A newspaper writer addressing offshore drilling recently said, very matter-of-factly, that no rational person could seriously suggest cutting back on energy use, because that would send civilization back to the Stone Age. I’ve been seriously advocating cutting back on energy use for about four decades now, and most of the time, I’m quite rational.

My argument goes like this: About 70% of our energy is used for transportation. How much of that could be eliminated without even getting close to going back to the Stone Age?

One advantage of getting old is that in scenarios like this I can compare today with when I was a kid, 60 years ago. We didn’t have a car.  We had bicycles, but my dad usually walked to work and we walked to school, church, shopping, and visiting relatives. On rare occasions we rode the bus to a nearby town, took the train on longer trips, and in an emergency, there were taxis.

We lived in a small town, but city life was similar. And my country cousins were also able to walk to school, church, and the country store.

Today my kids, their spouses, and their kids all have personal, individual cars. And I honestly don’t think they’re any better off than we were.

So, is the writer cited above talking about an honest-to-goodness primitive Stone Age, or is he just using that as a metaphor for retreating a bit from a civilization that produces (and uses) 1,000 barrels of oil every second of every day? If my childhood was what you want to call the Stone Age, I say, “Bring it on!”

Sure, everything was different then. For one thing, it was possible to walk almost anywhere. But instead of saying it’s impossible to reduce energy use without going primitive, wouldn’t it be more rational to consider making it possible to walk again? After all, we got into this mess only because the automobile made it possible!

If you think this is outrageous, check this out: Some people are actually choosing their homes on the basis of “walking scores.” Web sites such as www.walkscore.com allow you to type in an address in any of 2,500 neighborhoods in the 40 largest U.S. cities and get a rating based on the distance of certain amenities such as shopping. This doesn’t help rural-dwelling homesteaders, but then, we are supposedly more self-sufficient and eco-conscious than the average urbanite anyway. Interestingly, our rural area has seen a recent resurgence in those old-time country crossroads stores, mostly Mennonite. As it is, we often go a week or more without even opening the car door.

And of course, we’re vastly outnumbered by city people, who use most of the petroleum and therefore could account for saving most of it.

Fewer cars and miles traveled would also mean less need for new roads and maintenance, traffic lights and cops. There would be less smog and fewer traffic accidents. We’d spend less on insurance, tires, and batteries.

This is just personal transportation. We haven’t even mentioned transporting goods, especially food, which is the focus of locavores. And what about lawns… and energy slaves…

But oops, I see another argument coming: All that would raise havoc with our capitalist economic system (which is no more pure capitalism than our government is pure democracy), and that would certainly — you guessed it — send us back to the Stone Age!

On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Then we could start over again, on a more sustainable — and rational — basis. — Jd Belanger