172 comments on DrumBeat: May 18, 2008
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172 comments on DrumBeat: May 18, 2008
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Does anyone have a guess of when the US will see the first major shortage?
Demand destruction is just a shortage by economic class. If you are poor there is currently a shortage. If you have the money, gas is just expensive.
Pretty soon that has to shift to a broader shortage. My hope is that we will seriously wakeup at the first general shortage. There are so many potential causes, we cannot avoid them all forever; trucker strike, terrorist attack, hoarding, hurricane (Gulf), earthquake (LA), pipeline decay, etc....
What would TOD recommend as the actions that should be taken today to decrease oil use?
Today ?
Walk more, bicycle more, travel less, relocate closer to work and in walkable communities.
A "free market" will not have prolonged shortages. 5 digit gas prices ($22.78/9 per gallon) perhaps, but not shortages.
Alan
I'm amazed at the traffic in Italy at about $9 per gallon. Smaller, more efficient vehicles, and lots of scooters, but very heavy traffic nevertheless.
Of course there is traffic. People just love to GO! and without oil, they walk!
I remember a couple of years in Brazil in the early 60's, before anyone had cars. Life was good except for the very poor (who probably weren't that much worse off than the very poor today in the USA). The streets were filled with people -- walking.
Nostalgic, I know, but I could get used to a city that didn't have petroleum-fueled vehicular traffic. To be sure, people's ranges would be restricted, but would that be such a bad thing?
Hey N, I've been wishing decades for people to be able to stop saying "golly what a small world" Everywhere you go not only 'there you are' but also there is a effing MacDonalds or Wallmart and some god awful paunchy camera toting tourist looking at one like out of a mirror.
Interesting questions are average trip length and km per day. I speculate it's much less than typical US patterns.
My guess would be even US patterns aren't at all typical-i.e. the yearly miles driven per vehicle cover a broad range. Urban USA auto owners IMO will be able to tolerate extremely high gasoline prices-as development densifies, more auto users can tolerate even higher prices.
I started walking to work this past week. 1.7 miles each way, and I even lived to tell about it! ;-)
I'm in the process of getting an article about walking to work written for TOD:Local, I hope to get it done in the next few weeks if I can find the time.
One of the great things about walking to work is that I am now insulated from motor fuel price increases. This applies equally for those that bicycle.
Yes, one of the biggest problems is not the automobile necessarily, but automobile dependency. If you don't need a car -- able to walk to work and the supermarket -- then you can look at gas prices and decide IF you want to use the car or not. Thus, high gas prices are completely avoidable. Cancel the tour of Civil War battlefields and spend the weekend gardening and enjoying a barbecue with friends instead. Big deal.
Yes, check out the invite for TOD:Local over in the sidebar, folks...you'll see what we're looking for.
The first major shortage has already hit, the shortage of capital.
Bill, I am not being frivolous in saying that the shortage of capital has led to a shortage in loans which has lead to a shortage of customers (c.f. the housing market) which has led to a shortage of jobs which is leading to a shortage of customers and taxpayers which is leading to a shortage of capital. The first hoarding seems to be the hording of capital by many of those who have it. In watching the machinations of the markets (equity, exchange, bonds and commodities) it seems these folks are frantically trying to find safe places to hide their capital until it is safe to apply it again. The price of oil has led to huge capital accumulations in some corporations but they are not applying most of this to new activity but are simply dispersing it in share buy backs and dividends. This money is mainly going to those refered to above who are trying to protect their capital. As the job shortage increases it may balance the supply and demand of all other goods for some time. As others have pointed out there are economic "shortages" at the bottom of society and these will gradually creep up to higher income levels as the median income level declines. Baring some physical reason for a sudden shortage things may just deteriorate with no line ups or shoot outs at the pumps or anywhere else.
The capital constriction appears accurate.
I am not sure about the "no line ups or shoot outs at the pump". Instability seems to lead to more instability. It seems the economy in sustained by the ability to trust, transport and transact. Transport is in significant trouble. Trust will likely breakdown if transportation fails.
Sadly I think you are correct. However the destitute are already resorting to theft of fuel because of their cash shortage. There are no line-ups in suburban driveways at 2AM but we will probable see more shootings there soon. As far as FF shortages go I think we will see diesel (home heating oil) and propane shortages first. My understanding is they are pure distilates from crude and cracking methods are not used to make them so their availability is directly correlated to the volume of crude being processed. Crude availability and refinery utilisation come into play here. Perhaps someone can tell us if heavier crudes have less or more diesel grade and propane than the light stuff. Of course diesel demand seems to be sensitive to economic activity so that a recession may ease the problem.I also agree that once food and fuel stop arriving reliably at the retail outlets things could get ugly very fast.
I do worry about propane. Since I've started walking to work, our household is now down to using well under 200 gal of motor fuel per year. But we probably use about five times that much or more in propane, and that's with the programable thermostat set to 66/60F all winter. I'll be chopping a lot more wood for the wood stove this winter, and need to be getting solar hot water and solar space heating on a fast track. With any luck, the next administration will increase the credits for these.
WNC...If you write that piece, you should submit it to the MountainX as well. Also, check the Iwanna...occasionally I see solar water heaters pop up in there General > Heating and Cooling > Other Heating. Generally dirt cheap.
Crappy insolation where I am and the house isn't mine, so I can only look at them and sigh.
Thanks for the tip. Since plumbing and I don't get along very well, I'm inclined to leave the solar H2O to a professional. A homebrew solar air heating panel might be within my DIY capabilities, though.
I'm not sure where you live, but here in the UK residential solar thermal in contrast to PV power is a very viable alternative - it is good for up to around 55 degrees north at least, and not many people live above that latitude.
You should be able to save around 50% of your hot water bills, and could always take the panels with you.
My lattitude is fantastic, but I'm on the north side of a mountain and surrounded by trees.
Yikes! :-(
You might want to consider relocation. I'm on a south slope with an E-W roofline, giving me a good southern exposure. That's a big reason why I bought the house - I knew that some day I might need to add solar.
Instability translates into higher risk premiums, which raise ROI thresholds impossibly high.
This kind of circular dependency is not only showing up in the capital markets, but in resoource and infrastructure markets as well. Shortages of drilling rigs can be traced around a circuitous route right back to ... a shortage of drilling rigs.
It brings to mind the childhood ditty about "There's a hole in my bucket"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_hole_in_the_bucket
Exactly right. People should start noticing that high oil prices are not resulting in a huge surge of new investments in FF exploration & production, nor in a huge program of new nuclear power plant construction, nor in nearly enough new investments in alternative energy facilities, nor in major energy efficiency schemes like Alan's EOT. There is some of this going on, to be sure, but not nearly enough. It is very much a case of much too little, much too late. Lack of capital is indeed the problem, and this is ominous, because it means that it is unlikely that the investments that need to be made ever will be made. This is the fatal flaw in cornucopian thinking: even if their technofix ideas are theoretically feasible, the lack of funding will render them economically impossible.
CARPOOLING.
Facilitate and Vocally Promote this nationwide, as a clear way to cut commuting gas consumption and the cost to these consumers in half, third, quarter, as well as reducing road congestion and wasteful Rush-hour jams (where cars approach 0 mpg as they sit there..).
With internet and cell-phones, we have some great tools to help make this possible. Employers could help by working with employees on scheduling issues, city and state leadership should promote this, possibly hosting web-services.. while some private sites are already doing this.. (Anybody know links to this, and how well they work?
Google Search hit these ones..
www.iCarpool.com
http://www.carboncatalog.org/projects/internet-based-carpool-matching/
http://www.smartcommute.ca/ (and news story about this one.. http://www.canadiandriver.com/news/051125-1.htm )
Bob
(that was the 'do as I say, not as I do' post. I am a freelancer, about to fly to Vegas for two weeks, where I'll walk to work and around the strip while I'm there, or get to the casino with one of my colleagues' rental cars. Last time, I never even picked up the Rental car that the client provided for each of us. I take the bus, walk, and ride with the other guys. Who wants to drive in Vegas anyway? Of course flying there is automatically 'Plane-pooling', right?
Meanwhile, I'm in the basement, working on custom 'machining' some plywood pulleys to open and close the 'concentrator barndoors' for my Solar Hot Air heater, so it's shaded in Summer and warm days.. I hope to have TWO of these on my roof by summer's end, to cut down our use of Heating Oil in those chilly Maine winters, as well as a few other solar collectors for Electricity, Lighting and Heat for Washing, Home heat and Cooking. Lotta projects!)
Here's a link to the Hot-Air Heater concept that mine is based on..
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/Kreamer%20Air%20Collec...
the root 'build it solar' site has a gazillion project ideas people can try. MANY can be done with scrap and scavenged materials, which is recycling AND saving bucks! Great payback when the materials are 'Dumpster-Sourced' I have 12 sheets of Porch-door sized tempered glass 34"x70" to use for these kinds of projects! FREE!
ps, collect Glass and Mirrors! High energy materials, but durable and extremely useful for countless energy projects.
Ride sharing is not just for daily commutes. We tried, without success, to find a rider on our last holiday trip to visit my wife's mother 450 miles away. We'll keep trying on future trips; things will eventually get bad enough that we'll start getting takers.
I have also tried this on several trip via CraigsList. It was not easy and I was offering a free ride.
I think the time just hasn't been ripe up to now. I sense a shift in attitudes and behaviors is underway. There are several websites dedicated to matching people up for ride sharing, those are probably better places to try.
Personal lifestyle changes work for me. These days I walk as many places as I can and, aside from saving fossil energy, my physical energy has increased enormously.
We can also effectively increase fuel efficiency by carpooling. One car carrying three people uses one-third the fuel of three cars carrying one person.
Finally, modern offices make increasingly little sense. What I see is people commuting into work, taking the elevator to their office in a skyscraper, then sitting down at a computer to communicate to collegues by email. That could be done from home.
Of course, teams do need "face time" but, for many teams, once a week (or less) would do fine. Also, getting out of the house may be important for some people to work effectively. In that case, mini offices at a local shopping mall could be a solution.
We are spending enormous amounts of energy to support a communications mechanism (the office building) that doesn't really need to exist anymore.
Is it actually consuming more energy than it saves overall? All the people in the building are getting heat or air conditioning communally for their tiny cubicles, which must be cheaper than having them all sitting in their individually heated or air conditioned McMansions. Of course there is then the energy cost to get to/from the building from home. I'm sure these sort of analyses have been done, but I haven't heard the results.
You forget that the heat & a/c are left on at home to keep their pets comfortable.
Alan
Define 'major'.