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We have just returned from the Charlotte Film Festival. It was a great time. We were really impressed by the film selection there. It’s always a wonderful experience to spend time with other filmmakers. It gets the creative juices flowing. Sprawling From Grace was very well received. Our Q& A’s were really lively. We heard over and over that “Everyone in America should see this film.”

The irony was that as our film played, Charlotte was in the middle of a serious gas shortage. Numbers were down at the festival because people couldn’t get there. Gas stations all over the area were shut down. There was no gas to be had anywhere. People could not get to work, let alone leisure activities.

The Charlotte Observer reported that violence was erupting:

“Lines, traffic backups and scuffles at the pumps dominated in Charlotte on Thursday and Friday, with people in some cases parking at gas stations overnight, waiting near the pumps with their gas gauges on empty.”

Around 8:30 Friday morning, a woman in line at a Citgo station in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood told others in line she was saving a place for her father, who was on his way with gas cans. The station was selling only premium gas and had a 45-minute wait.

Several customers got out of their cars and began cursing at the woman, who went nose to nose with one man before someone called 911 amid a chorus of car horns. In pouring rain, one man threatened to “hurt” the driver of a Ford F150 who was confused by the line and got to the pump before him. Two police officers arrived and calmed everyone down.

At a Texaco at Independence Boulevard and Sharon Amity Road Friday morning, motorists waiting in line for up to an hour honked horns and yelled at each other. One woman trying to back out of the swarm of cars hit one.

“It’s a mess, man,” said LeRoy Talbert of Charlotte, who stepped out of his car for a cigarette break while his girlfriend stayed in line with the car. “This is getting crazy.”

The scene was similar in north Charlotte. Sara Ratclif waited an hour in the rain at a Texaco at North Tryon Street and Bingham Drive to fill her Honda Civic, which she needs to get to her job waiting tables at a SouthPark restaurant.

“If I don’t have gas, I can’t get to work,” she said, “and if I can’t get to work, I don’t have money.”
It is no wonder that the people of Charlotte were moved by our message. They are experiencing the pain of living without the ability to move around unencumbered. They know it is real.

Crude oil prices rose dramatically on Monday making the largest one day jump in history. The price went up as much as $25.45 a barrel at one point before settling at $120 a barrel by the end of the day.

Prices swung lower Tuesday, falling below $107 a barrel. It was crude’s first down session in five days. However, as global oil supplies grow ever smaller and the dollar continues to weaken, the fact that the U.S. government has had to come forward with a $700 billion plan to rescue Wall Street will only make it more likely that investors will shift funds out of equities and back into commodities like oil. As a result, oil prices are likely to go back up to record levels.

Is it just me or are there a slew of new ads trying to convince Americans that we can achieve energy independence( EI).  They all seem to be drinking T “Boone” Pickens Koolaide and jumping on the the natural-gas band wagon.  This particular ad delivers a soothing message touting the fact that the US has enough oil and natural gas to power 60 million cars and a 160 million homes till 2060.  Yeah, that would be great if there were only 60 million cars and light trucks on our roads today, instead of 260,000,000.  I have not been able to find the statistic for how many individual households there are in the US, but with a population that has surpassed 300,000,000 I am certain it is more than 160,000,000.  Oh yeah, and let’s not forget about powering our economic engines, and the energy it will take to power all those businesses. 

The sooner we quit glossing over the issue of this looming energy crisis with these soft reassurances that communicate, “Keep doing what your doing.  Don’t change your habits.  Consume energy like you always have…” the sooner we can come to grips with the reality that mother nature has dealt us.  These are not forever resources.  We have a limited amount of time, and a limited amount of remaining resources to - if everything goes right - get us through to sustainable and renewable technologies that will allow this experiment of human kind to continue.

The best strategy to acheiving energy independence, if that will ever be truly possible, is through curbing consumption.  This can be easily achieved by mandating a doubling of fuel efficiency in US automobiles.  Not by some far off date.  Effective immediately.  This would have the benefit of reducing carbon emissions, and thereby stemming global warming.  It’s not rocket science, there is a direct correlation between fuel consumed and carbon emitted.  Anything that technology can improve upon here is an added bonus to my favorite mom, Earth.

More important than increased fuel efficiency, however, is America’s need to start driving less by changing the way we develop cities.  We must end the development practice of Suburban Sprawl.  I could pound these keys all day, but this is better explained in the film Sprawling From Grace; Driven To Madness.

Oil prices continue to plummet in response to the crisis on Wall Street. Prices dropped more than a $10 a barrel in a dramatic crash as the continuing calamity in the stock market stoked fears of an economic disaster and signal another drop in U.S. energy demand.

Only two months ago crude was at $145 a barrel. It is now down 8 percent for the year. In spite of a pledge by OPEC to cut supplies, prices fell below $100 last week.

The US Department of Energy lowered its forecasts for 2009 global crude oil demand, and the International Energy Agency cut its estimate for demand growth this year by 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) and for 2009 by 140,000 bpd.

Check out Reconnecting America’s web site www.reconnectingamerica.org, the site states:

Reconnecting America is a national non-profit organization that is working to integrate transportation systems and the communities they serve, with the goal of generating lasting public and private returns, improving economic and environmental efficiency, and giving consumers more housing and mobility choices. Reconnecting America provides both the public and private sectors with an impartial, fact-based perspective on development-oriented transit and transit-oriented development, and seeks to reinvent the planning and delivery system for building regions and communities around transit and walking rather than solely around the automobile.”

This really is a great source with a wealth of information on all things related to transit-oriented design. There is a great interview up there now with Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer who was featured in Sprawling From Grace. He gives a great perspective on what constitutes good TOD (transit-oriented development). He emphasizes that it is all about walkability:

“The idea is that people are more likely to use transit if they can walk to the station than if they have to drive, park, and then get on the transit system.” Go check it out.

Google and General Electric are collaborating on technology and policy initiatives to promote the development of additional capacity in the electricity grid and of “smart grid” technologies, cleaner power generation and greener transportation. They will begin by working on enhanced geothermal and plug-in vehicles, specifically electric vehicle-enabling technologies. They will also lobby Washington to encourage investment and innovation in renewable energy sources.

GE CEO Immelt said “There’s fundamentally two things that have to be done, and both of which we’re working with Google on. One is that there’s going to have to be more capacity, and if we really want to drive renewable energy to where it could be in this country, we’re going to have to have more transmission and distribution.”

“The second thing is that there’s got to be a ’smart grid’ which allows it to operate more effectively both in the last mile, but also as you wheel power around the country. That’s fundamentally software and gadgets,” Immelt said.

The money you save in the first year of ownership of some hybrids will make up for the premium you pay to purchase them. According to “Which hybrids save you money” a report in the October issue of Consumer Reports, six out of the twelve hybrids the watch group looked at — the Toyota Prius and hybrid versions of the Ford Escape, Chevrolet Malibu, Toyota Camry, Chevrolet Tahoe, and the Saturn Vue are able to save buyers between $500 and $4,250 even without tax credits, and pay back their price premium after only one year. Tax credits are available for several of these hybrids that will allow owners to save even more.

Yeah!  Americans are changing the way they get from place to place!!  We have curtailed our driving at a historic rate this year.

The Department of Transportation said figures from March 2008 show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.

Compared with March last year, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles. According to DOT’s Federal Highway Administration, it’s “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.

The American Public Transportation Association report says that Americans took 2.6 billion trips on all modes of public transportation, including subways and buses, in the first three months of 2008, a 3.3 percent increase, or almost 85 million more trips than in the same period last year.