#automobility — Public Fediverse posts

Australia's lack of fuel security

"Our way of life
depends upon cheaper oil and fuel coming from overseas, but it does so at the cost of our security and resilience...The thought of not having food in cupboards and fridges or prescription medicines would likely exercise people's minds a lot more than the ill-informed thoughts they had during COVID about toilet paper." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-07/australia-fuel-security-falling-short-foi-war-game-report/104745210

Tangled up in oil in Petrotopia
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/113773037156395951
#energy #vulnerabilities #fuel #FossilFuels #cars #oil #petroleum #fuel #mobility #dependency #EnergyDependency #Australia #infrastructure #automobility #roads #malls #highways #Petrotopia #PetroMelancholia #CarDependency #MobilityDesign #ClimateBreakdown #transformation #societies #MiddleEast #FuelSecurity #MSO #WayofLife

Tangled up in oil in Petrotopia

Imagine life on an Island that has to import 91% of fuel from overseas.
And the entire matrix of the place has been set up for oil dependency a century ago.

Without a car there is no mobility (in Petrotopia)
Without a car one can't get stuff (made /transported by fossil fuels)
Without a car one can't get to work or other places
Without a car one can't drop off the kids
Without a car one can't empty the dogs
Without a car one can't go for a walk
Without a car /mower one can't do the endless lawns
Without a car/ boat/ plane one can't re-create or have a holiday

Australia is reliant on imports for around 91% of fuel consumption.
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australia-91-reliant-on-foreign-oil-research-report/

Bondre, N. (2023). Petromobility and Energy Coloniality in Puerto Rico: Reading Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La Guaracha Del Macho Camacho. Green Letters, 27(2), 219–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2023.2243488
#energy #FossilFuels #cars #oil #petroleum #fuel #mobility modernity #dependency #EnergyDependency #Australia #islands #infrastructure #automobility #roads #malls #highways #Petrotopia #PetroMelancholia #CarDependency #MobilityDesign #ClimateBreakdown #transformation #societies

The tyranny of automobility and sprawl

While the Bellingen /Gleniffer area is transitioning from an ‘idyllic tourist town’ into a ‘normal Aussie suburb’ (of Coffs Harbour), road congestion gets everyone stuck in traffic.

Car dependent motorists in their SUVs and bloated oversized trucks demand more and wider roads, larger car parking and a right to pothole-free roads for their 'sports utility vehicles’.

Extreme commuting for the necessaries of life are conducted in big private vehicles powered by fossil fuel. An aggregate of ugly big-box stores (large format retail, Coffs) with hostile giant car parks deliver what consumers desire. These consumption hubs are mostly inaccessible to pedestrians and can be dangerous ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé).

The mobility design of old school traffic engineers responds to the sprawling expansion with more of the same: more roads, wider roads and bypassing the last bypass. They call it ‘upgrades’.

As the latest $2.2 billion highway or forest road ‘upgrade/s’ are blasting their way through the landscape, they are silent about the ‘public bads’: the destroyed biodiversity habitat, the downgraded neighbourhoods, the violence and the polluted biosphere.

The ‘normality’ of automobility, or the 'car in the head' in petromodernity together with regulatory inertia make a transition to alternative land uses, energy systems, mobilities and ways of being a challenge.

#sprawl #suburbia #mobility #cars #roads #JevonsParadox #externalities #automobility #pollution #biodiversity #ClimateExtremes #FossilFuels #Petromodernity #GlenifferRoad #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #SettlerSociety #liveability