Is it already too late?

This extraordinarily bleak possibility actually looks like a probability – a third of a century after we had our best chance, when the likes of Aden Meinel were preaching a renewable energy transition strategy and Paolo Soleri and others were saying the same about replacing the city of cars, sprawl and gasoline with pedestrian ecological cities. I thought, back then, that human creativity could come to the fore and the positive side of an ecologically healthy future could be built, in the style some call, unfortunately not very melodiously, "proactive." The "reactive" approach – wait for the disaster to move people first – struck me as having the potential to erode the positive alternatives in a deadly manner. Now we have to face the likelihood that we have waited too long and have little time and resources left for positive investment. As they say, it takes a long, long time to turn a gigantic tanker around when its underway – and our physical "built infrastructure" is a million times as big as the largest tanker ever constructed and it definitely has massive momentum in its destructive direction. Perhaps the end of oil and beginning of expensive energy will be the iceberg for an even more accurate maritime metaphor. Tanker hell! This is a passenger ship!

excerpt from "Design, Oil and the End of the World"
by Richard Register
September 24, 2004
http://ecocitybuilders.org/design.html