James Kunstler, for instance, argues in his 2005 book The Long Emergency (see Rolling Stone excerpt here) that after oil production peaks, suburbia "will become untenable" and "we will have to say farewell to easy motoring." In Rolling Stone, Kunstler writes, "Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." (No -- that distinction probably belongs to China's torrid love-affair with coal power.)
But suppose Kunstler is right about peak oil. Suppose oil hits $160 a barrel and gasoline goes to $5 dollars a gallon in, say, 2015. That price would still be lower than many Europeans pay today. You could just go out and buy the best hybrid and cut your fuel bill in half, back to current levels. Hardly the end of suburbia.
The 'Comments', not this article by the GRIST were great... http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/29/01347/293
"Comments on ..latest post: It never ceases to amaze me how informative and helpful Romm is concerning the science of global warming, and how incurious he seems to be about solutions. In particular, he obviously is not very interested in trains or walkable communities, and I don't just mean the occasional reference.
He obviously is not doing much reading on oil. $5/gallon by 2015 is also pretty funny, if it wasn't tragic, because it will likely be much higher by then. But the point [odograph] is not exactly what the price of oil will be when, the point is that we should be seriously considering alternatives to classic suburbia, which fortunately many contributors to gristmill do."