The situation does seem to be rather intractable.

The system is currently not addressing the very real and very serious problems of GW and PO. The current system is very heavily entrenched. A brief review:

The government represents industry at the expense of the people. The media is owned by industry and it represent industry at the expense of the people. The populous is poorly informed and ill equipped to take the government to task. Furthermore, the populous works for industry, we the people are thus heavily indoctrinated with the present system. It's not surprising that it is highly popular with voters.

I guess that leaves dictatorship or anarchy as the options.

Sadly, I agree. I don't think the system we have right now will handle the long emergency very well.

The solution I propose is to socialize ownership of industry by making industry worker owned. I don't think that it is possible to legislate a change like this in the present system. Instead, we need to out compete existing industry. Since existing industry is presently based on the unsustainable BAU model its days are numbered. If we create worker owned solar companies, biodiesel companies, organic farms, etc. and those businesses are going to be dominant after the peak, then we fundamentally change the nature of industry and its effects on media, government, and the populous. If we do it right then we just might get a civilization worth living in. One with social cohesion and economic stability.

I recommend Gar Alporovitz's book America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy as a starting point. Also worth looking at Mondragon Corporation, a huge worker owned business, and its wikipedia entry here. It is worth noting that the Mondragon cooperative was started during the rule of Franco a fascist dictator.

Tim

Euan,

I think many of the TOD contributors (and commenters) are doing an excellent job in trying to describe the energy challenges we are facing and looking for solutions to moderate those effects.

Some of the American nat gas consumption has been substituted with distillates and RFOs (Residual Fuel Oils).

The reason why I refer to oil as KING among the energy sources is that oil may easily substitute the other energy sources, while the reverse substitution is harder to achieve.
So far the nat gas decline in North America has been modest. Therefore it should (so far) not have a dramatic effect, price rationing has so far driven out marginal demand.

But what about the effects on the American (or world) auto industry?

Some of the first victims for PO (with huge price increases on oil) will be auto industries (less demand for cars) and airline travel (less demand for aero planes), both cars and aero planes requires huge amounts of energy (normally from other energy sources) in their manufacturing. PO will, as far as I understand it, could create some paradoxes, a declining global oil supply could (after some substitution has taken place) reduce demand for other energy sources, thus creating a downward pressure on prices for energy from those sources until supply again meets demand and thus generates a renewed upward pressure.
The hard thing about PO is that there is no travel guide into the future we are headed, we are entering unchartered waters.

Euan, you are welcome to Norway and I will accompany you on some of the fishing trips (I’ll bring some good whiskey as well).

By the way I hope you have installed a wood stove in your home for the upcoming heating season. UK nat gas supply does now look very challenging, as they had to withdraw from the Rough storage facilities earlier this week.

Rgds
NGM2

. Falling nat gas in N America has not yet lead to a crater owing in part to de-industrialistaion and in particular gas intensive industries such as fertilizer manufacture moving to ME

Having been in the Plastic industry, I know that all PolyEthyene resin has gone out of the country, and I understand that Fertilizer also.

I wish someone could come up with a number of the amount of NG that was saved(added back into the market) because of these industries leaving.

5% of our usage?
10%?

How many years did that Onetime "moving off shore" buy us?

Just let us know when u start fishing.

Be careful of relying on salmon.

One of the many strikes by the Newcastle keelmen [the original bolshy workers] was over being 'forced' to eat salmon every day [I think it was part of the wages or something..]

http://www.rapper.org.uk/archive/keelmen_strike.php

A small farm, with fishing rights in a salmon river? Better start looking already, I don't think those properties are very common in the market nor cheap :)

A small farm of any kind can be a bit hard to get hold of even though the number of farmers are steadily decreasing, and if TSHTF I think it will be close to impossible. The reason is the "odel"-laws, stating that the oldest child of a farmer has the right to buy it when his parents give up. If he doesn't want it the right passes to the second oldest child. Then the third. If no child wants it, the grandchildren are next in line. Then siblings of the farmer. Then their children. Then cousins of the farmer. Then their children. And so on. It's easy to see how becoming a farmer can be kind of hard if noone in your family owns a farm, or if someone above you in the chain wants it.

If you do manage to buy a farm there is another law that says you need to live on the farm and run it for at least 5 years, this is to discourage speculation and make sure wealthy citydwellers don't just buy up all the abandoned farmhouses for use as vacation homes. It seems this rule is easily gotten around though.

The solution ofcourse is to marry the oldest child of a farmer ;) Interestingly, I am one of those oldest children of a farmer, and I'm not going to let it pass when my parents decide to retire. Strange as it is, I'm not yet forced to turn down hordes of desperate females begging me to marry them, so most people must still be under the impression that the party will go on.

Your small window of opportunity depends on your assumption that we are not yet at peak. What happens (or already happened) to your window of opportunity if we truly turn out to be post peak? Getting that farm you've talked about sounds better all the time.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone

Okay – I’ve looked at some numbers from the BP Statistic Review.

Here’s what I mean about oil being so significant:

The recent uptick in coal is China, but there are big questions about how long that can continue for.

We can see that:
Since 1982 gas increased at an average rate of 2.7%
Since 1982 coal increased at an average rate of 1.9%
Since 1982 coal & gas collectively increased at an average rate of 2.2%

However looking forward, perhaps a case can be made for peak oil not being peak fossil fuel.

In this chart I have assumed for sake of argument that oil peaks in 2007 and declines at 3% pa, that’s the light green curve. I’ve then also assumed that coal and gas continue to increase at 2.2% for another decade.

If that is possible, then the coal and oil additions are indeed enough to compensate for oil decline. I’m not convinced it’s realistic to assume “steady, BAU” growth in coal and gas production during the post peak era – we have no idea what the first few of years of oil decline are going to do to the global economy. I’m also highly sceptical of any significant substitution of oil for coal/gas, at least in the early years (the easy subsititution of oil power stations has largely already happened). So even with increasing Mtoe – we still have a major headache.

Lastly - it will be little comfort to Americans and Europeans who are being forced to use less oil for someone to say "ah but Chinese coal production is up 20%, the world has more fossil fuel available than ever before!". Indigenous Chinese coal production, bringing electricity to rural China is not a substitute for Cantarell and US oil imports.

My favorite was Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.