Great Graphic: Peak Driving

Pundits have talked about peak oil and peak water, and peak nearly every finite resource. A peak in certain behavior is suggestive of a potential social shift. Paul Kedrosky at Bloomberg tweeted this Great Graphic from dshort.com.   It shows the change in miles driven by Americans adjusted for population.  It peaked in June 2005, and has since fallen a little more than 9% to return to levels last seen in 1994. 

This decline in miles driven is the largest since the time series began.  It has already considerably longer than the pullback seen in the late 1970s/early 1980s.  The magnitude of the reduction is also 50% larger.  It is also telling that the decline has continued through the economic recovery. 

My longer-term work is predicated on the 19th and early 20th century insight that there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of market economies between the forces of production and social relations.  When the contradiction becomes acute, social relations are transformed.  Just like social relations changed after the Great Depression, my work finds that social relations are already changing.  These include gender relations, the relationship between the sovereign and the citizens and employers and employees.

It is not simply that the crisis causes the transformation of relationships, as many were already changing.  Rather the crisis may help expedite or help shape those changes.    The essays exploring elements of these theme can be found by clicking on the Noteworthy Posts button on the top of the blog.