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Originally Posted by Charlatan
This does not necessarily imply skyscrapers rather it suggests higher density. The tract housing that is our suburban dream has turned into a nightmare of highways, cars and the energy sink that is the average suburban home.
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Thank you, Charlatan, for clarifying my a-little-too-pithy statement. This was what I was implying. The problem with our cities is that we don't have a sensible setup: we don't live, work, shop, and play in the same immediate area. Could you imagine not
requiring a vehicle of any sort to do all of these in your typical week? No? Well, how do you think we got by for the past several thousand years? I know societies have changed based on necessity, but don't you think we have new necessities? We are killing ourselves with pollution. Our communities are fragmented as apathetic individualism runs rampant. I could give you a laundry list of problems that would at least in part be alleviated if we rethink our cities in structure alone.
Driving across a city should be a luxury, not an inevitability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlatan
For me, I would like to see the price of gas go way up. The higher it goes, the more affordable alternatives become and the more incentive there is to develop other forms of cleaner and/or sustainable forms of power.
As long as oil/gas as a fuel is still affordable, nothing will really change.
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Ugh, all we'd have to do is remove the bloody government subsidies to the oil companies! They'd have to pass on the losses to the customer, prices would go up, and we'd have to actually adapt to the inevitable: an energy crisis that isn't likely to be fixed by increasing capacity/production/reserves. It's ridiculous to think of the amount of energy North Americans consume compared to virtually any other country in the world. A crisis? Our consumption is the biggest part of the problem.