Also I frequently hear from my public assistance patients that they are trying to plan all of their medical tests and doctor visits on the same day so they only have to come to town once a month.  These are the poorest of the poor.  But if the lowest 5% reduce their driving by 20%, the overall effect is a 1% reduction in the rate of growth.  

Among middle to upper income people, there hasn't been any demand destruction around here. Everyone in Ohio who can afford it is still taking their annual beach vacation to the Carolinas.

It's the circle of growth.

Rampant comsumerism -> Obscenely Massive Piles of Debt -> Irrational Monetary Growth (FED/M3) -> and back to rampant consumerism.

And the circle keeps on rolling.  Build more, eat more, spend more, burn more...wait...what do you mean there is no more!?

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It's all about population!

ummm, there's the rub isn't it?  People still have to live and plan their lives.  They need houses, food, jobs, and as long as they still have cars and trucks, highways and roads.  If building what the American people need to live their lives is "not it" as far as useful goes, then we have to replace it with something that is "it"?

What would that be?  Getting people to plan for a different future relies on an answer to that question.  Right now, if you put 5 very "energy depletion" aware people in a room, and tried to get them to agree on even a short set of forward otions, my bet is that you would leave the room with at least 5 wildly differing sets of recommendations.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

Where I am in Central Kentucky is baffling beyond words.  In a state well known for decades of lack of development, all of a sudden, everybody is building.

In Hardin County, we used to be surprised to see a neighborhood being built that was ten or twelve houses at a time.  Now, the builders descend in with huge crews and equipment, and build FAST.  I have seen 3 or so sixty or seventy home developments in the last couple of years shoot up.  I figured, well, that about fills this market, more building that we have seen since the early Reagan years!  WRONG.  On my route to work, they are new tearing up three huge areas all within 3/4 of a mile of each other and about that distance from two of the current developments, preparing for three more (!!)

There has been a new Super Walmart built, followed immediately by restuarants, strip mall up the street, office parks, two new call center facilities.

It seems as though after decades of sloth, even slow old Kentucky has finally decided to join the building race, and can't get enough.  The size of trucks and cars only seems to get bigger, with driveways in some cases now having mulitple SUV's (!!!)  In a state with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the nation, I cannot even guess where all the money is coming from.

And frankly, what few people have heard of Peak Oil, oil depletion, or Gore's global warming simply dismiss it out of hand as another Y2K type hoax, and show zero interest.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

The Icelandic cod quotas are trending slightly upward.  The Icelanders claim, with some pride, that they have the best fisheries manageemnt in the world.  They fought and won two "Cod Wars" with the British Royal Navy for that right to manage their fisheries resource.

The Canadians (and to a lessor extent the Americans & Brits) badly overfished cod until it crashed.  A decade or longer total ban on fishing might bring back cod stocks, or the ocean ecosystems may have found a new balance without a place for cod.  Other species could fill that niche.

The overfishing of herring, which crashed and was the impetus of the Icelanders to fight for their national survival (if those utlangur fish our cod as badly as they did our herring, then we are doomed !).  Their fears of overfishing by the others seem to have been justified by recent history.

OTOH, what is happening in 3rd World countries is that they are fishing "what's left" in many cases for local consumption.  "What's left" has not crashed (recently, likely it did when diesel fishing boats first appeared), just the fishing pressure is declining.  Reduced fishing pressure should allow "what's left" to become larger and more numerous and future fishing to be more productive.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/1/27/14471/5832

Excerpt:

"As predicted by Hubbert Linearization, two of the three top net oil exporters are producing below their peak production level.   The third country, Saudi Arabia, is probably on the verge of a permanent and irreversible decline.   Both Russia and Saudi Arabia are probably going to show significant increases in consumption going forward.  It would seem from this case that these factors could interact this year produce to an unprecedented--and probably permanent--net oil export crisis."

I wrote this in January (this is actually the edited version, my version was more definitive).  Since then the EIA is reporting that oil production in Saudi Arabia, Russia and Norway is down since December, with Saudi Arabia admitting to a 5% decline since December.

Everyone knows what my views are.  My question is what are your specific predictions?  

Again, the central point is Peak Oil, and IMO, peak net oil export capacity.  What continues to amaze me are the number of people predicting rising oil production when the four largest producing oil fields in the world are almost certainly declining.   Sure there are a lot of smaller fields, but a lot of those are declining too.  How many smaller fields do you have to find to replace Ghawar and Cantarell?