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.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Are you worried about the future? So am I!
Friends of mine from opposite ends of the political spectrum have expressed concerns about the future of this country and the world in general to me recently. They have very similar fears even though some trust government regulation to fix everything and some think that if the government was not involved in anything would be the most idea solution. They all have fears about the economy, crime, food stability and the future. Some understand about peak oil and climate change and some don’t, but they are worried about the future.
First of all I believe in climate change and peak oil and of the two I believe that peak oil will have a much greater impact on me and my son’s lives. Climate change will have more of an effect my grandchildren and future generations. It is not that climate change is not a worry, but it is not the topic of this post.
I believe that our current economic malaise is a result of peak oil and is a direct result of the oil shock that we experienced in 2008. Now world governments and the oil industry itself are starting to state that if new production is not found we could face a 10mbpd (million barrel a day) shortfall of oil in the next 5 years. 10mbpd is what Saudi Arabia produces, so unless we find another Saudi Arabia out there we are going to see a 10% drop in supply within the next 5-10 years. When oil got up to $147 barrel and gas above $4 a gallon there was just a 2% gap between supply and demand, just imagine what a 10% gap will look like. Add to this a world that is addicted to debt, oceans stripped of fish, water shortages, falling crop yields, over population and climate change and you have a recipe for disaster.
I will concentrate on the US since that is where I live. Our country has decided to base its economy (as has the whole world for that matter) on exponential growth. For some reason economist thought that the laws of the universe does not apply to them, you cannot have exponential growth on a finite planet. To sustain this growth we have went from one income households, to two income households, we have become reliant on personal debt as well as national debt. Since we have switched from production based economy to a consumer economy (to allow for more growth of course) we added to the absurdity of our situation by trying to sustain a society where we just sell each other stuff made someplace else. We have to cut back on our spending now and will have to more in the future, and our government will eventually too.
The US government has been relying on borrowed money since the 1960’s to help sustain economic growth and the harder it got to grow the economy the more money the fed borrowed and printed. We are expecting to owe more than we make in one year (we currently owe 88.9% of GDP) by 2012 and 130% by 2015. There will come a time that we can either borrow no more money or that our money is so abundant that it is worthless.
The economy is going to slow down as resources become scarce and prices rise, if we keep using government infusions of cash to try to keep it afloat we will eventually be printing so much money that you will rush to the grocery store after you get paid to try to get there before prices raise again. We will reach a point where cash is useless except for low quality toilet paper. The economy has collapsed and society can collapse at this point and services are curtailed or halted altogether. Roads are not paved, broken cell phone towers are not repaired, the barter system and other more stable currencies are used (gold, silver or another country’s money if it has a stable and predictable value).
For most of us who are use to our disposable society, in which we cannot cook using raw materials, mend our clothes, fix common household appliances our do the numerous other things that our grand (our great grand) parents could and did do to help them through the depression. The fact that we have outsourced our production capability and centralized our food production is going to hurt us in every aspect of society. To add to this the fact that gasoline will be unaffordable to the common middle-class (which will have become extinct) American and you might begin to sense the desperation that could lie ahead of us.
Now we could have a government that puts in some stiff austerity measures and balances the budget and pays down debt. This would mean no more Social Security, Medicare, Defense Spending, Food Stamps, Federal Highway dollars, etc… This would result in massive unemployment, which would eventually led to a similar scenario to hyper-inflation, but in my opinion it is better because it gives us a chance to focus our few resources on areas that matter most to us.
Now there are so many variables that could happen from resource wars, revolts, massive protests and civil unrest and the destruction of our constitutional government. But no matter the variables the ability to produce some of your own food, survive with less energy and resources, having some skills that are marketable in a new era of depletion. Skills like knife sharpening, sewing, carpentry, making shingles, repairing electronic appliances etc… Learning to reuse things and use less now will be a lot easier than it will be when you no longer have a choice.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union or Argentina people did not flood the country side because they did not have skills to survive in the country, they flocked to the cities where there were services that they where use to having. Crime sky-rocketed has police protection became either nonexistent or only for those who could afford it. Food became scarce and government soup lines formed, food riots started (they also started in Egypt in 2008) and people began growing gardens anywhere they could. If we are lucky we will follow Cuba’s example and localize food production and encourage cottage industries (of course Cuba is now trying to roll back those freedoms now that they are exiting their crisis) and this will help mitigate the worse effects of the coming resource shortage.
In short I will encourage you to start a garden and grow as much food as you can, learn to cook from scratch, try to cut back on your spending and energy usage, reuse items, buy durable reusable items instead of disposable ones, develop skills that your grandparents had. I would add to this to buy a gun and learn to use it, but I will caution you that if you do not learn to use it, it can be as dangerous to you and your family as it is to any potential aggressor. Just remember that owning a gun makes you now more prepared than owning a piano makes you a musician.
First of all I believe in climate change and peak oil and of the two I believe that peak oil will have a much greater impact on me and my son’s lives. Climate change will have more of an effect my grandchildren and future generations. It is not that climate change is not a worry, but it is not the topic of this post.
I believe that our current economic malaise is a result of peak oil and is a direct result of the oil shock that we experienced in 2008. Now world governments and the oil industry itself are starting to state that if new production is not found we could face a 10mbpd (million barrel a day) shortfall of oil in the next 5 years. 10mbpd is what Saudi Arabia produces, so unless we find another Saudi Arabia out there we are going to see a 10% drop in supply within the next 5-10 years. When oil got up to $147 barrel and gas above $4 a gallon there was just a 2% gap between supply and demand, just imagine what a 10% gap will look like. Add to this a world that is addicted to debt, oceans stripped of fish, water shortages, falling crop yields, over population and climate change and you have a recipe for disaster.
I will concentrate on the US since that is where I live. Our country has decided to base its economy (as has the whole world for that matter) on exponential growth. For some reason economist thought that the laws of the universe does not apply to them, you cannot have exponential growth on a finite planet. To sustain this growth we have went from one income households, to two income households, we have become reliant on personal debt as well as national debt. Since we have switched from production based economy to a consumer economy (to allow for more growth of course) we added to the absurdity of our situation by trying to sustain a society where we just sell each other stuff made someplace else. We have to cut back on our spending now and will have to more in the future, and our government will eventually too.
The US government has been relying on borrowed money since the 1960’s to help sustain economic growth and the harder it got to grow the economy the more money the fed borrowed and printed. We are expecting to owe more than we make in one year (we currently owe 88.9% of GDP) by 2012 and 130% by 2015. There will come a time that we can either borrow no more money or that our money is so abundant that it is worthless.
The economy is going to slow down as resources become scarce and prices rise, if we keep using government infusions of cash to try to keep it afloat we will eventually be printing so much money that you will rush to the grocery store after you get paid to try to get there before prices raise again. We will reach a point where cash is useless except for low quality toilet paper. The economy has collapsed and society can collapse at this point and services are curtailed or halted altogether. Roads are not paved, broken cell phone towers are not repaired, the barter system and other more stable currencies are used (gold, silver or another country’s money if it has a stable and predictable value).
For most of us who are use to our disposable society, in which we cannot cook using raw materials, mend our clothes, fix common household appliances our do the numerous other things that our grand (our great grand) parents could and did do to help them through the depression. The fact that we have outsourced our production capability and centralized our food production is going to hurt us in every aspect of society. To add to this the fact that gasoline will be unaffordable to the common middle-class (which will have become extinct) American and you might begin to sense the desperation that could lie ahead of us.
Now we could have a government that puts in some stiff austerity measures and balances the budget and pays down debt. This would mean no more Social Security, Medicare, Defense Spending, Food Stamps, Federal Highway dollars, etc… This would result in massive unemployment, which would eventually led to a similar scenario to hyper-inflation, but in my opinion it is better because it gives us a chance to focus our few resources on areas that matter most to us.
Now there are so many variables that could happen from resource wars, revolts, massive protests and civil unrest and the destruction of our constitutional government. But no matter the variables the ability to produce some of your own food, survive with less energy and resources, having some skills that are marketable in a new era of depletion. Skills like knife sharpening, sewing, carpentry, making shingles, repairing electronic appliances etc… Learning to reuse things and use less now will be a lot easier than it will be when you no longer have a choice.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union or Argentina people did not flood the country side because they did not have skills to survive in the country, they flocked to the cities where there were services that they where use to having. Crime sky-rocketed has police protection became either nonexistent or only for those who could afford it. Food became scarce and government soup lines formed, food riots started (they also started in Egypt in 2008) and people began growing gardens anywhere they could. If we are lucky we will follow Cuba’s example and localize food production and encourage cottage industries (of course Cuba is now trying to roll back those freedoms now that they are exiting their crisis) and this will help mitigate the worse effects of the coming resource shortage.
In short I will encourage you to start a garden and grow as much food as you can, learn to cook from scratch, try to cut back on your spending and energy usage, reuse items, buy durable reusable items instead of disposable ones, develop skills that your grandparents had. I would add to this to buy a gun and learn to use it, but I will caution you that if you do not learn to use it, it can be as dangerous to you and your family as it is to any potential aggressor. Just remember that owning a gun makes you now more prepared than owning a piano makes you a musician.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Garden update
As you can see our garden is doing pretty well our spinach didn't come up but we are getting plenty of beans. Our melons seem to be doing well but something besides boys are eating our blueberries!
Rattlesnake beans
tea plant
Blackberries
Lazy housewife beans
popcorn
echinacea
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tyranny, Exploitation and You
I often talk about being free and not being a slave to the ruling corporate elites and their political lackeys. My beautiful and incredibly intelligent wife pointed out that we are all slaves to something, which is true in a way. I am voluntarily a slave to my family, which in turn forces me to work and participate in the military industrial machine so I can provide health insurance for my sons.
I also often mention how we are trying to live without exploiting other people, mainly in developing countries. But last night Kristina (my beautiful and incredibly intelligent wife) mentioned about how the poor are exploited here in our country (and likely most other developed countries). That those who are living in poverty or close to poverty most often do not have the choice to eat organic or even non-processed foods, or avoid products that have potentially dangerous components or compounds. That those in poor areas often have to pay higher for goods and services than those that live in a more affluent area (take health insurance as an example). I can just imagine the pain of a parent who is unable to take a child to the dentist or must use the emergency room as their primary care physician.
This got me wondering how much of this was intentional, whether it was planned or just worked out that way. When the primary means of livelihood was agriculture the poor at least could produce their own food and much of their own needs even if they had to trade labor for land. Trading labor for land was a basis for both the feudal system and the sharecropping system of the old south. It was also used in a different form by the old factory system in industrial society where your employer provided you with housing, a company ran store to shop at and a company doctor to care for you.
Both of these systems were either broken or severely damage by the prosperity that followed the end of the Second World War. With the increase need for labor and resource extraction that happened during the World War II, the poor could choose to leave and go to an area that offered more freedom and less exploitation. It seems like Lyndon Johnson tried to correct this by concentrating poverty and creating a dependent class with his Great Society programs. The poor became concentrated in the inner cities while the middle class and the factories in which they were employed moved out to the suburbs. The services that use to serve the middle class in the cities followed them out to the suburbs leaving only small independent providers or exploitive enterprises to serve the new poorer inhabitants of the cities.
This was actually not a new development and the conditions that the modern poor face are much better than the tenement slums that populated so many of the major cities in the western world during the early industrial age, the inhabitants of these early slums worked as domestic servants, general laborers and other low wage low skill jobs. For the most part the rural poor fared better health wise than their urban counter parts. Of course many of the rural poor fled famine and harsh political oppression, but many also came at the promise of a better life (measured in luxury goods) than they had in the countryside.
What was new about the Great Society and its programs was that the Federal Government provided for the basic needs of the poor under the supposed idea that they would use the boost to improve their lives. How they were going to accomplish this when they had lower quality schools, less access to goods and services and little are no role models was apparently not thought of. This concentration of poverty, lack of opportunities and the absence of the traditional labor for services system lead to an increase in crime, poverty and decrease in education and opportunity. The fact that this system has lasted for so long and is still in place (although not as bad as it was during the 1980’s) leads me to believe that the effect of it was the desired one and the stated aim at improving the conditions of the poor was just so many platitudes.
Today in the United States you can tell the wealth of a community by how many title pawn shops, cash advance and rent to own business (which have some of the most exploitive usury rates) are located there. You can also tell the socio economic class that a person belongs to by looking at their teeth because dental care is still a privilege of the wealthier classes. I wonder why the poor so often buy inconsequential material possessions when their income can obliviously be better spent. Whether it is 42” chrome spinning rims for their car or a big screen HD TV with an extended cable package, instead of healthier food or saving their money for a medical emergency. I know that they are targeted heavily by advertising but I think that there is some desire for a display of wealth that some socio-economic classes express. Why certain parts of our society values displays of wealth over health, food and security is something that I cannot comprehend.
It is ironic that one of the reasons that small farmers and shop keepers where able to beat the largest industrial power of the time was the diversification of their agricultural and industrial system. The sheer number of cottage industries producing rifles, muskets, clothing etc…. made it very hard for the British to hurt the economy of the rebellion, even when they occupied the largest cities in America. This was due in part to the British Empire forcing raw materials to be sent to England’s industrial powers to be refined into finished goods which would be then be sold back to the colonies. Now we freely ship our raw materials to foreign countries to be manufactured into finished products. I feel that the out sourcing of our manufacturing capability will come back and hurt our country.
It is the small scale manufacturing capability that I feel is most important for us to have. Small textile mills, small shops making bicycles, blankets, dinner and cookware are what we need to survive the decline of petroleum. I think that this will happen but it will be much smoother if we can transition at a controlled pace instead of transition only when we have no further option. But our laws and government not only favors large scale manufacturing and agriculture that outsources jobs, it actually provides disincentives for small companies to thrive. This is namely because our large corporations write the regulations that govern our economy.
Not only is our economic system exploiting developing countries, it is exploiting our lower and middle class citizens. We face a tyranny of the wealth and power of large multi-national business’s and banks who seem to run our country. It is time that we elect politicians who represent the people and not the corporations. For the courts are no longer protectors of the people but enablers of big business.
I also often mention how we are trying to live without exploiting other people, mainly in developing countries. But last night Kristina (my beautiful and incredibly intelligent wife) mentioned about how the poor are exploited here in our country (and likely most other developed countries). That those who are living in poverty or close to poverty most often do not have the choice to eat organic or even non-processed foods, or avoid products that have potentially dangerous components or compounds. That those in poor areas often have to pay higher for goods and services than those that live in a more affluent area (take health insurance as an example). I can just imagine the pain of a parent who is unable to take a child to the dentist or must use the emergency room as their primary care physician.
This got me wondering how much of this was intentional, whether it was planned or just worked out that way. When the primary means of livelihood was agriculture the poor at least could produce their own food and much of their own needs even if they had to trade labor for land. Trading labor for land was a basis for both the feudal system and the sharecropping system of the old south. It was also used in a different form by the old factory system in industrial society where your employer provided you with housing, a company ran store to shop at and a company doctor to care for you.
Both of these systems were either broken or severely damage by the prosperity that followed the end of the Second World War. With the increase need for labor and resource extraction that happened during the World War II, the poor could choose to leave and go to an area that offered more freedom and less exploitation. It seems like Lyndon Johnson tried to correct this by concentrating poverty and creating a dependent class with his Great Society programs. The poor became concentrated in the inner cities while the middle class and the factories in which they were employed moved out to the suburbs. The services that use to serve the middle class in the cities followed them out to the suburbs leaving only small independent providers or exploitive enterprises to serve the new poorer inhabitants of the cities.
This was actually not a new development and the conditions that the modern poor face are much better than the tenement slums that populated so many of the major cities in the western world during the early industrial age, the inhabitants of these early slums worked as domestic servants, general laborers and other low wage low skill jobs. For the most part the rural poor fared better health wise than their urban counter parts. Of course many of the rural poor fled famine and harsh political oppression, but many also came at the promise of a better life (measured in luxury goods) than they had in the countryside.
What was new about the Great Society and its programs was that the Federal Government provided for the basic needs of the poor under the supposed idea that they would use the boost to improve their lives. How they were going to accomplish this when they had lower quality schools, less access to goods and services and little are no role models was apparently not thought of. This concentration of poverty, lack of opportunities and the absence of the traditional labor for services system lead to an increase in crime, poverty and decrease in education and opportunity. The fact that this system has lasted for so long and is still in place (although not as bad as it was during the 1980’s) leads me to believe that the effect of it was the desired one and the stated aim at improving the conditions of the poor was just so many platitudes.
Today in the United States you can tell the wealth of a community by how many title pawn shops, cash advance and rent to own business (which have some of the most exploitive usury rates) are located there. You can also tell the socio economic class that a person belongs to by looking at their teeth because dental care is still a privilege of the wealthier classes. I wonder why the poor so often buy inconsequential material possessions when their income can obliviously be better spent. Whether it is 42” chrome spinning rims for their car or a big screen HD TV with an extended cable package, instead of healthier food or saving their money for a medical emergency. I know that they are targeted heavily by advertising but I think that there is some desire for a display of wealth that some socio-economic classes express. Why certain parts of our society values displays of wealth over health, food and security is something that I cannot comprehend.
It is ironic that one of the reasons that small farmers and shop keepers where able to beat the largest industrial power of the time was the diversification of their agricultural and industrial system. The sheer number of cottage industries producing rifles, muskets, clothing etc…. made it very hard for the British to hurt the economy of the rebellion, even when they occupied the largest cities in America. This was due in part to the British Empire forcing raw materials to be sent to England’s industrial powers to be refined into finished goods which would be then be sold back to the colonies. Now we freely ship our raw materials to foreign countries to be manufactured into finished products. I feel that the out sourcing of our manufacturing capability will come back and hurt our country.
It is the small scale manufacturing capability that I feel is most important for us to have. Small textile mills, small shops making bicycles, blankets, dinner and cookware are what we need to survive the decline of petroleum. I think that this will happen but it will be much smoother if we can transition at a controlled pace instead of transition only when we have no further option. But our laws and government not only favors large scale manufacturing and agriculture that outsources jobs, it actually provides disincentives for small companies to thrive. This is namely because our large corporations write the regulations that govern our economy.
Not only is our economic system exploiting developing countries, it is exploiting our lower and middle class citizens. We face a tyranny of the wealth and power of large multi-national business’s and banks who seem to run our country. It is time that we elect politicians who represent the people and not the corporations. For the courts are no longer protectors of the people but enablers of big business.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Oil dependence and responsibility by Ginnie Becker
The following was written by my friend Ginnie Becker and she was kind enough to let me share it with you!
"The impending and inevitable arrival of the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizons oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last week has many watching in horror as it threatens fragile coastal ecosystems. The loss of marine life is set to be catastrophic, and the impact on the struggling coastal economy devastating for businesses, many of which are still recovering from both Hurricane Katrina and the global economic meltdown's effect on Gulf Coast tourism. Already there is palpable anger within the community toward British Petroleum who was leasing the deep sea oil rig at the time of the accident, and supposedly lobbied members of congress not to pass stricter safety rules in favor of self-policing. Yet this anger, while understandable, is somewhat misplaced. The responsibility for this oil spill rests squarely on the shoulders of consumers, who ultimately create the demand for BP's product. Without the demand, there would be no oil spill. BP did play a role without a doubt - they have reportedly been ignoring and actively working against tougher federal safety regulations. Yet all of us as consumers have played a significant role in the unfolding disaster.
In the last American presidential election, candidates frequently tossed around the phrase "reduce dependence on foreign oil" during debates, a noble goal given that the main sources for oil are countries that harbour hostility toward the US, and China's rise to economic power causing inflation in world oil prices as demand spiked. There were debates ad nauseum about the possibility of opening ANWAR for oil exploration, offshore drilling, and the use of alternative oil extraction technologies such as shale oil. Yet in all of that debate, there seemed to be one word too many in the main argument. Instead of "reduce our dependence on foreign oil", what the debate should have focused on was "reduce our dependence on oil."
With the looming Gulf of Mexico environmental disaster nearly upon the five states it will affect, the debate over offshore drilling will be renewed with vigor. Many are already calling for a moratorium on offshore drilling, and asking that the bill signed by President Obama earlier this year allowing offshore oil exploration be revoked, citing the irreparable damage to the ecosystems caused by this oil spill. Yet, given that every single person in the nation is an oil consumer, this ultimately turns us into a nation of arrogant NIMBYs. By saying Not In My Back Yard, and continuing to consume, we are effectively just shifting oil production elsewhere, so "they" can deal with the environmental destruction that we don't want. Another version of Chinese sweatshop labor in the oil sector if you will. If we wish to consume the oil, we have to be willing to suffer the consequences of that consumption, which includes environmental destruction. Yet having seen just how devastating an oil spill can be, given the experience of the Exxon Valdez accident in Prince William Sound in Alaska, and the current disaster in the gulf which threatens to be worse, can we really make that choice? Even if we do choose to allow offshore drilling, as many people agreed with during the presidential debates (with the hideous accompaniment of the "Drill baby, drill" chorus), production values come nowhere near meeting demand in the US as it currently stands, so the idea of independence of foreign oil while nice on the surface, is not based in reality. What must happen is a radical rethink of the way we live and consume, coupled with aggressive research into and implementation of renewable energy sources
As a species, we seem particularly enamoured with the idea of technology saving us, even from ourselves. The Deepwater Horizon oil platform had state of the art technology allowing it to pinpoint to within a foot the exact place for drilling - a mile down into the ocean. It used GPS systems and computer controlled jet propulsion to remain in the correct place in the ocean, to within three feet of coordinates, instead of using anchors. It contained several shutdown mechanisms intended to avoid exactly what is currently happening. This miraculous technology is required because we are drilling in progressively more difficult places as the oil thirsty world sucks dry the oil in more accessible places. Yet this technology is obviously not foolproof, and we should not kid ourselves that "they" will come up with ways we can obtain oil so we can continue to consume as we do, at the prices we expect. Technology also has not given us ways of rectifying this accident, and the human, plant and animal residents of the gulf coast will have to live with that for decades to come. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at the problem, money does not magically bring back completely ruined ecosystems. We have dispersants for the oil, yet they are likely to have consequences for the sea life that lives in the water. We have booms, but they do not defeat tides or wave action. We have skimmer boats to suck up what we can of the oil on the water, yet even tiny beads of oil will be washing up on the beaches and affecting wildlife for years to come. Technology is not the immediate answer. The answer lies with every single one of us reevaluating the way we live and consume in the short to medium term future, and significant research and development of alternative renewable energy sources for the long term. But reigning in our voracious appetite for more must happen first, and we need to tackle that with a sense of urgency.
The Deepwater Horizons accident and oil spills promises to be a potent reminder for decades to come that we all need to shoulder our share of individual responsibility for the environmental destruction it has caused, and be judicious with our choices as consumers rather than rely on outside technology to save us from ourselves."
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