Yes, they’re more convenient, precisely due to the longstanding public investment in supporting automotive-only infrastructure and pointed lack of public investment in other modes. The “free market” had very little to do the rise in popularity of automotive travel which dominated after intensive public works investment to support the new industry. And I’m not saying that was bad. We’ve had a good sixty year run on this single mode and I expect another 10 years of automotiveness if only from our “psycology of investment” syndrome. That’s a pretty long run for a public policy developed in Eisenhower’s administration. But developing the built environment is expensive, time-consuming, requires public investment and it requires a long lead time. That’s why it is the purview of policy makers and not the vagarities of the marketplace. The era of arranging our lives to depend on a personal automobile trip to do everything meaningful in our day is dwindling and about time too.

There are other costs besides the diversion of precious oil to personal transportation. There are the ~40 thousand Americans killed each year by cars, The acres of impermeable asphalt covering and choking our soil and interfering with our ability to move about our local spaces or develop human-scaled land uses. Even the lowered cost of relocation sometimes touted as “freedom” has resulted in a discardable landscape where no one will stay to build and nurture a community as it’s easier to just move on to former farm down the road converted into a cheap housing estate where they need a car to get food, work or just see other people.
I don’t advocate tearing down an existing mode of transport but further investment in an automotive-only amenities is ill advised. There’s just no future in it.

And another thing – just because we drive rather than walk/bike/transit doesn’t mean we aren’t more eco-sensible than our coworkers from Suwannee or Lawrenceville. My round trip commute is half a gallon of gas. I put less than 5k miles a year on my vehicle. A gas tax hike, which I totally agree with DEM on, wouldn’t really impact me.

That said, the prospect of reduction in use is not immune to the realities of human behavior. Green marketers discovered this in the early 90s when they banked on a body of consumer research that said people would pay a bit more for things if those things were good for / not bad for the environment. In the abstract, that’s how people like to think of themselves but, on the supermarket aisle, it doesn’t play out that way. People shop deals. It wasn’t until marketers figured out that you need to match the benefits (cost and otherwise) of other products, then use green as your trump card, that they started getting real traction.

Using less oil can’t just be the “good” or “right” thing to do. It needs to be the more logical choice on all levels… more convenient, equally or more affordable, better quality of life, safer, healthier, etc. Some of this can be accomplished by the type of taxing DEM refers to, some with greater investment in alternate forms of transit, some with demographic changes and new interpretations of what constitutes the “good life.”

The question is, does the political will exist — from the federal to the local level — to prioritize oil use reduction and incentivize/encourage/facilitate the type of individual initiatives and decisions that will ultimately make it happen?

Don’t get me wrong — I am all for using less oil, for many reasons. And I do that in my personal life. They could (and should) tax gas to the hilt, it would make little difference to me. That harkens back to my original point: so many Decaturites want everyone else to use less oil, but they sure seem to insist on driving their own car to work everyday, based on those poll results.

If it’s the latter, it sure sounds like the opposite of your feelings about the U.S. deficit.

I don’t have an hour to follow up on DEM’s post, but it is clear that the only thing we should know, is what we don’t know.

Al the huffing and puffing reminds me of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb