Old Habits Die Hard

Anticipating high fuel prices would mean more expensive airline tickets, I bought my ticket weeks ago. Even in August, the South African Airways office in Seoul was quoting the ticket price plus 'fuel quota'.
On MSNBC Americans preparing for the Christmas holidays are finding that there are no cheap tickets left. Some airfares have already doubled. Airlines are shedding flights to save fuel costs, which means there is less and less capacity. People who wait for prices to drop will find themselves unable to buy tickets at all.
Right now the expenses are being quietly absorbed. The airlines are living lives of quiet desperation.
But even as this reality sets in, countries like India order 50 new Boeings for their fleet.
In Beijing, 30 000 new cars are added to the streets every month. That's 1000 each day.

The first casualties in the airline industry will be budget airlines like South Africa's Kalula.com, and others like Easyjet. More will follow in 2006.
The first casualties on our roads will be the big trucks. Trucking goods over long distance is one of the most wasteful activities people do today.

Countries and cities with good railway networks, and subway systems, will fare better, but in many cases, these same countries also support topheavy populations that already use these systems to capacity.
A country like South Africa needs to develop its railway infrastructure. Those cities that once used streetcars (trains in cities) may well resurrect them by 2010 when the reality really sets in.
The later changes are made the more expensive they will be.

In Cape Town, the use of water canals is already under development. It's likely that the original goal of this development will soon be superceded by the economic benefits. Could Cape Town emerge as a sort of Cape Venice, with the Waterfront spreading seawater arteries under the whole city?

South Africa in recent years has suffered from a strange mixure of severe flooding and droughts. Last year in the Western Cape, clouds burst over towns, flooding the streets up to the height of windowsills.
The country has just experienced one of its warmest winters in decades. Last week, when large parts of the country were about to unpack their swimming trunks, snow fell on the Drakensberg. They were the first snowfalls of the year, and they fell in the middle of spring. The town of Harrismith experienced its coldest maximum day temperature (5 C)for any day of the year since 2001.
On the flip side of the planet, South Korea has experienced one of its hottest summers in history. And in the Gulf of Mexico, the Hurricane Season has been catastrophic, by the end of November it will more than likley be the busiest Season ever (the Hurricane Centre currently has only one name left for Tropical Storms - Wilma - before switching to the Greek Alphabet - something that has never happened before.

The way we respond to our changing climate, with resistance and hopefulness, provides a mirror image for our attitude towards the impending catastrophes: Energy, Economic, Worldwide Disease.

The first half of the first decade of the 21st century has gone by in a fairly stable and orderly fashion. The world economy has hummed along pretty much like it did in the 20th century.
But landmark changes are on the way. The next 5 years will set the trend for the decades that follow.

In The World Is Flat, star New York Times writer writes convincingly about the merits of the American economy, providing many insights and support for a world that can only improve (connect, flatten, grow closer) in the coming years. He pays special attention to oil, but only to show how the countries who drill for it, have no responsibility towards their populations, because they don't need tax from their citizens. They get their government funds through oil revenues directly.
What he and millions of intelligent people have failed to appreciate is that all the interesting effects will reverse and become meaningless once an Energy Crisis, the extent of which the world has never seen, hits home.

The question no one has asked is this: What will countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia do when the oil powered engine that drives their economies (and the world's) begins to breakdown? Saudi Arabia's largest oil field, Ghawar, which produces 5% of world oil, is already in decline, at a rate of 8%. Iran's fields are also past their peaks.
What will happen to these entire countries and their populations, who produce very little else, and grow none of their own food? The answer is this:
These countries may be invaded or annexed before they themselves disintegrate, probably in the same way that Iraq was. Iraq may become an enormous staging ground, as military conflicts on either side converge. If America is struggling now, one wonders what an even broader conflict will engender. The answer is that other countries bearing the brunt of the Oil Crisis, like China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany (the G8 essentially)will involve themselves more deeply, and more fully, in these conflicts too.

But that would be a conventional conflict. We already know that countries are no longer willing to engage in conventional warfare. They know an assymetrical approach, which is essetnially terrorism or guerrilla warfare, offers better odds for survival. This ushers in what Dick Cheney has called The Infinite War. We have already seen its preview, on a small scale:

9/11 > Iraq Invasion > Insurgency/Resistance > Military Operations and ongoing Occupations > More terror plots.

The Western World continues to operate in denial. We already know that we have found no new reservoirs of oil. We're exhasuting what we have, and extraction and consumption is accelarating. Now all substantial remaining oil resources are in countries that hate America.

America reminds me of someone diagnosed with cancer, or a terminal disease. It's immediate response is aggression and denial, and in some, in very few cases, a Lance Armstrong Event, does happen. More often than not, sad to say, peaceful acceptance is the better alternative. America has been diagnosed with energy addiction, and it needs to respond by rehabilitating itself, changing its energy infrastructure, adopting massive energy/consumer-related conservatism.
That won't happen because Americans, most of us, have not evolved enough. We have entertained ourselves into beliefs that will not serve us in the coming years. Unfortunately, the lessons we need to learn will cost us dearly.

Our technologies form a wafer thin barrier, at this moment. We are still conducting our lifestyles the way we did yesterday, moving to where we want to be, buying what we want to buy, eating and drinking for entertainment, and in the interim, placated by television, inspired by glossy commercials and shiny new toys. Gradually each of these accoutrements will be deleted from our lives. The silence on the other side will soon erupt in collective uproar.
That feeling you get when you find you have to pay more money for the things you did yesterday, that feeling will intensify over 2006.
2006 will see the beginning of New Limits set on our consumption.
The article below will seem deluded, in the new context.

It may seem strange to offer this peacefilled philosophy,given the above context, but here it is anyway:
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Bear that in mind, and then, without asking permission, get to work in meaningful ways. Do things you know you need to do - that form part of the Great Work that stands before all of us.


Full-Serve Lingers in Self-Serve World
By Elizabeth Douglass Times Staff Writer
Sun Oct 9, 7:55 AM ET

Like many motorists, Albert Menaster has watched with alarm as gasoline prices zoomed past $3 a gallon.

But when he drives his 1998 Ford Windstar into Silverlake 76, Menaster stops at the lone full-serve nozzle, where customers can bark a command heard mostly in old movies: Fill 'er up!

In a world gone self-serve, Menaster belongs to a pool of full-serve holdouts who pay as much as 50 cents more per gallon than their self-serve brethren. If he pumped his own gas, Menaster could save $4.50 with each fill-up. But he and others say not even the unrelenting rise in gasoline prices can force them to the cheaper, do-it-yourself pumps.

Paying the higher price assures them of an oil check, a clean windshield and some special attention. And in a city where people complain of feeling disconnected, it also provides a human touch.

"Yeah, it costs more," said Menaster, who heads the appellate branch of the Los Angeles County public defender's office. But "Paul, he and I became friends because of it…. Now it's as much a social event as anything."

Menaster was referring to station owner Paul Sawan, who is often there waiting for him. They joke and talk about world events, court cases and, on one recent day, about the book "Freakonomics" — a bestseller that uses statistics to help explain human behavior.

It's a ritual that grew out of Menaster's misbehaving gas tank, which shut off the pump before his tank was full. After Sawan found a way to fill the minivan's tank without spilling, a friendship blossomed.

Menaster, 56, said he had no intention of letting soaring gasoline prices ruin it now.

Visit a local station that offers full-serve and you get a good sense of who uses it: Seniors. People who should read "Auto Repair for Dummies." People with company cars and expense accounts. And others who can't stand the thought of dripping fuel on their clothes or having their hands reek of gasoline.

Dawn Josef, among the 15 to 20 motorists who buy full-serve each day at manager Gurnam Singh's Chevron in Encino, said she began paying extra to have attendants pump her gas while she was pregnant. She got hooked and never went back to self-serve.

Silver Lake resident Bridget Arian, 83, has been going to Sawan's 76 on the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Fletcher Drive for the last 25 years. Her loyalty is underscored by the "76" ball on the antenna of her Nissan Sentra. She became such good friends with the former owner that they still call each other.

On a recent Friday morning, Arian called out, "Hi, Carlos, it's already open."

The longtime attendant, Carlos Campuzano, returns the greeting, starts the pump, then lifts the hood.

Full service, Arian explains, is easier for a woman her age.

Because her driving is limited to local shopping, she comes to the station once a month. Arian spent $14.05 to buy four gallons at $3.199 each — 22 cents a gallon more than self-serve.

After getting her change, Arian waves and drives off.

Nationwide, about 20% of the nearly 169,000 gas stations still offer full-serve to customers, according to trade publication National Petroleum News, which doesn't break the data down by state.

Finding one can be a chore, except in places such as New Jersey and Oregon, where statewide bans on self-service have been in place for decades despite periodic attempts to remove them.

Under California law, all gasoline retailers must provide fueling assistance to the disabled at self-serve prices. Exceptions include stations with a single employee.

Full-serve is still the norm in San Marino, 12 miles east of Los Angeles. City officials dumped a self-serve ban five years ago but still limit gas stations to one self-serve island — unless stations get a special permit.

In its heyday, full-serve was the core function of every gas station. When cars tripped the station bells, attendants dashed to the pumps, said John Jakle, a professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and author of "The Gas Station in America."

"There was the uniform, the manner in which the customer was greeted and served, the wiping of the windshield, the free air, the checking of the oil," he said.

The demise of full-serve started in Los Angeles in 1947, when an independent operator named Frank Ulrich opened the first self-serve gas station with the slogan, "Save 5 cents, serve yourself, why pay more?"

Ulrich stunned naysayers when his station, on the corner of Jilson Street and Atlantic Boulevard, sold 500,000 gallons in the first month.

By the 1970s, self-serve was permitted in 42 states. The energy price shocks of that decade hastened the trend, persuading oil companies to experiment with convenience stores, in which stations would cut staffing and make money from snacks and soft drink sales instead of fuel and car repairs.

When a 10-cent gap developed between the cost of full-serve and do-it-yourself fueling, business plummeted at full-serve pumps.

In an unscientific online poll earlier this year, gasbuddy.com found that 93% of those surveyed would choose self-serve instead of full-serve.

Most dealers can't afford to set aside pumps for the trickle of full-serve customers. With oil companies hiking their rents, operating costs on the rise and per-gallon profits squeezed to pennies, "it created a situation where if you didn't do the volume, then you just couldn't make it," said Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station & Automotive Repair Assn.

At his 76 station, Sawan said he loses money keeping the full-serve pump open for a handful of regulars. Even that group has been dwindling. "With the price of gas going up, people are trying to save money by going selfservice," he said.

Sawan acknowledges the business folly of hanging on to full-serve. But, he said, "when you see older people coming in and they have been coming for 30 or 40 years, you feel bad not to give the service."

Menaster said he resists pleas from his children to ditch self-serve. He reminds them of the gas tank problem, and that it takes an experienced hand like Sawan's to fill it properly.

What happens if he gets a new car? Menaster admitted, a tad sheepishly, that he might stick with full-serve.

Otherwise, he added, "I'd have to come up with a way to still hang out with Paul."