Turmoil in the Middle East makes many of us nervous about one crucial thing: Oil! Will future regimes in the region satisfy our ever-increasing demand for black gold? Or will those future regimes look out for their own citizens’ interests first?

If those citizens get the better life they are fighting for so vigorously, they may have more money to spend. More money means buying more cars and driving longer distances. It also means more air traffic and increased transport of goods. In short: more consumption of oil. Oil that we want too.

“Unrest in the Middle East or not, the days of cheap gas are over”, says mobility historian Vincent van der Vinne. “The current €1.70 per litre of petrol at Dutch gas stations is just a prelude to what is to come. Soon we will have to reach much deeper into our our pockets when going from A to B.”

Conventional oil, extracted by the all too familiar hammer-shaped pumps is running out. But there is still plenty of unconventional oil,  found in places like the Arctic sea bed or in Canadian tar sands. But  this is difficult to extract and thus extremely expensive. So what about bio fuels?

Bio fuels
“There is no serious future for bio fuels”, says Van der Vinne. “You need more agicultural soil than we have in The Netherlands to fuel all of our 7,8 million cars. And that is just regular cars. Trucks, ships and airplanes aren’t even included in that calculation.”

Van der Vinne thinks that production of electric cars won’t solve the energy problem either.

“They could never fully substitute the number of regular cars. For one, electric cars are much more expensive to produce. But more importantly, we need to realize that two thirds of our fuel demand is needed for the transport sector anyway. There are no such things as electric trucks, ships or airplanes.”

Mobility and use of land
Before the invention of the steam engine, there was a direct connection between how people got around – horses – and how they used land – to grow food for people and horses.  Van der Vinne:

“If we look at the 17th century for instance. Back then a working horse ate about eight times as much as a person. Taking the agricultural techniques of that time into account, you would also need eight times more land to grow horse feed. So it was easy to know how much grain you would need. If you wanted to increase your mobility too much, there would not be enough agricultural land left for crops to feed people.”

Van der Vinne says that that same mobility-land connection exists when you produce bio fuels. “Except that back then people in the Netherlands travelled about 20 kilometres per year over land… and now we travel 12 thousand kilometers.”

Ouch!
Even though we need to brace for the impact of higher fuel costs, Van der Vinne thinks that we are still willing and able to pay more money to get around. “We all know that going 90 kph on the highway reduces our fuel use substantially. But do you ever see anyone do that?”

So what would happen if fuel prices sky rocketed up to, say, €2,50 per litre? According to Van der Vinne it would not be the end of the world.

“We would still pay the same 7.5 percent of our income on fuel,  just like we did during the oil crisis of 1973. We don’t realize that we are living in a time when it’s outrageously cheap to drive a car. And that is going to change soon.”

(mw/ae/js)

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