DrumBeat: July 24, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 24, 2006 - 9:16am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Heatwaves and biofuel demand in Europe and US to fuel bread, pasta and beer price rises
Grain Drain: With unstable supplies of staples, we'll need to rethink ethanol as an alt fuel source.
Brace yourself for crises at the cash register. Major price hikes for food are coming, as Peak Grains join the lineup of life-changing events such as Peak Oil and Peak Water. Unless this year's harvest is unexpectedly different from six out of the last seven, the world's ever-decreasing number of farmers will not produce enough staple grains to feed its ever-increasing number of people. Quite a shift from obsessing about obesity, isn't it?
Gas tops $3 a gallon, hitting 25-year high
Bush told to plan for Chávez oil shock
"Venezuela's leverage over global oil prices and its direct supply lines and refining capacity in the US give Venezuela undue ability to impact US security and our economy," Mr Lugar wrote in his letter to Ms Rice.
Iraq ready to restart northern oil pipeline
LONDON - Iraq has completed repairs to one of two sabotaged oil pipelines that export crude from its northern fields to Turkey and aims to restart the flow this week, Iraq’s oil minister said on Sunday.
India: Soaring oil takes us for a ride
Discontent clouds Angola's oil boom
...On the outskirts of the African nation's bustling capital of Luanda, the talk is not of a more prosperous future but rather of a stolen one.Led by a collection of reformed Marxists and Western-leaning technocrats, Angola's government is struggling to convince sceptical citizens that it will use the proceeds of vast oil reserves to improve living standards in a country shattered by a brutal 27-year civil war.
They were the images that finally demonstrated the irreversible climate change now taking hold in Britain. Where green parklands once provided cool refuges in our cities, newspaper photographs last week showed them to be bleached, white landscapes. Reservoirs were revealed as cracked, arid deserts. And from Cornwall, pictures of the nation's first cage-diving trips for shark-watching tourists, an experience normally confined to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.In addition, schools closed, steel railways buckled, and road surfaces melted.
[Update by Leanan on 07/24/06 at 12:02 PM EDT]
Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?
A rapid demise of Cantarell, the country's chief oil field, could pose a serious economic threat.Output at Mexico's most important oil field has fallen steeply this year, raising fears that wells there that generate 60% of the country's petroleum are in the throes of a major decline.
Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, in the shallow gulf waters off the shore of Mexico's southern Campeche state, averaged just over 1.8 million barrels a day in May, according to the most recent government figures. That's a 7% drop from the first of the year and the lowest monthly output since July 2005, when Hurricane Emily forced the evacuation of thousands of oil workers from the region.
The EB (Energy Bulletin) has a very good/scary series of articles on food and on food versus fuel.
In regard to my ELP (Economize; Localize & Produce) recommendations, I would start making preparations now. If I'm wrong, you will have less debt, more money in the bank and a lower stress way of life.
Texas billionaires Richard Rainwater and Boone Pickens--hardly a couple of guys typing out dark conspiracy theories in their basements--have tried to warn us about that the dangers posed by Peak Oil. In fact, Mr. Rainwater questions the survivability of the human race.
According to the 12/05 Fortune article (search EB for Rainwater Prophecy), Mr. Rainwater is currently trying to expand his ability to grow his own food.
http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm
Excerpt:
"And the Russians are having a field day with U.S. policy putting us into the box where we don't have much room to move. I mean, there's a reason by Condi is not calling for a cease fire: in the crass world of oiltics, the number of dead doesn't matter because it will be such a small number in comparison to an oil drought induced die-off."
As for the oil fields, there are a few others who have mentioned this before, and I tend to agree with 'em. I see no reason why the oil fields grab needs to be viewed as a failure thus far. As long as the area is occupied, that seems to be a win to me. With the huge complex in Baghdad a permanent presence seems assured. Much of this stuff is at least alluded to in PNAC. As well as the multiple theatre military assertions. Will they keep it up? Will that require conscription? Will there be another 9/11 as Pearl Harbour incident? Guess we'll find out in due course.
Richard Lugar, chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee, has urged the Bush administration to adopt specific "contingency plans" for a potential disruption to oil supplies from Venezuela.
In a letter sent to Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, last Friday, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times, Mr Lugar warned the US that it needed to "abandon" reliance on a "passive approach" to energy diplomacy.
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If somebody was saying those oil fields matter at any cost, this might be them. Maybe that is all that does matter to the Neocons.
From that article: "Unless this year's harvest is unexpectedly different from six out of the last seven, the world's ever-decreasing number of farmers will not produce enough staple grains to feed its ever-increasing number of people."
The "scary part" you mention from the Energy Bulletin's list of articles is that this year IS going to be "unexpectedly different" from the last six or seven in that grain harvests could be much, much worse than last year as the result of the heat waves in the U.S. and Europe.
Has anyone seen any forecast or discussion of where that storage cushion may be at the end of the year?
Also, how quickly can ethanol production be ramped up? Can ethanol expansion really have such an immediate impact on supply and price, or is that something more likely to occur 2-5 years down the road?
Crop Prospects and Food Situation
The other day I was taking a plane flight, and the fellow in the seat next to me was reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse". At the time I was reading "Limits to Growth - 30 year update". We briefly chatted about Collapse, and then he asked what my book was about. I had only started in on it, but I had an idea what the basic idea behind it was, and I mentioned that LTG is referenced in Collapse in numerous places.
Don't know what kind of impression it made. Just an interesting story.
Brews yer owns beers 'n ails, thas' what I sashesz.
Yo ho ho . . . .
Crude Tops $71 on Louisiana Refinery Snags
These are just my impressions, any further enlightenment is highly appreciated.
Another question: I was a high-school student in rural Wisconsin about twelve years ago - have there been any major changes in urbanization patterns since then, or was it as bad then as it is now? (I wasn't aware of any issues at the time, obviously, maybe apart from inner-city crime).
A very European attitude, don't you think? If gas is cheap enough, distance becomes less of an issue, especially when you have no choice anyway.
Though I'm an American, I'm not one of "you guys" as I live in Germany. It doesn't sound like any of "those guys" felt addressed by your post. Of course, there aren't that many of them at TOD.
My attitude is similar to yours. I drive when I have to, but I take the train when I can. To me, driving to work is a complete waste of time. But many people (here too) really are forced to drive, or at least feel that they are, or feel "freer" driving.
The points you listed in your original post explain the situation well enough. The zoning in many areas pretty much forces people to drive. Cheap gas made driving more bearable, and cheap credit allowed people to buy bigger cars and build bigger houses farther away. That brought them to where they are now.
Back in the day, I put my belongings in storage and spent a year living in the office. I could get away with it; most people can't even consider such a possibility. No rent, relatively little driving. It was the best year of my life up till then. I paid off my debts and haven't been in debt since. Even then, I wasn't a typical American.
Whatever absolute figures may be longrange commutes are considered normal. I have a neighbor who commutes 5 days a week from home in Chicago to Manhattan, no one blinks an eye.
The U.S. was a country of farmers only a few generations ago, and it shows in the our preferred housing. Suburban homes are symbolic farms, with back yards instead of the back forty.
Laura Ingalls Wilder's father used to say that when you could see the smoke from your neighbor's house, it was time to move on, and a lot of Americans seem to have similar ideas. My boss grew up in a row house in Boston, and hated it. He now lives a 45 minute commute away from his job, on five acres so he won't have any neighbors.
What's so funny about this is that just this spring, as I visited the 138-acre family ranch in East Texas, I sat outside at night with a camp-fire crackling in the woods, and could hear the neighbor's music blaring away, from a home at least a half-mile off...
It's apparent that even 5-acres (and 138) is just symbolic isolation. Perhaps a penthouse apartment downtown may provide a greater sense of distance from the rest of the populace. If that is what one seeks.
-best
Ummm... well if we have another blackout and the elevator fails to appear when summoned I'd say you would be right for sure. Most would rather walk a mile in the outdoors than up 40 flights of stairs in the dark ;)
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide
For many, though, it is symbolic isolation. Those huge McMansions on relatively small lots, for example.
IMO, it's not so much the noise as the sheer human presence. People want to putter around their homes and yards without having to talk to their neighbors.
I live in an apartment complex, and I confess, I often do things at night, so I don't have to deal with my neighbors. Take out the trash, do the laundry, etc. Not that they're bad neighbors. I just don't want to deal with them.
Oh, fer christsake - what a pussy. A black bear, and I suppose there wasn't even a cub around. I have seen many black bears in the wild, and it really isn't a big deal.
Just tap the horn and it will run off into the woods.
And we have had some surprisingly aggressive black bears around here. One pulled a toddler out of a stroller on the porch as its mother was trying to get her other kids inside. The bear killed the kid, and the cops eventually killed the bear.
That wasn't in NY was it - I remember a couple years back that same kind of incident happened near the Catskills. Maybe the same one ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5067912.stm
The auto body shops love the black bears. You hit one doing sixty miles an hour in your full-size newish SUV and do about $15,000-25,000 of damage--not quite enough to total out a valuable vehicle, but enough to make several boat payments;-)
A few months ago I did move into another apartment block across the city, in a beautiful quiet area. It is a small block (36 apartments in total) and my plan is in progress, albeit slowly and in unexpected ways. There are 3 stairways in the house, 12 apartments each. I am disappointed in the neighbors living in my stairway - they are polite but uninterested in any contact beyond the obligatory greeting. There is one exception - a retired guy who is a part-time janitor for the whole house. Very polite yet never annoying. Just brightens up your day.
Most of my contacts, however, are with two neighbors from the other stairways. One is a thirtysomething teacher who I met at the apartment owners meeting (most owners at the meeting were over 50, younger people generally don't care about such things). We've exchanged visits and my girlfriend even takes care of her dog sometimes. Another neighbor I talk to is a guy who started organizing people interested in high-speed Internet (no-one here has broadband yet and if there are at least X subscribers in the same house you can get bulk rates). So slowly but surely I'm building up social capital.
I think relationships with neighbors are an interesting challenge. You don't want them to be your best buddies (they're tough to avoid when you fall out over something) but you don't want them to be strangers, either (who knows when you might need them). You also have to tread a fine line between tolerance and assertivity. I always felt, though, that avoiding neighbors is a wrong response to the challenge.
A couple of random collected thoughts....
First you have to define "long-range". 60 miles each way? 100 miles each way? Those folks are indeed rare.
One complicating factor is that you have married couples both of whom have jobs. One may change jobs, but if they move to be closer to that job then the other one might be further.
Another complicating factor is affordability - housing closer in tends to be a lot more expensive. On the flip side though, there are lots of people who wouldn't consider a condo or apartment and just gotta have that standalone house, and if that's what you want then you end up living further out. Another complicating factor is just the crass materialism in our country - this causes people to buy lots of crap, and if you have lots of crap, then you need a larger house to hold all of that crap.
Some of the problems are self-inflicted by goverments. There is this tendancy to have separate areas for businesses and housing, and they aren't always close to each other. In fact, inner suburbs have tended to emphasize office buildings, which means that there is insufficient housing nearby for all of the people who work in those office buildings.
I work in the Buckhead area of Atlanta (which is farther from home than downtown Atlanta). My husband teaches at Kennesaw State University, in a suburb of Atlanta. We live near my husband's work, making a long commute for me.