Random thought

There's a lot of doom and gloom around right now - the economy sucks, the environment is teetering on edge, fire, flood, etc.

But for some reason I find it fascinating.  The world is going to be very different in twenty years - perhaps not as big a change as electricty or the computer have had on our society, but, let's face it, regardless of whether we actually run out, oil as a source of energy is on its way out.

The biggest obvious impact is going to be on transportation.  Automobiles are going to have to evolve to other fuel sources fairly quickly - they're becoming too expensive to the economic class that made them so widespread.  Air transportation... that's a harder one, although if the demands on oil that the driving population currently makes are drastically lessened or removed, flight may remain affordable for a while.  Whether it's feasible to move planes to a non-hydrocarbon fuel source, I don't know.

I'm curious how this will ultimately impact rail travel.  It's not feasible right now for the simple reason that there are a lot of places you just can't take a train to - I'm looking at going to a conference in Oswego in August, and the closest the train could get me is Syracuse.  The times also cut things close; I couldn't really get there without staying extra nights.  Local commuting by rail is impossible here; tracks run all over, and we have Amtrak service, but you can't get from Schenectady to Albany by train.  The Albany station is across the river in Rennselaer; you'd have to take the bus or a cab from the station to actually get to Albany.  And Saratoga is just out of the question.  And me?  I work all the way out in Cobleskill.  It's 32 miles; a rail option would be great.

Anywho...  Some people are all caught up on the negative of our current economic and environmental situations, but really, in order for us to feasibly survive the next twenty years, we're going to have to make changes: renewable energy, transit reconfiguration, urban revitalization, localization/globalization balancing, and so forth.  And I think it's going to all be fascinating to observe.