The Oil Drum: Local

I live in New Hampshire and am opposed to the proposed widening of Interstate 93 which links Manchester, NH and Boston. For the New England states, the Conservation Law Foundation http://www.clf.org/ works to stop the development of unnecessary highways. CLF has been able to delay the widening of I-93 on legal grounds: Below is an excerpt from a CLF press release:

"Concord, NH (August 30, 2007) A federal judge today ruled that the N.H. Department of Transportation (NHDOT) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) failed to appropriately consider the traffic congestion and air quality impacts of the planned 20-mile, $700 million I-93 widening project. As a result of a lawsuit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Judge Paul Barbadoro today ordered the two agencies to complete a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to address significant deficiencies in NHDOT's and FHWA's planning and review of the proposed project. In particular, the Court in its ruling agreed with CLF that: The transportation agencies' projections of future traffic demand on the highway were based on outdated population data."
I have compiled a report on Peak Oil using federal government and scientific studies: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
This report indicates that the price of oil is about to skyrocket. Therefore, in the future fewer cars will be on the roads and there is no need to widen Interstate highways. Two weeks ago, I emailed this report to all CLF attorneys. One attorney responded that they got the report and are looking at it. As a political scientist who has been teaching in the Master of Public Administration program at the University of New Hampshire since 1981, I'm sure that this report will help. CLF can ask the NHDOT and FHWA to address the federal government reports on Peak Oil, and then in the next lawsuit, the CLF can include those reports for judges to consider. Also, the reports indicate that Peak Oil will soon result in a recession, and therefore fewer people will be commuting to Boston.

The most important report is by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) “Crude Oil: Uncertainty about the Future Oil Supply Makes it Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production” (2007). This study concludes:
“Because development and widespread adoption of technologies to displace oil will take time and effort, an imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could have severe consequences. The technologies we examined [ethanol, biodiesel, biomass gas-to-liquid, coal gas-to-liquid, and hydrogen] currently supply the equivalent of only about 1% of U.S. annual consumption of petroleum products, and DOE projects that even under optimistic scenarios, these technologies could displace only the equivalent of about 4% of annual projected U.S. consumption by around 2015. If the decline in oil production exceeded the ability of alternative technologies to displace oil, energy consumption would be constricted, and as consumers competed for increasingly scarce oil resources, oil prices would sharply increase. In this respect, the consequences could initially resemble those of past oil supply shocks, which have been associated with significant economic damage. For example, disruptions in oil supply associated with the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 caused unprecedented increases in oil prices and were associated with worldwide recessions. In addition, a number of studies we reviewed indicate that most of the U.S. recessions in the post-World War II era were preceded by oil supply shocks and the associated sudden rise in oil prices. Ultimately, however, the consequences of a peak and permanent decline in oil production could be even more prolonged and severe than those of past oil supply shocks. Because the decline would be neither temporary nor reversible, the effects would continue until alternative transportation technologies to displace oil became available in sufficient quantities at comparable costs. Furthermore, because oil production could decline even more each year following a peak, the amount that would have to be replaced by alternatives could also increase year by year.”
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf

Other U.S., Canadian government, and international government and organization studies that are cited in my report indicate that alternative energies will not be able to replace declining oil production.