How Oil Prices Will Change the World

These are my rosiest predictions. And I really mean it. This is best case, the way I see it.

As energy prices continue to rise and push other prices ever higher, people will want to...be forced to...stay closer to home. Zoning laws will have to re-adapt to pemit and even to encourage neighborhood businesses. Cities will be forced to re-think massive investments in "build it and they will come" suburbs and regional malls. Businesses will be forced to allow employees to telecommute in order to attract high quality workers. Municipalities will surely begin taxing businesses on the basis of employees' carbon footprints, so the closer the employee is to the business, the less tax the business will pay. The transportation/distribution systems that we have come to take for granted will become highly valued; there will be an enormous surge in demand for access to, and proximity to, distribution systems. This, paradoxically, will occur at precisely the same time that demand for "hyperlocality" (see below) soars.

As zoning laws change (but don't keep up with social change, which will far outstrip municipalities' ability to respond to the real world), the growth of residential-neighborhood-based businesses, both retail and business-to-business, will accelerate well beyond the capacity of cities to keep up with them. These businesses will be smaller, much more personal, and highly competitive for the business of smaller markets. For people who have grown accustomed to their "pure residential" neighborhoods, this change will seem like the world is coming apart. And, in fact, what they will be witnessing will be the beginning of that process.

Cities like Dallas, which heretofore have purposely segregated businesses from their customers through the use of zoning and which have staked their futures on what all of us have believe was the immortality of the internal combustion engine, will find themselves unable to cope. The new realities of citizens' lives will result in radically changing expectations about what cities should be doing and should have done. Cities will be forced to respond to demands for IMMEDIATE projects to dramatically improve public transportation, create bicycle lanes on roadways, and undertake other projects that will ease the pain of having to deal with the new realities of gas prices.

Globalization, long the rallying cry of politicians who want to "lead" their subjects constituents into a make-believe future, will begin to be viewed as the monster it is (it is not inately so, but is made so by the forces of the free market, which can turn even the most innocuous process into an ugly and dangeous mutant). An equally unrealistic reaction, that of "hyperlocalism," will emerge as the "way of the future." [The term "hyperlocalism" has been used to describe media coverage at the neighborhood level; I use it here to describe a reaction to globalism that takes provincialism to entirely new levels.] Hyperlocalism is apt to breed insularity and distrust between nations and even between cities and states. "All politics is local" will take on a new and much more ominous meaning.

Trying to forecast the rolling impact of change on society is one of my favorite pasttimes. But I wish I could believe that the impact of oil prices on our society will be as rosy as the picture I just painted. In reality, I think we are witnessing the beginning of what will be a massive collapse of civilization as we have come to know it and the ultimate demise of humankind. When we talk about what the world will be like in fifty years, I think we're engaging in wishful thinking of biblical proportions. In fifty years, I think it will be The World Without Us (a book I've mentioned before, but still haven't read...time is running out).