Radical conservation can go a long way in making the best possible use of the remaining fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions dramatically. First off; the automobile is obsolete. Pneumatic tires use massive amounts of energy, as do suspension systems. Brakes that convert the energy propelling a car into heat are obsolete, while I’m not an engineer a braking system that stored energy to a flywheel or an electric generator storing energy to a battery seems long overdue. The endless starting and stopping in traffic is an absurd waste of energy. Finally automobiles kill way too many people.

CSX, the rail company, advertises that they can move a ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel. The main reason for this is that steel wheels on steel rails uses far less energy than pneumatic tires of roads. The second reason is that trains don’t stop and start continually. http://tinyurl.com/3v6aku

The time to announce that the automobile will be prohibited from the roads in five years has come. The time for a new transportation system employing much lighter weight vehicles with steel wheels on a light weight rail system is now here.
Finally the steering wheel, gas pedal and brake need to be removed and a computerized control system that is integrated with all the other vehicles needs to replace it. Technology has developed to the point that with the combination of high speed computing, data transmission GPS, radar, laser distance measurement technology etc. that there are now the tools to control a transportation system much the same as the internet is operated.

An integrated control system would then be able to virtually eliminate crashes, end stop and go traffic and the elimination of having to control the vehicle would give riders the opportunity to read, watch TV, surf the net and a million other actives. Eliminating crashes would allow the weight of vehicles to be reduced by 75% or more and operating with steel wheels on rails with energy storing brakes would also reduce energy consumption dramatically.

Cars would become much like horses, nobody rides one to work, but they still run the Kentucky Derby every year as a holiday for the overly rich and self important.