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.

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.

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

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.

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." 

To my Sons

William and Ian, I want to leave you a better world than the one that was left for me, but I fear that is impossible and beyond my ability to control. I hope and pray that I am a Father that you can look up too and admire. I will try to be the kind of man that I want you to be, and I will tell you of my struggles and failings so that you will not have as hard of a time as I have.



I would like for you to say what you mean and more importantly mean what you say. That you treat people with respect, especially those that society doesn’t think deserves respect. Respect doesn’t mean being “nice” but treating someone with dignity.


All living things deserve to be treated with dignity no matter if they are a human, dog or plant. We should always remember that the breath of life that God breathed into us, he also blew into them. If we harvest a plant or animal for food we should honor it and give it the best life and least traumatic death that we possibly can. If we have to take a life because of necessity (whether weeding our garden or defending the life of another) we should mourn that life.


We should try to live our life without exploiting others, even if that causes us difficulty. We should be ashamed if our standard of living is only possible because we are abusing and using others. While we cannot change the world we can change the way we impact it and hope that our example convinces others to do the same.


You should never feel that you are better than someone because you have more knowledge, money, clothes etc…. One person’s life is not worth more than another; I say this even though I would gladly choose my Loved ones over anyone else and not feel guilty. Treat all people with respect, especially those who do not show you respect.


Try to think before you act, this will save you much grief and hardship. Remember that once something is done, it may be impossible to undo. So use as much forethought as time will allow. I will warn you that I have found that action is almost always better than inaction. I will endeavor to give you the tools you need to act wisely to the situations that life gives you and the experiences necessary to develop that wisdom. I hope this will enable you to think while you are acting and prevent you from the paralysis of indecision.


Violence never solves problems but only creates new ones. But you might encounter a time when violence is the only viable option that you have. When that is the case use as much as you can summon as quickly as possible, while this may seem counter intuitive it will save pain and suffering to all parties involved.


Try to leave every place you go better than when you found it. Help others when you can, but remember that often the best way to help others is to teach them to help themselves. Making someone dependent on your aid is not good for either your or their dignity. There will be those who try to take advantage of your kindness and willingness to help. This is a price you have to pay and you will become better at identifying those who would abuse your generosity as time goes on. Just remember that if you are in doubt about a person’s motivation it is better to ere on the side of giving until proven otherwise.


Success in life can only be measured by happiness and your sense of self worth. What is simple is not always easy, and the right thing to do often is hard and painful. Do not decide on an action just because it is easy or painless but try to do what is right and just. Try not to leave problems for others to solve if you can fix them now. When you are looking for a solution to a problem try to find a simple one, because simple usually works out better than complex.

I will always try to be the father that you deserve to have and give you the tools that you need to have a happy and successful life. I will fail at times, but I will never stop trying and I will never stop loving you. The two of you are the greatest blessings that God has ever bestowed upon me and I will try to always treat you as such.


I Love You Ian and William, and even though I wish that you could stay small forever, I also look forward into meeting the Men that you will become.


With all of my Love,

Daddy

Earth day?

It is earth day and the college campus where I work is having a celebration, were they are giving out free bottled water and hot dogs and hamburgers on Styrofoam plates, with napkins, plastic forks etc….. Why do people not understand that it is our over consumptive lifestyle that is causing not just our environmental problems but our financial problems as well.




We have lived in an era of abundance for so long that now that we have out grown our ability to extract resources from the earth at a pace that equals our consumption, we are experiencing price increases as a result of raw material scarcity. Not only is our demand out stripping our ability to extract resources but the resources themselves, whether it is fish in the ocean or oil in the ground. But most everyone seems to be in denial about what our problems are and the impact that we as individuals (in first world countries) have upon our environment.



We seem to believe that we can keep buying HD big screen TV’s, iPhones, discarding our last years (still functioning) electronics for new ones, trading our movies on VHS for the same movie on DVD. We do not even think about the conditions in which the people who made these items worked and lived. We tell ourselves lies like “you can live like a king on $5.00 a day in Indonesia” without us ever having been there or even knowing anyone who has lived there. We deny and lie to ourselves about these things because if we ever took the time to look and really think about our impacts we would feel guilty (if we have any empathy left), and we do not like feeling guilty. We do not want to admit that our standard of living is only possible by the exploitation of our fellow human beings, and the only reason that we tolerate this system is that we do not have to see the people we are exploiting.



Thanks to globalization we have moved the wage slavery jobs from our nation to developing countries, we even convince ourselves that building a T-shirt factory in Haiti is a development project and helps Haitians. We fail to simply look at Haiti and ask if they really need a T-shirt factory to increase the income of a few thousand Haitians or agricultural development so they can feed themselves. What we do is use cheap labor and no environmental regualtions or worker safety laws to make cheap t-shirts will flooding the Haitian market with cheap “Food Aid” grain which drives grain prices down causing more farmers to leave their farms and move to the city which lowers wages even more. To further increase the profit margin we “provide” the workers with company housing and a company commissary in which we deduct these costs from their paychecks. Even the cotton that is used in the t-shirts is grown here and exported to Haiti and priced under the local market value due to our very generous subsidies that we pay our farmers. All we have to do to realize this is ask ourselves why we can buy a 4 pack of t-shirts for $10 at Wal-Mart.



As our standard of living has become harder to maintain we have gone from single income families to dual income families, we have outsourced our production capacity to cheapen labor and production costs. We have been sold a bill of goods to consume even more, become more energy efficient by replacing your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs. You never hear that a better way to become energy efficient is to use less light bulbs and less energy. That if you really want to help the environment then don’t buy a new TV or cell phone if your old one still works. Life and business functioned just fine before Blackberries and HD TV’s. If you ask the average Western consumer what they would want more off most will say time. We buy all of types of “time saving” devices but spend the time if any that we gain from using them working to pay for them. We have completely lost touch not only with the earth but also with ourselves.

If you want to really do something to help the Earth, then turn off the TV and read a book, or play outside with your children.