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Ecological Economics
Our modern world was built on fossil fuels, and one of the biggest uses of those fuels is for transportation. As fossil fuels decline, the problem we face is not a lack of alternative technology — electric vehicles have been around as long as conventional cars, and just about everyone can walk or ride a bicycle. The problem is that for over sixty years we have built our transportation infrastructure and designed our communities to function almost exclusively with privately-owned gasoline-powered cars and diesel-powered trucks. This trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure would take many decades to retrofit for a world without cheap oil — decades we do not have.
PCI Transportation Fellow Anthony Perl discusses the reality of higher fuel prices and how this is presently and will continue to effect daily transportation in the United States.
Anthony Perl is Director of the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia; he has previously worked at the City University of New York, the University of Calgary, and Université Lumière in Lyon, France. He has authored or co-authored four books, most recently Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil (2008). Anthony's research crosses disciplinary and national boundaries to explore the policy decisions that affect transportation, cities and the environment. He has published in scholarly journals such as Energy Policy, Transportation Research, Transportation Quarterly, World Transport Policy and Practice, and Scientific American.
Anthony's work been awarded prizes for outstanding papers presented at the World Conference on Transport Research and the Canadian Transportation Research Forum. He has advised governments in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, and the United States on transportation and environmental research and policy development, and currently chairs the Intercity Passenger Rail committee of the U.S. Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council.
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what is pci?Founded in 2003, Post Carbon Institute is leading the transition to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world. The Institute has gathered 29 of the world's leading experts on a wide range of interdependent social and scientific issues.
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