GUEST VIEW: Are we parked in a past era?

However invincible it seems to us now, the automobile age is coming to an end. The reasons are obvious to anyone who has been reading the news (as opposed to watching television, where the automobile struts about proclaiming itself the invincible guardian of American freedom).

There will soon be a massive realignment of our economy away from petroleum and toward more sustainable forms of energy. And not because a bunch of tree-huggers convinced us to be nice to Mother Earth, but because (1.) there will soon be no oil, and (2.) if we don’t stop putting carbon into the atmosphere, our children will face the Biblical-sounding catastrophes of plague, flood and starvation. The twin forces of peak oil and global warming are going to reshape our communities and our living patterns as the discovery of petroleum in Titusville, Penn., and the invention of the assembly line in Dearborn, Mich., did in the past century and a half. We are going to have to reinvent the way we live, work and play, and I would not bet on the parking lot as the great symbol of our 21st century urban life. And by the way, don’t assume we are going to just substitute ethanol for oil; it takes oil to grow the corn to make the ethanol.

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