Jeff Rubin talks about planes trains automobiles and avocado salad
Jeff Rubin has had a busy morning. With a radio interview already done he’s sitting with me in the Raw Bar at Hotel Arts. Canned soft jazz bubbles across the room the clink of forks on plates in rough accompaniment. When the server comes over he jokes with him that he’s back already having eaten here earlier and it’s not even 8:30 a.m.
We order coffees and talk about his new book Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller a work on how the end of our cheap oil economy is going to make globalization a memory.
But I can’t resist the obvious. My first question has to be about GM. Considering his book argues car culture will be a thing of the past GM’s bankruptcy must hold special significance for him.
“I have no problems with unemployment insurance for unemployed autoworkers” he says “But I do have problems with us making a long-term investment with taxpayers’ money in an industry that I think is doomed to obsolescence.”
He argues there are much better ways to invest the billions of dollars earmarked for various rescue packages and bailouts. Rather than citizens essentially owning failed companies income support for unemployed workers would be more effective in diminishing the concomitant problems of the bankruptcy and save the taxpayer money in the long run.
“I think this is a permanent downsizing of the auto market” he says. “The days of 16- 17-million vehicle sales in the U.S. are over. We’re going to look at a market that will be half the size. I don’t think those plants are ever coming back so why are we investing in our past when we should be investing in our future?”
Many policy wonks and analysts Rubin included are heralding the need to make public transit that future. When the car market shrinks fuel prices spike and suburban commuting is no longer an option Rubin thinks public transit has to pick up the slack.
“When those people get off the road they’re going to want to get on a bus. Right now there isn’t a bus to get on.”
Public spending he says is wasted on the likes of GM and Chrysler as well as in building new roads and highways. Whatever the short-term stability in doing so the long-term implications will result in a deficient mass transit infrastructure unsuited for the post-car and post-cheap oil economy Rubin describes in his book. But I ask how can the transition between car culture and transit culture be successfully achieved?
“We have to do the equivalent of what America did in 1954 with the American Highway Act with public transit” says Rubin identifying the mass infrastructure projects that created the famous American interstate system.
“We have to be making this investment now because” he says with a snap of his fingers “you don’t just go — puff — there’s a subway.”
Ultimately in his opinion it will be the market that will compel huge changes in economic behaviour. People he says respond quickly to price increases.
“I don’t think it’ll take long back in triple-digit oil prices before our world starts changing very very radically” he says.
The change will come rapidly — more rapidly than most other analysts assume according to Rubin. Although he doesn’t give an exact timeline he hints at a metric of decades. Such a speedy transition can raise questions about how turbulent and potentially violent this could be if food prices skyrocket as much as fuel will.
“I don’t necessarily see it in apocalyptic terms” he says. “It’s only apocalyptic if we continue to insist on having the lifestyle of the past — a lifestyle predicated on cheap and abundant oil. If we insist on eating avocado salad in the northern part of North America in February we got a problem” he says laughing.
