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Support for the $2.1 billion Regional Transportation Authority plan on the May 16 ballot is broad and deep. An unlikely alliance between religious leaders, car dealers, conservationists, and the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association threatens to generate enough votes to overcome the hostility associated with raising taxes.

The improbable alliance has reached the right conclusion — we should generate revenue to make Tucson a livable city, and we should plan to raise taxes two decades into the future — based on two incorrect assumptions: continued population growth in Pima County and continued economic growth in the United States.

Because the assumptions are wrong, the RTA plan is a $2.1 billion mistake.

Never mind that road-improvement projects have a long and dismal history of abject failure, or that most of the plan's money is dedicated to these kinds of projects. We have much bigger problems.

Consider population growth. In 20 years, the city of Tucson will have fewer people, not more. A likely scenario has Tucson occupied by a few thousand hardy scavengers on foot, on bicycle or on horseback.

Two decades from now, the world's oil endowment will be nearly depleted and we will be unable to power the pumps we need to deliver our water. Our inability to deliver coal to our coal-fired power plant or food to our grocery stores will further contribute to a shrinking population.

Now consider economic growth. In 20 years, this country will be deep in the midst of the greatest depression. We are addicted to economic growth and we mainline oil. The contemporary version of the American Dream is completely dependent on ready supplies of cheap oil.

By the time the RTA plan is completed, oil will be exorbitantly expensive. Shortly thereafter, it will be gone. A progressive plan rooted in reality should have paths for walking and riding, not roads for burning oil we will not have.

According to Kenneth Deffeyes, a petroleum geologist recently retired from Princeton University, the world had burned half its oil by mid-December of last year. We will use upthe rest within 30 years at the current rate of consumption, which ignores increasing demands from China, India and especially the United States, which consumes three times as much oil as second-place China.

With proper leadership and tremendous sacrifices from the American public, we could avert the impending crisis. Instead, the Bush administration is firmly committed to finding more supplies to feed our addiction to oil.

State and local officials are unaware or, more likely, disinterested in solutions that demand sacrifices from the current generation on behalf of future ones.

If we are to avoid economic Armageddon at the local level, we will need to develop and implement a visionary plan rooted in renewable energy. We must secure our water supply, develop a means for growing and delivering our food, and create a robust system of public transportation.

The RTA plan hardly merits the label "visionary," even within the narrow domain of transportation infrastructure.

Our leaders are ignoring this most monumental of challenges. Welcome to the American Nightmare.