The film, "End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream", basically talks about how America had suburbs after WWII, which leads to a huge amount of use of resources later on. Creating suburbs was a good idea. It provides the soldiers to have quiet place to live, since suburbs are far away from the urban world. However, because of that, people living in suburbs have to drive in order to get nearly anything.
Unlike "Enron: Smartest Guys In The Room" this film doesn't really inspire people. It only does the job of reminding people the problem we are all facing. It is undeniable that transportation plays a huge role in most people's life. We need it to go to from place to place and, even for the ones that have markets right near by their homes, the markets, themselves, need transportation to get all the goods. In order to save time and so we can use spend more time doing something else, vehicles become a very helpful technology. Only problem here is that most them need oil, and oil is finite. To be more realistic, it "is" going to run out pretty soon.
What could help save the situation? A lot of scientists and engineers are now working on trying to find something else to replace oil. It would be good to have an infinite amount of replacement, such as solar power. While we are either still finding the solution or waiting for people to find one, there are things we can do to help at least save a little bit more resources for all of us to use in the future. Although it costs money, I always prefer to take public transportation. I mean, even if we drive ourselves, we will have to put money into the gas station anyway. So why not just use the public transportation that is always there running in the circle? A lot of people have been asking me why haven't I started practicing driving and get a license yet. Yes, I usually say it's because I'm lazy. but other than that, it's because I don't think it's a must. Look at me now, I can still get to go to many different places by walking, biking, or taking the public buses. When I'm in my internship up in Taipei, MRT really saves my life. Even if I need to go to somewhere that is not in Taipei, MRT doesn't go to, and has no bus stop, the worst case would be calling a cab.
We have tons of scooters here in Taiwan and those drinks oil like a beast. I guess most Taiwanese would prefer to buy a scooter is because of its price and it's easier to park a scooter. The problem with scooter is that it can not carry a lot of people. I have seen some Taiwanese can put 3 or even 4 passengers on one scooter but I'm pretty sure not everyone is able to achieve that. It is usually either one or two people on a scooter. Compare with cars, which usually have between two to four people in one vehicle, a scooter only has about half of a car's opacity while it could use more oil than some cars do.
The major problem here in Taiwan is that we don't have a very well designed public transportation yet, except for Taipei. Places like Tokyo doesn't have this kind of problem. Tokyo has an extremely well designed subway that decreases pollution and cleans up the roads. Better public transportation will help save more oil.
image: drew from a friend, Sarwar Z. Khan.
3 comments:
Ooh, I learned something today. XD I didn't know scooters used up more fuel than cars.
Kind of relevant but not really relevant: I heard somewhere before that the more people you carry on a car, the more gas it will consume. But still, I guess it's better than going on two separate vehicles.
Personally, I don't think this documentary was any less inspiring than Enron. This makes people conscious of where all the fossil fuels are going, and makes us realize just how fast they're depleting. It's a huge scare, which will encourage people to do something about it. Even if individually, you can't do much, at least you'll try your best to not worsen the situation.
I liked your post. Good point about the public transportation system in Taiwan being good enough for you to not need a car. I had very similar points about the scooters. Very well-thought-out post. Keep it up.
Mr Truchon knows of a man that sells electric scooters. You should ask him to show you the scooter he got. It was more expensive than the gas ones but if more people buy the electric ones the price will go down.
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