My previous posts have stressed learning skills and the low energy future we face. This post we concentrate on what can do to prepare for a future of “Hard Times” and if I am wrong and the times aren’t so hard they will help you anyway so why not give them a try. I do know that oil is going to start to get expensive, I don’t know how fast the price will run up but I know of no other source that can replace our reliance of petroleum.
You can prepare yourself mentality and physically, you can become involved in your local government. You can start using alternative modes of transportation, buying local produce and products. Increase the energy efficiency of your house, have an alternative way to heat it. I hope you get the idea now, think about how $8.00 a gallon gasoline will affect you and think about everything that now uses oil will cost when oil hits $200 a barrel. I am going to expand on some of these ideas in the coming paragraphs.
If your sense of self-worth comes from material goods then you need to find something else to give your life meaning. Now most of you will say that material things are immaterial to me. Well if you talk about your TV, car, cell phone, look at the sales flyers in the paper, live in the Untied States or Canada then they probably do mean more to you then you realize. My generation (Generation X) has been bombarded by advertising since birth, and the geniuses of marketing have been very good at brain washing us. We have come to think that we need a new car every 3-4 years and if we do not have the extensive, extended, expanded, cable package then we will seem less in the eyes of our co-workers. We have been sold that the more gadgets and services that we buy the better that our life will be and the easier our children will have it.
To borrow from John Michael Greer, “There is no Brighter Future Ahead.” If we measure success on material goods then we are bound for disappointment. If we believe that our kids will have the jet packs (that we where promised) or that they will be able to jet set around the world, then we will experience a future full of frustration and stress. Prices are going to increase and material goods, especially the frivolous consumer goods that so many of us buy will become unaffordable luxuries.
Turn off the TV and stop the brainwashing rays from the advertising gurus for corrupting your children’s minds. Eat dinner together at a table without the TV on, and then do not turn the TV on but play a game, go for a bike ride, draw or color picture together, play with some toy that requires no batteries with your children. Try to do this at least once a week; it would be better if you did it all of the time but start with just Saturday. Start to reduce your consumption, don’t buy the new salad shooter, try to go for a week without buying anything but gas and unprocessed raw food (you know vegetables that you have to peel) play a game and see who can go without buying something the longest(no matter how big the “SALE” is or how much you will save).
Prepare yourself for a time when you can no longer buy new things, and get use to the idea of doing without. This is going to be a major cultural shift that we have to make, that no matter how hard we work there will be something that we just cannot afford to buy and that our children will have less access to material possessions than we had. I fear that for most of the population this will be the hardest thing to comprehend, because it goes against what we have been told by society for the last 50 years.
Next, get in shape. Exercise regularly, in the 1940’s the average American walked 5-7 miles a day, now we walk less than a mile a day. We are going to have to walk and bike more in the future so start now when you can do it for fun, rather than when you have too. Start a new diet, and not the Atkins diet or any other Hollywood fad diet either. Read Michael Pollan and eat “real food, not too much and mostly plants.” Cut your meat consumption back to one or two meals a week, eat non processed foods (you know vegetables that you have to clean, peel and cook), stop buying anything with corn syrup in it (no sodas) and make your own bread once a week.
With a natural diet and exercise you will find that you have more money because in a matter of months your cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar will return to healthy levels. You will lose weight and feel better than you have in years. You might even be able to convince your Doctor to take you off of all those medications that you are on (and save lots of money). Changing your diet back to a more traditional diet (if your grandmother couldn’t buy it in 1940 then you don’t buy it either) and increasing your physical activity will probably have the most beneficial effects on your life.
Get Local, become involved in your local politics, go to your city council meetings, and become informed on the local issues. Join local civic groups (the Rotary Club, Junior League, Boy Scouts, Elks Lodge) these groups will start to have more importance in your community has the civil authorities start having to cut their budgets.
Join a CSA and shop at your local farmers market, as fuel prices start to increase our current industrial agricultural system will start to break down. By supporting and encouraging your local farmers you will lessen the impact that you and your community will feel.
Know your neighborhood and neighbors, as you walk and bike ride for pleasure stop and talk to the people who live on your street. You will learn the best routes to get you places and form a valuable resource that can be used when police budgets force fewer officers to be hired and increase response times. Try to form a tool sharing bank so you can borrow each other tools, find out who is elderly and check in on them regularly. This will go a long way to increase both your security and your sense of self worth.
Encourage your city to become a walk-able and bike-able city. As we will not be able to drive everywhere encourage your city to have sidewalks and bike paths. Join any local organizations that promote these activities.
Start a garden, it doesn’t have to be big just a few potted tomato plants if that is all you have room for or plant fruit and nut trees instead of pine trees. You can still have a decorative landscape that can also produce food.
As you can see there is a plethora of things that you can do now to prepare yourself for a more difficult future. Most of these things are good for you and save you money even if I am wrong and someone invents a table top fusion reactor that anyone can have in their home that will meet all of our power needs cheaply and cleanly. I truly hope that I am wrong but I don’t think that I am wrong and perparing to have a more fulfilling life with less material goods.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Skills for the Future
When I talk to most people about Peak Oil they tend to get the impression that I am talking about oil running out overnight or in a few years at the longest. Oil will not just disappear but as we use the oil that is easy to get we have to search longer and harder to find what is left. The oil that we get from Texas or Saudi Arabia takes about 1 barrel’s worth of oil in energy to extract 100 barrels of oil or a 1:100 Energy Input: Energy Returned ratio (EIER). Deep Water Horizon only promised a 1:4 to a 1:8 EIER! They are drilling there because we are running out of places to drill. Even if we open up ANWAR it will only be a tiny drop on the price of oil in 10-15 years (the amount of time to get an average oil field into production). The point is that the oil we have left is going to steadily increase in price as the decade’s progress.
This means that our disposable society that depends on cheap petroleum based energy will have to transition to something else entirely. I will restate this: Our way of life is going to dramatically change in the coming decades. Yes this will take decades and it will be painful for most of the population who have been living in denial for most of their lives. To minimize the social upheaval that you feel it would be advisable to acquire some skills that our grandparents had and to rethink all of our purchases.
When we buy something we should try to buy the most durable, reliant, and energy efficient thing that you can. If you are buying a bathroom scale buy one that does not require batteries. If you buy a set of kitchen knives buy ones that you can sharpen. If you are buying frying pans buy a cast iron one over a Teflon coated frying pan, the cast iron one can be used by your grandchildren and the Teflon will become scarp in a decade when the Teflon starts to peel off. Buy quality now because quantity is not going to be cheap once it starts costing a lot of money to sail container ships from China. Things are going to start getting more expensive so if you can buy a high quality durable product now, do it now.
Learn to sharpen your own knives and tools, only a half century ago people made a living sharpening knives. Learn to sew and repair your clothes or even make some of your own cloths, towels etc… There will come a time when we will no longer be able to afford to go out and just buy a new shirt just because you lost a button on yours. We have out sourced most of our textile mills and it will be costly to move them back, they will move back but only when the cost of transportation is more expensive than what they have to pay Americans to make clothes again.
Learn small engine repair, gardening, electronic repair, plumbing, carpentry, learn to play a musical instrument or any countless things that your grandparents could do. A lot of our jobs that depend on federal spending (which is most of us) will start to disappear once our nation has to finally rein in its spending. Get out of debt and try to find a job close to you, because commuting will start costing more. Find alternative ways to heat and cool your home, start using clotheslines and most importantly learn to cook.
We spend less energy/time now to procure food then anytime in human history. Only 10% of our income is devoted to obtaining food for ourselves. As food prices increase the processed, precooked, heat and serve food so many Americans consume will become prohibitory expensive. It is amazing that most Americans do not know how to cook, they know how to warm things up but not cook from scratch. Learn to use and buy raw in season produce in your food preparation, because you will not be able to obtain asparagus from Argentina in January unless you are rich.
As we proceed down the petroleum curve the divide between the rich and the poor will increase and the number of people who are middle class will decrease. If you can start taking steps now you will help ease the burden on your children who are the ones that will feel the true brunt of the decline of the oil age. If you can switch to renewable energy sources even if it is only a solar hot water heater. Try to demand net metering from your utility company, or the creation of microgrids in your area.
Our world is going to change whether we like it or not. We can start to prepare now or we can be caught unprepared in the years to come. Our economy based on infinite growth is meeting the brick wall of a finite planet. No matter how much we shout “Drill Baby Drill” we cannot increase the amount of oil on this planet. We have to realize that just because we drill a hole does not mean that we will find oil in it. Some people will grow angry and blame everyone but themselves as our current concept of “the American Dream”, which is measured by the possession of material goods, becomes unobtainable. They will blame the government, foreigners and anyone who is different. They will not realize that it is their own overconsumption and reckless waste that has created the problem.
You have a chance to ease the pain that your children will feel in the future as they can no longer obtain the same lifestyle that they’re grandparents lived. Please take that chance and use it wisely, not for me, not for the planet but for your children and mine.
This means that our disposable society that depends on cheap petroleum based energy will have to transition to something else entirely. I will restate this: Our way of life is going to dramatically change in the coming decades. Yes this will take decades and it will be painful for most of the population who have been living in denial for most of their lives. To minimize the social upheaval that you feel it would be advisable to acquire some skills that our grandparents had and to rethink all of our purchases.
When we buy something we should try to buy the most durable, reliant, and energy efficient thing that you can. If you are buying a bathroom scale buy one that does not require batteries. If you buy a set of kitchen knives buy ones that you can sharpen. If you are buying frying pans buy a cast iron one over a Teflon coated frying pan, the cast iron one can be used by your grandchildren and the Teflon will become scarp in a decade when the Teflon starts to peel off. Buy quality now because quantity is not going to be cheap once it starts costing a lot of money to sail container ships from China. Things are going to start getting more expensive so if you can buy a high quality durable product now, do it now.
Learn to sharpen your own knives and tools, only a half century ago people made a living sharpening knives. Learn to sew and repair your clothes or even make some of your own cloths, towels etc… There will come a time when we will no longer be able to afford to go out and just buy a new shirt just because you lost a button on yours. We have out sourced most of our textile mills and it will be costly to move them back, they will move back but only when the cost of transportation is more expensive than what they have to pay Americans to make clothes again.
Learn small engine repair, gardening, electronic repair, plumbing, carpentry, learn to play a musical instrument or any countless things that your grandparents could do. A lot of our jobs that depend on federal spending (which is most of us) will start to disappear once our nation has to finally rein in its spending. Get out of debt and try to find a job close to you, because commuting will start costing more. Find alternative ways to heat and cool your home, start using clotheslines and most importantly learn to cook.
We spend less energy/time now to procure food then anytime in human history. Only 10% of our income is devoted to obtaining food for ourselves. As food prices increase the processed, precooked, heat and serve food so many Americans consume will become prohibitory expensive. It is amazing that most Americans do not know how to cook, they know how to warm things up but not cook from scratch. Learn to use and buy raw in season produce in your food preparation, because you will not be able to obtain asparagus from Argentina in January unless you are rich.
As we proceed down the petroleum curve the divide between the rich and the poor will increase and the number of people who are middle class will decrease. If you can start taking steps now you will help ease the burden on your children who are the ones that will feel the true brunt of the decline of the oil age. If you can switch to renewable energy sources even if it is only a solar hot water heater. Try to demand net metering from your utility company, or the creation of microgrids in your area.
Our world is going to change whether we like it or not. We can start to prepare now or we can be caught unprepared in the years to come. Our economy based on infinite growth is meeting the brick wall of a finite planet. No matter how much we shout “Drill Baby Drill” we cannot increase the amount of oil on this planet. We have to realize that just because we drill a hole does not mean that we will find oil in it. Some people will grow angry and blame everyone but themselves as our current concept of “the American Dream”, which is measured by the possession of material goods, becomes unobtainable. They will blame the government, foreigners and anyone who is different. They will not realize that it is their own overconsumption and reckless waste that has created the problem.
You have a chance to ease the pain that your children will feel in the future as they can no longer obtain the same lifestyle that they’re grandparents lived. Please take that chance and use it wisely, not for me, not for the planet but for your children and mine.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Heads in the Sand
In conversations with my fellow residents of Lower Alabama, I am almost always amazed at how uninformed and gullible they are. While talking about the oil spill (it is really a well blow-out not a spill) in the Gulf, I find it remarkable that a seemingly large number of people believe that environmental extremists committed some act of sabotage on Deepwater Horizon. They do not seem to realize how difficult it would be for someone to infiltrate an oil drilling platform 50 miles off of the coast of Louisiana, much less the technical expertise it would take for then to disguise the act to make it look just like a methane gas well blow-out. I do wonder why the more plausible and factual cause of the disaster, lax government oversight and deregulation coupled with cost cutting and unsafe work practices by the management on Deepwater Horizon seems to be so unbelievable.
Of course these are some of the same people who think that the military should use a nuclear bomb to stop the oil from gushing out of the well head. I have to admit that a nuclear bomb would stop the leak, but will point out that the radioactive tidal wave produced by it would probably poison the Gulf coast for much longer than the oil that is now coating the marshes and beaches. Now some people have the bright idea to drill a hole beside the well and place the nuclear bomb deep enough that most of the radiation is contained, and that it will not produce big of a tidal wave (probably 12ft or less). They fail to grasp that by the time you bore a hole big and deep enough to place the bomb in that the relief wells will already be finished.
Then there are the people who are mad at BP (and justly so) and are boycotting them. A boycott is well and good but if you are not willing to give up your SUV and decrease your energy usage then you are only going to hurt the local owners of the convinence store that is unlucky enough to have a BP sign on their gas pumps. This is because BP will just sell its gas to Chevron, Shell and all of the independent gas stations and continue to happily take our money. If we do not make the connection between this disaster, the economic crash of 2008, the invasion of Iraq, rising food prices in the developing world and or national debt with our consumption of oil and other raw materials then we are just paying lip service to our outrage and inviting these disasters or worse to happen again and again.
Here we are almost 2 years after the market crash of 2008 which was brought on in large part by oil reaching $147 a barrel. And the worlds demand for oil is about 3.5 times less now then it was then and oil is at $70 a barrel. What do you think is going to happen when demand starts to pick back up? If we keep failing to realize how much of our lives revolve around petroleum and keep using it at ever increasing rates we are going to come up very hard and fast to the wall of reality. Now some people will say that there is plenty of oil left in Saudi Arabia, to which I generally ask why the Saudi’s are spending so much money to build nuclear reactors if they have an unlimited supply of oil left in the ground. If there Ghawar oil field still has billions of barrels left in it then why are they drilling more wells off shore? The short answer is that they (and the world) have passed the peak of oil production.
We have a few years (or hopefully decades) to prepare for a new and harsher future without cheap oil. We need to become more local in not just our lives but also in our government. Actually our government is probably where we need to start the localization effort at. In this we are lucky because that was how our Constitution and government was conceived to work. We just need to get the federal government out of local government. This will mean to cut off the federal welfare that most states rely on. As simple as this sounds it will not be easy, as a matter of fact I think that it will be so onerous to do that no politician(s) will attempt it. Instead people will clamor for more government help and hand-outs. This includes the Tea Party which want lower taxes and less federal interference in their lives with the exception of Social Security, and Medicare, and unemployment insurance which they either receive or soon will receive.
We will be forced to take some very serious austerity measures in this country in the next few years if we want to survive as a country. And I fear that we will see rioting and civil unrest much worse than Europe has seen when people’s false idea of the American dream becomes a distance and unreachable reality. We have replaced our forefathers’ dreams of freedom with dreams of safety and material wealth. Our system of government was formed to protect us from exploitation and tyranny, which we have surrendered to in the name of economic growth and material possessions.
If we do not pull our collective heads out of the sand and from real local communities, then our collective asses will be handed to us. We have to find community solutions to problems such as food and transportation before the price of petroleum makes these unaffordable. Because there is nothing to take the place of our reliance on petroleum, no cold fusion power plants, national wind power grids or any other pipe dream that can realistically replace our national reliance on cheap oil. We need to develop micro power grids which will be much easier to maintain to produce and distribute electricity locally than it is to have a national grid. The same is true for local food and transportation systems. We need to quickly dispose of our disposable society now before it becomes to expensive to maintain, because now we have the energy and time to do it. If we wait until oil becomes to expensive we will not be able to afford a comfortable change and our society will collapse under its own weight.
Of course these are some of the same people who think that the military should use a nuclear bomb to stop the oil from gushing out of the well head. I have to admit that a nuclear bomb would stop the leak, but will point out that the radioactive tidal wave produced by it would probably poison the Gulf coast for much longer than the oil that is now coating the marshes and beaches. Now some people have the bright idea to drill a hole beside the well and place the nuclear bomb deep enough that most of the radiation is contained, and that it will not produce big of a tidal wave (probably 12ft or less). They fail to grasp that by the time you bore a hole big and deep enough to place the bomb in that the relief wells will already be finished.
Then there are the people who are mad at BP (and justly so) and are boycotting them. A boycott is well and good but if you are not willing to give up your SUV and decrease your energy usage then you are only going to hurt the local owners of the convinence store that is unlucky enough to have a BP sign on their gas pumps. This is because BP will just sell its gas to Chevron, Shell and all of the independent gas stations and continue to happily take our money. If we do not make the connection between this disaster, the economic crash of 2008, the invasion of Iraq, rising food prices in the developing world and or national debt with our consumption of oil and other raw materials then we are just paying lip service to our outrage and inviting these disasters or worse to happen again and again.
Here we are almost 2 years after the market crash of 2008 which was brought on in large part by oil reaching $147 a barrel. And the worlds demand for oil is about 3.5 times less now then it was then and oil is at $70 a barrel. What do you think is going to happen when demand starts to pick back up? If we keep failing to realize how much of our lives revolve around petroleum and keep using it at ever increasing rates we are going to come up very hard and fast to the wall of reality. Now some people will say that there is plenty of oil left in Saudi Arabia, to which I generally ask why the Saudi’s are spending so much money to build nuclear reactors if they have an unlimited supply of oil left in the ground. If there Ghawar oil field still has billions of barrels left in it then why are they drilling more wells off shore? The short answer is that they (and the world) have passed the peak of oil production.
We have a few years (or hopefully decades) to prepare for a new and harsher future without cheap oil. We need to become more local in not just our lives but also in our government. Actually our government is probably where we need to start the localization effort at. In this we are lucky because that was how our Constitution and government was conceived to work. We just need to get the federal government out of local government. This will mean to cut off the federal welfare that most states rely on. As simple as this sounds it will not be easy, as a matter of fact I think that it will be so onerous to do that no politician(s) will attempt it. Instead people will clamor for more government help and hand-outs. This includes the Tea Party which want lower taxes and less federal interference in their lives with the exception of Social Security, and Medicare, and unemployment insurance which they either receive or soon will receive.
We will be forced to take some very serious austerity measures in this country in the next few years if we want to survive as a country. And I fear that we will see rioting and civil unrest much worse than Europe has seen when people’s false idea of the American dream becomes a distance and unreachable reality. We have replaced our forefathers’ dreams of freedom with dreams of safety and material wealth. Our system of government was formed to protect us from exploitation and tyranny, which we have surrendered to in the name of economic growth and material possessions.
If we do not pull our collective heads out of the sand and from real local communities, then our collective asses will be handed to us. We have to find community solutions to problems such as food and transportation before the price of petroleum makes these unaffordable. Because there is nothing to take the place of our reliance on petroleum, no cold fusion power plants, national wind power grids or any other pipe dream that can realistically replace our national reliance on cheap oil. We need to develop micro power grids which will be much easier to maintain to produce and distribute electricity locally than it is to have a national grid. The same is true for local food and transportation systems. We need to quickly dispose of our disposable society now before it becomes to expensive to maintain, because now we have the energy and time to do it. If we wait until oil becomes to expensive we will not be able to afford a comfortable change and our society will collapse under its own weight.
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