Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian
Trading villages and towns have always arisen around crossroads and other hubs of trading routes. As these routes shut down, so do the communities around them. If cars were to be phased out in their current form, they'd either be replaced by electric cars which still need refuelling, or railways will become more important, which means business will move to surround railway stations instead. As long as the government doesn't abandon a geographical entity entirely, there will always be infrastructure servicing that entity, and a community living on that infrastructure. Just make the transition gradual, and it will be relatively painless.

The pain only comes when that community collapses almost overnight, as with the closures of the mines and the clampdown on fishing - both necessary as a whole, but far too abrupt for the communities to adapr to. Make things easier for everyone, and start the process now. Write to your congressman demanding higher taxes on gas.
Okay, I can agree with this, but its singular view. So you get rid of cars, or even 25% of cars and we replace them with trains or electric.

So the service station who used to have oil, whose service station is trained to fix combustion engines now fixes electric? Who incurs the expense to train new individuals? Who pays for the gas stations new marketing? Who pays for the stations physical changes? (new service bay etc)?

These are real questions someone has to answer. The taxpayer? The former oil worker in nigeria? Government subsidy? Corporations?

Each rhetorical question I just asked has its own economic implication, again Oil isnt a simple matter, largely due to our own self creation.