Final preparations for moving the donkey foals are upon me, which has me sorting out the logistics of getting them safely home. The breeder lives less than a kilometre away, which originally made me wonder if they could be walked over but the open road is just too dangerous. If it was just a risk of them getting spooked by a sound it would be fine, but the chance of a deadly encounter with a high-speed car is too high. Instead we will be forced to load them in a horse float to be dragged by a one ton vehicle, pushed along by oil based fuel imported from another continent.
This state of affairs is a relatively recent occurrence. For most of human history the roads were one of many common spaces which were used for a wide variety of activities, not just zooming from one place to another at maximum velocity. They were places where people socialised and worked without constant fear of mortal injury. Sometimes a small section of road will be roped off for people to enjoy for a festival, but that is becoming less common over time with an army of angry motorists waiting to whine about the inconvenience.
Despite all the apparent advances in personal transportation we are really no better off. The average speed of transport in London is the same today as it was centuries ago thanks to the ever-growing congestion. The average daily commute is about the same as it was for urban citizens of the Roman empire, only everything is further apart now since everyone is assumed to have ready access to a personal vehicle. The fuel that goes into cars and the pollution that comes out of them is orders of magnitude more toxic and carcinogenic than glyphosate or endocrine disruptors, but we have built such a car dependent society over the last century that nobody can even contemplate getting rid of them.
Instead we seem determined to make electric vehicles work as a drop in replacement. Sober analysis of the minerals required to do this indicates that the world produces enough copper, cobalt and lithium to do this once for the motorists of the United Kingdom and nobody else, but the entire fleet would need to be built again in another 10-20 years when the devices inevitably wear out. Recycling the metals is a nice idea, but virtually zero lithium is recycled today, so that is another vast industrial machine that we somehow need to build overnight.
The fervent hope people place in electric vehicles ignores the multiple other uses of oil. Apart from the ubiquitous role of plastics, oil is essential for building the roads on which cars roam (regardless of whether they are ICE or electric). In the mythical city of El Dorado the roads were paved with gold. Ours are paved with something almost as precious- asphalt- the heaviest fraction from crude oil. Electric vehicles running on highways built from lithium mine tailings won’t work nearly as well. Nothing comes close to asphalt roads in terms of useful physical properties and ease of application, though modern roads wear down pretty quickly and need constant maintenance. Crude oil is separated into multiple fractions based on boiling point. Some of these are more valuable than others, so some parts of the oil economy cross subsidise others. The most useful components are jet fuel for aviation and diesel for heavy machinery. In the early days of the oil business the intermediate grades of distillate had no uses so they were poured down rivers as a waste product. Eventually industry invented the internal combustion engine for the personal automobile, and suburban sprawl was the result.
A crunch is coming, whether electric cars take off or not. The physics of electric cars is marginal, but the logistics of using battery power for heavy machinery is utterly ludicrous. A giant truck used for mining or a combine for industrial agriculture cannot afford to expend most of its fuel energy lugging around a monstrous battery. Overhead cables might work in compact mine sites, but they will never make sense on thousand-acre farms. Heavy trucking for freight is another major choke point. Australia is especially vulnerable. We produce about half the oil we consume but it is mostly lighter grades. Our refineries have all been decommissioned so our crude oil is shipped to Singapore to be blended with heavier crude and refined. Finished diesel and other fuels are shipped back again. We have zero strategic fuel reserves, so if shipping is interrupted the supply in the system would only last a few days.
Nations and empires are held together by communication, trade and the projection of state power. All of these rely on rapid and reliable transportation. Consequently, nations and empires tend to disintegrate when transportation fails. In the fifth century AD the western Roman empire finally disintegrated, around the same time as a similar collapse of central power in China. The Roman road system was abandoned and the vast bulk of trade took place by ship until the industrial revolution (though European geography made this a sensible choice). In China the road system was not abandoned, but instead simplified. Instead of the double wide roads suitable for ox-carts maintained by central authorities, the new Emperor decreed that all land holders were responsible for creating smooth footpath-width roads alongside their properties. These allowed horses to travel, but more importantly were used by freight carrying wheelbarrows. This maintained trade across the region during a time of decreasing social complexity and helped catalyse a rapid recovery when conditions improved. These wheelbarrows feature a large central wheel, so the driver only needs to push the load. In the windy western states they were rigged with sails so the driver only needed to steer.
How will our modern oil-dependent transportation system adapt as it is strangled of its lifeblood? Australia has around 44 km of paved roads per capita, among the highest in the world. I doubt even the most enthusiastic Aussies would volunteer to maintain a bush track of that length. Will our population centres become disconnected from each other? Aussies have the most mobile population in the world. Maybe in the future local cultures will have more opportunity to evolve. Will electric SUVs become the sole domain of the ultrawealthy, rumbling down disintegrating roads abandoned by failing authorities? When will cars become rare enough that the roads once more become a place for people, a place for livestock to wander without constant fear of death or disability?
One thing is pretty likely. In the future we will still spend an hour or two each day getting where we need to go and back again, whether it be with a rocket ship or carefully picking our path through the brambles. Hopefully we will have some donkeys to help us on our journey, provided we can keep them out of harm’s way during the ordinary chaos of today and the extraordinary chaos of tomorrow.
Hi Shane,
It would appear that you've truly got the cart before the horse (donkeys)!
How ironic is it that we now haul animals around, where once they hauled us around!
Good luck with your new ehaws, & keep an eye out for winnie the pooh!
Excellent read. I've been thinking about similar things lately - namely *car culture* and how successful of an export it was for the Yankees. If they hadn't been in just the right circumstances (early capitalism, car companies, ample resources - most importantly oil) the world would probably look a lot different now. Likely a lot more public transportation (which early car manufacturers actively lobbied against, to expand their market). Of course, Europeans would have started building more cars as well, but I doubt that they would have created *an entire way of life* around them. It wouldnt even make much sense from an economic perspective, since Europe has almost no oil reserves.
I was sitting right by the four-lane highway down in the valley the other day (waiting for a bus with my brother-in-law), and it's at times like these where those realizations hit me really hard. The sheer tonnage of cars that drove by in about half an hour is absolutely mind-blowing. Each person moving around a fucking ton of steel at all times. The utter dependency of basically everyone in society on cars.
And how completely normal all this madness is for the average Joe. Not a single second thought.
Definitely one of the most successful exports of Yankee "soft power."