What the heck is "Peak Oil"?

The term "Peak Oil" hasn't yet gone mainstream, but you are hearing that catch-phrase occasionally on mainstream financial sources and even in USA Today. Do you wonder what that term means? Click here for a very simple explanation, developed by "Gail the Actuary," one of the contributors to The Oil Drum -- a great site for information on this topic and for discussions about energy and our future.

USA 2034: A Look Back at the 25th Anniversary Year

Alan Drake presented a great piece, at this year's ASPO Conference in Houston Texas, of optimistic fiction about the US, 25 years from now, and how we managed to do the right things. Alan's story was also posted on one of my favorite sites, The Oil Drum.

Here is an excerpt from this post, along with a link to the post itself on The Oil Drum. Here is a brief excerpt from his story. I hope this whets your interest enough to read the whole thing.

After an extended period of bewildering, painful and rewarding transition, the people of the USA finally feel that they have found their feet underneath them, with a clear and hopeful path to the future. Oil consumption is down to 6.6 million barrels/day, 30% of our 2007 peak oil use, and CO2 emissions are 26% of their 2011 peak, a matter of pride for most Americans.

As we close this year of 2034, for the first time in a quarter century, we can now say that next year looks to be better than this last year. Our problems are not solved, but we know the solution and we are confident of our ability to work and sweat towards sustainable, workable solutions !

Go read the whole story. It is the most credible and optimistic scenario I've yet seen.

Peak Oil Hits the Amish (Continued)

Amish Country, May 2012

Jacob had promised Josiah that he would do his best, but nobody realized either how difficult it would be to get power from the sun or --having set up a magnificent solar array-- what the consequences would be. They would be good and bad.

To understand part of the problem, you must understand the Amish approach to technology in general. They evaluate every technology choice based on its affect on the community – the Amish community. They deliberately pick and choose technologies to maintain the special nature of their community. And that approach is inward-looking.

They struggled with choices when it came to a public health requirement regarding milk storage – it had to be kept chilled (refrigerated), and had to be stirred automatically. Chilling (and automatic periodic stirring) requires electricity, and they had been averse to running electricity to their barns. Instead, they used diesel generators to create the electricity needed to chill and stir the milk.

Yet even that seemingly odd solution left open the possibility of allowing more technology into their communities. In fact, an Amish bishop –long before the energy emergency—said that “ To make a living, we need to have some things we didn’t have 50 years ago.” So what where the non-cultural barriers to the use of solar power?

For starters, the sheer cost of setting up the vast solar arrays surprised the community. They also had to decide whether to store the energy for a rainy day (or for night use), or to save money by not storing the power at all. Not storing the power meant using the English grid as a battery -- essentially sending excess electricity back to the utility grid. This “ran the meters backwards,” saving money on the electric bill, and was what the community decided to do

The cost itself, to generate power for woodworking and for use in the dairy, was far more than they'd expected, well over $50,000. This had required long hard lobbying --if that is the word-- in the Ordnung by Josiah. By working together --in typical Amish fashion-- the labor costs to set up the arrays were minimal. And before they started, they all realized that the whole community would have to share the cost but would share the power. Neighbors came to use the woodworking equipment, and milk storage tanks had to be tripled in size to accommodate neighboring dairy milk. Still, the system worked, and absent physical damage to the arrays, they should run quietly and as long as the community kept them clean and performed minimal maintenance.

Still, it was an odd looking construction -- black and shiny, definitely high-tech, and didn't exactly blend in with the typical Amish décor.

And then there was the heat. Nobody in the community remembered it ever being this hot, for generations, in the middle of May. Families could tolerate heat inside the barns and homes -- hand fans will always work-- but they were beginning to worry about possible damage to the solar panels themselves. And not only that, but the English were acting strange. The cost of gasoline had risen so high, up to $10/gallon at times, that the Amish didn't get very many gawking tourists anymore, and they didn't worry about vandalism from the English teenagers as much. But there was a certain tension when the English tankers came to pick up the Amish milk, always chilled as it should be, since power outages that the English farmers experienced hadn't ruined any of the Amish milk. Power outages usually occurred during the day when the sun was shining.

Yet the tension was clear. English farms were built on a scale that couldn’t apply solar refrigeration without massive changes to the buildings and land use, the cost would be way beyond English farmer means –especially in the newly depressed economic environment—and the demand for solar equipment in general was so high that just getting the supplies was nearly impossible.

There is generally a natural fellowship between farmers, in good times and in bad, but that friendship was strained as the “oddball Amish” –as some English referred to them—were clearly better positioned for the gathering energy storm. And most farmers have guns. What’s to prevent a stray bullet from hitting some solar panels by mistake? The Amish were no strangers to such outsider violence, and by nature would neither defend against it or repay in kind. But the threat of such violence seemed to be growing, and it was anybody’s guess where it would end up since the economic depression seemed to be worsening with no end in sight.

Peak Oil Hits the Amish

Amish Country, March 2010

I have always had a warm spot in my heart for the Amish. I am a Catholic with strong Franciscan leanings, and one of my favorite images of St. Francis is his rejection of his father's mills and embrace of the humble life. The Amish, without intending so, follow many of the ways of Francis. Here are some short stories about the Amish as they, like the rest of the world, begin to experience the effects of peak oil with ever-increasing world demand for fossil fuels.

I used an excellent article from the IEEE magazine, IEEE Technology and Society, Summer 2007 edition, to learn more about the Amish as background for this post. The article, Amish Technology:Reinforcing Values and Building Community, was written by Jameson Wetmore.

Josiah Glick wondered what the world was coming to. That was a typical question for an Amish farmer. Even though the world energy crisis was affecting Josiah and his Amish community less than it does the outsiders (whom they call the “English”). After all, the technology-skeptic Amish have always moved slowly and consulted their kin before adopting any new technology. Horse buggies insulated the Amish some from the soaring price of gasoline. They decided to accept battery power only with limited use, and bought diesel generators and engines to keep the farm milk cool (or they wouldn’t be able to pass the Pennsylvania state board of health standards). Their circumspect use of modern technologies buffered them somewhat from the vagaries of energy issues in 2010. But only somewhat.

The price of diesel is getting prohibitive for Amish and English alike, making it more costly to produce and deliver milk – especially since Amish farm milk volumes are smaller than those from the large “English” dairies. Sources of both diesel fuel and batteries are also becoming a bit unreliable. Josiah and other members of his extended family were planning to meet soon with the district’s Ordnung council to consider yet another piece of technology that might make them less dependent on diesel supplies: Solar panels or maybe even wind turbines. Adopting solar power would require some unsettling changes, and would be a huge investment, although in some ways the gentle quiet power of the sun is consistent with Amish ways. Wind turbines were similar, a bit more intrusive and definitely noisey, and when Josiah made discrete enquiries, he found that the English orders for wind turbines had been delayed for several years. The suppliers are having to back order their own supplies, partly because European vendors captured suppliers in long-term contracts, and the delays are in years even for large US purchasers.

The energy problem is also affecting his district in ways outside of Amish control. Fencing material deliveries, and other basics, were not arriving when promised. It is very hard to guarantee services to the English when you can’t get the basic materials you need.

Would that diesel and batteries and deliveries and high prices were all Josiah and his community had to cope with. It seems that some English are getting very angry with the scarcities and high prices, whether fuel or foods or virtually anything else. And the English, in Josiah’s view, were a little like a hornet’s nest – best leave it alone and try to work around it. Josiah worried that his district would start experiencing break-ins, shootings, vandalism by the English. After all, the senseless school house shootings several years ago were still fresh in everyone's minds, the Amish equivalent of 9/11.

Still, Josiah and some of his neighbors were convinced that if they were to preserve their peaceful way of life, living off the land and with the sweat of their labor, they would have to do something to preserve their sanctuary and customs.

At the Ordnung, Josiah was surprised how easy it was to get a majority of the elders to agree to a purchase of some sort of energy devices. Thrifty to a fault, they had sufficient funds to purchase whatever Josiah felt would begin to put them on the path of energy independence.

After the meeting, Josiah said to Jacob his son “I know ye aren't done with the rumm-shpringa, running around to taste the English world. But I need your help, and I need it before you choose to return to our Amish world. I have heard from the English that there is this new kind of electric newspaper where you can learn anything ye need to know, and then some. Have ye seen it Jacob?”

Jacob wasn't sure what his father meant, but he guessed: “Do ye mean the Internet, Father?” “I don't know what kind of net it is son, but have ye seen it?” “Yes, Jacob said.” “Well I need ye to find out however you can with this electric newspaper whatever we must do to set up a way to get power from the sun in our community. Can you find that out on the net?”

Jacob replied “I will do my best for ye Father.”

(to be continued)

Oil Addiction consequences in northern NH, today and 2027

Who Pays for Oil Addiction? View from Grand Bois du Nord - GBN, USA

Ezekiel 18:1 “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

In other words, our kids, grand kids, and those after them pay for our addiction.

“Grand Bois du Nord” –abbreviated GBN in this story-- is a mythical rural town in northern NH. (In fact, there are signs in northern NH with the sign, “Entering the Grand Bois du Nord” – entering the Great North Woods.)

GBN Today

Actually GBN today isn’t a whole lot different from GBN yesterday, a year ago, or several decades ago. The pace is slow; people generally are at the bottom of the economic ladder yet manage to scratch out a living. GBN residents’ houses are modest, and built on lots of land, and have shallow or artesian wells for water. Distance between houses makes good neighbors. Distance also provides a place to hunt (in season and out of season), and large lots mean a good supply of trees for cutting and heating your homes. Everyone has a garden. Nobody has cable, broadband or even cell phone signals in much of GBN. Many residents do have satellite television, but that is often their only concession to modern-day luxuries. Everyone has to leave GBN to go shopping, even for basic foodstuffs. Living sustainably? These folks hang onto life from day to day, week to week, and that is the way they sustain their lives. Here is Dan, describing how $6 oil affects him.

“Prices like this hurt, but we manage. Isn’t like we’ll go out to the movie theatre less. They shut that down year’s ago anyway. We’ll just have to drive to Walmart once a month instead of every week, and buy our groceries there and in Shaw’s next door. I’m guessing that I’d better stock up on some things though like shotgun shells in case there’s a run on them. You never know.”

GBN, 2027

I decided to make one last trip from DC to GBN, for one last visit the place of my childhood and see Dan and his family again. Getting to GBN from Washington was not easy. The trains still run from Union Station to Boston, provided you can afford the $1000 round-trip ticket. Getting from Boston to GBN was the hard part. I couldn’t reserve a ticket on the new hybrid bus in North Station – it’s first come first serve—so I stood in line and waited my turn. Luckily I caught the evening bus, along with about 20 other people. Buses are smaller these days and more efficient, , but because they’re smaller and are really the main intercity transportation, they are always jam packed. And nobody has to enforce a 55 mile per hour speed limit. They drive at 40 mph max to save fuel.

I made it to GBN late in the evening, and made it to Dan’s about 4 hours later after walking from the drop-off down a very dark country road for several miles. It was peacefully dark and quiet. Although it was mid-May, it was much warmer than I remembered GBN even in the summer nights of my youth. My main worry, besides whether I could walk the whole way with my suitcase, was whether I’d run into a bear. The Milky Way shone brightly just as I remembered it, but I didn’t remember the haze. Yes, it was probably caused by global warming, with invasive trees and plant growing fast and what I was seeing was pollen.

When I got to Dan’s house it was probably 2 in the morning. I was tired and thirsty, and the house was dark, but then it seemed like all GBN was dark and Dan’s house never had street lights even before the oil shock. After a few knocks on the front door, I heard Dan call from inside. I told him “Yes, it’s Bob.” Dan opened the door and let me in.

First thing I wanted was a glass of water and Dan and his wife Mary gave me one and turned on the LCD lantern so we could see each other and talk. “Don’t know what we’d do without these things,” Dan said. “At least we have plenty of sunshine in GBN, and that means we can recharge the lantern and run the artesian well pump every day, except when it is really overcast. And with global warming, we don’t need to chop as much wood to heat the house in winter. You’d never believe how late in the season I was picking tomatoes last year: It must been October, and we watched the last green tomato turn green just before Thanksgiving.“

Dan and the folks of GBN were managing surprisingly well, living off the land more than they used to, but there was plenty of land, they never had much anyway, and their sustainable ways sustained them. Dan joked about how much work it was to do the little things. “You know, we’re all getting older, but you wouldn’t believe how much work it is to work the compost tumbler and keep up with the worm bed. We don’t have many table scraps for the tumbler anymore, but the garden weeds grow like crazy since the weather warmed up. And the worms grow like crazy. You can’t buy fertilizer anymore, but the worm castings make up for that just fine.”

I must have fallen asleep as I heard Dan and Mary chatter just like old times, and next thing I knew it was noon. They nudged me and offered me a bowl of strawberries with milk fresh from their cow. It was really nice to be back in GBN. I wonder if I’ll ever go back to Washington.

Who Pays for Oil Addiction? View from Sub Urbium, USA

Ezekiel 18:1 “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

In other words, our kids, grand kids, and those after them pay for our addiction.

Sub Urbium today

And here’s the view from the prototypical suburb, Sub Urbium.

Hey, what’s this $6/gallon crap? You know how much I had to spend for a fill-up today? $120. My Chevy Avalanche will burn that up in just a few days with my 70 mile round trip daily commute and errands, especially now that it’s hot and I have to run the AC and always get stuck in traffic 5 miles out of Boston.

And don’t forget: I have to heat my 4200 square foot home with oil 8 months of the year, and I have to keep it cool for most of the other 4 months. This is getting ridiculous. At the rate things are going, I may have to forget about towing my camper to the mountains for vacation in July. How’s a person supposed to live these days?

Those $%$##@ oil companies really have us over a barrel. I think I’ll ask my congressman to vote for that bill outlawing “unconscionable price increases.”

Sub Urbium 2027

Damn, it was 20 years ago when I complained about the price of living and the price of gas. Who was to know that things were going to get worse? Ten bucks a gallon for gasoline if you can get it at all. The cost of living was so high even 20 years ago that I couldn’t just walk away from my Chevy Avalanche lease. Then when the lease expired, well I’d invested so much in it already I couldn’t turn down the low price they offered me to buy it outright. Then gasoline prices kept climbing, and can you believe nobody wanted to buy it from me? So I kept it – I figured gas prices would come down eventually, and I really needed the power and safety of that truck. And today, there it sits, rusty around the fenders, but it still runs. Meantime I had to get one of those stupid plug-in hybrids for my commute, but the thing only goes 40 miles between charges, and I have to pay $10 a day to recharge it at work. You’d think they’d do something about these things, to help out those of us who are still trying to do good for the environment.

On top of it all, I’ve just gotten over another bad case of pneumonia. Can’t keep the house warm and pay for food too. And you’d think somebody would like to buy it – 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 acres, plenty of trees, not far from the Interstate. I’m finally paying off my mortgage and the house isn’t worth any more than I paid for it over 20 years ago. Some of my neighbors are just walking away from theirs – maybe after the “fire” they thought it was best to just take the insurance money and leave.

I’m beginning to worry though. I’m not getting any younger, and it is really getting hard to keep this place in shape. Also, it’s still 10 miles to the nearest grocery store. That’s too far to walk, and you can’t carry much on a bicycle –not that you can be sure what you’ll find at the SuperMart when you get there. Lucky I’ve still got cable and my broadband connection. Maybe I’ll just cocoon for a while.

Who pays for oil addiction? View from Washington DC

Ezekiel 18:1 “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

In other words, our kids, grand kids, and those after them pay for our addiction.

We could discuss this question for years, by which time we’d know the answer.

We could analyze this question from a million different perspectives, such as – where we live: rural, suburban, city; transportation: commuters, travelers, commerce. And by the time we were done analyzing, it wouldn’t matter.

And of course there are the very different perspectives today and 20 years from now.

So in the interests of time and space, here is the first of three stories, based on where we live, today and 20 years hence. The locations are Washington DC, Sub Urbium (anybody’s suburb), and Great North Woods (a rural NH area). I have some experience with each. First, the Washington DC story today and 2027.

Washington DC, today

DC is the Prius center of the US, or at least that is true of the affluent quadrants in the city. There are so many, and they come in so few colors, I’ve bought a vanity license plate so I can figure out which is mine. And most of avoid driving in the city anyway; we take public transportation – and that is true of all quadrants in the city. Still, the price of over $6/gallon is making everybody nervous, and you can only manage a couple of shopping bags on the bus or metro. And metro prices have been raised to cover the cost of running the system, so once again it is the poor who are affected most, but not as much as you might think. Oh yes, to save costs the system is also running fewer trains and buses so the system is jam-packed. And they’ve raised the thermostats in the cooling season and lowered them in the heating season. In fact, it isn’t uncommon to ride in buses with no AC and the windows are sealed shut. So in summer we’ve taken off the ties and everybody wears short sleeves, sweating like pigs on the very warm days. We complain, but we complain together. And when we are squeezed together in a hot metro train, we watch our wallets. Riding in such close quarters has become a pickpocket’s paradise.

I’ve started gardening in earnest, and nobody laughs at my $64 tomatoes now. At least I have tomatoes, corn, and fruit, even if only a little of each. My grandsons think it is interesting to harvest food from dirt. They especially like digging up potatoes.

I’ve also started using a compost tumbler and I feed the partially composted materials to my worms, in my little 3-tier worm farm. The grandkids think the worms are gross but fun. They see me transfer the finished compost and worms to the garden and guess that it is OK, since the garden is growing nicely. Besides, they know worms grow in the ground anyway. I look at worms and see free organic fertilizer.

Washington DC, 2027

I don’t have many more years to live, but I am still living where I was 20 years ago, and my garden is still intact. To expand my harvest and develop items and services to trade with my neighbors, I’ve quadrupled my composting and have a mini-worm farm in my basement. Still, all these things get to be lots of work, and at 80 I find I can’t lift and move as much as I used to. I’ve also found out which items I can grow best on my little plot, and I have set up informal networks to trade worms and compost, berries, etc. with those who have goods or services to offer me. I was surprised how long it took to learn urban gardening and how much time it takes to do it successfully. Many neighbors never learned at all. Roaming bands of hoodlums have eliminated the problem we used to have with deer and other scavengers (by eating them), and now these bands menace the neighborhoods looking for meals to steal.

I’m also surprised how solar power and solar water heating both became so popular in the neighborhood. Many of those grand slate roofs have been torn down and replaced with shiny solar panels. Solar power generation turned out to be the best bet for rooftop use, so most people simply have had passive heating tanks in their backyards. Global climate changes mean that hot water is essentially free 9 months of the year. And nobody complains about the aesthetic of silicon on the roofs or tanks in the backyards. The city’s commercial buildings all sport silicon and hot water tanks on their roofs. This doesn’t make us self-sufficient by a long shot, but DC’s “net power” usage is only about 25% of what we consume, and we aim to be totally self-sufficient in another 10 years.

My grand kids are now in their early twenties. Two of them have set up a business installing and repairing solar energy and heating systems. One lives with me and after hours helps tend the garden and helps guard the house. They all thought of civil service jobs, and may still apply, but the federal government’s de facto power has dropped as its ability to influence events has waned. Young people are less interested in civil service employment and are more interested in practical work with down-to-earth results.

It’s hard to remember the good old days of $10/gallon gasoline. At least you could buy it if you could afford it; now supplies are spotty at best. The metro system, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps on moving but it is increasingly moving in slow-motion. The bunny is getting very old, and metro officials never did (and maybe never could) invest in the amount of maintenance needed for the thousands of buses and metro cars.

If you don’t take public transportation, you ride a bike or walk. Luckily most people don’t have to walk far to get to a store. Unfortunately you never know what you will find for sale in the store, since deliveries are sporadic and the prices are astronomical. Converting most of our corn to ethanol keeps the system going, more or less, but makes the price and availability of groceries a carefully considered luxury for most people. Forget frozen foods – the energy to transport and store frozen goods eliminated them long ago. Now you buy the staples: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and eggs. As with residents of Cuba during the long US embargo, people now are thinner – they exercise more and eat less.

When you buy your groceries and walk home, you’d better do it during daylight hours and bring your cell phone in case you need to call for help. You won’t get any help from 911, but at least you can call your network of neighbors along the way to help you if trouble strikes.

Sustainable living in DC, page 2

As though we didn’t have enough to worry about with the stresses of oil depletion, it seems like crises are brewing and converging from all sides. Now it’s the bees. Where are they anyway? Peach blossoms dropped off my two dwarf trees as usual, but no peaches began forming. Then I remembered: I haven’t seen a single honeybee so far this year. Yeah, I read on the Drudge Report that somebody else noticed and blamed cell phone towers. There was a short piece in the Washington Post about that too. Then I noticed an article about missing bees in –of all places—this month’s Smithsonian Magazine. That magazine article said that many things could be killing the bees, from cell phone towers to global climate change to pesticides. But another possibility the magazine cites is that the die-off is a “multiple stress disorder.” I’ve heard that if the bees die off, many of major fruit and nut crops will too, and we’ll be next.

Also, where are the backyard birds? I still have a few wrens, and the robins show up quickly when I empty the worm culture bin into my garden. But even the robins look a little frazzled, like they need some sleep. Is West Nile virus killing them off? Is something else stressing them?

And they say this hurricane season will be a doozy. Just what we need: The oil refinery and distribution system is fragile enough, and if we have another big one like Katrina, maybe we’ll move from $6/gallon gas to spotty supplies at best.

At least some things in my garden don’t need bees. In fact, I’m not sure what doesn’t need bees since I’ve always taken them for granted. Now if only we can find a way to make a complete meal out of leaf lettuce. Until the summer comes, it gets really hot, and the lettuce is gone.

Our just-in-time grocery distribution system depends mainly on trucks whose transportation fuels, will also become unreliable. I can see it now, the fresh vegetable racks empty; quotas on fresh milk.

It feels like a multiple-stress disorder.

Sustainable living in DC, page 1

In her 17 May piece for MarketWatch, Carolyn Pritchard said:

“Tens of thousands of Mexicans took to the streets in January to protest tortilla prices as they soared to their highest levels in a decade as demand for corn... Such fervor is unlikely to sweep the streets of American cities anytime soon,” Prichard also quoted Ken Cassman, a professor of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska. Cassman said: "We're probably going to be abruptly going into a period where supply is much more balanced with demand so that small perturbations can cause a significant impact on food supply."

Hold that thought.

In 1915, the US horse population (for travel and farming) peaked at 25 million horses. 20% of the land was used to feed horses (think ethanol for horses). The US population was 100 million. Roads were muddy and stunk, but we got around and generally we had full bellies. Now there are 300 million residents in the US, many fewer (and larger) farms. Forget about how we’ll get around, how will we eat?

This chapter is about attempts in DC to live sustainably, particularly growing food as the perfect storm of climate change, ethanol production’s impact on food supply, inflation, and other issues force people to think about food security.

The story begins---

I grew up on a farm, and there has always been a little bit of farmer in me no matter where I lived. Moving to DC, I picked a place where I could cut down a few trees (before the city laws forbade it), get some sun (not as much as I really need), and began planting. I decided to try moving towards a path of sustainable gardening – composting, vermiculture, no pesticides, etc. This took me several years to perfect, so I know the other DC residents –if they have enough sunlight—will not catch onto this sustainable methodology quickly, or in less time than I did.

And here we are. Our attempt to boost ethanol production is sending food prices through the roof. Shoplifting is up, not for jewelry or property, but for food. People are hungry and angry. Forget the street people shaking cups outside Starbucks for loose change, they’re eyeing you and asking for a piece of fruit or some bread as you leave Safeway.

Compared to others, I have a nice supply of organically grown fruits, vegetables, and berries, but nowhere near enough for all our needs, and certainly not enough to last through the winter. My kids –formerly very picky eaters—now give me no grief about eating their vegetables. They’re helping me cultivate and harvest. And believe it or not, the perennial thieves are still here and even in greater numbers, in DC no less: the deer, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, (rats) and birds. Nobody is thinking seriously of killing any of these critters to eat them, but I do remember the nice taste of venison back on the farm...

Riding the DC Metro

Public Transit in DC seems to have traded places with the Hummers and monster trucks. Riding the bus and metro has gone from something only students, nannies, retired and low-skilled help rode in northern DC to wildly popular. Even with a recent doubling of fares -- $2.50 for a bus ride to the metro, $.75 to transfer from the subway to a bus – it is still an incredible bargain. It also beats the alternative of waiting in gas lines or paying $7/gallon for gasoline, even if there are noticeably fewer commuters on the road. The only problem with metro is that its entire infrastructure has rotted from within; in the past, maintenance money was skimped on everything from the bus line and metro cars to the escalators and elevators. Moreover, to save operating costs, buses do not run the air conditioner yet many have windows that you cannot open. Metro stations –-some over a hundred feet underground—have become oppressively hot, and human smells made them a difficult place to be in.

Mix heat with bad smells and you get nausea. In fact, it isn’t uncommon for someone to pass out or become ill, right there in the station or in the train itself. And usually when that happens there is a chain-reaction of sympathy sickness, and that prompts the trains to stop running until someone from Homeland Security can verify that those ill aren’t carrying a contagious disease.

The best strategy is really to stick with above-ground transportation, large buses whose windows you can open, or to travel early in the morning before the crowds commute or leave a little after peak in the evening. That is also a good strategy to avoid what we all fear are the inevitable suicide bombers. They probably wouldn’t bother with a single bus, and for some reason they like peak-hours to do their killing.

The Shock Continues, page 2

Do you remember gas lines in the 70s? That first-of-a-kind event was a comparatively gentle, short dress rehearsal for what is happening now. Then, we imported only about a third of our oil and although we didn’t realize it, our domestic oil production was peaking but supplied the other two thirds of our needs. Now the percentages have reversed; we import two thirds and produce one third. And we lived not like kings, but like Gods.

In the petroleum embargoes of the 70s and early 80s we could still drive anywhere, provided we filled up at the odd or even day. Fuel costs increased the cost of food and anything else delivered by truck, air or train. Yet fuel supply constraints were more an inconvenience than a crisis – we complained about driving 55 miles per hour, we queued up at stations and honked our horns. However, even that inconvenience pushed up inflation and hurt those at the bottom of the economic ladder. We worried about street parking and someone siphoning gas from our gas tanks. Trucks delivering beef and pork were hijacked – yes, that happened in the 70s and early 80s, but it made little news. And soon it was over and everything was back to normal. These were two brief, rude interludes in our paradise of fossil fuel luxury.

Now things feel different. We know that inflation makes numbers seem higher than they really are, but $7/gallon is still a shock. And there is a general uneasy sense that things are different in fundamental ways. Those who bought the big 10 mpg pickup trucks with their menacing grills now cost $100 to fill up, and the hint of rationing in the news makes those drivers wonder what they’ll do if they can’t even find the fuel for a full tank. How will they commute from West Virginia or northern Maryland to their jobs in the metro DC area? More and more people are taking the commuter trains. And national government in DC, long told to prepare for flexible work arrangements but never quite pulling it off, is beginning to wonder how it will get its basic daily work done. Parking spaces in the commuter lots never were sized for big trucks, and now with so many people commuting by rail you have to get the lots early even to find an open space.

That leaves street parking for the Hummers and menacing pick up trucks. Well, not to worry about anyone stealing them; nobody wants them, and you can’t even trade them in for a smaller car without a huge loss. There is still that worry though about someone stealing your gasoline. Even locking gas caps are easily broken. Instead, the big pickups advertise: Lots of gasoline in my big tank. In 6 months, they have gone from menacing to menaced.

It’s enough for a good ole boy to get really mad and want to run a few Priuses off the road. Matter of fact, that new kind of road rage has begun to make the headlines. And those who had the foresight to buy small hybrids now have their own worries. It is hard to start a Prius without the bluetooth device, but it isn’t hard to simply tow one away, remove the old device and replace it with a black market knock off. All those DC folks who converted their small garages into living space and now have to use street parking are worried about their cars being stolen at night. It is weird seeing the new blinking lights on webcams, swiveling back and forth from ledges and rooftops. This fourth-generation video camera’s software is designed to ignore motion caused by the wind, passing cars or people walking their dogs, and focuses instead on the owner’s car. If it moves, the device wakes the owner, sounds audible alarms, and calls a preset security service offering to respond faster than the police to stop the robbery. Some even wonder if the sedurity services are playing both sides of the street so to speak: Protecting and doing some stealing to demonstrate the need for their service and their skill in recovering vehicles.

Everyone is getting edgy. Basic societal trust is fraying.

Initial Shock, page1

Well, I’ve been expecting this shock for sometime. In fact, after losing some bets with my friends about when gas would go over $5/gallon, this year I could get no takers. Nobody wants to think about –nobody I believe can even wrap their head around the idea that—oil is running out and even $7/gallon is a deal.

Living in DC, a block captain for Neighborhood Watch, I am doing my small bit to keep up a neighborhood infrastructure to protect from the waves of robberies, car jackings, and violence that are now increasing. Having a Prius makes it a little easier to keep my car safe from theft – can’t rob it without the Bluetooth starter—but of course that only goes so far. And I get uneasy when I fill up once/month for only $75 when others, with their big honken pickups can only get about 100 miles for the same price at 10mpg. If they’re commuting outside the metro bus and rail system, they’re in trouble and are coming to see those monster trucks as a cruel joke, a betrayal.

Food has of course become far more expensive and scarce. Deliveries are intermittent due to spot fuel shortages, and the added cost to transport goods makes corn –if you can find it at all, since more and more is going to make ethanol—only $5/ear. And to think that Virgin Atlantic is working with its supplier to develop an ethanol-based jet. How many people will go hungry --and get angry-- due to the corn diverted to supply one transatlantic flight?

Believe it or not, having lived through the oil shocks of the 70s and read the “back to basics” books like “One Acre and Security,” I started preparing long ago with my backyard garden, dwarf fruit trees, etc. These won’t keep me or my family fed, but they will provide a nice supplement to whatever we can find at the local markets. On a quarter acre lot, half of which is house and front yard, you can’t plant much, but I’ve made recycling a priority (even with a small worm farm in my basement), so this normally ivy-covered clay is really beginning to bear fruit, literally.

One nice side effect of the growing hunt for food: the deer who normally roam through yards eating everything from tomato plants to hosta, have suddenly disappeared. I’m betting some of them have ended up on dinner plates.