For many reasons, the pipeline is a terrible idea. The globe and the country need to get off of oil, and strip-mining northern Alberta for it won’t help us get there. What’s needed instead is building forms of transportation that enable us to use less oil, saving not only the environment and addressing the climate crisis but also saving money and creating jobs as well.

President Obama has pointed out before that high speed rail can help reduce dependence on oil, and that this is a beneficial thing for the country. Ironically, high speed rail is picking up steam (sorry for mixing my train metaphors) in Alberta itself, as the center-right Premier Alison Redford is embracing the concept. Of course, Redford supports the oil companies and tar sands production, but she also realizes that Alberta will have to plan for a day when the tar sands are tapped out.

Many Californians were active in the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline project, and will continue to be active to ensure the project is not revived after the election. But it won’t help to simply block a pipeline. Canada will eventually find a way to get that oil to market as long as demand for oil exists. The only way to deal with the problem is to reduce oil demand.

And that’s where high speed rail comes in. To oppose the pipeline, as well as to push back on pressure to reopen the California coast to oil drilling, requires supporting high speed rail projects across America, including in California.

“When American consumers are short or prices are so high — $5 a gallon for gasoline, for example, by 2012 — that’s going to set a new tone. It’s going to be panic time on behalf of the politicians,” John Hofmeister, who was president of the company from 2005 to 2009, told Platts Energy Week. Platts Energy Week aired the interview with Hofmeister Sunday.

“What I fear the most is that by 2012, gas prices are so high that we have a backlash from the electorate and we go in reverse and we go back to a hydrocarbon-only type of a future, maybe with some nuclear, instead of moving on into the 21st century,” Hofmeister said.

By “backlash,” Hofmeister surely means an all-out effort to deny reality and avoid the inevitable truth that cheap oil is gone forever. When gas hit $4.50/gal in the summer of 2008, we saw proposals to “drill, baby, drill” off of nearly every coastline, as well as proposals to suspend the gas tax (because there’s such a huge difference between paying $4.82 a gallon and $5.00 a gallon). Thankfully those didn’t come to fruition, and instead Californians approved $10 billion in high speed rail funding and passed a series of tax increases to fund expanded passenger rail service.

Hofmeister’s suggestion is not idle speculation. Just before Christmas, oil prices broke $90/bbl for the first time since 2008. Prices at the pump here in California are well into the mid-$3 range ($3.45 at the nearby station here in Monterey). And this is all part of the long-term secular trend upward in oil prices that had Deutsche Bank predicting $175/bbl by 2016:

The implications for California are clear: we need to get ourselves off of oil. And that means we need to finish what we’ve begun and build out our local and intercity passenger rail networks, and preserve and expand our local bus systems as well.

Since the last gas price peak in 2008, we have seen a growth of HSR opposition around the state as a small group of ideologues, convinced that driving should be the only option available to Californians, have tried to destroy a train project that a clear majority of voters supported. I have previously argued that HSR opposition is a bubble phenomenon enabled by the temporary lull in the long-term rise in gas prices. As California prepares to begin construction on our HSR project, I have to imagine that HSR opposition will soon become very unpopular as gas prices continue to rise.

I’m sure some HSR opponents will claim that rising fuel prices will spur improvements and wider usage of hybrid and electric cars, rendering HSR unnecessary. I certainly hope the first part comes true – I’m all for more and better zero emissions vehicles. But that won’t impact our need for HSR.

First off, it doesn’t matter whether a car is fueled by electricity or by gasoline – it still takes a LOT longer to drive between NorCal and SoCal than it does to take a bullet train. So HSR will still have the automobile beat in terms of travel time as well as convenience, since you can’t work from your driver’s seat.

Second, electric vehicles in particular are best suited for short trips close to one’s home. While range improvements will surely happen, it’s not likely that we’ll see people driving 500 miles on a single charge anytime soon. Even if they could, you’re back at my first point – driving takes over twice as long as the train. In the meantime, though, it seems likely that even people who buy electric cars will still use the bullet train for longer-distance trips. This happens in Europe, where cars get much better mileage yet HSR is extremely popular.

Third, like the time problem, there is also a traffic problem that hybrids and electrics won’t solve. In fact, they might even make things worse, especially if the car-only fanatics get their way and all alternative forms of transportation are defunded. Already Southern California freeways are jampacked, as are many Bay Area freeways. As we know, the cost of building more lanes and roads to try and relieve the congestion is far greater than even the worst-case scenario cost estimates for the HSR project.

I hope that vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, the Chevy Volt, and the Tesla product line are spectacular successes. But they won’t change the need for high speed rail. California has to use less oil, and part of that means we’re going to drive less no matter what powers the car engine. (Especially since it’s quite unclear whether the electric grid can handle a mass switch to electric cars.) That’s OK. It’s not the end of the world. If you ask most Californians who are stuck in their cars for their commutes, they’d much rather have a more comfortable, affordable, and convenient method of getting around their cities, their metro areas, and their state.

Driving is always going to be part of California’s transportation system. But we are already on the path to developing the long-overdue alternatives that Californians want and need in order to enjoy 21st century prosperity. Rising gas prices will simply give a further kick to those efforts, while exposing HSR opponents as the reality-hating NIMBYs they always were.

But even if one were to address the issue of how people would actually afford the vehicles and how we would afford to widen the freeways to handle the increased traffic (our freeways are already at capacity in the state’s urban cores), there is a far more fundamental problem: we will run out of oil before these alternatives are developed to a point where they can satisfy our existing energy demand.

At least, that’s what UC Davis researchers concluded:

The global oil supply is set to run dry 90 years before replacements such as renewable energy are ready to satisfy the same amount of demand, according to UC Davis researchers.

Current policies that set targets for batteries, hydrogen, biofuel and other alternative energy sources won’t be enough, a study published Monday says….

The technologies in the market “may not be able to occupy a sufficient enough niche in the market by the time we need them to,” Niemeir said in an e-mail.

Their study is based on an assessment of market conditions and government incentives – and incentives for renewable energy are being scaled back all over the world as a consequence of the global Depression, as foolish and short-sighted austerity budgeting is leading to cuts in funding for things like renewable energy subsidies, feed-in tariffs, tax credits, and so on.

There’s a deeper problem, however. Oil is not easily replaceable because it has a greater energy density than other fuels. What that means is a certain amount of oil – let’s say a pound – yields much more energy than almost any other comparable form of fuel, certainly more than renewables. This is one reason why hydrogen fuel cells have never taken off as a replacement for gasoline-powered vehicles – you need to store a LOT more hydrogen on board a vehicle to get the same driving distance that you do with gasoline.

Electric vehicles have improved their range, sure, but that simply raises the same problem again – where do you get the energy to generate the electricity? You need to burn a lot more coal, or have a lot more solar and wind generation facilities, in order to match the energy yield of oil. Oil production is notoriously dirty and risky, as the Gulf Coast was reminded earlier this year – but its overall physical footprint is actually much smaller than coal, wind, or solar. California will have to be covered in solar panels and wind turbines in order to generate enough electricity just to replace our current level of oil usage. NIMBYs will object even more loudly than they already have, and the cost will be astronomical.

What this means is that it’s just not practical to assume that we can drive as much in the 21st century as we did in the late 20th century. We are going to have to drive less as part of the transition away from the oil economy. And high speed rail helps enable that, at a lower cost with a lower carbon and physical footprint. HSR opponents deny this reality (which why they are called “deniers”) because they cannot bear to part with their beloved 20th century ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and practices. Even though the evidence is staring us in the face that we must adapt to new circumstances and make some changes, we’re told we absolutely cannot do it because it will “lower our quality of life” or “ruin our communities.”

We are 90 years behind in the development of a sustainable transportation network. There is literally no time to lose.

California experienced a similar spill 41 years ago. An oil rig in the Santa Barbara Channel had a similar rupture at the wellhead in 1969, causing significant damage to the ocean, beaches, wildlife, and the region’s economy. It was this spill that initiated the big push against offshore drilling, not just in California but nationwide. California has held the line against offshore drilling, even though in recent years it’s been close, as Republicans nearly succeeded in opening the Santa Barbara coast to a new drilling project at Tranquillon Ridge.

As it becomes clear that the Gulf oil spill is almost impossible to cap, and similarly difficult to clean up, we are reminded of the desperate need for us to reduce our dependence on oil. We cannot drill our way out of our dependence crisis. Al Gore likened the desire to drill to a junkie searching for veins in his toes. For example, opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do next to nothing to help:

But it’s not enough to say we don’t need new drilling. It’s time we wound down offshore drilling entirely. The risks to our environment and our economy are too great.

Of course, we are still very, very dependent on oil for our transportation needs. We must reduce that dependence for our future prosperity (because it’s only going to keep costing us more money) and to protect our environment. So how do we get out of it?

One fantasy – and it is a fantasy – is that hybrid and electric cars will do it for us. This is the favored solution of all those who irrationally refuse to let go of the 20th century model of American life, dependent on sprawl and on the car. Just swap out a gas tank for a battery and we’re fine, or so the argument goes.

Of course, this ignores the traffic problems choking many American cities, including the Bay Area, which originally motivated the revival of passenger rail in the late 20th century. The cost to expand freeways to handle the traffic would be far higher than the $43 billion to build the HSR line from SF to Anaheim.

But even if that wasn’t a consideration, there’s another issue: where do you get the electricity? Currently 50% of electricity in the US comes from coal, with natural gas and oil playing a big role as well. Coal is just as dirty as oil, causes perhaps more carbon emissions, and its trail of environmental devastation is about as extensive as oil’s – West Virginia has been environmentally destroyed by coal, just as the Gulf coast is now getting hammered by oil.

Coal deposits are non-renewable. Same with natural gas, same with oil. And as China and India demand more coal, more gas, and more oil when their economies recover from the recession, those costs will keep on rising.

So what happens when you add a truly massive new amount of demand to the US energy grid in the form of mass ownership of electric vehicles? The cost of electricity will soar. It was only 10 years ago that California had its own energy crisis, and although it hasn’t returned, that is largely due to an aggressive and successful conservation program. We don’t have much electricity capacity to spare to enable the growth of electric vehicles unless we bring new generating stations online. And unless we want to merely recreate the economic and environmental costs of using fossil fuels, those new sources will have to be renewable.

But will Californians accept huge solar panel projects? Projects in the middle of the Carrizo Plain and the Mojave Desert have already faced criticism from NIMBYs and environmentalists, and wind turbines are notorious for producing NIMBYism. While we can and should push aside those objections, it’s not at all clear that even renewables will help meet the overall electricity demand if everyone in America drives an electric car. If we could meet the physical demand, the cost is not likely to be cheap.

It’s also massively inefficient. Moving more people by high speed train is better than people sitting in their electric cars for 6 hours on the way to LA or SF (if their car can even hold a charge that long!). Moving people within a metro region, or a megaregion, by electric commuter or high speed train is also more efficient than a bunch of electric cars sitting on the Bay Bridge or on Interstate 580 over the Altamont Pass.

Given those considerations, it would seem that high speed rail is a vital piece of the strategy to reduce our dependence on oil in an affordable, efficient manner. If we’re going to stop offshore oil drilling and protect our environment, we need to make sure California’s high speed rail project happens as planned.

It’s enough to make you wonder why city councils such as Palo Alto’s are making a de facto alliance with oil companies to prevent building those alternatives. Why does Palo Alto mayor Pat Burt oppose energy independence? Why do HSR critics and opponents believe we should have more offshore drilling, despite the risks? Because even though they may construct a fantasy world of affordable electricity for affordable mass electric car usage, the reality is that if you oppose or block HSR, you are merely deepening our dependence on polluting, damaging, even devastating oil extraction, at a massive economic cost to us all.

The president assures us there will be no pork in the $3.8 trillion federal budget for 2011. That may be true if we ignore the proposed $2.3 billion high-speed-rail grant for California. An undetermined amount of that money would be spent as a down payment on a $42.6 billion proposal to connect Anaheim with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco and Los Angeles with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Las Vegas. That’s an “oink-oink” if I ever heard one. I can understand the Las Vegas high-speed link to accommodate the thousands of Californians who want to flee to Nevada to escape California’s high taxes.

First, HSR is not pork any more than the Interstate Highway System was pork. It is a national project that was awarded on the basis of merit. Right-wingers love to frame any spending they don’t like as “pork” in hopes of delegitimizing the project.

Second, it’s amusing to see that while he calls out Pelosi and Reid, Stegemeier doesn’t note that one of the HSR corridors funded by the stimulus grant connects Los Angeles to “Curt Pringle’s Anaheim” – or did the Register, long an ally of Pringle’s and the OC Republican Party, veto that reference?

High-speed rail as part of a short-term economic stimulus package is nonsense if it takes a decade or two to build.

Of course, if construction work is taking place in that time, it very much counts as stimulus. Or does he think magic faeries will build the tracks and trainsets?

The environmental impact statement itself will take years.

Yes, it has. And it’s almost done. In fact, as a condition of spending stimulus funds, a Notice of Decision/Record of Decision that officially closes the EIR/EIS process must be in place by September 2012 on stimulus-funded corridors.

Acquiring 680 miles of right-of-way will be contested in thousands of eminent domain lawsuits and will take at least a decade to complete.

That’s rather doubtful, and as is the standard practice with HSR deniers, Stegemeier offers no evidence to back up this claim. Most of the ROW will be bought from willing sellers. Where eminent domain must be used, it won’t take a decade to complete.

If high-speed rail serves intermediate cities then it will increase travel time, create noise and interrupt traffic flow at thousands of intersections. If it bypasses smaller cities to gain the advantage of speed, then it serves only the end terminals and disadvantages everyone in-between.

Reading this, I have to believe Stegemeier has never been on a high speed train in his life. As we know, California HSR will do both – it will serve intermediate cities AND the end terminals, with a mix of express and local service. The noise will generally be less than the loud diesel trains and their horns, and since it will be fully grade-separated, traffic flow will actually be improved.

The right of way to Las Vegas must cross or encroach on multiple wilderness areas. Some are controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, others by the Forest Service and the National Park Service. The Department of Interior and the EPA would certainly contest this proposal.

This isn’t entirely accurate. There are no federal “wilderness areas” along the Victorville-Vegas route, though the Mojave National Preserve reaches up to the southern side of Interstate 15 between Baker and Mountain Pass. That Preserve will be an issue for HSR. But getting BLM permits may not be so problematic. Of course, Vegas HSR wasn’t funded at all by the stimulus, so there is time to sort this out.

The French TGV train reaches 190 mph for the three-hour trip between Paris and Marseille, a distance slightly longer than Anaheim to San Francisco. Each train carries up to 345 passengers, slightly fewer than wide-body airplanes. Without government subsidies the fare would be two to three times the price of flying.

Lots of nonsense here. How many widebody planes serve the SoCal-Bay Area route? Southwest’s planes seat either 122 or 137 passengers. Last time I looked, 747s aren’t flown between LAX and SFO as part of the regular shuttle route.

Of course, what would the fare be without government subsidy for air travel? Some airports are built and operated with subsidies. The airlines themselves have received tens of billions of dollars in subsidies in the last decade, most notably in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

Stegemeier’s main point, however, seems to be that HSR isn’t a good deal when it comes to fuel conservation:

So, what are the advantages of high-speed rail, considering that an airline infrastructure is already in place? It conserves fossil fuel. On the Paris-Marseille route, each TGV train trip consumes about 30 megawatt hours of electricity that’s produced from France’s nuclear power grid. Because of California’s aversion to nuclear power, we can’t do that. Almost 65 percent of our electricity comes from coal or natural-gas-fired plants. Today’s power generation in California would take about 1,500 gallons of jet fuel equivalent to make enough electricity for the Paris-Marseille trip by rail. That’s slightly more than four gallons of fuel per passenger.

Of course, California is embarking on a project to produce more renewable power. HSR is a core element of that project, with the Authority having committed to seek 100% renewable power sources for its electricity, providing a guaranteed buyer of solar, wind, and other renewably generated electricity.

A Boeing 747 can make the same trip in about half the time. It carries slightly more passengers but would consume a little more than twice as much fuel, or nine gallons per passenger, one way.

Again, is Stegemeier serious? My grandfather flew 747s for TWA for 15 years. His route was usually LA-London, or LA to some European/Middle Eastern destination, not LA-SF. Those planes are enormous and totally unsuited to routes like those HSR will serve.

Statistics show that there are about 100 round-trip flights each day between the Southland and San Francisco, carrying more than 6 million passengers a year. If all airline travel ceased on that route, 50 high-speed trains, serving all those passengers, could save about 30 million gallons of fossil fuel, or about one gallon for every Californian, each year.

Of course, all airline travel won’t cease on that route. But as we’ve seen in Spain, Taiwan, China, and even the Northeast Corridor, HSR will take as much as half of the market share on the route from airlines, if not more. As to fossil fuel, the California High Speed Rail Authority estimates that HSR will save 12 million barrels of oil annually.

The economics of high-speed rail are bleak. Interest alone, at 4 percent on a $42.6 billion municipal bond, would cost $1.7 billion per year – almost $300 per projected passenger. That’s triple the cost of an airline ticket, just to cover the interest on the debt. It’s also $60 per gallon of fuel saved. Surely, there are better investment opportunities for taxpayer dollars than this fantasy.

Of course, that would come out to roughly $47 per year for all 36 million Californians – or 9 cents a week. Brother, can you spare a dime?

It’s almost comical that the Register turned to a former oil company CEO to attack HSR – and that he did such a bad job of it. But then at least they went directly to the source, rather than relying as the usually do on oil company-funded think tanks like the Reason Foundation.