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Count me in also. I first truly learned about Peak Oil back in January of this year. What I learned and was hearing, especially concerning the connection between peak oil and finance, impressed me so much that I put my house up for sale at a discount in August, asked for a job transfer, and moved 1000 miles away to a more favorable city. The sale of my former house closed at the end of September, and I was sweating bullets the whole time. This was during the first explosions in the subprime market, by the way! The real estate lady who sold that house told me afterward that mine was one of the few houses she had been able to sell. I now have a smaller, less expensive house, but it's on a bigger lot. I am preparing to pay off my loan next month, and am sheet-mulching the backyard so I can start a garden.
I believe that in 2008 we will see both increasing failures in American finance and hikes in fuel prices due to declining oil production. I happen to believe that the recent Energy Watch Group peak oil report is correct. And I also happen to believe that we are beginning to see some more advanced signs of failure and collapse in American society. There was a story on either TOD or Energy Bulletin this week about increasing foreclosures and "Hooverville" tent cities springing up to shelter those forced out of their houses. It would be interesting to do a rigorous mathematical analysis of the month-by-month changes in the numbers of foreclosures per thousand houses in various cities, as well as the total percentages of vacant homes in communities on a monthly basis. The analysis could also include the crime statistics on a monthly basis for the communities with higher foreclosure rates. The crime statistics would need to be broken out in categories, such as vandalism, stealing of building materials, squatting, and so forth. Such an analysis would give us a clearer picture of the magnitude and spread of the worsening financial problems in the United States.
http://features.us.reuters.com/cover/news/D8C99CD0-AF35-11DC-9E67-616F0D...
Where are you located now, and for what reasons?
southern Oregon is asking
Southern Oregon seems like a good place to be. I'm a bit farther north, in a city known for its bike culture (you can probably guess where by that clue). I chose the place because my company has an office in a nearby suburb, and I am able to get to work by a combination of bicycle and bus or MAX. Also, house prices were quite a bit cheaper than they were where I was living before. And there seems to be a much more self-reliant, environmentally conscious attitude here compared to where I was before. However, there is also a significant portion of the population which appears to want to turn this place into another Southern California.
By this I mean idiots who drive monster SUV's and trucks and people who want to subdivide their land to build more McMansions. One of the first things I did when I got here is register to vote so that I could vote for Proposition 49, which passed :).
This area also has some long-term challenges. One is the weather (it rains a lot. Also, it rains. By the way, did I mention that it rains?). This poses difficulties in harnessing solar energy to serve cooking and heating needs. I put up a clothesline shortly after moving here and have used it perhaps a dozen times since.
There is also a problem with our mass transit. It seems that policing and enforcement of order on the MAX and on the TriMet buses has been lax lately. There were articles in the local paper about assaults on citizens perpetrated by wanna-be gangbanger teens. But there has also been, encouragingly, increasing public outcry over the lack of law enforcement attention, and I think things are starting to change. Our public transit will be a critical strategic resource over the next few years, and it should be treated as such by our local government.
Where were you before ?
I'm looking to relocate in Dec. '08 from SE Nebraska. Even knowing where not to go would have value to me.
If you are interested in relocating, there are some interesting perspectives from John Michael Greer's "Archdruid Report" blog. A couple of his posts are especially relevant, namely, "Lifeboat Time" on 29 November of this year, and "Cities in the Deindustrial Future" on 8 August. He suggests moving to towns or cities which are compact enough that you could get around to most essential places without a car. He does not advocate moving to a wilderness holdout with a few tons of canned goods, a Winchester and 500 rounds of ammunition. The advantage of a town or small city is that it is already established as a community, with a pre-existing web of order and social services which could survive fairly well in an era of resource shortage. I think there are many viable small towns and cities in the upper Midwest, with fairly low prices for existing homes. In fact, I was looking at North and South Dakota, but my company did not have any offices there.
I used to live in So. California. It is a thoroughly ruined place in my opinion, and will probably be unable to support itself if things get as bad as some say. The same goes for many cities in the Sunbelt, which are terminally dependent on auto transport, crowded to the gills with McMansion developments and strip malls. Most of the farmland and dairys in Los Angeles and Orange counties are now gone, paved over or developed. The nice thing about where I am now is that there are local farms nearby. And the recent passage of our Proposition 49 means these farms will hopefully be saved from the developers' bulldozers.
Ultimately, where a person chooses to relocate depends not only on the place one is considering, but on the person himself. If one is going to relocate because of peak oil and climate change, one must be willing to live lightly in his new place, so that it may not be ruined. I like Jeffrey Brown's perspective on economizing and localizing. I would not want my former neighbor who lived across the street from my old house to move where I am now - he has two full sized Chevy pickups, a Suburban, a motor home, a golf cart, two ATC's and a boat. I don't think he gets the idea of "living lightly."
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I have been reading this board about a year. I have seen the “Archdruid Report" report mentioned here before and have visited a few times. I will look in more often.