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.