In lively and engaging language, this book describes our dependence on
freight transport and its vulnerability to diminishing supplies and high
prices of oil. Ships, trucks, and trains are the backbone of
civilization, hauling the goods that fulfill our every need and desire.
Their powerful, highly-efficient diesel combustion engines are
exquisitely fine-tuned to burn petroleum-based diesel fuel. These
engines and the fuels that fire them have been among the most
transformative yet disruptive technologies on the planet. Although this
transportation revolution has allowed many of us to fill our homes with
global goods even a past emperor would envy, our era of abundance, and
the freight transport system in particular, is predicated on the
affordability and high energy density of a single fuel, oil. This book
explores alternatives to this finite resource including other liquid
fuels, truck and locomotive batteries and utility-scale energy storage
technology, and various forms of renewable electricity to support
electrified transport. Transportation also must adapt to other
challenges: Threats from climate change, financial busts, supply-chain
failure, and transportation infrastructure decay. Robert Hirsch, who
wrote the "Peaking of World Oil Production" report for the U.S.
Department of Energy in 2005, said that planning for peak world
production must start at least 10, if not 20 years ahead of time. What
little planning exists focuses mainly on how to accommodate 30 percent
more economic growth while averting climate change, ignoring the
possibility that we are at, or near, the end of growth. Taken for
granted, the modern transportation system will not endure forever. The
time is now to take a realistic and critical look at the choices ahead,
and how the future of transportation may unfold.
