DrumBeat: June 24, 2006
Posted by threadbot on June 24, 2006 - 9:15am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Update [2006-6-24 11:21:56 by Super G]: Don't forget to check out Addicted to Oil on the Discovery Channel tonight at 10p ET.
Update [2006-6-24 12:31:53 by Leanan]: The Watt crunches the numbers from the recent BP and EIA reports: For Most, The Future Is Overrated. Lots of rather sobering graphs.
Gazprom: Gas deal review may cause crisis
MOSCOW - A pledge by the woman likely to become Ukraine's next prime minister to review a gas supply deal could re-ignite a feud with Moscow that temporarily disrupted supplies to Europe, Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly warned.
Drilling Firm Seeks Favor as Expatriate
WASHINGTON, June 22 — The language in the House measure seems innocuous enough. Tucked into the Coast Guard budget bill, it says merely that Section 608 ( c ) (1) "is amended by striking the second sentence."But what that language would do is allow one company, Nabors Industries, to gain permanent access to business open only to American companies. The language is needed because Nabors, a big oil drilling company, moved its tax headquarters to Bermuda and its legal headquarters to Barbados in 2001 to avoid American taxes.
Consider the challenges facing college graduates in future years, assuming that we are transitioning into a post-Peak Oil environment: large student loans that by and large can't be discharged in bankruptcy; a slowing economy or a recession/depresion; a highly competitive job market; increasing health care costs; high Payroll Taxes, in order to pay for the Boomer's Social Secuirty/Medicare costs (as the feds increase taxes to fund the "Trust Fund" withdrawals) and higher taxes of all kinds to pay for greater welfare costs.
How many of these college graduates are going to be willing--or able--to have children? Now consider the fact that at they same time that they are being squeezed from all sides, they are going to be taxed to financially help lower income people have children. This will be especially explosive in regard to taxes paid to support illegal immigrants.
I think that James Davidson compared the welfare states to a group of 10 climbers on a mountain--all linked together--that start falling off the mountain one by one. As more climbers are hanging by the safety lines, the burden on the climbers still on the mountain increases dramatically until everyone falls.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I predict some type of explosive response by twenty to thirty somethings--against everyone, their debt overlords, the Boomers and illegal immigrants having kids paid for by US taxpayers.
This is really an example of the problems facing lawmakers in the years ahead. Politics is going to be a bloodsport as lawmakers are increasingly faced with a range of bad choices.
I wonder if the best thing that Boomers and their kids can do is to buy a small organic farm, as part of my ELP reccomendation. If nothing else, it might be a way to start transitioning to a barter system.
Surely other nations still produce good degrees for less $ investment.
I read recently that Bill Gates has declared high schools obsolete. Are universities obsolete as well? Do we put people in rooms (rather than have them learn on-line) because we need to, or because we can charge more for physical presence?
I would think that a university could be run with about 1/4 the physical presence that was required in my day (1980) with no loss in quality (and that's thinking of Chem, a lab degree).
I think they will not be as angry as you expect, although they might become more radical, but rather simply say, "screw it all." In other words, do as little as possible in order to get by since there will be little chance for success. It is likely the lessor educated will keep on making babies while the more educated will have fewer children.
I do see a major shift in education from the sciences toward service stuff like medicine, etc. Were I starting college today, I'd never major in chemistry as I did in the 1950's. In fact, having gained some wisdom about my likes and dislikes, I'd go to an Ag school and major in soil science...or, maybe, take the tuition money and become a speciality farmer.
BTW, my wife and I are one of the few non-parents from my generation. Kids didn't fit in with our lifestyle or personalities.
"Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906 :
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.
There were only 8,000 automobiles in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st
most populous state in the Union.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home. Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason. The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
- Pneumonia and influenza
- Tuberculosis
- Diarrhea
- Heart disease
- Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't yet been admitted to the Union. The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30.Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet. There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day. Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
For the year, there were about 230 reported murders in the entire country."
We should also keep in mind that the marginal income tax rate for the rich during the Eisenhower years was 91%. We have a long way to go before we are "overtaxed".
The boomers were and are supporting their parents and supported their children. I would hate to think they will be jettisoned when times get a bit tough. We will all sink or swim together.
It is mostly our greed,materialism, need for comfort and "convenience" that has gotten us into this mess. The only way we can get out of this mess is to relearn the lessons of frugality. It also wouldn't hurt if we cut back on our population. If the new college graduates choose not to have children, I say great. Thus far, I have just one grandchild and I would be happy to keep it that way.
Yes, it is indeed interesting to contemplate all the things that weren't here 100 years ago.
To put a bit of political and societal spin on this exercise, here are a few of my own, in no particular order:
- No Department of Homeland Security
- No FBI
- No CIA
- No War on Drugs
- No police SWAT teams
- No for-profit prisons
- No surveillance cameras in public places
- No IRS ( no income tax)
- No War on Terrorism
- No (almost) Federal involvement in local law enforcement
- No government data bases on private citizens
- No wire tapping, data mining
- No Total Information Awareness program
- No AIDS
- No military-industrial complex and no massive 'defense' budget
- No powerful Israeli lobby unduly influencing US foreign policy (no Israel)
- No imported oil and all the problems thereof
- No SUVs, cell phones, iPods, rap music, etc
I could go on and on, but I think you see my point -we have gained much but we have also lost much.
fewer of us a hundred years ago.
No Department of Homeland Security
Do we not need this?
No FBI
100 years ago a er could flee unpursued across state lines
No CIA
We had spies since the revolutionary war
No War on
see above
No police SWAT teams
Special Weapons and Tactics to deal with heavily armed criminals.
No for-profit prisons
Everything id profit don't kid yourself.
No surveillance cameras in public places
Why is this bad? If you are not commiting a crime what does it matter? Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. Since so many have none this insures someone is looking.
No IRS ( no income tax)
I don't like taxes either.
No War on ism
Chicken or egg?
No (almost) Federal involvement in local law enforcement
As southern sherrifs turned blind eyes and attended clan meetings
No government data bases on private citizens
No computers
No wire tapping, data mining
""
No Total Information Awareness program
""
No AIDS
No aliens in roswell either
No military-industrial complex and no massive 'defense' budget
No powerful Israeli lobby unduly influencing US foreign policy (no Israel)
No imported oil and all the problems thereof
No SUVs, cell phones, iPods, rap music
I blame rap
Coffee cost $5/pound
That is a bit of an understatement. While I am much younger than you I still can easily see how far society is changing, and to me the changes are accelerating in the wrong direction.
>I do see a major shift in education from the sciences toward service stuff like medicine, etc.
I see it shifting away from the sciences entirely and into liberal arts and away from education that would provide them real job opportunities. A few years ago there were several articles about how the high school curriculum was simplified so its easy to obtain a A or B average with virtually no academic effort. When these kids reach college they are unprepared to meet the requirements and often change thier major into liberal arts. Today's kids have far more distractions then our generations did. They've been raised on game consoles and 100+ Channel cable TV. Interest in determining a future career is at the bottom of the list.
>It is likely the lessor educated will keep on making babies while the more educated will have fewer children.
This is always been true. When ever I hear about a co-worker or friend that just had a new baby, I find it depressioning to think about that child's future. I doubt that anyone born today will ever have the opportunity to drive, even less, a decent education.
>I'd go to an Ag school and major in soil science...or, maybe, take the tuition money and become a speciality farmer.
I have one of the top hi-tech careers as you can get and I am in the process of giving it all up and going rural. I remember the oil shocks of the 1970s and I know that our economic system is not sustainable without cheap energy. My career is only as sustainable as the oil keeps on flowing.
In prepation, I have been spending the majority of my free time educating myself to become self-stainable.
Maybe this will help...
Todd has thought about this stuff more than anybody I personally know. I've posted some of the papers he sent me...
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21880292
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21893957
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21894050
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21936866
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21936869
And a final thought about subsistence hunting...
He's also the guy who told me that, when the Depression hit up here (northern Mendocino County), all the deer were hunted out in 6 months.
Rat thanking Todd
Thanks for the thanks. I'm currently working on a paper entitled Austere Food Production. The basic thrust is getting away from the idea of "gardening" and seeing it as one might see a business. In essence, I believe people will waste time and resources growing the wrong stuff in the wrong way if TSHTF. My idea is to provide a different view of how to do it and what to grow. And, FWIW, part of it may be high carbon/Terra Preta type soils.
I thought I'd have it done weeks ago but life has been busy. I'll get it circulated one of these days.
Todd
Could you email about this paper? I'd email you but there is no email contact on your profile.
my email is matt@lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
Best,
Matt
I'll have to reset my email program but I'll get something off to by the middle of next week (there's a long story behind this that isn't germane). There are a number that Rat didn't post.
FWIW, they are all in Word. The doc titles are Giant 1, Giant 2 and Giant 3 since I combined a lot of docs into, big surprise, giant docs. Lots of the formatting was lost in the posts he linked.
Your subject line will be Todd's Giant Papers.
Todd
FWIW, my email addy is shown on Rat's first link. But I didn't think I had blocked it on TOD. I'll have to check. In any case, now everyone knows. Just don't send stuff on penis enhancers since all the email goes to my wife's computer. I'd add more but this is a family channel.
Todd
This isn't a comment to you specifically, but some in the thread who seem to think you have to leave for the hills:
I really hope that anyone who (a) is ready to go, and (b) already has access to 1/10th acre (and water) has the sense to "pilot" their ideas there first.
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/
As I say below, it's about "urban" homesteading and growing 3 tons of food on 1/10th acre.
... maybe if you produce a ton or two of food in a suburban setting you'll end up less of a pessimist ;-)
I expect peak oil to mean smaller cars that are expensive to use, more trolleys, more train travel, far less air travel, expensive food, less cheap toys, more software toys, less printed paper use, less living area per person complemeted with cheap unheated summer living area too feel richer, LED lighting, lots of bicycles and Ipods with batteries and connectors that can be changed at the local electronics repair shop.
And no I do not expect any of the early 1900 technological systems to expire with peak oil with the possible exeption of the rural telephone lines being replaced by radio.
They were built with far less oil input then todays use. They contain a much larger investment today and and require more maintainance but the manufacturing technology is more efficient now.
Antoinetta III
Here in Texas, we're less concerned about heating in summer as well... fortunately, we don't need refrigerated living areas so much in winter, however :=>
I agree with the idea of a local repair shop, however; the importance of repair will surely increase as our unsustainable throwaway culture gets too expensive to continue.
I think one of the biggest staring points of future repairability is the need to recycle material. Easy manufacturing and easy breaking down favors maintainability and designers learn how to make smarter products.
When things get more expensive with higher energy costs I expect the switch over to maintainable stuff will be quick and follow the market expectations.
My model for this is professional chain saw maintainance shops and the TV repair shops of the 70:s.
I am very qurious about future electronics, motor and battery standards and so on. Some day the development will slow down and the same standard parts will be used everywhere since large scale manufacturing will continue to make sense and redesigning things cost money. But not yet and it would have sucked if the future had standardised on for instance 80:s cars or 90:s battery tools.
This reminds me of 40 year old train coaches and 50 year old two stroke diesel engines competing with modern busses and trucks wicth engines that almost can be used as air cleaners. A long life lenght is not allways a benefit if you neglect to invest in better technology. But it is of course nice when you can not afford to do so.
U.C. Davis.
School has a weird knack for pumping out peak oil aware people too.
Best,
Matt
But I am optimistic, I believe there will be survivors. It's just that right now I cannot figuer out what stragedy will give one the best chance of survival.
But if you really wish to know why things must collapse, you can do no better than read David Price's great essay, "Energy and Human Evolution".
http://dieoff.org/page137.htm
An excerpt:
The AP has a story on China asking civil servants to forego energy consumption for a day. They claim that 7 million Chinese civil servants use as much energy annually as 780 million Chinese farmers.
Think about that. That's telling us that the ratio of energy demands between these two groups of living breathing people is 111:1.
I certainly don't want to sink that far, to Chinese peasant living, but I think it's important to note how far that fall really is in energy terms, and that after it 780 million people are still living their lives.
Pessimists are worrying about us all dying, with far, far, shallower energy shortfalls that that.
Would you care to explain that process, explain where they would get the land, explain how the ghetto dwellers would learn the art of substance farming, and so on?
Simply pointing out that a certain portion of the world's population survives on much less energy than most really explains nothing. It was the advent of fossil fuels that enable the world to support billions more than the world could possibly support by substance farming. It was fossil fuel energy that enabled the green revolution, that enabled one farmer to produce enough food to support 100 other city dwellers.
Coal enabled the industrial revolution. Liquid fuel enabled the automobile revolution, the green revolution, the medical revolution, all of which enabled the population explosion. And when these things are gone, the massive population that they brought with them will be gone as well.
But do you wish to rebut point's made by Price in his essay? If so, then please do.
http://dieoff.org/page137.htm
That implies a timeline to which I do not subscribe. See below the discussion of "centuries."
Further, even if they arrive at your location, you assume that a mass of people will continue to push against a fortified position while taking continuous losses. This also is highly unlikely.
Everyone who says rural retreats must be doomed always starts by concocting scenarios that don't bear much resemblance to history. And we have lots of history in the last 150 years alone of how people behave as smaller societies collapse, as starvation sets in, as people respond to crisis. Interestingly, they don't tend to migrate as massive violent hordes at all. Instead they migrate as individuals, and if abandoning the rest of those in the migration path gets one individual an advantage, they tend to take it. The largest group that consistently works together is the family unit. Above that it just varies and is much rarer.
So personally, I think establishing a rural retreat is a good idea and many of the scenarios concocted against such a retreat smack of Hollywood Mad Maxisms.
http://tinyurl.com/ltqs9
But the collapse of a civilization is historically different from normal tribal societies. What normally happens when a government or a civilization collapses it becomes every man for himself. When the Classic Mayan Empire collapsed the common people turned upon and killed the elite, the priesthood and the rulers. The population of the Petan collapsed from about 13 million in 800 AD to about 1 million in 900 AD. Unfortunately we do not know what actions those few survivors took that enabled them to survive.
But in Somalia a warlord took power in every section of the country. The young and powerful of the clan of the warlords quickly found a place in the pecking order. Those on the outside were left to starve, and starve they did.
People, when faced with starvation, unless constrained by a powerful government such as in North Korea, do not just lie down and die. They will fight over every morsel of food. And people do not, as you suggested, set out on their own. I know of no historical reference to this kind of behavior and if you do I would appreciate a reference. Historically the people have banded together in gangs or tribes led by a powerful leader such as a warlord.
These gangs will move only when necessary, but will do so if necessary. And they can easily move 25 miles a day on foot. There would be no need for cars or even horses. To suggest that all you have to do is move a few hundred miles from any large city and you would be safe is simply wrong.
Ted Trainer has advocated "The Simple Way". He has a small organic farm just outside Sidney, Australia. He has cows, goats, chickens, a garden and all that stuff. He thinks he will be perfectly safe if Civilization as we know it collapses. He trusts people and believes people are basically good, even when their children are dying of starvation. I have exchanged emails with him on many occasions trying to explain to him why he will not last a month if the shit really hits the fan. He will have none of it. He had rather believe in the gentle, kindness of his fellow man. They will just sit and watch him live good off his farm while they starve. History tells us that this has never been how starving people behave.
Like any force of nature, people will flock to areas that offer the best chance to find resources. Hypothetically if a swift collapse did occur, people would begin to migrate out of the large cities into suburbs. The high density of resources (shopping centers, private residences) will offer them better chances of finding food or other goods they desire. Eventully these resources will be depleted that the will be force to move on to other areas.
Lets suppose that you are a refuge (perhaps banded in a gang) forced to find food and other resources. Your likely to walk to regions that offer the most opportunity while having to walk the least amount. For instance your not likely to go walk ten miles down a dirt road on the chance that your going to score food.
>To suggest that all you have to do is move a few hundred miles from any large city and you would be safe is simply wrong.
It all depends on where you live. If you live close by a shopping center or other potential targets, the risks are high that