.  Just  
like everyone else, Fred knows what Fred wants to believe.  There are  
a number of factors in this soup that might make it happen or might  
make it not happen.

1.  Americans have a long history of spending more money than any  
culture I know of in an effort to distance themselves from people  
whom they feel are inferior to themselves.   They call it moving to  
the suburbs and having a patch of green around themselves.  When the  
Yankees told the Southerners they had to integrate their schools, we  
up north responded by emptying out our cities and moving to the  
suburbs and creating a new form of segregation.   There is a very  
strong preservationist movement to keep the suburbs as they are.    
Interestingly, Jerry and the rest of you, I live in the richest  
township in my county.   I grew up in this same suburban township.    
It was 100.00000 percent white in the middle of the 20th century.    
Today the township is still the richest but it is 3 percent Asian, 3  
percent Hispanic, 1.5 percent Black, and only 92.5 percent White.    
My next door neighbor is a black registered nurse.  My great  
granddaughter is half and half.   Maybe we are doing a better job of  
learning to live with each other because it may be necessary to save  
the world.   But as long as we fight wars over the premise that My  
God is better than your God or over who has the oil, I don't know  
that we will survive.

2.  ExxonMobil is telling us that we have used up 17% of the world's  
oil.   People who don't have a vested interest in trying to sell the  
product claim we have used up about half of the conventional oil  
resources and that it is going to get so bloody expensive in the  
future that we will not be able to use it for transportation.  In the  
past if the price of gasoline went up and consumption dropped, that  
forced the price back down.   It isn't happening now because India  
and China also want the oil.   The price isn't going to drop.  What  
is your gasoline going to cost next summer?  Maybe $5.00 or maybe  
more.   A week ago I heard a prediction on NPR that crude will top  
$200 a barrel in two years.   If I use a percentage increase to the  
current gas prices, then I get $6.00 a gallon.   If I use the normal  
ratio of 1:20, then I get $10.00 a gallon.   So pick a number  
somewhere between $6 and $10 for summer of 2010.   My favorite  
Chinese restaurant is hurting because people can't fill their gas  
tanks and go out to eat.   Mrs. Ku is also upset because normal cash  
customers are charging their meals and she is loosing another 3  
percent of her business that way.  My favorite men's clothing store  
is having a going out of business sale.   We can be sure that  
expensive clothing, meals out, model trains, motels, airlines and  
things we don't need are going to suffer most.   Movies will probably  
do OK because historically we needed to be entertained in depressions  
or recessions.

3.  Assuming that the price of fuel continues to rise and that oil  
becomes too expensive to use for a motor fuel, then there is a reason  
to believe, Jerry, that we will need to make major adjustments to our  
life.   I think we will walk more.  We will ride bikes more.   We  
will probably move back into cities or initially into apartment  
blocks in suburbia.  (I may have made the most stupid mistake in my  
68 years, but I bought a bicycle today.)   But there will be  
tremendous fights against sensible living because you or your  
neighbor do not want cheaper houses next to your or their expensive  
home because home prices go by neighborhood averages (notwithstanding  
the fact that the expensive home will not be expensive if you cannot  
afford to heat it and therefore cannot sell it).   What is a city?    
It is a politically defined piece of ground with an imaginary  
boundary around it.   When I say move back into cities, I am not  
saying necessarily into the City of Washington or the City of  
Pittsburgh but I am suggesting that we will find it necessary to  
create densely patterned housing that looks and feels like a city.    
In time Bethel Park may feel like a city.   Can you visualize tearing  
down a few blocks of houses around Dormont Junction and replacing  
them with high rises?   That is easy to see.  But the city may not be  
where the city was but I think if I came back in 2075, I would see  
people living in communities that resemble cities again.  The city of  
2050 or 2075 may well be Bethel Park or Donaldson's Crossroads.   I  
want to believe that 50 years from now a lot of our suburbs will have  
been leveled and converted back to farm land.   But in reality, the  
single family homes in the suburbs may be torn down and replaced by  
apartment blocks if the population continues to grow.

4.  If we then live in communities with cities, it seems logical that  
we might have fixed guideway transit lines to serve the people.   But  
Jerry, one of those cities might be Orlando if the ocean doesn't  
flood that far inland.   Can you visualize a new city somewhere  
northeast of Atlanta?   I can.

5.  There is also a population growth problem.   Can we restrict  
growth?   China tried too and is now paying the price with too few  
young people working to support a huge elderly population.  Are we  
allowing people to live too long?  Maybe we can get Dr. Allman to  
address that.  I tried to rope my own doctor into that argument  
yesterday and I found that he agreed with me, i.e. that we are  
creating a problem where the world cannot support the population  
because we have such wonderful medical care that we don't let people  
die.  And now we want to take farm land out of food production in  
order to make ethanol to run our cars, when it uses more energy to  
produce the ethanol than it produces?   Sounds like a farm subsidy  
plan to me.   But whatever happens in points 2 and 3 are dependent on  
how we solve or fail to solve 5.   Knowing how politicians work, we  
will solve 5 with blinders.

6.  This time Jerry, your should, coulda, woulda question opened up  
what could be a doctorate thesis.   I don't have answers.   I just  
can postulate a thousand more questions.

Time to go ride my bike so I can live longer and eat your food....

P. S.   You can buy a bike for about 10 tanks of gasoline.

On Jun 12, 2008, at 11:15 AM, Jerry MATT Matsick wrote:

> Well Gentlemen thank you to "Fred and all" who responded on the  
> Should Coulda Woulda question,
> now I have a Could it be possible one day?    Seems to me the  
> suburbs of Pittsburgh in whatever
> direction you go  seem to be vibrant and growing, my question is  
> could it be possible that one day down the road (maybe not in our  
> lifetime) could a Washington Pa LRV route be built, seems like an  
> awful
> lot of new homes being built along 19 south from Allegheny Cty,  
> into Peters Twp and onward
> to Washington Pa to warrant a "Rapid Transit" line?    These people  
> must be working in
> Pittsburgh somewhere?    Also was there or is there talk of  
> extending the T Northward after the
> "tunnels" are done?   Also a line back out to Oakland area would  
> seem to be good also.
> Just missing the "rails Jerry" !
> Jerry Matsick
> --
> From the RIVER CITY by the Sea!
> Jerry "Matt" Matsick
> J A C K S O N V I L L E, Florida !
>
>