The LA Times has an interesting article on what will happen if oil prices hit $200. In short, activities that require lots of oil will become incredibly expensive. And in Southern California, just about all activities require lots of oil. Michael Woo, a member of Los Angeles's Planning Commission, says "it would be the urban-planning equivalent of an earthquake." Yes, in the sense that it would convince people to stop to building on the fault line. Because that's what we've done, basically. Build a lifestyle contingent on cheap oil, with no backup plans for the day when oil -- which we knew was a finite resource -- became expensive. It's exactly like building on a fault line. Good land now, and we'll worry about tomorrow when it gets here. But market economies are dynamic things. As oil-intensive modes of living become intensive, alternatives will begin to seem cheap. And that may have some benefits. The internet, already a backbone of our communications infrastructure, will become crucial for transportation and delivery. Telecommuting means you save on energy. Transmitting everything from video games to health records to cable bills electronically means less driving. Expect those trends to intensify. That would be a good thing. Moreover, there's a line towards the end of the piece where the authors say, "And spending less time stuck in traffic on the 405? Priceless." That's actually a rather important point. Southern California has developed a transportation infrastructure and set of commuting norms that are actually really awful for people. Folks hate traffic. Happiness studies show that there's virtually nothing worse. Public health studies show that gridlock increases heart attacks. Reordering society such that alternatives have to be found and transit infrastructure has to be developed may well be one of the best things to ever happen to the LA area. No single improvement could do more to better the local lifestyle. But because an alternative to commuting is expensive, and requires a lot of upfront money, the activation energy has never quite been mustered. Until now.
