🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <65971@cup.portal.com> compata@cup.portal.com (David H Close) writes:

>dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu provided a common non-sequitur,
>" Getting people out of there [sic] cars is more than a point of
>" political correctness: At current usage rates, known oil reserves
>" will last us maybe 100 years or so. This includes oil reserves in
>" protected areas.
>
>It has *always* been true that known oil reserves would run out at some
>time in the future.  At nearly all times this century, that deadline has
>been sooner than it is now.  In fact, known reserves have expanded faster
>than usage, even when exploration has been artificially restricted.  The
>trend is for the deadline to be moving further into the future, not closer
>to the present.

The idea presented is far from a non-sequitur: conservation is
necessary to reverse the trend toward resource depletion, whether it
be in petroleum, gas, air, or unpolluted dirt.  And the automobile as
we know it here in L.A.--one person to a car, internal combustion
engine burning petroleum--is not an efficient means of transportation.
Ask any physicist anywhere.

>How can anyone, competent enough to use Usenet, seriously
>expect that technology will stagnate for the next 100 years, so that the
>problems faced 100 years from now will be exactly those we face today,
>except that the oil will have been exhausted?

Speaking of non-sequiturs....

Betting all on technology of the future reminds me of those who are
cryogenically preserved at time of death, hoping for a cure that may
or may not come, in the future.  Actually, the analogy should include
those persons' not making an effort to seek medical attention while
alive.  We cannot rape the planet without regard to the future.

>rob@xyzoom.info.com (Rob Lingelbach) offered more nonsense,
>" I believe "if you build it, they will come": build another freeway,
>" and the traffic will fill it.  To capacity.  And we don't need more
>" traffic.

>We don't build freeways so that they remain unused.  Of course, they get
>used!  But there is a natural limit:  one person can only drive one car
>at a time (for the forseeable future, anyway).

With no passengers, and in gridlock.  A rosy picture.

>Can you imagine the telephone situation in LA if the phone companies said,
>"add more numbers and people will use them", then refused to split the
>area codes?  You can't eliminate a need by restricting supply - the demand
>just goes elsewhere, less efficiently.

Does making a telephone call--indeed, having 1 million people make
telephone calls--decrease the quality of life in L.A.?  No.  Do 1
million people driving their polluting, non-renewable,
resource-depleting automobiles to work, one person per car, degrade
the quality of life in L.A.?  Yes.



-- 
Rob Lingelbach KB6CUN | 2660 Hollyridge Dr LA CA 90068 213 464 6266 (voice) 
rob@xyzoom.info.com   | "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or 
robl@netcom.com       |  cat are not the better for it."  --Abraham Lincoln