<DrumBeat: May 21, 2006 The Oil Drum Albany Coddles the Oil Addicts>

116 comments on A gentle cough for the Washington Post

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

TI on May 22, 2006 - 5:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Alan from Big Easy, you count it wrong. It is not only your own direct gasoline and electricity bill that tell how much energy you use. There is also all the infrastructure, all things you buy, all the services you use, all the environment you live in, all energy you use in your job and all the company or organization that provides the job is using, all the energy the administration is using, even all the energy your government is using in the wars you pay for.

But I agree that people can live very happily in a quite low-energy environment. Personal happiness is a diffeent question. But, unfortunately, we know that a sudden drop in energy use and the economic and social disruption connected with it do make people quite unhappy. The problem is mostly the change, not the level, as long as your most basic needs are satisfied.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
AlanfromBigEasy on May 22, 2006 - 9:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
> It is not only your own direct gasoline and electricity bill that tell how much energy you use.

I noted this with my remark that rail (we have six Class I railroads*) and water (ocean and barge) can bring all essentials to us in energy efficient ways.  How much and how fast modal shift occurs is still an open question.

Yes, there is the larger question as well for all the "indirect" energy use.

* Union Pacific, CSX, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, Norfolk-Southern, Canadian National, Kansas City Southern

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Wolfric on May 22, 2006 - 5:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You may not be aware, but in order to grow most of the food that you bought in those stores, a whole lot of fossil fuels is needed.  

It will be harder to live in the next 10 years mainly because most of the people have been accustomated to low endosomatic enerfy use.  Growing a garden will be applied first, then permaculture will probably get on rapidly.

Being a Cisco professional (among many other things) I can tell you that powering the whole internet infrastructure takes lot of energy.  Even Google complained about the enery cost of computing last summer.  In order to compute all the stuff they do, they need lots of power.  For that power, the liquid fossil fuels needs to be up and running.

You will probably be able to live good, but you will have to do more that just surfing on the web in order to do so.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
JN2 on May 23, 2006 - 5:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You may not be aware, but in order to grow most of the food that you bought in those stores, a whole lot of fossil fuels is needed.

Wolfric, I am sure Alan is very aware of the fossil fuels needed to bring food to the stores. Have you read any of his posts? He is one of the best contributors to TOD...

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

116 comments on A gentle cough for the Washington Post

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version