Hello Megacities, Goodby Sprawl

What was it the wise sage said? Diversify, friends, don't place all your hopes in single-source anything. Works for energy sources, too. But did we listen? Why should we, after all; it might not be prudent, but who looks ahead so far into the future when access to cheap and affordable promised us a world of ever-expanding opportunities and riches? We're only human, after all.

And isn't it a kind of truly rich irony that never quite occurred at the time - when England, France and the United States were all busy moving into the Middle East with their great plans for co-opting those countries' massive resources of black gold - that there would come a time when they would themselves realize they had sufficient economic gains to control what was theirs.

So here's the world relying on various sources of the same type of energy; gas and oil deposited aeons ago in the formation of the planet as we know it, when ancient vegetation turned inexorably through a process of compression and heating over geological time scales to present us with the future means by which we would heat our cities and operate our machinery.

Nature's malicious sense of humour saw fit to place those resources in countries that had scarce other resources with which to enrich themselves. Now the developed countries of the world whose management was achieved largely through the exploitation of those raw products in their investment and research agreements with the host countries who couldn't initially foresee what their oil riches might portend, find the tables turned.

Those same host countries understandably feel they've given up too much of their geological patrimony. They hadn't the initial investment and engineering resources to develop it themselves. They now do. And somehow, countries such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Nigeria, Iraq, Libya, all large oil producers, are not particularly friendly with the West, with liberal democracies.

Countries such as Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, France, Italy, Spain, India, Taiwan, and the United States are major importers of oil, requiring that energy resource produced from fossil fuel deposits in the countries where they're not particularly popular. More reliably friendly countries like Canada and Mexico are filling the breach. But all are really feeling the pinch of expanded demand, finite supply and high prices.

Not nearly as much as the under-developed countries for whom high energy prices translate to higher prices in commodities they can ill afford to pay more for; heating oil, and basic foods whose production costs have sky-rocketed with higher energy costs for production. It's an ill wind that blows no good for anyone in the world, though, since even those countries gifted by nature and geography must understand oil not to be a renewable resource.

So we're having to look elsewhere, from wind to solar, to nuclear. Reluctantly we're being forced to acknowledge that our lifestyles cannot continue to expand as they have in the past to enable us to diligently and enthusiastically capture all the leisure conveniences and material goods we've led ourselves to believe we're entitled to by a bountiful existence.

We've heedlessly built our economies on a one-track pony of energy which is diminishing in accessibility through both increased demand and dwindling supply. We're not yet there by any means, but getting there. To the point where the pain of expense will force us to retract our idee fixe of entitlements.

All those huge gas guzzlers will slowly disappear, creating another problem; disposal of all that suddenly waste material into other, more useful forms. Our cities which developed all manner of satellite outreach communities will begin a slow process of contraction, with urban infill the order of the day, and public commuting through more available public transport will transform our lives.

To more resemble those of populations living in the current mega-populated urban centres in India and China, where people too often live in virtual rabbit-warrens, and the mode of transport is far more modest and populist than our energy-wasteful habits. Homes, commercial shops and places of employment will begin to coalesce in close convenience, relegating the ubiquity of personal vehicles to the past.

We'll be returning to the reality of small-town conveniences of the past, where everything was within walking distance and people lived more communally, knowing everyone else's business. Only those small towns will exist in huge numbers as neighbourhood communities emplaced within gigantic metropolises. Actually, resembling what Tokyo is like, with its aggregate of small communities and mixed-use neighbourhoods making up its geography.

We'll increasingly realize that it makes infinitely more economic sense to export to and import from the next city, or province, than our current transcontinental importation. We'll miss the pleasures of having fruits and vegetables out of season. On the other hand we'll begin to value the work of our farming communities, understanding at last how utterly dependent we are upon them for our daily food needs.

We won't be indulging in quite the same recreational airborne travel as we've been wont to do. All of which re-adjustment will assist greatly in the newly-realized battle against global warming. We'll be sending far fewer carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, as we settle in to living in a more energy-sustainable way.

Not necessarily because we good-naturedly opt to do all these things, because we're attracted to a more basic mode of living, and we have become piously addicted to abandoning our profligate ways, but because the reality of economics and the environment dictate that to be our new necessity.