Evil genie pops cork. News at 11:59pm

I've been working on the little garden to the right and tomorrow I begin my 6 months of work at PeaceHealth. Last night I finished the second part of a documentary that is on ABC in Australia via the web and it had a big "aha!" in it for me. Before I launch into that there is a post by Phil Churchill on the main site that is here. Check it out.

Evil genie in the bottle:
In the age of the dinosaurs the big plates of the earth began to separate. Volcano's formed everywhere along the edges and spewed out humongous amounts of carbon dioxide. Over 100 million years the earth got hotter and hotter because carbon dioxide lets warm sunlight in, but doesn't let it out. It is like a piece of glass in a greenhouse.

The polar ice caps melted entirely. You know that can't be good. When there is no cold ice cap the cool the warm water flowing up from the equator (the sun heats the equator's water more than the poles), then the warm water can't cool and drop deep to create the flow that mixes the oceans of the world through currents.

So the oceans became stagnant. Plankton went nuts, yahoo - good eats, warm water, heaven - in the warm water and used the oxygen in the water, the carbon dioxide in the air and sunlight to grow more of themselves. Because of the humongous amount of CO2 in the air, the plankton thrived and created a thick soup of the stuff in the oceans of dinosaur times.

Just like us, the plankton won't stop until something stops them. They used up all the oxygen in the water and began to die, leaving the seas, pitch black and without any oxygen at all. The began dying and drifted to the bottom. There over millions of years they built up, forming a thick, gooey, stinky mass of lipids and cell walls, and icky icky black decay. At some point in the cycle, H2S - hydrogen sulfide began to bubble and poison the remaining life in the ocean as there was no oxygen in the water to oxidate it. Acid rains began to sweep the globe and a hell, from the human perspective, was created. The continents were washed into the seas with terrific storms of acid rain. Soils swept into the sea and began to cover the stinky ooze of dead plankton. Good riddance.

But the earth is a dynamic balance engine. Those very stinking half decayed plankton had each pulled a little bit of CO2 from the atmosphere. Since were buried without O2, they kept the carbon dioxide and the slow miracle began. In their act of dying, these little plankton had taken the evil tiny bits of CO2 with them to their dark graves deep in the oceans. They rained down in the ocean floors for millions of years. And the miracle began. Without the CO2, the earth's atmosphere began to cool. The polar ice returned. AND THEN: The ocean currents began to flow again, they stirred the waters and oxygen was once again reabsorbed into the seas. Life returned to the ocean depths. Our blue planet reborn as we know it today, well, a hundred and fity years ago, and life began again, without most of the dinosaur clan though.

In a good dramatic book, the story would end with the blue skies clearing, birds (dinosaur cousins) flying and a then a cut to a bubbling cauldron of stinking ooze imprisoning the dangerous CO2 deep under the oceans floor, where under pressure and no oxygen, the ooze was slowly compressing, creaking, groaning, waiting. Waiting once again to be released to the surface to begin the process the volcanos had started 120 million years ago, returning the earth to the hell of stagnant death. Waiting for the sequel.

Not to worry, all that ooze turned to oil source rocks and most if it was buried thousands of feet down under the surface of this new eden (from the human perspective). There is no wise human who would release that evil genie by pumping it up and burning it because it would spell the end of Human Kind. Sleep easy, we're not that dumb. Oh, wait.

Getting small

I just finished Kunstler's essay that he posted today and it is worth a read, "We want Solutions!"
He finishes the article with the passing thought that he would be happy to hear people stop talking about how to make cars work on other fuels (thus preserving the status quo), and start talking about "occupying the landscape differently."
A week or so ago Rick and I attended a small tour of a local permaculturist's home. As you might imagine it is a riot of flowers, fruits, vegetables, 3 chickens, water tanks, little fountains, rain water catchment systems, and it felt really really good, physically to stand in the middle of it. Jan made the comment that he really likes to stay home and goes out much less. I had the thought at that moment that many of us really have sterile homes and we need Starbucks or the equivalent to be in a place that we like.
I think Kunstler is touching this point. We cannot reinvent the world with alternative energy and have it be the same. Actually, I can do very little about the rest of the world, but the spots that I choose to stop, my small worlds, I can help make places that I would not want to leave. I was walking around TJ's yard looking at my fruit trees and blueberries, and the compost crate wood bins that he and I built two days ago and thought how wonderful it was to just drink my coffee and see how everything was doing.
You and I can make our personal spaces the place to be. What did Walt Disney say? "Imagineer!
Imagineer your life so that where you are is a wonderful place to be. This centers us down, and we travel less. We are happy to tend our food and plants and talk to friends and sit in the sun and gossip. What if we each traveled half as much, not work travel, but mental health travel, you know, "ah honey, I'm going down to the store," only because you are bored. What would the energy savings of that alone be?
So changing your own small world in the midst of this energy transition is the most important thing you can do because it is the only part you have any control over. Every bit of energy you save is money in your pocket. Put self interest to work, get small and get CHEAP!
Here's a system that is based only on your own self interest.
Stop shopping for anything new. Buy only used and buy at thrift stores or garage sales. All the "disposable" income you save - buy a few solar panels, start a garden, buy one or two good bicycles, start an exercise program (NOT a GYM!) Spend no money except on those things that are useful to you both now and later. Everything you buy should reduce reoccurring costs. Shut off the second cell phone, cut the minutes down. Shut off the landline phone completely. Buy a CB radio and learn how to talk. Create food coops among your friends and try to support local farmers. Most of all, stay home, drive less, walk more. Now is the time to break addictions, not while you're in a crisis.
The bottom line is that you can't influence anyone but yourself. But just imagineer this. You build a place around you that is beautiful to you and functional, in the physical world, and in doing that you find that you are happier. The changes that come require changes in us, not in the energy saving bulb you buy or in a hybrid car (all hybrids use more oil to construct than they will ever save, don't be a dope), in what we want. Change what you want, get small, get solid, dig your toes into the soil and change, or you will be flotsam in the stream come big changes.
There is no political change outside yourself that will stop what comes - the energy and climate switches are thrown, now it is just timing. Don't waste time convincing others, begin the gentle work of changing what makes you happy.
I raked and loaded a bunch of lawn clippings onto the center storage bin of the compost system, and I felt pretty good. It is start.

Wetware Reprogramming Problems

Reprogramming ourselves and how we deal with bad news. As the cowboy philosopher once said, "it ain't the bad times coming, its the good times going."
No matter how you introduce people to the wall towards which we rush (oil depletion), you are almost in the role of a loved one telling you a family member has died. Speaking with a local farmer who is active in preparing for this, he mentioned that this sort of information must come from a friend, knee to knee, and you must be prepared for the denial, anger, and grief. You are bringing information to those you care about, but it is not happy time, not happy talk and at the bottom of it, when they fully understand, you have introduced them to idea that all they have believed and all they have worked for was the wrong thing, the wrong goals, the dream is dying. Imagine how you felt the first time it began leaking into your conciousness. For me, a friend sent an email and simply said, "google peak oil." By the end of the day, I looked over at my friend Rick and said, "we are so fucked."

I've been beating on this drum for most of a year now. I have seen friends come in a circle from pushing back, - "bullshit, you're just a paranoid geek," through complete acceptance and fact discovering - where they send me all the corrobrating evidence that they are finding, and some to the point where they see that it indeed makes no difference and that they should work instead on keeping themselves emotionally healthy.

There are three responses to the Peak Oil scenario that you will generally experience as you wade through it with your friends, knee to knee.
1. Not true - many variations of this from, "there is plenty of oil" to "we always figure things out, count on our problem solving technology."
2. So it doesn't matter what we do, so we're screwed, so there is nothing to do, so party on and enjoy the ride.
3. This one recognizes that all the information from so many directions, such as oil depletion, Hubbard's curve, global warming (whatever the cause), fished out oceans, poisoned water, and make believe money created by creating debt - all these make the "PERFECT STORM" of our coming collapse. Understanding that not every field and every "big brain" can all be wrong, and considering that anyone of the converging streams of our "Perfect Storm" are enough to cause a massive collapse of industrial society, they do not go to - screwed or not true.
This group grasps the only possible straw left - they hope and soon believe that it will happen slowly. This is very attractive and easy to believe. We are programmed to incremental changes in a very slow changing environment. So I was good to go yesterday, I expect the same tomorrow.

It is this third state that I would like to address as it came up yet again for me yesterday with a close friend. If you remenber back to a post here a few weeks ago, we perceive threat only when it is close. A lion just in sight arouses caution but no real response, but a lion close and hunting we react to. Our reactions to threats are not linear.
We react to things we see that are close. We have no big indication peak oil except the fact that we are pumping oil and then there will be know more. We know that intellectually but not in our old brain where the drive to "DO IT NOW!" comes from. So we talk, and try to motivate ourselves to some action.
Will totally understandable, it is also true that what we think about our societies need for growth and a constantly increasing oil supply in ordered to feed a constantly growing earth population has little to do with what I believe or you. It is physical, inexorable, and it comes.

I had the thought when I hear, "oh I understand the whole peak oil thing, but it will probably take years." Why would anyone think that. We are used to government and corporations lying to keep their power, line their pockets and control us, but we get our information on peak oil and global warming from people who are outside of the distrusted realms. Why do we need to push this away? Even people with young children who I would think would be frantic are sanguine.

It is that evolutionary tick, the danger is not close enough, therefore not important enough. The part that breaks my heart is that I have read and read and talked and listened and listened and thought, and it is not distant. It is as close as tomorrow. I can't say for sure tomorrow, but we are running around in a house of glass that is fragile beyond belief.

All that information is available for you to come to the same conclusion, and many are, but not everyone that I care about.

So what do you do if your friend pushes into denial and you watch them wondering what is love's responsiblity? Isolate and wave goodbye? Given them a subset of all the information coming in so that they are not overloaded? Avoid trigger words? Have the concepts introduced by people they love and trust and believe?

All these options have proponents. Many of my friends have cut ties with the idea of introducing the collapse to anyone and are simply taking care of those close to them by edict. Some have plans to disappear into the wilderness of North America for a year or two and then see what is left. Others are acting locally to convince people to relocalize their purchases. No more Walmart, no more throwing things away, all purchases local. That groups hope to save all around them, at least in their local communities.

It is a big topic, a big problem and a big responsibility to love the people around you. You will be discomforted. You will be the bearer of bad news and their anger will often be directed at you. So what I do personally is different for each friend and close person. For some, nothing. Even my own stepdaughter who is an adult. I broach the subjects lightly and they are replussed. OK.
Other friends I sit through the grieving and on to their preparations. With the friend I was talking to last night I played the friendship card. I said do these three things because I say so, just because I say so.
In this instance it was to buy two Unisolar 64 watt solar panels, buy enough canning jar lids for all the canning jars they have, and to put in enough stored food for six months. I think that she and her husband and daughter will do that, only because I'm being weird about it.
So each of your friends is different. But on all of them, you must sit knee to knee and deal with this, or cut them loose.

So for you, my anonymous reader, I suggest the generic following for you. This summer, grow a garden and can if you can. Buy grains and learn to store them. Make sure you have a source of heat that does not come from the electrical grid or from a petrochemical product. Draw a circle around where you live the distance you can walk pulling a cart. Find what resources for you exist within that circle. Get some candles, then get some more. Get a CB radio for the car - there are little ones that fit where your ashtray was. Get a good battery powered radio. Have a source of water besides the city water, or store water enough for a week at least.

If you did even that little bit, you will be able to keep your head a bit in a crisis. You would have water, food, heat and communication. You would not have an expectation of driving "out" of the problem. Perhaps this is time to reconnect and move closer to family if you would do that in an emergency anyway, for surely it will be much more difficult to move once this begins.

Finally - why so many spelling errors and things when I first post? Because writing this is a flow out of me and exhausting. As I type this last sentence, I don't want to re read it, because all this information is hard for me too. Like you I wish it to not be so, to go away, I want the world my mother promised me and I goddamn mad at all of us for having gone down this particular social evolutionary path (capitalism). So later I will come back and edit, and it will be clearer, and it will be spelled right, but right now, I am complete.
mcnalan

Government in Collapse

Right, planting fruit trees and putting in a garden. I strongly suggest you do the same if you have property you own or rent or can use. It is time to support local farmers who can feed you, and neighbors whose resources might be shared.

Our government since about 1900 has been a machine that has fed and grew on oil. The increasing free energy source was the life blood of a growing industrial giant that we were taught and allowed to love. Our country was the pride of our fathers. This machine of government had ever more growth and money from the application of this magic free energy to all the functions of society.
The upside curve of the graph of every increasing nearly free energy is a wonderful place to be, and any government blessed with abundant, SEEMINGLY endless supplies of cheap fuel can achieve the unimaginable, the moon, the sky scrapers, the bridges spanning miles of ocean, the cultivation of millions of acres by machines, fueled of course by cheap energy. Any government enjoys this growth period because all things are possible. The future is a vision of shining achievement, new technology, new enlightenment.
The down hill slope of decreasing energy creates a different form of government. Almost in an instant as we are watching, day to day, our government, any government, sees in this new future something it cannot contemplate, will not contemplate: the death of itself.
The government of ever more becomes the government of ever less, and that animal looks more like a coyote than an angel.
On May 9th George W. Bush issued an executive directive giving himself dictatorial powers over all branches of the government in extreme crisis. Extreme crisis as defined by the executive branch. Purportedly necessary to avoid a replay of the Katrina federal response disaster, or another 9-11, it allows Georgy and the gang to "protect" democracy. How in the world do you protect democracy by imposing what amounts to martial law?
Read the directive here for yourself.

I can't actually work up any indignation at this because I think I understand what each government, not just our own federal government must become during the collapse of the industrial period of magical nearly-free, oil. It goes like this.
Shrinking resources, shrinking money for government, a growing unrest from a population that is only used to more, not less, creates the need to do two things.
1. Secure all resources that are possible - right to the last drop in case of oil.
2. Control the population so that it doesn't remove the government that it perceives to be the problem, because it must be somebody's mistake. Higher gas prices, a conspiracy, not a natural result of less and less in the ground. (it is so odd that we understand easily that 3 apples minus 2 apples is 1 apple, but we all believed that oil was forever).

All governments must and do two things at the beginning of hard times. Inventory assets and control. Already in Oregon, there is a bill to meter personal wells. To meter is to inventory, to inventory is to control (and tax). That is the smallest step at the local level. At the federal level we learned last year that "containment" camp contracts have been awarded - guess to who, hah, you knew it - a part of Dick Cheney's group - Halliburton! Read prison camps for containment camps.

No government in power goes easily into the dark night. As an US ciitzen I long bounced around the superficial notion that we have a peaceful revolution at the polls every four years, and if other countries would emulate us they would be better off. It has taken me a long time to finally get it, and only through the gloves coming off of the current government. There never was a revolution every four years. It was always a superficial change to a free market engine that was only slightly affected. I'm not going to get deep into politics but America is run by return on investment - by profit, by corporations, and who they support are the only choices you have. A and B on the ballet both received money and incurred obligations to, the very same large corporations.

So look for these things. Passage of directives or laws giving emergency powers. Oh wait, that is done at the federal level as of May 9th. Look for local government, state and county to begin to inventory everything of value to be taxed and controlled. That is already happening too.

Look for the government to seize all remaining oil reserves as the oil decreases. Perhaps this is why 12 warships entered an exercise near Iran yesterday. Perhaps control of the middle east is crucial to the remaining 25 percent of the oil reserves under Saudi Arabia. Perhaps that is why the Saudis are moving the insides of their palaces to London.

I ask you to look with fresh eyes, not because I believe what will come is changeable. All governments seek to preserve themselves, all systems that work are worked right to the point they do not. BUT underneath governments there are people like you and I. I planted 2 fruit trees and 6 blueberry bushes yesterday. I am eating sprouts and will buy all my vegetables from local growers.
The local churches are holding nights during the winter when you come to a pot luck and meet your local farmers. The relationships that are crucial to your happiness during the down hill curve of petroleum production are happening now. If you know your farmer by name, perhaps you will have an edge in getting food when others do not. That is why the local churches call these nights, "That's my farmer." I suggest you get in on this.
Relocalize - buy even at greater cost food locally and make sure you make a personal connection with those you will need to keep your channels open during this collapse. Food, materials, medicines, everything critical in your mind to your life. People as a group have access to stored resouces in a way that no individual ever will.
Oh, and lie when local government wants to inventory what you have. Make your connections with others around you, meet your neighbors, host a pot luck, because a hundred people can turn away the sheriff, but one person is simply another happily employed laborer in the "containment and control camp."
Perhaps you having a sip of excellent coffee as I am, enjoying empire around me while it lasts and all the benefits we take for granted. You think, ' man he is over the edge, government is not the enemy, anarchy is the enemy.
I can only say, feel what is happening. IS it your experience that governments get smaller? Is it your experience that government cares about your welfare? In any crisis the role of the police and military is control not to help. We saw that with the pathetic Katrina response. We are no longer led by our ever richer benevolent uncle, Sam. We are led now by the lean and ferret eyed coyote who needs everyone's oil to make it one more day.
But all the other countries are better right? There was a free for all in the Canadian parliment last week when a shouting match ensued over the fact that they long ago peaked in oil production and gas production but they continue to sell the USA 60 percent of their oil and gas. Some Canadians want to stop sell us oil. Gee, that wouldn't be nice nor wise would it?

Government in energy decline is a different animal than government of the ever more energy blessed. It will fight for self preservation and set aside an democratic process that interferes with it's survival and growth. The problem is that growth is dependent on energy and oil has peaked (according to most oil geologist not working in the public relations department of big oil), and the decline means we cannot support the parasite load of multi level government that we once could. We are now taking our medicine and some cramping is expected.

Tree planting day!

TJ has been working to prepare the garden space by mowing it several times, and that is done. We have covered the garden space for next year, about 1500 sq feet with plastic, tarps, and cardboard.
I have found and bought enough pallets to build the first two composting bins and best of all, or most fun for me anyway, I bought two apple trees and 6 blueberry bushes yesterday. It rained lat night for quite a while, soaking much of what used to be stored in the truck, but that is very good for tree planting day. I'll pick up my purchases with the F250 today and get them in the ground this morning.
All is going well, but I'm spending more than I had allocated. I suspect many of us who are thinking there is a timeliness to our preparations are constantly being faced with the decisions, both large and small, as I did yesterday. Everything changes when you begin to think time is short.

My example: I could have waited until next year and bought 2 year old bare root fruit trees for less than a third of the $29.99 I paid for each of the apple trees. I am working under a very strick budget and what is time to an apple tree? I could have waited. Except that I don't think loosing two years of apple tree growth is a good idea. I think time for easy purchase and easy transportation and low prices (yes, low even at 30/tree, for what will it be when everyone you know is putting fruit and nut trees in their back yards?) is at the end.

Some people who have been following the "Perfect Storm" of peak oil, global warming, fiscal growth and collapse, sterile seas, are calling this the "Last Summer." So all my spending is directed towards what will feed me and my tribe during the coming times. Also, I'm preparing both truck, trailer, and Geo Metro for even greater self sufficiency and mobility.

Most of all, as I go through my own transition back to work and non mobility, I am finding peace in the small things I can do, growing sprouts, planting these apple trees this morning. They will outlast me, and feed some or many. They will wait and grow and be part of a very different world. A more sane world I hope, a community that makes so much more sense to it's members than the community I live in now-the community of consumption.

So it is early morning, I will eat, drink coffee this morning and then later plunge my hands into moist compost, and set the future for two trees and six blueberry bushes. A real change in my little world. An act of prayer and joy in the face of the storm that comes. I do have pictures of the work and will take pictures of the trees and berries as they nestle into their new homes. Check the main site later today or tomorrow morning.

Food

Worth a read. Food

Doing, not talking

My lack of posting in the last 7 days, what I consider "posting lite" is not an indication that I've lost interest, direction or confidence in my thinking about living in a decreasing energy supply, but rather, that having arrived back in Oregon, everything is falling into place and I'm busy doing, rather than talking.
Garden planning is underway
I've become active in a post carbon Eugene group, and will be helping to bring the new movie, "Escape from Suburbia to" Eugene for a showing here along with the producer and/or director of the movie. I have met many people who assume already what I have been trying to present here in the last 6 months, so I don't have to sweeten the message. Do understand that many people around you understand the significant nature of the lifestyle change headed our way, and are actively doing something about it. That something in the people I've met is moving to property
I've bought the geo metro and all trips to town have sidelined the truck as plan to very occasional trips for heavy items.
I've also been going deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of culture, civilization and government for a future low energy United States. I know that I alienated many readers with Peak Oil and this is much deeper and requires facing even more difficult choices. Writing about that here will not help my thought processes or subsequent actions, so in a sense, I'm taking that work off line.
Meanwhile, starting when the sun comes out tomorrow I'll begin focusing on showing you the garden plan, the methodology, my permaculture design for the space and expected outcomes.
More then.
alan

Tragedy of the Commons

IN 1968 G. Hardin wrote a paper for Science magazine. You may have heard the name of the title in discussion, as I have heard all my life. It was and is entitled "the Tragedy of the Commons." Today I followed a link to the discussion of it, and you can download the whole article as a on the Main website later today. I entertain this because the enormous reservoirs of oil in the earth are the new tragedy of commons, and it behooves us all to understand what happens when too many need, desire, demand, too little.

Using land that is open and unfenced, open range, or common lands for the use of all is an English idea dating back to before the Romans occupied Britain. In simple terms it is the idea that you or any herdsman has the right to put his cow on common ground that is shared by all. This right is fundamental in the development of our modern crisis of declining energy (peak oil) today.

There is very little downside to you putting your cow on the commons. They eat food that you do not have to provide that is largely free to you, except for a little upkeep of the cow. It is a high win value situation for you, giving you practically a free cow over time. The problem with your right to use the Commons is that it is every one else has the same right too. Soon the grass is exhausted and can't support even a few cows. We collectively ruined the resource, and now few cows at all can be supported because the pasture is destroyed (Overshoot). It is our right to use the common land by legal right and tradition but in reality there is a limit to how much resource the common land can provide. Unfortunately without control our method for testing the carrying capacity of any Common resource is to use it to destruction. Then we know it was one less cow than that.

Hardin in his 1968 Science article describes what must exist to control the Commons for the best use of all. There are three things that must exist to protect and extend the commons forever.

First, you must be able to measure the extent of the resource.

Second, having measured the resource the users must agree to be controlled in their use.

Third, a government, having the measurement of the resource in hand, and the method of control of Commons users also in hand, must have the ability to use that coercion to protect the commons and insure fair use by all.

If each of those three criteria are met, then the commons can be sustained indefinitely.
How does that work with our modern society and the nearly magically free energy spigot of oil?

We could not measure all the oil when oil was first discovered, and even today there is endless misrepresentation of findings, and even complete discord over what is found oil. In essence, we can't accurately describe the resource. But in 1930 for instance, almost every oil geologist would have said that the amount was so large as to be equal to infinite. We would always find more oil, there would always be more oil to pump. It seems ludicrous in retrospect, I mean, these are scientists who learned that three apples minus two apples equals one apple. But there is a flaw in humans that when the resource is so large, and the use so small, we extrapolate large to infinite and never revisit that thought it seems.

Second, our meaurements of remaining oil are more accurate in the present time because of the oil finding technology, so we come late to the savings of this Commons with measurements that no one wants to hear. Essentially, giving myself leeway of 10 years, there is agreement that we are at the 1/2 way point of having used all the oil that exists. Unfortunately that was the easy half, the inexpensive half, the upside slope of cheaper and cheaper oil. Now we are looking at the downslope of the next 1/2, with each barrel more expensive to extract than the previous. With this gloomy unwanted measurement of the size of the remaining Commons in our hands, we find that we fail Hardin's second requirement. A way to control the use of the commons by all. There is no current way to enforce the use and importing of oil in the world except by a group of oil producers reducing the flow. They have the right to do that if they could all agree, and they do not all agree, and if they did, world wide business will collapse. So Opec or Russia may say they will slow down the pumping, but every country that believes they have the mandate to grow their economies and support their population will use military might to open up the spigots of oil again.

Thus failing the control of use, and failing to have a world organization with the authority to coerce restraint of use of the commons, we cannot control the exhaustion of the resource by which much of the world population is fed.

This is our oil "tragedy of the commons," that describes in ever lessening flow, the loss of energy and the ushering in of a new age of de-industrialization, energy poverty, and return to human and animal labor supporting populations a mere fraction of the size that they are today.

The final point I realized in this examination of the "Tragedy of Commons" is that oil never was really similar to the English Commons, though world wide we have treated it as such. The pasture in the middle of an English village, with the aid of the world eco system, can grow new grass, replenish itself, and even add to it's critical topsoil if it is used very lightly. But oil, well, as Richard Heinberg replied when asked when oil started running out, "oil started running out when we used the first barrel."

Oil is not replenished. When we use it, that part is gone. The easy oil is gone, and from now on it is harder and harder to get. We will never pump it all, because at a certain point, oil being the blood of our industrial world, there will not be enough to run our world, and it's use will collapse. Perhaps our few descendants will place small cups of oil in clay earthen bowls and worship it, telling religious stories of a mythical time past, when people flew in the air, powered by this magical liquid.

Salvage of the old oil age culture

There is a meeting of the Post Carbon group in four hours and I've been finishing up a video that was shot here in Eugene in 2005, a talk by Richard Heinberg which forms the shared common assumptions of the Post Carbon group. I've also been hearing back from many of you free chickens on the Crude Awakening video that I've sent to some of you. On top of that, this little monkey brain has been trying to sketch out a new life in our near future through long conversations with TJ and a very long phone call with Gary.
Gary sent me this link which I find very appropriate considering how most people slowly come to accept the inevitable reduction and lose of cheap energy and the corresponding social "adjustment." Most of us simply assume we must find a replacement for oil to put in our gas tanks. The answer is that we must do without all that enormous nearly free energy.
The task once you get through the denial and grief, anger and even self loathing is to design a life you can accept with no oil energy. Can you fit your life around no car, no job, no fossil fuel heating?
Maybe if you move quickly you'll have time to get a few solar panels and some batteries. So maybe you'll have a little electricity for a radio, CB, small TV if there are any broadcast stations. Oh and a light or two will be possible.
That is the world you must design for yourself that still has your most precious life items in it. The things you want to do must not require fast or heavy transportation, and your car may be something to roll around and live in, and certainly a good source of 12V salvage for a long while, but that's all. That is what is at the end of easy fossil fuels. Maybe much less than that if we don't play nice as the era winds down.
Here's what I think about and learn about with most of my precious internet time.
1. Water, food, shelter.
2. Power generation with solar, wind, hydro.
3. Food, growing food, canning food, preserving food, protecting food..
4. Learning to effectively salvage the machines and buildings of the old oil age.
5. Tribal formation to protect these small acquired assets.
6. Amassing real wealth in the remaining oil indulgent immediate future.
7. Trying to think without using the thinking tools that created the very mess we need to think our way past. How do we not do this again on a smaller scale in the future?

Phil is foraging

For those of you have read some of Phil's essays on aftershock, he is now in South Dakota and is trying to forage for seventy percent of his food.
"This will give you a good start if you want to try a few wild plants in your meals. I use thirty to fourty different plants here in SD through the spring and summer when camping, and I'm familiar with a couple hundred more. One thing you should remember is that wild plants have more fiber than the commercial varieties. At the amounts I'm using, I'm getting about . . ." read the article!

Post Carbon in Eugene

First, here's a picture of the 1991 Geo metro that I bought on Friday.
There is another shot of it next to my trailer and some thoughts about why buy it on the Aftershock main website here.
I met three of the Post Carbon group in Eugene yesterday at a quick meeting out at Kevin's farm near the Willamette river. Doug, Denise, Kevin and I talked about where Doug would like to put the efforts of the Post Carbon group in the immediate future. More, it was a chance for me to see how wide the subject is, and how exhausting.

I tried last night to get my thoughts straight. Why was I there at all? I guess I'm what is known in the Peak oil circles as a "doomer." I have not yet found any confidence, plan, or suggestion that takes our current society and moves it through the loss of free and easy, hell, magical, oil to a lower energy future without deadly, enormous disruption. That does not mean that I am not looking for the path for me, and my close people. But yes, I'm a doomer and remain unconvinced about people's ability to change, and about the very structure of this machine civilization to transmute to a non machine civilization.

In the short time that the four of us met yesterday, with a larger meeting coming on Tuesday, I found several viewpoints that really reflect that all four of us came to that point in the greenhouse from very different directions. Doug is a methodical activist seeking change in practical ways through the political system as it really exists. It is a very slow process and he chips away at the entrenched Chamber of Commerce machine that controls even a small thing like a Peak Oil resolution - which Portland has already done!
Denise represents a Peak Oil person who has already made changes based on what she has learned, relocating herself and her husband to Eugene. Kevin is living the life that is probably the only real choice in 50 years. A very nearly completely self sufficient farm on 23 acres that supplies almost every need and creates a surplus. I enjoyed basking in his energy because it is calm, quiet and directed, as most people who work physically hard seem to possess.

The consensus was that relocalization is the key to future community change. Learning to grow, buying food locally, supporting the structures that will still exist when the Walmart trucks roll less often and the price of gas isolates you where you are.
But what did I feel about all of this? Was I bouyed with new hope and enthusiasm? I was devestated that there is no consensus of the smallest of issues. Anyone who has the courage to not flinch and look away, anyone who begins the process of self education about energy finally one day realizes there are at least already 4 billion more people than the earth can carry, and second, that every political system in the world is the wrong tool for getting through this. The political systems are the problems. They are exactly how we got in this mess, and whoever is left at the end of the next 80 years will probably not fondly remember us, those people who used the most magical gift of the 120 million years of earth oil production in 150 years. And, we did it with no view of the future and of the time when it would be gone. We have been very bad dogs. Unfortunately our political systems exist to preserve the status quo. Investement, ROI, exist on stability - that tomorrow will have the same cheap energy as today. Some of the smartest people I know personally can simply not look at this, can not entertain running out and the business model collapsing, investment collapsing, debt overwhelming them as the bills of nearly free energy are called in.
I and those people see the future that would work here in the Willamette valley - Kevin's farm in a wonderful model of what will be common, among those left in 2082 (when oil becomes a collector's item - maybe we'll sell it on a primitive version of local ebay by the cup then?). But how to reach across from massive belief that this party can go on forever? We could be using the last half of oil reserves (the very hard to get last half) to build sustainable energy, wind, and solar at the local level on every home, as Cuba is currently doing. They are pumping oil from off shore and selling it, using the proceeds to buy and build solar panels for every school and eventually all rural homes. It is not much power, enough for a light bulb and a radio. That's it. But I can personally tell you, there is a huge difference between no power and even a very little bit of power.
But I was in Las Vegas two weeks ago as blog readers know, and there was no sign that anyone can stop. The machine is self perpetuating, and those that control investment can not accept the physical laws and math that you learned in 1st grade. You have three apples and subtract two apples and you have one apple. Oil was a two time event in geological history, I have read, 90 million years ago, and 120 million years ago. Find it all, pump it all, wait a few hundred million years and maybe there will be more. From now until then, no oil.
I hope to learn more from these people, and I strangely am driven to make people look right at it. It's bad enough that we used it all in completely stupid ways, but then to not have the balls to look at the what we did and the coming result? Somehow we have to let it in, if only to grief it's loss. If you want to wait until you are like a little baby rabbit saying "what happened, what happened, it's not fair!!!" then we have not matured as a species at all. We have to stare right at it, do the best with what is left, and accept that we have been, since the dawn of agriculture, the problem on this planet, not the solution. I would just like us all to look, and then have the grace to say, "oops." And then use what is left to build a sustainable new world. Whatever I think or you think, whether you bothered to read this far or not, the end of oil comes because the pumps are running.

Geo Metro owner

My plan to buy a beater car to keep the miles over the tow truck (my 460 F250) has had success! I bought a 1991 Geo Metro for 1800 yesterday. I drove it out to Eugene and back in twice. 55 mph seems very fast. It is like a rattling skateboard with a 5 speed. I was hesitant only because it is a ragtop convertible, but I was easily convinced by a blog reader on the phone to get it because a convertible is fun. I don't have much truck with fun, fun is not serious. But I drove it around when the sun was out (it is bone chilling, soul sucking wet and cold today - whaaaa! I wanna go back to the warm desert) and I sort of fell in love with how little it is and the gas mileage. This one came down from Seattle, and it averaged 43 mph on the way down with oversized tires. Now it is back to stock and better, I'm getting a whole new convertible top for it (the rear plastic window is funky).
It has already save at least two 24 mile round trips, and it will keep all those miles off my beautiful truck, AND it is one of the best high mileage cars in existence. That gets rid of the "just wrong to use so much gas" feeling I had driving the truck and trailer combo.
You might ask why have the truck? It pulls my little home which is so energy light (all solar no plug in at all). My main reason is that the truck is very low mileage and pretty perfect and I can't afford to replace it, so I'm babying it.
I'll have pictures of it up when the sun is out tomorrow.
Meanwhile I've made (TJ made) several copies of the Crude Awakening movie and I have them with me. Tomorrow I will be attending my first Post Carbon, Eugene, meeting and will meet some of the local people involved in planning a positive future after peak oil.

Post Carbon in Eugene

I've been thinking about change stress, as I'm in it right now as the traveling mcnalan becomes the sort of stationary alan who works and commutes. There has been internet connectivity problems, but they are minor. Yet I'm disrupted. So TJ so I ran out some ideas of stress during change while drinking coffee this morning.
Everything that I do is some variety of reoccurring process. From checking email first thing, making sure web work obligations are met for my clients, checking my blood, shooting insulin, dumping grey water, checking batteries, keeping the cell phone charged - all are a wheel that turns every day, minimum efforts that must be paid in to keep this level of my technology alive.

So yesterday the wireless connection broke and that caused a cascade of events that culminated with me in town without my insulin, thus unable to eat carbo, however I did, (bad dog), and thus my blood sugar numbers went high, which besides destructive to my body, cause emotional irritation too. So the smallest break of my technology and I was rendered "crisis useless." I was not in any place to think creatively and it was all I could do to get the things done on my list.

So in real change, like closed gas stations and fuel too expensive or unavailable for me to get to work, all will require big adjustments. I can hardly stand a small adjustment. Maybe we all have a tendency to judge our ability to handle the normal stresses of daily life based on how we feel when we have most things caught up and are poised for more problems and opportunities. However I don't think in any societal change that I will likely be in that mental place. More than likely I will be a mental basket case. So one of the skills I need to work on, to allow, to develop, is flexibility when everything is not working, where I can't communicate, where I can't hear and learn in my preferred way (internet), where I might not know where my friends and loved ones are, or if they are alright. And in that emotional cloud I have to make gentle, loving, sound decisions for myself. I've got a lot to work on.

Gary has been posting some tough to talk about personal observations. Check out the Pill linked on the right, perhaps there is something there that will have meaning for you too.

Here are the minutes from the last Post Carbon workshop in Eugene. I post this to give you and idea of the disparate views and concerns of people about Peak oil and our uncertain future from their minds and hearts. I'm looking forward to meeting all of them.

------------------
AFTERNOON SESSION--PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS; everyone in the room
contributed


PROBLEMS--LONG RANGE AND IMMEDIATE


--25% of US oil directed to producing food and fiber (f&f)
--imported natural gas used for synthetic fertilizer production
--inevitable fossil fuel depletion
-- more likely- spasmodic interruptions of fuel occurring soon
--food commonly viewed as a commodity, profane not sacred
--local farmers markets not year-round, 7 days/week
--population growth/urbanization destroys farmland while increasing
need for f&f.
--climate change leading to water loss and emerging diseases
--antibiotic resistance in humans caused by overuse in livestock
production
--arable soil destruction thlrough urbanization & desertification
--public health problems from widespread pesticide and fertilizer use
--crab bucket society; less fortunate out of luck, ignored
--stigma of farm work
--junk food cheaper than good food
--apathy of population oblivious to problems and consequences
--food needs labor to produce, process
--people live in cities, removed from production & processing f&f
--popular mindsets- assumptions, framing and metaphors
--transportation energy (food miles)
--children eat poorly, especially if poor
--emergency preparedness and response lacking
--lack of f&f = biggest Homeland Security problem
--nutritional content of food poor, declining
--food & fiber production involves violent/hostile interaction with
nature
--farm housing inadequate-people kept off land by laws
--economy based on exploitation of nature
--spiritual disconnect - people and nature
--GNP concept fundamentally opposed to sustainability
--industrial model of thinking overwhelms smart advances with
bureaucracy
--no commons, no popular understanding of commons concepts
--water quality deteriorating due to f&f production, urban uses
--land use laws favor urbanization, keep ag people off ag land


SOLUTIONS
--gardens in yards, rooftops, ect.
--land ownership changes to bring people to country living
--reframe metaphors, reality-study George Lakoff
--everything doesn't have to be sold-food too important to be a
commodity
--reduce useless work in society
--growing food and fiber = meaningful work
--depaving
--food not lawns
--pedal express
--SF and Portland Peak Oil Resolutions
--economic incentives for learning f&f sustainable production
--organize ourselves on new models-cooperation rather than top-loaded
incorporation
--adopt traditonal meeting methods of Quakers for democratic answers
--increase popular awareness of historical, alternative cultural models
for f&f production
--disaster preparedness critical (Mayan calendar warns poop hits fan
soon)
--must get ready for unknown future
--avoid entrapment of traditional industrial success models (don't
create monsters)
--increase nutrition of food products
--support school gardens, community teaching
--excercise kindness, patience working with f&f production
--problems present opportunities
--involve churches, faith communities
--approach problems with love, compassion and education
--give up "dominion over earth" models
--convert wasted and misallocated land to f&f
--reestablish lost town commons
--teach people how to grow f&f
--city planning to include neighborhood markets
--make local leaders aware of Portland task force report and
reccommendations
--explore new models of group living and growing food together
--support people already moving in right direction
--embrace sudden change concepts
--understand no technological fix will maintain status quo
--understand no gradual curve of declining fossil fuels probable
--understand fuel decline will be spasmodic
--give up delusions
--moral obligation to weaken global economy model
--live outside system
--work to actualize critical mass, reframe issues and change popular
culture
--take responsibilty for personal change
--music, dance, celebration
--everyone stay positive and go within themselves to find what is
theirs to do
--dachas- European model-families live in high density in winter in
urban areas, in warm months live in country on 1-3 acres, producing own
food.
--adopt Gross National Happiness (Bhutan model) vs GNP industrial model
--understand living soil-bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes,
microarthropods, etc
--put soil protection at top of human priorities
--cultivate Biodynamically
--co-production (Japanese) models of urban groups contracting with
farmers
--adopt horticulture therapy as everyone's lifestyle
--understand amino acid content of vegetables(Kapuler and Gurusiddiah)
and grow garden crops for complementary protein balance (CPB)
--develop menus and recipes utilizing CPB
--

Extrapolated world

I was talking to my step daughter recently, listening to her ponder her next moves in her life and career. She and her classmates, friends, and lover, all foresee a tomorrow that is just like today but they have a role in that, rising through the capitalist structure, enjoying a never ending cornucopia of new toys, game boxes, nights out, and more extensive comfort and fun. She does not read my blog.
She has worked very hard and wants the commesurate rewards. I cannot break her heart. It is bad enough that I wear some of you down, depress you, interfere with your unfettered enjoyment of your flagrant excesses and planet killing decisions, but I can't bring myself to do that to her. I love here dearly and will do what I can to provide for her during and after the "adjustment." God, I just wrote that and even as I did, I realized it wasn't true. I will not likely help her at all because she is out of reach of me now, in this world of cities, jobs, and fashion. She will live or die based on her own flexibility, wits, and strength. She has all those things so maybe she will do well despite my concerns.
Meanwhile I am back in Eugene at TJ's in Elmira, I'm very tired, but TJ did manage to find a copy of Crude Awakening for me to watch and I will do that before my eyes give up for the night.
There is more to say but my brain is mush. Despite that I'm glad to be at this home now and will see many of you soon. - mcnalan

Pirates, all

Hung suspended with a sense of motion all around, but so many things to fall into new, old, changed patterns in the next few days and weeks. I'm in Florence OR after a miserable night at the Mill Casino in Coos Bay. The fog and rain were so cold it was hard to even walk in it. The dish could not find my internet satellite through the soup, and worse, the trailer was clammy, moist.
At my points of turning - my six months on, six off - so many patterns are set and locked in a day or two, where I'll stay, how much it will cost, what sort of internet connection and how much, all add up to decisions about my future for the next six and 1/2 months. That is so odd when I'm not sure what will happen in the world in the next six months. More germane, I have changed on this trip. I am less bound by the law of the land, the laws of conformity, and I have given myself my own letter of permission to do what I must to prepare for what I see headed our way.
Part of that permission is deciding to be active in the Post Carbon group, part of it is realizing that when you are on the Titanic, despite how good the music is in the ballroom, it is OK for me to go and get my own lifeboat setup. So everyone will party on around me, at work, in town, at the coffee shop, and I will dedicate my energy and my time to acting personally on my beliefs, not as a philosophical experiment, but a new and larger degree of action.
Does that sound like perhaps I've received a letter from the Crown presenting me with the authority to seize the shipping of enemy nations? What did Pogo say? "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Begin the time of Pirates matey. My time for thinking wider is at a turning point.
Society is not your friend. Your government serves the rich, and medicates the poor. If you try harder and live a better life you child will never grow up to be president. We are distinctly class society while pretending not to see that we have class structure in every decision, expectation and action. This society, the world captalist society is cracking at the seems, it does not have the capacity to do other than what it is doing right now, growing hard up against the edge of resource depletion and fouling all of us in the process.
You, me, us, our ability to affect our futures is pretty small compared to the size of our Titantic juggernaut sailing into self destruction. But our small world is all we can affect, all we can change. That is the cusp of thought and action that has woken in me this last 5 months. I have lost friends and acquaintances, I have gained confidence commitment.
Find the pirate in you, set sail from conformity, drudgery, powerlessness, and depression. Embrace the life of the pirate, for though the nations of the world unite to enslave you, only by your acquiescence can they perpetuate their parasitic position.
You, me, everyone was born as co owners of this wonderful planet, third from the sun, in a minor arm of what some call the Milky Way. You have every right to land, opportunity, health and space, clean water, sunlight, and love that the most priveleged class member would suggest that you do not. There is no part of the country club golf course that does not belong to you in absolute reality. Perhaps you cannot put your foot there today because of your beliefs and the beliefs of police and our overlord ruling class, but in fact, you were born on this planet, it is yours, or rather, you are hers. There is nothing here that is not yours.
You may choose to accept the imprisonment of your body by society, at work, at your tiny house, by your debt, by the criticism of your family and friends, but even as you are harnessed to their tasks, you must not, I must not, accept that prison in my heart. It is not what I believe. I believe that you are creators of all that you see and experience and love. The only real prison, the only real sadness are the limitations we accept for ourselves. Just because everyone says it, just because everyone says you're only worthy "this much", never never never accept that. You are and remain a miracle in motion, a miracle of potential and this world gave you life and no one, anywhere can do more than kill your body. Rage, rage, and love, against the dying of the light. And I will rage and love with you.
Remember who you are! Laugh at the petty tyrants, The chains we must strike off are not society's chains but those you accepted as true, your limits, your worth, so long ago. Those chains were never true. You are a swashbuckler in your heart, you know it. Live it.

Even a drop is a lot

I arrived on the California coast and saw the Pacific ocean for the first time in almost a year. What a shock from the desert. I'll have a picture of my feet in the water here today, as soon as the sun comes up and it gets a little warmer.
Crude Awakening is a movie by a European film maker and his partner, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack. From what I've been able to read about it and from a taped interview over the phone with Basil Gelpke, I believe this might be a perfect follow up to showing someone the Cuban movie, the Power of Community. Here is a link to the movie. Meanwhile, it is being shown all over the world at film festivals, but the DVD is not out yet. I'm hoping to find a bootlegged copy somewhere.
But this morning I want to talk about another set of crude awakenings, both internal to me and external. First, I'm in a very tiny campground right on the beach north of Arcata in Northern California, and there are plenty of people here who are living in tents and while writing this to you, I'm looking a man about 45 and apparently his mother, crawling out of the back of a Nissan truck canopy. They are very precisely cleaning the condensation from their breath off all of the windows, and acting very much as if this is normal. Now she's wiping the taillight lenses.
There are people living far outside my comfort zone, as they travel and adjust to a collapsing economy, seeking to preserve the normalcy of cleanliness, and without any recognition. Disenfranchised people are invisible, made deaf and dumb by their circumstance.

Many of them who saw me roll in to this camp yesterday. Those in tents, car living people, truck living people (everyone has a dog, except me), all of them saw my Airstream truck combination as extremely interesting, NOT for the cuteness, the warmth, the king sized bed, the fantastic fans, the satellite dish pointed phallically south, BUT they wanted the SOLAR panels. Fringe, displaced, out of work, or out of luck people, after food, water and shelter want electrical POWER. I get it, it is hard to understand the importance of something until you don't have it at all.

So many people discuss how alternative energy can't replace oil, being a drop of sunshine compared to an ocean of crude. HOWEVER, when you have NONE, even a drop is a lot.

My internal crude awakening is that all the joy of the traveling is gone now. The education about oil, energy, and societal change and collapse has taken all the fun out of burning large amounts of gasoline to get me north and south each year. Instead of Booker T and "Time is Tight" smoothing my way down the endless, effortless highway, I just feel parasitic, gross and in appropriate.

Yes, I'm aware that my life style, producing 99 percent of my own energy, living for the last 6 years in a 160 sq feet of space, has consumed a tiny fraction of the power that most American's consume in their homes, but still. It really sucks to move just to move at the cost of the most magical of fuels, gasoline. I don't know exactly what I will do about this, but change is inevitable and I will not remain long at the ends of such a long road. Currently the options are give up the south in the winter, relocate to Arizona where the north and south destinations would only be a hundred and fifty miles apart, requiring that I end my job completely.

Like so many of you who have come to understand the sketchy outline of change that comes, my choices are grafted on a very tenuous time line. I have no idea when the shit will hit the fan, except to say, sooner rather than later. So that is my epiphany for this morning, the sun is just breaking over the mountains to the east and soon it will be warm enough to greet the cold cold Pacific with my toes.

Dividing up the trophy wives/bimbos

I've edited the blog below today (May 7th for greater clarity and to find out if I actually had a point when I wrote it).

I've taken some criticism from friends when I've made the point that I wished that our oil addicted society would collapse now instead of in a more distant future. I'll explain my reasoning below, but first to respond to the idea that I want it to happen now for personal reasons, not from any altruistic concern for society as a whole. Apparently my hidden agenda is that collapse brings down the rich fat cats to my level thus raising my pathetic status to near normal. I would essentially have my social position raised by the collapse of the capitalist system. Maybe so. I can't really pretend to understand my own motivations. However that is not why I wish the collapse to happen sooner than later.

The reason which ALSO drives me, besides the huge supply of ex-trophy bimbos who would see me this future time as "studly" with my newly raised status, is much more serious and universal in application. Any species in overshoot doesn't just die, it also destroys the carrying capacity of its environmental niche before dying. This makes the number of survivors much smaller than the original carrying capacity would have sustained. It means we cannot go back to 1859 and support that population level, and the longer we stay in overshoot the more we destroy, eat up, and lay to barren waste; the smaller that can be supported in the future. Collapse now, today, leaves a larger resource base intact, and a better future, for your great grand children, but it kind of sucks for you and your kids now (but not for me of course, I'll have increased future status!).

Below is a clip from a discussion group on Yahoo. Ron is responding to Paul Chefurka's article that I linked a few days ago - on carrying capacity. Paul had defined overshoot as declining population, and several people corrected him. Here is the essence of why overshoot is actually a right now experience, even while world human population continues to grow.

OVERSHOOT
"A species may greatly overshoot the long term carrying capacity of its environment. (Its population may become greatly larger than its environment can sustain.) Overshoot becomes possible when a species encounters a rich and previously unexploited stock of resources that promotes its reproduction."
http://www.energybulletin.net/4735.html


"Can our numbers still be growing though we are in overshoot? Of course! Overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the long term carrying capacity of its environment. Like the reindeer of St. Matthew Island. They were probably in overshoot when their numbers reached 1000 but they continued to multiply until their numbers reached 6000 before there was a total collapse.

"While they were in overshoot, the reindeer completely destroyed their support system, the lichens they were living on, so their numbers plunged to under 30. We are currently deep into overshoot. Were it not so we would not be destroying the environment. We would not be drawing down the water tables, drying up rivers and lakes, destroying the rain forest, destroying our topsoil, over fishing the oceans, causing deserts to expand, driving thousands of species into extinction, polluting our water and atmosphere, and a thousand other things.

"But things are far worse than that. I am saying, even with our current consumption of fossil fuel, we are still deep into overshoot; else the above things would not be happening. But look close at The Energy Bulletin article. 'Overshoot happens when a species encounters a rich and previously unexplored stock of resources that promote reproduction.' We are in overshoot because we found a rich store of detritus, or fossil fuel. This enabled us to produce massive amounts of food which enabled our population to explode.

The long term carrying capacity of Homo sapiens, if fossil fuels never ran out, would probably be somewhere between two and three billion people or four at the most. But the long term carrying capacity of Homo sapiens without fossil fuel, including coal, is probably less than one billion.

So according to my estimation we are either three billion into overshoot, if our fossil fuel lasts forever, or about six billion into overshoot if it does not." - Ron Patterson

To put a point on that in case you missed it - everyone knows the fossil fuels are finite, running out, the discussions are all about when, not if.

Meanwhile I've been out tagging rich trophy wives with small dye markers for roundup later when my social status has improved.

The Odd Thing

From Phil Churchill:
I've been going through my books on the history of man and I notice a common theme among cultures. Every one of them wasted their resources during times of abundance and the habit was so ingrained that it continued into times of shortage. All cultures have found it difficult to change during times of stress and as the stress passed most of them went right back to the old wasteful ways within one generation. The only cultures that didn't were the so-called primitive cultures. They seem to be the only ones that permanantly learned the lessons. Even in times of plenty they kept a reserve of supplies on hand. The odd thing is that the cultures that had writing forgot the lessons the quickest. Those cultures that relied on oral tradition retained them. It seems as if once something was written down, it was put away into storage and only the people who kept the records had the
knowledge available. Good thing if you're a priest or leader who wants to retain power over others, bad thing for society as a whole. Perhaps the fact that nearly everyone in our society can read and has access to most records, will finally allow us learn the lessons for good.

Red Bluff

I just paid for two days more at this campground along the Sacramento River. It is a good transition from desert to Eugene (soon) for me. It is also the beginning of a transition from chronicler my perceived future, and my becoming more active in Post Carbon activities in Eugene (when I arrive back). It is so green, so wet, and it rained last night. Jeez.
I'm enjoying the time to catch up on reading more in depth on issues about a sustainable future. Meanwhile I have some pictures up - like the one above, on the main site here.
When I arrive back in Eugene/Elmira, I will buy a small older Honda Civic, Geo Metro, or similar, but less than $2000 is the budget. This will keep the miles off my truck, and as long as it gets to November I would be happy. I want something light, old, good gas mileage, and as simple as possible. I've been following a Geo Metro conversion to electric which I would dearly love to do, and then build a larger solar array to charge it but it would be a year long project, and I don't want to commit resources (money/time) into something that is not critical to my preparations for my near future. However you might want to look at a starting place for your own gasoline to electric conversion. Electric car conversions will become increasingly difficult and expensive, if not impossible after some larger fraction of the population begins turn their attention seriously away from gasoline. I would guess that this is the last year that you will find fork lift motors and larger recycled batteries for cheap. If you're thinking of a solar electric project, we are probably already past the cusp, but maybe it is not too late.

tumble

Good morning chickies!
Phil wrote me last night to point out newer theory that Maya died off from their deforestation tied to the creation of plaster. They would burn down a thousand acres to plaster one temple. Afterwards I was wondering what correspondingly epic stupidity we are involved in, as blind to it as the Maya to their disappearing forests. I was thinking about how we will all be put in places where our blind spots will be revealed, exposed and we will have our hard edges worn off. We will be tumbled smooth.

Part of flexibility is a sense of humor about our own blind spots , and I think we will find them once society wakes up to the post peak oil hangover. Suburbia, desert cities, frozen cities, all who live there will come to understand that the energy that sustained them is gone and that it was a ludicrous path for us to have taken at all. How will all those new homeless deal with the change.

So I tumble. Will I be fractured to sharp angles, anger and revenge, or will I be worn smooth like a pebble in a stream? The sharp cuts and is cut in return. The other weathers, rolls and is rolled again, always adapting. I want to be a tumble, not a point (rock talk). Go with the flow chickies, go downstream and practice not your work of money, but your work of the heart. Reconnect with friends, make new ones, build tribe, even at a distance, for these things are the web that supports. A multi million dollar house, empty, without electricity, without gas, without water, is without life. It is a mausoleum. Even around a small fire, a group of friends, they are the future.

So practice your tumbling. Practice your affection. Remember who you are, the one who is you just before you drift off to sleep, and just before you wake. Recall every time you were loved, helped, made to feel cherished. Amplify that. For the practical among you, no smile is wasted as that person may be the one who pulls your ass out of the fire. No one really knows what is coming, our uncertain future, but my hand is always out for the emotionally honest person. The defended person, well, they are on their own.

Stories

I will always listen to a good story. Facts are dry, often boring. Research and informed decisions are work, like going back to school. Yech. But stories are not work because you don't read them, you live them ,like movies. Stories are fun. The movies and stories we read, view and hear today are the meme programming of empire. The story is the carrier wave of the broadcast and the message is the encoding. And stories go right in! Revenge, greed, persistence, acceptance of duty and obligation (debt) are all encoded teaching you what to feel. Counter programming has to slip in just as easy.

Stories, because we live in the stories. We feel the tension, the problems, the ravel and the unravel and we share and feel and experience the fear of the hero, heroine, antagonist and victims.
So for two days I have been sketching ideas in my head for a group of stories, sort of a franchised reality. A group of short stories that puts you in the future, in various future scenes post peak oil. It would be a sweeping set of stories through several generations, in separate locations; areas of contrasting overshoot, weather patterns and population.

We could follow the characters as they adapted to the changes in this new world and get to hear their reaction to how we lived, back when energy was so cheap that people used to ship, drive, and deliver wheat for pet food from China, all the way to the wheat growing regions of Montana. Wow. "Why did they do that mommy?, it's stupid!"
"We don't know honey. They often said they did things only because they could," she said, knowing there was no answer to satisfy her seven year old tom boy. She knew of her daughter's dream to one day visit the ruins at Old Chicago, a hundred miles away. But even a seven year old knew that it was a very long way to go.

TJ sent me a link to a different kind of story, a future myth. It is excellent. It is about 1/2 way down this blog and is entitled, "The Forest People." It is the entry for April 30th. Myths are often blueprints for a societies cultural structure. I'm guessing this myth is meant as a warning, but of course it is similar to the myths that will be created in our future to warn coming generations against repeating our mistakes.