Living without Oil

Feeding the World

2011-08-27T17:54:00.002-04:00

As I wait for IRENE to come, with sump pump and tarp at the ready, I’m reviewing some old-but-not-yet-read digests from Peak Oil News. Here are some disturbing thought from the May 31 2001 issue, from Farmer’s Weekly, written by Tyson Cattle (no kidding). In essence, the writer is reporting on a visit by Tyson Cribb, noted science journalist, who was in Washington, Australia giving a presentation on Peak Oil and Agriculture: “Where is Agriculture Heading in the next 20 years?"

Cribb is peak-oil savvy, and is wondering how farmers will feed the world, given that our whole agriculture system (like every other modern system) presumes endless supplies of cheap fossil-based energy.

Some excerpts from Cribb’s talk follow.

"Today the world faces looming scarcities of just about everything required to produce high yields of food, that is, water, land, nutrients, oil, technology, skills, fish and stable climates.

"This isn't a simple problem which can be treated with techno fixes or national policy changes."

"To put it another way, between 1990 and 2005, world demand for food has grown 15 times faster than the area of land being farmed."

"If, due to an oil crisis or local war, the endless river of trucks carrying food failed to arrive even for a week or two, what would their citizens eat?

"In developed countries we trash from a third to half of all food produced," he said.
"In developing countries we lose similar amounts post-harvest.
"Half the achievements of the world's farmers are going to landfill.
"While a billion starve, we waste food enough for three billion.

"Our grandparents would say we are idiots and they would be right."

Cribb suggested that Australia begin devoting a larger percentage of its funds for agricultural research. He notes that the world spends $1.5 trillion each year on weapons, but only $40 billion on agriculture research.

Rather than wait for the research, I suggest this is a good time to start planting annual gardens – if you have sunlight, you can supply the rest—to see just how difficult but satisfying gardening can be.

Powering down before we need to

2011-03-29T20:58:00.001-04:00

Which two disasters in this year and last inspired the most fear or anger? For me, the two events were the BP Oil spill and Japan's post-tsunami disaster at its four nuclear plants. Both threaten to poison our oceans and us who depend on it for some of our food supply. What do these disasters have in common? Both are related to:

our ever-increasing consumption of energy in whatever form works for us, and
the difficulty of maintaining (never mind increasing) our energy supplies.

With two in a row, it is likely that next year there will be another disaster, and the year after, etc. All the while, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are increasing their energy use. Saudi Arabia is itself consuming more of its fossil fuels each year. And why shouldn't they all do this, since they can now afford it and deserve it as much as we do. How do we avoid the oncoming energy disasters and ever-increasing price spirals? Live with less, and learn to live entirely without the one that is increasingly being swamped both by demand while its supply diminishes, inexorably. That one would be petroleum. That process of increasing energy frugality is what others, especially Richard Heinberg, call "powering down."

Nuclear

We in the US generate 20% of our total electric energy from nuclear, and –in spite of the 3 Mile Island disaster—nobody has been hurt and the possible environmental disaster was averted. Still, we continue to store spent fuel, with a half-life of thousands of years, in containers at each nuclear site. These sites were not designed to house the spent fuel. In fact, we spent upwards of $15 billion on studies to select a storage site, then in setting it up. It was only until Barack Obama shut the Yucca Mountain facility down –in deference to Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader from Nevada—that we lost the possibility of storing this in a controlled manner. (to be continued.)

What’s Next? Locusts?

2010-08-14T09:00:00.003-04:00

Think of my new gazebo as "screen house version 2."

I've always thought that we were facing a serious set of 3 problems, a trifecta of "peak oil", debt (national, state, personal), and terrorism. Each of these is bad enough, but they feed on each other and are interrelated. If we can no longer afford to fund police and our national defense, we are more exposed to terrorism (which will likely increase). Peak oil issues cause everything from higher prices and shortages, trauma to our practice of stocking supermarket shelves via a long distance just-in-time inventory practices, which themselves can lead to shortages, anger or panic, and perhaps more extremism. The relationships are many.

Now I have to admit that there is an obvious 4^th problem: global climate change. This winter we had snowfall totals of over 40 inches in DC. There has been intense record-breaking heat this summer in the metro DC area, with alternating wild rainstorms and more tornado watches than I have ever seen. 2010 is likely to be the hottest year on record, world-wide. There is unusual cold in South America, wildfires in Moscow, floods in Pakistan (and Iowa too). My screen house was a haven in 3 seasons protecting us from flying insects, and I lost it this winter when the winter storms came too fast and furiously. To take its place, I had a new, solid, gazebo built that should withstand the snow (screen house version 2.0, above), but now I worry about falling branches from all these storms.

Global climate change has obvious damaging effects, but it also has lots of subtle ones, even in your back yard. If you are a gardener, you are dealing with more than the usual problems: tomatoes cracking due to alternating dry and wet, cold and hot conditions. Power outages are followed by power surges; I've got a damaged DVR and outside security motion-detecting light that doesn't work any longer, both caused by surges when the power came back on.

Gardens are also yielding less, in part because there are fewer bees (bees are stressed by the weather too). New invasive species of weeds are growing like crazy. Some, like purslane, are rich sources of Omega 3 oils (so all is not bad.) And now there are the damned chiggers. I finally figured out that raised bumps at my beltline and below are not caused by fleas, ticks, or bedbugs, but chiggers. These nearly invisible beasts cause button-size welts and intense itching. Almost nothing gives relief.

In a recent editorial for the Wall Street Journal, "America is at Risk of Boiling Over," Peggy Noonan said she's worried that our nation is becoming simultaneously pessimistic and feeling helpless. She suggests this will lead to deep societal unrest. I agree with her. And wait until the four big problems become more active and begin feeding on each other. So what are the mitigation strategies? You can build a 10 double fence to keep out the deer and deer ticks (I did), but that won't protect against the chiggers.

Public Transportation in DC and Larger Symbols

2010-07-19T17:27:00.001-04:00

Today was the first time in a long time that I rode the DC metro during the workweek, since I had jury duty. I am an enthusiastic advocate for public transportation, especially in DC where

parking is non-existent
ozone triggers my astham

Today's subway ride was very disappointing and, I believe emblematic of two things: Society as a whole, and government in the US. What did I find and what do I mean?

First, you never expect all the escalators to work, and indeed you wouldn't have been surprised to find broken ones at almost every stop. There were also ever-present postings of elevator outages. AC was almost non-existent, and that was especially troublesome because on the ride back, one 8 car train had only 6 cars available (the dark cars were locked as they should be). So everybody piled into the remaining cars, cheek by jowl, and -once again, there was no AC. I felt like I was riding in a third-world country.

When I got off at Tenleytown, I hurried to the waiting bus only to have to navigate a maze of bent and falling over chain link fencing. All this in the US capitol.

What did I mean about this being emblematic of our society and government? First, nobody gets an award for maintenance; we get bonuses for cost-cutting. And that's what happened for 30-40 years in the metro system, which is now literally falling apart. They've recently raised the fares (and another fare increase is coming soon), but this nickle-dime stuff will take a long time to pay for new cars, fix the escalators, etc. We love low costs, but we get what we pay for. It costs much more to fix a car engine than it does to perform routine oil changes and maintenance, but we are often short-sighted and just keep our fingers crossed that big bad things won't happen.

Some problems also have been reported about operators texting while driving, and there have been fears of drugs (which seem to be everywhere). Yet the terrible crash that killed the driver and several others last year was not due to any of those things. It was due to bad brake warning systems on the tracks.

And where is governmnet in all this? There was of course the after-crash NTSB investigation, but that saved nobody's lives and surprised nobody with the result. Nobody in government wants to be proactive to fix the metro infrastructure before parts of it break or kill people. It doesn't help that the Metro DC system is paid by three jurisdictions --DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and even then there is no ongoing source of funding. It's "pass the cup" among these three groups each year to run the system for another year. Everybody knows this is no way to run a railroad or a metro system, but nobody stands up to say so.

If you think we can somehow fix the metro system, going green with propane-powered buses etc., any time soon, then you're crazy. We all know this will take a very long time, if it ever gets fixed correctly.

In the meantime, as peak oil and climate change problems loom larger and we depend even more on public transportation, the system will become even more stressed.

"Thank you for riding Metro."

JOE and Peak Oil Concerns (who’s JOE? See below.)

2010-04-17T21:36:00.004-04:00

The US Department of Defense recently published a 2010 study by the US Joint Forces (Joint Operating Environment or "JOE"). The point of this study was to answer three main questions:

What future trends and disruptions are likely to affect the Joint Force over the next quarter century?

How are these trends and disruptions likely to define the future contexts for joint operations?

What are the implications of these trends and contexts for the Joint Force?

The 76 page free study makes interesting reading (as in the mythical Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times) -- cover to cover. However, my interest focuses on the impact of diminishing fossil fuel productions, or what is commonly called "Peak Oil." The authors are no sandwich-board "the end is near" loonies; they are the United States Joint Forces Command.

It is no secret that the Armed Forces run on petroleum products, and therefore are vulnerable to any production shortfalls (as indeed are we all). Here are a couple of selective quotes from the study.

"To meet even the conservative growth rates posited in the economics section, global energy

production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand is estimated to be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia's current energy production every seven years.

And here is the International Energy Agency's (optimistic) projection about future production (click on the photo to see a larger version):

Notice the red section starting at 2010. Do you think we'll discover a new Saudi Arabia-class discovery every 7 years? I don't, but even if we do, you can be certain that it won't be cheap – Brazil may have come close to being one such "7 year" discovery, but that is prior to 2010. The Brazilian oil find is miles beneath the ocean, and beneath salt basins at the bottom of the ocean. To get it out (none, I believe, has been pumped yet) will require floating oil platforms costing well over $1 billion each to get the stuff to the surface.

One last quote:

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.

Scary? The whole report is scary. But we shouldn't bury our heads in the sand on this, especially the sands of Saudi Arabia.

Peak Oil, e-Readers, and Electronic Documents

2010-04-11T10:41:00.003-04:00

This is a cross-post of a similar posting in my Content Curmudgeon blog, since the post fits equally well in both blogs.

Peak Oil and e-Readers or Electronic Documents… Huh? Isn't this kind of like mixing oil and water? Not really.

For related reasons, having to do in part with resource constraints, the cost of print subscriptions continue to rise, even sometimes becoming prohibitive. After 40 years as a continuous Wall Street Journal print subscriber, I canceled my print subscription. It cost nearly $400/year, and I already have an online subscription that costs around $100. The WSJ is great, but not $400/year great, especially in this economy, when I also have the online edition. So I cut the cord and went completely on-line. With online access I can of course search, save articles, print them to Acrobat PDF, the way I used to clip print articles. My paper press archive goes back 30 years, but PDF lasts forever, right? Another advantage of online news: the news is always fresh. Besides I'm helping save the environment, or at least I hope so. I reduce the number of plastic bags (that you can't recycle); I eliminate the need to recycle the paper itself. There is even a potential business advantage to the right e-Reader: It can preserve into the indefinite future the opportunity to view important documents. What could be nicer?

Well, there are advantages to print. Print never crashes. You can read print even when broadband is down or out of reach. You can fall asleep in a chair, drop the newspaper, and not have to buy a new one. Can't do that with a laptop. Print is very easy to read, indoors or out in bright sunlight. And print graphically rich, uses color, and is still more familiar and comfortable. Spouse says "I miss the WSJ print edition." Oh Oh.

I tell her to wait, I'll find an e-Reader that is nearly as good or even better than print. It will meet my kind of Turing test for print: doesn't crash, very portable etc. but also preserves the benefits of online: Searching, always current. iPad is here; Plastic Logic's Que reader is coming. We'll find something (but haven't bought anything yet). Now the limitations begin to appear, both from others' reviews and my own discussions with vendors.

iPad is ever so cool, has Apple's trademark usability, color… what could be better? For one thing, it tries to be everything a netbook can be, way more than just an e-Reader. I don't care if it can run my iPhone apps because I don't have an iPhone. In fact, I don't want to be nickled and dimed (more like dollared) to buy lots of little apps to fill in iPad's gaps (like being able to print or use a USB). And iPad doesn't run Flash, which is commonly used on many web sites, including the online WSJ. This feels a little like the "microsofting" of Apple. You can run anything, but not without add-ons that may not play well together. So I can buy another iPad-custom WSJ subscription, right? And do I do that for every subscription? Oh well, at least iPad has a (downsized) browser, so I can get to the WSJ in some fashion if I decide to spring for an iPad. But what about the other constraints? Early reviews say that that beautiful 1 and one half pound product begins to feel very heavy after a while, even can make your wrists hurt. And what kind of netbook wannabe is only single-threaded?

So I've now talked with a marketing rep from Plastic Logic about Que, and expect to get an evaluation device as soon as they become available. Yes, I know it will not display color (hey, the WSJ didn't start using color until it became common in other print editions). And it is very light and also cool in its own way – even has a screen that is more book-like, roughly 8 ½ y 11 inches. It reads virtually every document format known to humankind, and has huge amounts of space for all my books. But wait: It doesn't do flash either, and apparently has no browser, not even a limited one.

Maybe I misunderstood. And maybe when I finally get my hands on Que, I'll discover other advantages that cancel out the negatives.

Or quite possibly there is no perfect e-Reader. I'm guessing that's the case, since this is the real world. And if that's the case, I have to figure out exactly what a document is, and what attributes are optional (like Flash). That is no easy decision, since it requires peering into the future and guessing exactly what I'll be willing to do without.

And that's where the similarity with Peak Oil comes in. Liquid fossil fuels provide 95% or so of the world's transportation fuel needs. Yet liquid fuels will eventually run out, and before they do, they will become erratically less available and more expensive. So we'll also have to figure out which transportation options are critical, which optional. I'm guessing SUVs are optional, and public transit is critical.

And this may even have some bearing on e-Readers: they depend on electricity and broadband. Those are critical resources too, right?

What's your guess, about which transportation choices are critical and which are optional?

What's your guess about what constitutes the essence of a document, so it can be preserved and read generations hence?

Energy "Thought of the Moment"

2010-03-16T21:41:00.002-04:00

Brief thought about energy, expressed from time to time.

Historic Blizzards in DC 2010-Peak Oil Thought Experiment

2010-02-10T20:39:00.016-05:00

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard about the series of 4 winter storms that have hit the metropolitan DC area, starting with 19 Dec 2009 and continuing to this evening, 10 February 2010. DC's Reagan National's total snowfall to date exceeds historic records: 54.9" total compared with 54.4" set in 1898-1899. Not only that, in Northwest DC where I live, we always get 4-6" more than does National, which is right off the Potomac waters. Since there was no Reagan National in 1898, that total was probably more realistic than the 54.9" recorded at National – add 5" at least, or "normalizing" today's totals—making them apples to apples with 1898—the total is probably more like 60" compared with 54.4". Our electric utility, Pepco, shows huge numbers of power outages.See the little "hat" icons?

Those show where workers –already stressed to the bone—are trying to restore power.

We've had 4 snowstorms-cum-blizzards since the 19^th of December. Here are some photos during the 3^r^d storm, after the neighborhood was somewhat cleared, and some from today, the February 10. Here's a second-story street view including my Corolla, during the 3^rd storm.

And here's my (beloved) screen house after the third storm – no time to take it down in November since it was always too cold, and the vinyl roof would crack.

And here's that same Corolla 6^th of February, before the fourth storm. I bravedthe roads to get the local Giant grocery store to buy some milk and a few other necessities (champagne off the list; liquor store was still closed). There were lots of empty shelves. I managed to buy milk, eggs, and some other things. The store was packed.

And the screen house after the 4^th storm – leaning precariously towards the gas grill. See how much snow there is on the grill, which I cleared between storms.

Last night there was a natural gas explosion (maybe not the right word) when the consistently 20 degree F or lower temperature caused a breakdown at a gas meter near Lafayette School, about a mile from my house. There was a loud thunderclap (no actual explosion), a strong rotten egg gas smell, and authorities considered evacuating houses in the area (to where?), until the gas company could get through the snow and shut off gas to the school.

Interesting times.

But what the heck does this have to do with a Peak Oil thought experiment?

The thought experiment is that we might see similarities in life after 4 blizzards-in-a-row and life after peak oil.

And what on earth does "Peak Oil" even mean? Well, for starters it doesn't mean that on a year certain the invisible oil spigot is shut off, and suddenly there is no oil. The definition is more subtle. And as you may know, oil not only provides gasoline, but plastics, diesel, many pharmaceuticals, electricity (for those power plants that burn diesel), and may other things that we take for granted. Shut off the oil and you shut off the other products. No, what global peak oil means is simply that world-wide, we've extracted the most petroleum that the world has ever seen, and year-by-year we will produce less.

Now we all know that everything runs out eventually. When will "Peak Oil" happen? 50 years hence? 2007? Opinions differ. "Peak oil" is usually considered along with the economics of extracting it. So the bubbly that flowed effortlessly from the ground in the "Beverly Hillbillies" comedy shows –not unlike the Quaker State oil in Pennsylvania— becomes very expensive to extract from $1 billion plus deep water rigs like Chevron's in the Gulf of Mexico. Clearly the easy bubbly stuff , which was so inexpensive to collect and refine, becomes much more expensive when Chevron has to drill 4 miles below the ocean and another 2 miles in the surface below that.

Add to the increasing extraction cost the fact that demand for fossil fuels is also increasing, everywhere from Saudi Arabia (yes) to India and China, and you can visualize a picture of gasoline and other fossil fuel-based products becoming increasingly expensive and scarce, as the US (and other countries) compete for the diminishing, ever more costly products. Think of a 7th grade graph with two lines, one sloping down (oil production) as another slopes up (demand).

So what will that world be like, whenever it begins? Perhaps it won't be a "tipping point" where suddenly everybody realizes it has occurred. Maybe it will be a series of unpleasant events where everything from gasoline to plastics and other petroleum-based products become intermittently available and more costly, on an upward trend of cost and a downward trend of availability.

A glimpse of that world might be like life during the blizzards. Store shelves –depending on just-in-time deliveries by semi's from distant locations, don't show up in time. Perhaps the rig owner-operators can't afford the expensive fill-ups, keep driving for cheaper diesel, and don't deliver on time. Perhaps utility deliveries of electricity to my house become intermittent – maybe they've installed wind or solar power which eventually became competitive with fossil-based fuels, but the wind died down and the sun didn't shine today.

What does that do to us in our homes? During these blizzards, I've grown accustomed to carrying around an LED flashlight in case the power goes out. I had a natural-gas fireplace installed several years ago as a heat backup. (Yes, natural gas is also fossil fuel, but it –like coal-- may run out after oil). I have thankfully been able to telecommute since I kept my power, heat, cell and land line phones, and broadband. I didn't miss the daily drive to Herndon, but I did miss the person-to-person interaction. Still, we collaborated successfully and got our work done. My son-in-law turned down my offer to drive to their house before the storm and deliver my WII console for the grand kids – he said they were learning to play games together and enjoying reading. "Good choice," I thought.

Still, after nearly a week housebound and even without postal mail, I've felt like I was more than housebound, almost under house arrest. But we coped and are getting to enjoy it after a fashion. I can't do anything about it, but I also wonder how the street people are faring. In this world of confinement to my close neighbors, the best I can do is check on Mary, the nearly 90 year old, feisty lady who insists she doesn't need anything, but accepted my freshly baked bread.

So is the fourth DC blizzard a metaphor for peak oil? Do you think the whole idea is hooey? Love to hear your comments (spammers need not apply).

Last Harvest - December Salad

2009-12-10T22:02:00.002-05:00

In my earlier post, I lamented the meager harvest for all my organic urban gardening efforts and hoped for better times next year (don't we all, gardeners or not?). Weeds had overtaken everything; harvest was pitiful.

Well here's a little update. A month ago I harvested 15 pounds of sweet potatoes, just before the annual scourge of the leaves. Ordinarily I spend over two months raking, moving the piles to the front for DC leaf pickup, a total of leaves at least 5 feet high, 5 feet wide, and maybe 25 feet long. A huge mess. This year I found a way to make lemonade out of the leaf lemons. Instead of using a leaf blower to blow them, I raked them into easy small piles every few feet. I then used the "reverse switch" and a pouch on my blower and mulched the leaves. This divide-and-conqueor strategy was so much easier to deal with, and instead of piling them up for the city to truck away, i've made beautiful layers of mulch, a winter blanket over the perennials, raised beds, asparagas, and everything else.

And one immediate benefit: the salad you see above. I think this must be a DC gardener's record, harvesting a fresh organic salad on the 10th of December. I'd picked the last of my tomatoes a couple weeks ago and let it ripen on a sill. I'd planted the lettuce in August, but mulched it with the leaves and covered them whenever a frost was forecast.

Tonight I picked enough lettuce for two bowls, and have covered the plants back over with leaf mulch to see if they can survive the below 20 degree F predicted temperature this evening. (Where is global warming when you need it? Can't help asking that.)

So did I transform the leaf scourge to leaf blessing by living without oil? Not completely. Pepco burned something (or used Nuclear power) to generate the electricity. Still, the city trucks didn't have to cart my 600 or so cubic feet of leaves to who-knows-where. I'll bet my net energy use was less than the city would have spent carting them all away, and I've now got a great layer of mulch for next year's garden.

Urban Micro Gardening

2009-09-05T16:44:00.010-04:00

Lifelong Gardener – New Challenges

If you consider life after easily accessible oil and products such as artificial fertilizer derived from petroleum products, the thought occurs: "How will people cope?" Especially in an urban setting, you cannot be self sufficient. Still, can we become a bit less attached to modern food systems and even pass along urban gardening knowledge to those who follow? As a life long gardener I thought this would be easy. It isn't. That's what this post is about.

I have gardened all my life, starting in my teens with a quarter acre of land in northern NH, then on a third acre house lot in central Massachusetts. I like growing almost everything: herbs, flowers, vegetables, fruits (I’ve even tried mushrooms). Now I am living in northern Washington DC literally 6 miles from the White House. To quote Jefferson “Though an old man, I am yet a young gardener.” This garden has no more than 1/10th of an acre growing space surrounded by oak trees and on a downslope. My gardening efforts have grown beyond mere hobby with two new directions: An experiment to see how much can be produced on this little patch of earth, and a living lesson to my grandkids and others what is involved in approaching sustainable gardening. I’ve learn just how hard it is to garden in an urban setting even with significant sustainability investments.

Apart from the small space, there are other challenges: animals and barely adequate sunshine. Yes, animals: I built a 6’ fence to keep out the deer, rabbits and foxes, but I still lose produce to birds, squirrels, raccoons and who knows what all else. The neighbors love (and DC protects) its trees; I compromised and cut down enough to get me perhaps 6 hours daily sunshine.

Garden Strategy

My gardening strategy has several elements, each with a sustainability theme. First, pack quite a bit into a small space without overcrowding, and plant many small things in small numbers. Secondly, favor heirloom varieties since they require less fertilizer and you can harvest their seeds. Third, although aesthetics are important, think creatively and landscape with edibles. Strawberries and sweet potatoes are a pretty ground cover; blueberries are beautiful shrubs. Finally, diversity is important, since you never know what will succeed from year to year. I plant perennials, annuals, and dwarf trees.

I’ve emphasized sustainability with 3 rain barrels (185 gallons total capacity), an upward migration worm farm, tumbling composter, raised beds, and electric tiller. In fact, I've given away all my gasoline-powered tools in favor of electric and battery-based alternatives. (How well they work is also another post for another day.) We recycle essentially all table scraps, garden waste, and even some newsprint; our goal is to throw away no more than one garbage bag of waste each week, continuously looking for ways to reduce waste further.

That picture of a rain barrel? That's one of three that I own. Beautiful, functional, and if you're lucky lots of free unchlorinated water easily dripped into your garden. What could go wrong? Lots of things... but that's a post for another day.

What’s growing in this small space? I have a dozen asparagus plants, six rhubarb plants, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, horseradish, two super-dwarf peach trees, a fig tree, a dwarf pear tree (picked since it doesn’t require another for cross-pollination). I grow herbs in pots and in the ground. We are experimenting with both culinary and medicinal uses for the 20 or so varieties.

I have tilled a circular area roughly 15’ in diameter for flowers, and another 100 square feet to see if I can grow sweet potatoes (these have become a groundcover extension of the flower garden). I have five plastic “Earthboxes,” essentially sealed containers of potting mix that require very little watering, fertilizing, and no weeding. Each can grow two tomato plants or 6 peppers, for example. These also are on wheels so I can move them to the brightest areas of the yard depending on the season. Lastly, I have two raised beds, each 8’ x 20’.

I run drip hoses from each rain barrel to different gardens. Worm compost and tea go into the gardens, as does the regular compost (supplemented with numerous pages from the Washington Post).

What have I achieved?

A more important question though, is “what are you harvesting from all these plantings?” Simple answer: Do you remember the book titled “The $64 Tomato”? I’d be happy if mine were that cheap. Perhaps it’s the difficulty of the Urban Garden paradigm, but this garden has been the most disappointing and difficult of any I’ve had through the decades. And I’ve spent in the 5 digits to set it up and make it work. If I were the quitting kind, I’d quit.

Some things like the peach, pear and fig trees may eventually bear fruit. Trees take time. But so far is not so good, primarily because of the extraordinarily low yields generally.

Lessons Learned

Urban gardening constraints are far less forgiving than growing in larger rural gardens. Oddly, the problem with animals is MORE severe in the city than in the country. For example, I suspect the deer in northern NH have learned that people eat venison, while they’ve also learned they have no natural predators in D.C.

Larger gardens provide more room for experimenting and more produce even when yields per plant are lower. This forces urban gardeners to react quickly to problems, measure everything, and document ongoing “lessons learned” to apply with each new season.

There are many advantages to growing heritage varieties. They provide a hedge against varying climate conditions (since they’ve learned to adapt). You can re-use the seeds. The produce is generally tastier (even if less pretty). They also require less fertilizer, perhaps growing with just compost and worm dirt. However, heritage varieties do yield a lot less than hybrids and often require longer growing seasons. It’s probably a good idea to grow both heritage and hybrid varieties. The little fertilizer needed for the hybrids is a better use of scarce resources than many other uses we can all name (think SUVs).

Be flexible, very flexible. If something doesn’t work out, and the reasons are beyond your control, then forget how much time, money and effort you put into it, and do something different. Find fast growing or shade-tolerant things to grow where there is the least sun. Decide which is more important for the best areas: mint or rhubarb, for example. I’m digging up the mint (it seems to grow nicely anywhere) and putting in more rhubarb where the original plants did very well.

Test your gardening area for moisture, sun, PH, and nutrients. Use an all-in-one tester (which unfortunately does not measure Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potash separately) or test individually.

And remember, there’s always next year.

Taleb, Noonan, and a Supermarket Conversation

2009-03-15T21:33:00.006-04:00

In her WSJ editorial dated March 13, 2009, There's no Pill For This Kind of Depression, Peggy Noonan described a phenomenon that I noticed recently in a supermarket checkout line. We all seem, pretty much simultaneously, to have come to believe that the world is not only worse off than anybody would have said a year ago, but that it will be bad for a long time.

Noonan credits this to the idea that

“The writer and philosopher Laurens van der Post, in his memoir of his friendship with Carl Jung, said, 'We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time.'"

“Of our time,” meaning that we have come to a concurrent conclusion that we are all witnessing a Black Swan event. The concept of such a thing was popularized by Nassim Taleb in his book of that name: Once in a while something totally unforeseen happens. Taleb elaborates on that idea on his website, Fooled by Randomness. Taleb asserts that there are some kinds of events (Black Swan events) that you essentially cannot foresee, even when the warnings are there.

Noonan says that we have a collective unintended common belief shaped by our time (that Black Swan event). Today, the event is the serious near-Depression and the common belief is that it won’t get better very soon at all. Noonan describes a “wall street titan” she interviewed five weeks ago, asking him what people should do next. He said: “Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things.”

Now to my supermarket checkout line conversation. A middle-aged woman ahead of me was buying a bunch of pussy willows, and we got to talking. She said that once she’d stuck a branch in the grown and it rooted, almost damaging her plumbing with its growth. I mentioned I’d done something similar by cutting some tomato branches last October before the first frost – I’d put them in water, they’d rooted, and I expect to plant these now 2’ tall tomato plants in a few weeks.

She responded that she didn’t have much land in the back of her house, but was seriously thinking of digging up the front lawn to grow some vegetables. In Northwest D.C. you just don’t do that. It hurts property values, and neighbors complain. (Unless you are a wealthy heir of a food company, then you dig up all you want and plant sunflowers and potatoes out front… I’ve
seen that too.)

Taleb and Noonan are both right. The Black Swan event happened, and we were all caught by surprise. Noonan was right that we are all gripped with the same kind of pandemic fear, sharing the life of our time.

Maybe good will come of this. We’ll all get down to our roots, back to basics, and that will be part of our shared recovery. And we’ll collectively stop our blind consumption of resources of all kinds, including fossil fuels, buying some time to figure out sustainable alternatives.

I hope so.

Peak Lithium? Why Should You Care?

2009-02-15T07:58:00.003-05:00

What the heck is lithium and why should you care? First things first; what is lithium?
My first encounter with lithium was as a surreptitious high school participant in a science experiment. My teen buddies and I got a small piece of lithium and dropped it into a toilet to let it fizz.

That was exciting. But beyond the plop-fizz thing, what else should you know about lithium?

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
“According to theory, lithium was one of the very few elements synthesized in the Big Bang, although its quantity has vastly decreased since that time. The reasons for its disappearance, and the processes by which new lithium is created, continue to be active matters of study in astronomy. Though very light, lithium is nevertheless less common in the universe than any of the first 20 elements.”
To learn more, go to Wikipedia.

All this is mildly interesting, but it doesn’t answer the question “why should I care?”

Here’s why.

President Obama’s and others’ hoped for transformation of our transportation systems –including your car—from petroleum based to electric, depends on rechargeable batteries. The best chemical bet at this time seems to be lithium batteries. Lithium ion batteries are the majority choice, although lithium phosphate batteries are less apt to catch on fire – but they too depend on stable and abundant supplies of lithium. Click here for more on lithium phosphate alternative rechargeable batteries.

The common thread is easy to see: Lithium. Note this phrase in the above Wikipedia quote: …less common in the universe than any of the first 20 elements. And that leads to the next point.

Where in the world do you find lithium? Not at Home Depot. Here is a quote from Peak Oil Review from its February 9 2009 newsletter (ask me how to receive this if you’re interested).
In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to allow much access to the mineral. (Peak Oil Review, 09 Feb 2009).
Recently Simon Romero wrote about this in the NY Times. Here is a quote:

“We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”

How much lithium is in Bolivia and elsewhere? The article goes on to say that “The United States Geological Survey says 5.4 million tons of lithium could potentially be extracted in Bolivia, compared with 3 million in Chile, 1.1 million in China and just 410,000 in the United States. And beyond the current use of lithium in cell phones and laptops, what will be the impact of plug-in hybrid automobiles on the supply of lithium? Here’s what Mitsubishi spokesman said on the BBC News, November 9, 2008: “Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.”

Now technology optimists will always say, and sometimes be right in saying, that we can always find alternatives. Still, the time is short for alternatives; GM is pinning its hopes for survival on the Volt, to be available in 2010. Not sure
Google “peak lithium” and you’ll find this WSJ blog. http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/03/peak-lithium-will-supply-fears-drive-alternative-batteries/
This blog describes alternatives such as zinc-air batteries. However, one very large obstacle: they aren’t rechargable and have a short lifespan. That’s akin to saying “except for that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

So are plug-in hybrid automobiles truly a climate-friendly, peak-oil mitigating alternative to the internal combustion engine?

API Energy IQ

2008-08-18T06:20:00.003-04:00

At a time when Americans are focusing on energy issues and policies, a survey from API and Harris Interactive finds that most U.S. adults have a fundamental lack of knowledge regarding energy demand and supplies and the role of America's oil and natural gas companies. In fact, when presented with 23 multiple choice questions, on average more than 25 percent of respondents said they were "not sure," and in many cases people chose the response that is farthest from the correct answer. Test your knowledge on 10 questions.

Think you understand energy issues? Click here to see the questions and comments on TheOilDrum.com.

Posted using ShareThis

It Aint Easy Being Green

2008-08-14T21:57:00.004-04:00

Green Challenges

I try harder than most both to live an environmentally frugal life and to prepare for an era of fossil fuel scarcity. I garden (fruit trees, berries, vegetables, flowers), and have been gardening for over 40 years. I have a compost bin, and I grow worms in my garage (to reduce waste to the sewer and waste systems). I bought 5 expensive “Earth boxes,” essentially potting-mix based hydroponic systems, including wheels to move them around to the best areas of the yard depending on season.

Outside of my gardening efforts, I have replaced every light possible with CFLs (and will use LEDs when available). I’ve added insulation to the attic. We use a portable outdoor clothesline. I have a sun oven. We drive a Prius, when we drive; I have used only public transit (D.C. bus and metro) for the past 4 years. I could go on and on.

And I’m discouraged.

Whether it’s due to climate change, or just the gardener’s perennial luck of the draw, my gardening yields in recent years have been at best mediocre. Animals (from deer to raccoons to rats) have taken their toll. I’ve built a deer fence (that the deer smashed into and I repaired). I (hate to admit) I have put out a rat trap. Still, the birds, raccoons and squirrels take their pick of the best of everything from berries to tomatoes. And they’re getting slim pickings too.

This year I decided to try planting more “heritage” varieties of tomatoes and lettuce (for starters). I assumed they would be more resistant to variations in the weather, they would not need as much (or any) artificial fertilizer, and they would taste better than hybrid varieties. That was the theory. I’ve never had such skimpy yields; tomatoes with blossom end rot; the pumpkins and squash have no fruit set. I blame that (in part) on the nearly complete lack of bees.

And if everything worked fine and yielded as much as I used to get in New England, the effort would still be significant. And I’m willing to pay that price of effort, materials, etc. Now I pay the price and get very little in return.

No matter what the advertising brochures claim, the Earth Boxes, I hate to report, yield far less than simply planting veggies in the ground. CFL bulbs (especially the more expensive dimmable versions) burn out in as little as 3 months – not 5 years.

Recently I tried a different approach. I asked for a solar panel assessment, knowing I had some daytime shade. Result: You’d have to cut down all the trees around your house (illegal in D.C. unless the trees pose a danger or are diseased), since if one cell of one panel is shaded, the whole panel’s output is diminished. And if one panel’s output is diminished, the whole series work inefficiently. Just not worth the $25-$30 thousand investment, even though I know electric costs are going to skyrocket while electricity availability will become increasingly intermittent.

I also visit and read nearly every post on theoildrum.com, daily.For another wakeup call (if you need one), read “Gail the Actuary’s” post on the “oildrum,” at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4381, titled “The Path From Petroleum Shortages To Electricity Shortages .” If Gail is right (and she is certainly persuasive and informed), we can all look forward to a large assortment of unexpected consequences from peak oil supplies, including intermittent availability of electricity.

Here is an excerpt from Gail's recent post:

"The issue I see is that if we know we are very likely to have electrical difficulties within twenty years, it does not make sense to start a transformation to a more electrical society. For example, if we start building a lot of electric trains, we are likely to discover that that we don't have the electricity to operate them when they get built."

Now if I am working this hard to become a darker shade of green, and getting so little effort in return, what about the other 99% of society who probably either are ignoring peak oil issues or doing very little to prepare. If you think you can just dig up a patch in your back yard, buy some seeds, and haul in the veggies to supplement your grocery bill… good luck with that.

Still, I am something of a perennial optimist. I believe if you try hard enough to improve your processes, learn from past mistakes, and continue trying, you’ll both be better off and provide credible insights for others how to succeed when they decide to try out gardening or energy saving strategies. Or at least I hope it works out that way.

Investing in a Post Peak World

2008-01-28T21:41:00.001-05:00

It is only prudent to prepare for a post-peak Oil world, and part of that planning is financial planning. Specifically, I've been wondering whether there will be a pronounced use of online commerce when automobile fuel cost becomes scarce or prohibitive. If people flock to the web to make their purchases, then it follows that home delivery of those online purchases will also increase. OK, so does that mean that UPS or FEDEX could be stocks to buy as part of a personal hedge against the difficulties of peak oil?

I contacted Jim Hansen, a financial consultant at KMS Financial Services based in Seattle, Washington. He posted on The Oil Drum and writes an investment newsletter titled the “Master Resource Report.” I asked Hansen specifically about whether he thought FEDEX or UPS might be good Peak Oil investment plays. My paraphrase of his reply follows.

First, he's not giving any advice on the companies specifically but suggested instead some guidelines for evaluating them or other delivery services.

First, consider the GDP issue raised by Roger Bezdek and Robert Hirsch. With a flat to declining GDP, consumer spending will decline. That decline could be significant and last for a long time. This could hurt online sales and economic activity in general.
Many times the shipping cost is a large percentage of the cost of the item being shipped. At what point do consumers flinch and say “I'll pass”?
In every case, localization is important (and among other things, reduces the use of shipping long distances).
High value items will probably benefit from the use of delivery services, but probably not low-value items such as CDs, books, etc.
The primary advantage of FEDEX or UPS is speed versus shipping by rail or ship. Cheap energy is an important factor to make the FEDEX or UPS model work.
And the business model is critical. Jet fuel cost less than .41/gallon recently, and is now about $3/gallon. Airline fuel expenses are now 30-40% of total costs, more than labor for the first time ever. What happens when fuel costs approach 50% of costs? If they try hedging forward that won't help since markets will realize that future fuel supplies will be constrained, essentially forever.

So if online commerce goes down with the economy in a post-peak world, what are some other investment alternatives beyond the obvious (oil services for example). Other companies with an online presence such as Disney?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

What the heck is "Peak Oil"?

2007-11-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-30T20:47:00.000-04:00

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)

2007-08-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-20T21:22:00.001-04:00

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

2007-06-01T06:35:00.001-04:00

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

2007-05-30T21:50:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-24T05:50:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-22T20:22:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-16T22:48:00.001-04:00

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.