The Oil Drum

1) Any hint on the location of your spot? (Which continent is it on?) I'm just curious, actually.

I may disclose after my visit. Let's just say it has the following attributes:

population density under 50/mile
lots of sun and water
good soil
very isolated
not a nuclear target, and out of the fallout patterns. see:

http://www.ki4u.com/nuclearsurvival/list.htm

YEs, the nukes are going to come out. The only reason they didn't on the way up is because we were on the way up! The downslope is a whole another story.

Stuart, for instance, is fond of saying "for every hitler there is a roosevelt." This sort of statement about an oil war fought during the heydey of the upslope shows that even somebody as smart, analytical, etc as Stuart has perceptual and intellectual (political?) filters that prevent him from truly understanding the implications of a sharply and permanently declining per-capita energy supply.

More local food effort, is what I take home from what you're saying.

Yes, but remeber "the law of attraction". If you're area has enough food but is not physically isolated, it will simply attract people from other areas thereby destroying whatever the advantages are.

2) Did you ever happen to look at the end of the article by Catherine Austin Fitts - (the one you suggested I read)- where she makes proposals at the end for how to "take back" one's local economy? http://www.solari.com/

Catherine's stuff is GREAT. But it is way too late to "take back" anything, imho.

Furthermoe, even Catherine is not factoring in the coming nuclear war, at least as far as I know. She believes that the good guys win in the end. This is where our opinions differ. Where she forsees the good guys winning, I see a world plunged into permanent darkness with only small pockets of human dignity and reciprocal altruism existing. My goal is to make it to one of those pockets and try to make the best of a bad situation.

Geography will be the primary determinant of where the pockets develop, if and when they do develop.

3) Did you notice that Prof. Hatfield seems to think people learning about "peak" is a good thing? (I wonder why that would be the case?)

Who is learning?

Walk up to 1,000 people and ask them:

1. Do you know about Peak Oil?

and:

2. What are you doing to prepare, mitigate, etc?

Come on, lets' get real. People aren't learning about it. There are about 5,000-10,000 of us who check the blogs. That's it.

There is no peak oil "movement" and there never will be a movement to address peak oil or any other limits to growth beyond a handfull of activists getting non-funded resolutions passed in cities that are prime nuclear targets. (portland and sf)

Follow the money:

1. how much are we spending on oil, oil wars, and mindless consumption?

2. how much are we spending on anything remotely construed as "solutions"

When you do the math, you see the trajectory we're on.

Compare the budget of CERA to the budget of TOD. See a pattern?

4) Is anyone going with you? Or, are others already there? Honestly, I'm very curious about this. It seems to me that a lot depends on the ties one may (or may not) already have with other people.

Things are in the planning stages, the big X factor being finances.

Most of NA will be turned into a nuclear wasteland. Getting off the NA continent is priority #1.

Even if only I make it off well at least one of us will have half a shot of surviving. There is not point in all of us staying here in NA and all dying equally horrible deaths.

(Also, don't you live near Richard Heinberg? Isn't he planning to stay put?)

Richard is almost 60. My guess is he doesn't care if he dies in the ensuing chaos. Heck, if gets another 10 years he will have lived to be 70, a ripe old age by historical or global standards. (I have no doubt he realizes and appreciates this.)

Last time I talked to him (right as ODP came out) he said he felt there was maybe a 1/100 chance it would work and that the most likely scenario is total global war.

Whether he is more or less optimistic/pessimistic today I do not know.

I think he has quietly accepted whatever his personal fate might be. He has said that if he were 30 years younger he would be in an intentional community reskilling himself.

5) Re: North American food supply. Can you go into a little more detail on this? Do you expect immigration to be a factor?

When Mexico's oil production crashes, the country will be flooded with refugees.

When the rolling blackouts are instituted the criminal elements (MS-13, for instance) and plain old normal people who have become desperate (that is everybody else) will get more and more aggressive with each subsequent blackout. This is the sort of positive feedback loop that will keep much of the second half of the world's energy supply in the ground.

Lack of policies that are humane? Nothing at all to do? Or is it that the things that can be done you believe will not be done?

Dude come on. Look at the trajectory we are on. Perpetual war for diminsihing resources. ARe you paying attention to the news these days? Billions for things like renewable energy but trillions for perpetual war. I have trouble seeing how we won't be in a full blown nuclear war by the time we are half way down the per-capita energy production curve:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/energy.html