3 Cats Stalking

Conservation, Our New Major Fuel Source

Notes of an alternate world, a World Without Oil

It's funny but sad that we finally found a new major fuel source in WWO, one that had been available to us but we just didn't use it here in the USA very much. It's called conservation.

Conservation could have been a habit; in today's WWO it is a requirement. In either case, conservation cuts fuel consumption in this country by almost 50%.

Had we made conservation a habit practiced by everyone before WWO came along, the shortages we see would not have been so painful, the disruption so drastic, the destruction to our economy so final. If we had learned to conserve back then, WWO would have been noticeable, but we would have been prepared and taken it in stride. We would have had alternative energy sources and transportation ready to go.

Conservation, what's that? Transportation requires the majority of our fluid energy resources. Had we required that vehicles double their mileage, we would now have affordable autos. Had we demanded more public transportation, it would be available now. Had we curbed the expansion into the suburbs, we would not have so many people who require that transportation to go to work.

Lighting used to suck up 19% of our power in the US; in WWO it may be the same, but we have brownouts to make up the difference. Had we outlawed incandescent bulbs and old fluorescent fixtures, we would have cut that requirement to 15% by using CFLs. Had we given priority to development of LED lighting to replace all the CFLs, we could have cut that down to 10%. Had we been able to teach our children how to turn off the lights when they left the room and gotten rid of all the parasitic loads, who knows how much we could have saved.

Over half of our usage of coal goes in to generating electricity, and the creation of CO2 is a problem unless we use more energy to sequester it somehow. Had we pushed for truly renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, and wave, we would have a reliable alternative to the effects of peak coal and pollution. Had we made it more of a priority to develop fusion, we would not be lagging behind the French on the development of that source.

Conservation means finding ways to reduce the use of energy. We could have been so much better at it back when we had plenty of time to learn how. In the WWO scenario, there is no more time to learn; you just do it.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Meds & the USPS

Notes from an alternate world, a World Without Oil.

Woops, we have a problem. I had not been watching my medical prescriptions supply, and I ran short on a couple of my heart medications. I had to get refills ASAP.

Being 70, I am on Medicare Part D. That means I get a break on my meds, at least as long as I go through the system. However, before this world without oil business started, we made regular trips to Los Algodonas, Mexico, down near Yuma, to pick up most of my medications. It was still 70% cheaper there than using Part D, and I could procure a ninth-month supply instead of a one-month supply.

Now we are here in Oregon without enough fuel to get to Mexico. I thought about searching out some diesel and moving back to southern California, but when I checked the weather, it was apparent I do not want to stay down there into next summer. The weather in the southwest has gone even further south (temps over 115), and the drought conditions are still there. They are running out of water faster than they can come up with ideas of what to do.

So, back to plan D. I called my friendly mail-order pharmacy in New York where I have been purchasing the prescriptions I could not get in Mexico, and asked them to send me a supply of my other heart medications. They said they needed a new prescription, the old one on file with them was out of date.

Bummer, my cardiologist and GP are in southern California near our old home base. I called their offices and asked for a refill prescription. Nope, I had to come in for a checkup before they could write a new one. I explained I was up in Oregon and could not get in. They said sorry, they could not help me on that.

I scratched my head for a while and then went around to other RVers in the park and asked if they knew of any local doctors. I got a list of the "good" ones and started calling them. There were no doctors in the local town, but there was a cardiologist in the town of Roseburg, about 15 miles south, who would see me the next week.

I still had that quarter tank of diesel in the truck, so I knew I could make it to the doctor's office. I wasn't sure I could make it back without a refill. But when the time came, my wife and I headed down that way on I-5. We had checked around and found five others who wanted to go shop in Roseburg and would help pay for the fuel. Seven people in a quad-cab pickup is pretty tight.

Along the way we got a few stares, but I had never seen it so clear on I-5. There were only a few trucks, virtually no cars, and everyone was doing 45 or 50. Nothing like a fuel shortage to make conservers out of everyone.

I parked next to the doctor's office, and everyone else headed out to shop. I laughingly warned them I could only carry so much in the back. I went inside for my appointment.

The nurse was nice and the doctor obliging. I explained the situation and gave him our medical records. We always carry a complete copy of our records because we travel, and it surely helps in situations like this. Dr. Lin said he really should run a series of tests before giving me new prescriptions. I said I didn't think I could come into his office for the tests anytime soon, and he just did a visual check, a quick EKG, and reviewed my records. He finally wrote the prescriptions I needed and I made arrangements for my mail-order pharmacy to call him so they could be filled. He said he should see me in the next few months, and I said I would see how soon I might get a ride back down and call him back.

Returning to the truck, I found it piled high with stuff that the people from the park had found. Three of them were standing guard over the "loot" as they called it. I asked if anyone had found a fueling station, and they gave me directions to the only place in town that had diesel. They said I would have to pay with cash and I should take some heart medicine before I drove in. Once everyone returned, they all climbed aboard and we drove down three blocks and behind this feed store to get fuel. I almost fainted when the owner told me he wanted $8 per gallon, cash on the barrel-head, take it or leave it.

We pooled our available cash and had $155. The store owner said I could have 20 gallons. Everyone agreed we should get the fuel while we could, so we did the deal.

After returning to the RV park with the loot, I called the pharmacy again and made arrangements for them to verify the prescriptions with Dr. Lin. They said they would send the meds out as soon as they had talked to the doctor. And they even let me use my credit card.

It turns out that one of the most reliable services that remains in the world without oil, and one of the cheapest, is the US Postal Service. They still charge less than $10 to ship a Fixed Rate Priority Mail package across the country, and they do it reliably. It just takes a little longer than it used to.

Good news. Two weeks later I walked down to the Post Office and picked up my prescription. Okay, it cost three times what I would have had to pay in Mexico plus postage, and I would have to do this refill thing every month, but at least I had my meds.

And the park has an available truck with half a tank of fuel for common use. Life in central Oregon is settling in. Hope the World Without Oil doesn't throw us a curveball.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Mindsets & Adaptability

Notes on an alternate world, a World Without Oil.

It amazes me that even today the majority of the people here in the park and elsewhere do not understand what has happened to energy supplies in this world. Expectations remain high that we will (somehow, sometime) return to what we had, and they just know there must be someone who is responsible for the mess we are in. Their mindsets are rock-solid and crystallized.

It's like years ago when I had several intense discussions with my Dad. I told him he was killing himself and Mom by smoking. He told me to go to hell; his mind was resolute that smoking was not a problem to either his or Mom's health. He died of a heart attack shortly after his third heart bypass, before the lung cancer they found when doing the bypass surgery could become serious. Mom died five months later of a mixture of problems, including COPD symptoms.

Another of his mindsets was that global warming was hogwash, absolutely not true. It was a plot made up by a bunch of eco-terrorists who wanted to destroy our country. His ideas were solid as a rock and could not be changed. I gave up trying, and spent our last few months just loving him as he was.

I recently said that the world of the future would be a no-growth society, a direct result of the depopulation of the world that would result from a shortage of energy. One response I heard was that there was no way could that be, and once we were through the coming depression, the US economy would grow again. It looks like a majority of the people in this park echo that sentiment: growth is necessary and inevitable. It is a mindset set in granite.

I do not like what I am saying about the future; emotionally it is getting me down, As a corporate executive I once believed that growth was the inevitable future of working very, very hard. My mind was strong in that belief, but that belief has been shaken over time as I analyzed what is going on with climate, resources, and population: warming, depletion, and overshoot.

Today I try to find holes in my logic or inconsistencies in my thinking. I check the data and suspect the statistics that are published by the researchers. Sometimes I pray that I am wrong in my estimates of the future. But my rational mind keeps telling me my former mindset has been broken -- my only choice today is to plan for an energy-short, no-growth future and adapt to it.

The real key to survivability in this new world without oil is adaption. If you can, change before it becomes a problem. That means you must look ahead and try to best-guess where things will go wrong.

Take suburbs, for example. For years some ecologists have been worrying about the spread of urban centers, resulting in longer and longer commutes, poor use of land, decay of culture to TV watching, remoteness from resources like food, and many other problems. The attendant problems have been lack of public transport, cost of building and maintaining roads, pollution, etc.

Growth has meant that more and more suburbs are created, more land is paved or covered with big flat houses, commutes get longer. How can the young folks of today adapt to a world where this kind of activity does not make sense?

The first step must be to break the mindset that growth is necessary, that suburbs are necessary, that big is necessary, that over-indulgence is necessary. Kick yourself in the side of the head, and think about an alternative approach. Adapt.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Solar & Peak Oil in October

Notes from an alternate world, a World Without Oil

As I remember, the price of fuel started its runup in the World Without Oil the end of April. After 24 weeks we are at the beginning of October, and the bad news is that even though prices are holding kind of steady, they have not gone down. The second bit of bad news is that the autumn weather pattern is started here in Oregon. That means mostly cloudy with intermittent rain. The temperatures are not too bad, getting as low as 45 at night and up to 60 during the day. But that weather makes it not so good for solar. I do collect some power from my panels, but not so much as when it is sunny.

I know things will get more scarce as winter approaches, with long spells of low clouds and drizzle. That's the nature of Oregon.

My wife got on my case a couple of months ago  and made me buy a small wind turbine and mount it atop our rig . It took quite a while to find one, and even longer to bargain the seller down and find someway to ship it to here in Oregon. At least the turbine runs even during the night, but it requires a moderate breeze to be effective.

The good news is that with solar and wind, and using LEDs for lighting, we are still able to get along off the grid. The price of electricity through our meter has gone out of sight, and I finally just unplugged from it.

There has been some discussion, both on the WWO group and here in the park, about how what we are seeing relates to peak oil and where things will go in the future. I will admit to being one of those who sees worse problems ahead, even though by definition: peak oil is simply the point in time when we have pumped one-half of the oil that originally existed in all the petroleum reservoirs.

People ask me two questions: 1) why is peak oil a problem? and 2) when will peak oil occur?

The original analysis on peak oil by King Hubbert in 1957 is based on an assumption that the rate of oil production for an oil field (the supply) will follow a familiar-looking bell-curve. At the peak roughly half of the original oil has been pumped from the field, and that had been the easy oil to pump. After the peak it became more and more difficult (and expensive) to pump the remaining oil from the field. It is sort of like wringing water out of a wet towel. You can get a lot of water the first time you squeeze the towel, but as you try to get more and more water out, it takes more and more effort. Finally, you reach the point where you can't squeeze it any harder, but the towel is still wet with a little bit of the remaining water.

The reason for pumping more and more out of a field is because the demand has been increasing, driving the need to pump the oil. But when the field peaks and the supply starts to diminish, the demand momentum keeps on driving ahead.

This demand momentum is why one field is not enough, and geologists searched the world over for more and more fields, new fields to replace the depleted fields. But Hubbert also hypothesized that a geographical collection of fields would also peak. He said that all the oil fields in the contiguous USA would collectively peak in 1974 -- they did. Just as it got harder and harder to pump the last drop out a field, it became harder and harder to find new oil fields.

The US solved the problem of its rising demand by turning to the rest of the world, and started replacing its rising needs and lessening supplies with imported oil. Yes, there are at least 21B bbls in the USA ground as YuckyMuck says, but the USA has been using about 21B bbls per year, over 60% of that coming from imports.

Peak oil is a problem because it means that when the supply of this vital resource diminishes while the demand rises, it causes the price to spike to incredible levels, even when there is "plenty" of oil in the ground. The producers simply cannot get it out quickly enough to fill the demand. Of course, they may not be working very hard to do that since high prices benefit them, but all my sources tell me that even if they wanted to produce more, they could not.

So when?

Today Peak Oil refers to world oil production. Geographically we are talking about the entire world, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East, Africa, and Russia. Most of the big oil companies, most government agencies, and OPEC are saying that yes, there will be a peak in oil production, but it won't happen for another 20 to 35 years, or maybe not even in this century.

If you look carefully at the records, world oil exports have been dropping since December, 2005. Some agencies are saying that simply means we are entering into some kind of plateau, but exports still keep dropping. To me that sounds like we are past the point in time of worldwide peak oil.

Mexico has admitted that the Cantarell field, second in size only to the giant Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, in 2006 was losing up to 15% per year in its production capacity. Some petrologists are voicing the opinion that Ghawar has peaked or is very near to that condition, but the Saudis refuse to provide firm data to support their claim that there is no need to worry, they have plenty of oil. However, it is known that the amount of water cutting the oil from Ghawar has increased sharply in recent times.

So you have a growing amount of supply/demand tension in the oil market, plus a volatile Middle East, Africa, and Venezuela. US demand has remained fairly constant over the past couple of years, but the demand for oil from the likes of China have increased by more than 10% per year. Someone has not been getting their supplies. Why? Because they could not afford oil at $60 per bbl, and they sure can't afford it at $150 per bbl.

Where we are today is that whenever some little thing goes wrong, BINGO! The stability of the prices goes to hell. Yes, there is still a lot of oil in the ground, but it is going to be very hard and expensive to get it out. Some of the technologies to do so have not even been invented. The supply cannot match the demand, so by definition, the demand must drop to match the available supply. Someone is going to have to do with less than they have been getting. Who do you think it will be?

In November, things could really start getting cold. Prepare.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Living In A No-Growth Society

Notes on an alternate world, a World Without Oil

I noticed the price of fuel has been fairly constant over the past few weeks in this World Without Oil. I know there has been a lot of demand destruction, and I expect prices will fall as some order is restored to the supply chain, but I surely don't foresee that it will go back to where it was before.

There are still fuel shortages, and those will continue. The shortage in the world market of energy supplies is a solid fact and will not go away, it will only get worse. In fact, the next step is allocation of resources. The government must ensure fuel for emergency services, public transportation, farmers, freight transporters, and electrical generation. That leaves the Sunday driver, RVer, and commuter at the short end of the stick. I am not sure how the bureaucrats will do it, probably some kind of rationing like we had sixty years ago during WWII.

By now most people should realize that the era of a growth economy is over. Yes, there will be a few new innovative industries that get started, but those will only be replacing old industries that are dying. Autos is a good example. I have seen ads where people are offering to pay you to tow away their three-year-old SUV (of course, you get to take over their payments, too). Guzzlers are out, but it is hard to find a really high-mileage vehicle that runs on alternative fuel. They are in short supply, and the only auto industry that will grow is one producing that kind of car.

Unfortunately, the Far East is our primary supplier of efficient cars, and they are having more and more problems just like we are. Too bad we could not convince Detroit's Big Three to convert to the small, efficient format. Now, that area has the highest unemployment rate in the country.

Our country is going to have to get along with the housing we have. Forget the new home sales, they are not building any more, and if you have a big house, forget getting your investment out of it. In fact, most people who want to sell their home now cannot find a buyer unless they lower their price far below their equity. That leaves them saddled with a big hunk of debt from the bank or whoever holds the mortgage.

CD and DVD sales have plummeted (Internet piracy has sky-rocketed), and the TV, movie, and music industries have almost died. Oh yes, the younger set would really like to have the latest recording or see the latest movie, but their parents have clamped down -- no more money. There are still lots of performers doing their thing, sometimes on the sidewalks with a hat in front of them for tips. But then, only a few of them ever got much in the way of royalties anyway.

Information Technology continues, mainly because of the installed base and the utter dependency so much of our society has on it. But plans for expansion have been shelved. As a result, the electronics equipment industry has laid off over half of their staff. Silicon Valley has entered another bust, and this time there may not be a boom to follow.

Industrial farming is continuing, but it is having major problems getting the water, fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides it has been addicted to. In fact, some studies are finding out it is more productive and less consuming to return to the smaller, old-style farming like done on the family farms many years ago. That with the increased urban gardening may be able to supply food for the whole population, at least for a while.

One casualty of all this is the meat industry: beef, hogs, chickens, turkeys. First, the rampant conversion from feedstocks to ethanol and biodiesel production so restricted the supply of animal grains that many of the farmers simply sold their livestock. Then the transport limitations cut even deeper. Now the price of meat is so high it is always a luxury, and people are not buying much in the way of luxuries these days. Macaroni and cheese is just fine.

Milk is gone. Dairies have been suffering the same food supply problems as the feedlots, and with the unreliability of the transports, milk has spoiled waiting to be delivered. What has grown is the cheese industry, since they can keep the cheese for much longer, and it does not require so much refrigeration.

So what is left? Well, we still need food and water. We still need an infrastructure to dispose of our wastes. From time to time we still need replacement clothes. But we can watch our old TV for entertainment, or download an old song from the Internet, or just sit in the back yard and enjoy the sunset. We don't have to fly to Jamacia for vacation. We don't have to drive four blocks to pick up the kids at school. We don't have to continually grow.

It will be a different world, but by balancing our resources and making use of renewables, we can sustain our life for a long time. Learn to like it; that's the future.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Treating Symptoms or Planning Futures

Notes on an alternate world, a World Without Oil.

Over the past 23 virtual weeks, we have been reacting to a crisis situation, struggling to survive, trying to make sense out of what has happened to us. We have learned a lot and shared stories and tips on what to do in a mess like this. We have been treating the symptoms of a catastrophic societal disease brought on by our earlier over-indulgences. But what is causing the disease?

Treating symptoms is a reaction, a response to a problem. It does not necessarily solve the problem. I compare this with my real life. When I get a chest pain, I take an aspirin and sit down to rest. I am treating the symptom. What is important is that when I get the chance (like now), I give priority to solving the problem that causes the situation in the first place. I know I need to lose weight and exercise, but what else?

The first step to a solution is to understand the problem. It would be nice if we could pinpoint just what thing created the crisis of a world without oil. I said earlier that what we are seeing is a supply disruption, but that is just another symptom. You have to go deeper to understand just what is happening, and from there, guess what will most probably happen in the future.

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of disagreement about what is happening today and what it means. The concept of peak resources and resource depletion was introduced many years ago, but it has not been a mainstream idea until recently -- and there are those who vehemently deny the possibility. Global warming has entered the fray, introducing new variables and stakes, and making the choices harder. A variety of theories about how economies work have been proposed, and the agreedto conclusion is changing even as we speak. We are living in a time of uncertainty, and it is hard to know what is the best way to turn -- or run.

I have long been a futurist, studying what might happen, reading about theories on the future, building scenarios, and writing books about potential disasters. Living in retirement in an RV has given me the chance to think long and hard about different issues facing our world, and the Internet has been a great tool for doing that. Finding the Energy Bulletin and World Without Oil have been a great help in my quest for understanding.

I still have much to study and to learn. I wish to share with you two of the more interesting articles I have found recently, because they pertain to understanding the problems we face.

The first article is called The Economy is an EcoSystem, by John Ryan of Sanders Research Associates. It is rather pedantic and a little hard to read, but don't let that deter you. It provides a wide-ranging view of just what our economy is and how it works. The article proposes that our economy is best described as a functioning ecosystem, not a monolithic structure of supply and demand. It attaches traits to what compels our society that so many of our business leaders and politicians do not see. Viewed as an ecosystem, it becomes apparent that certain things are vital to the survival of any economy, and that the economy must evolve to survive on an earth with a different level of fossil fuels. Many parts will remain similar, but some will change dramatically.

The other article is Global Warming Exaggerated- Insufficient Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal, by Professor Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University in Sweden. The professor points out how the peak limitations on supplies for oil, natural gas, and coal may very well cap the CO2 emissions in the coming decades, and prevent the world from reaching the worst-case scenarios discussed by the UN's IPCC in their latest report on climate change. In fact, within the range of error, it is possible that even the best-case scenario is unachievable, there will simply not be enough energy for families to live frugally but as well as they would like. It is almost as if he is saying that the WWO we have been studying is inevitable.

[Sorry, this paragraph was left out in the original post. sjp] Though there is disagreement, everything points to the problem being centered on how to survive the change of our world from one devoted to unlimited growth to one with diminishing resources. The key problem has become how to survive this transformation.

 

My wife and I started planning for the future long ago. We chose the full-time RVing lifestyle because that allowed us to live frugally, unencumbered by chains to a fixed base. We reconditioned our rig with solar and LEDs and RO water so we could take up boondocking and live off the grid, independent from much of society's infrastructure (at least for a while). Now that the price of fuel is rising (and may rise much, much more), we are limiting (but not stopping) our travels. We are also walking more to stay in shape.

After glimpsing through the eyes of the WWO netizens what might come, I am adding to my list of alterations. I will get a little hand-crank washer and clothesline. Even now, we can limit our use of coin-operated washers and driers. We can add to our solar panels and batteries. We need a solar oven.

Hate to say it, but I might purchase a firearm. Sounds like many netizens expect there could be some kind of civil unrest, so self-protection seems a good idea. I think I should possibly get a short barrel pump shotgun. Just the sound of cocking it can scare the daylights out of someone, even me.

Even though we travel around, we could maintain a small garden of herbs in small flower pots. I can also put away a stock of vegetable seeds for when we land long enough to do a garden. Kept in a sealed, dry, dark environment, seeds will last for years.

We have agreed that when grocery shopping, our first stop of choice should be the farmer's markets. We will fill up on local vegies before we go off to the nationwide chain supermarket. Good to start the habit now, and to support those local farmers. Also, we will carry our purchases in our own cloth bags -- reusable and non-polluting, no more paper or plastic.

While decent supplies last, we can go to garage sales and thrift shops to find clothes. Better to get more use out of a piece of clothing than spend the carbon creating something new. I tell my wife, "One woman's junk is another woman's treasure."

I am sure there are more things I can do to plan for the future. At least it is more fun than treating symptoms.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Commons, a Concept Misplaced

Notes on an alternate world, a World Without Oil.

Living in a more rural area, I don't have any good stories on the urban situation. I do have the time to think back on how we got here, and how we move ahead. The Commons Concept is an important ingredient in both.

In my youth I read an article in Scientific American about the concept of Community Commons, spaces that are shared by the entire community but not owned by any community members or any higher authority. In other countries of that time, such spaces were owned by a Lord or King or other institutions of authority. The Commons concept came to America from England, brought here by the early settlers in Plymouth. You can still find places called The Commons in many towns in the former colonies.

Over time the Commons concept was adopted and formalized throughout the United States and it became an integral part of our culture. The concept was used as a basis for the development of many utilities and city and county governments. You find it in the foundations of many of the religious and social groups in our land, the feelings that there are some things that belong to every citizen, not to some vested interest. Even our form of government reflects that attitude.

Unfortunately, too many in this country today have no appreciation for the Commons concept, or maybe they just never learned it. I argue that much of our situation in a World Without Oil results from misplacing that concept, and I argue that many of our future solutions will embody the revitalization of the Commons concept.

First, how could we misplace a concept?

When I was a young boy on a farm in Oklahoma, only what happened with my family, the local community, and the nearby town affected my life, and what I did had little affect outside that area. We had Common things, like my country school, and the city parks and swimming pool, the roads, the library, and the churches. We also had some rules: don't mess up those common things, don't take more than your fair share of any of them, don't encroach on them, remember they belong to everyone.

As I grew into manhood I found my world had grown even more. I watched MovieTone news showing the wars in Europe and the Pacific. I watched movies of the first atomic bomb test, and then the Eniwetok hydrogen bomb test. I watched our country send a man to the moon and bring him back. I watched as our cold war with Russia finally crumbled with the fall of a symbolic wall in Berlin. I was proud of our country and what it was doing. My family and I were living a good life.

Along the way, I was one of the few who listened to an early warning in 1974 from the CEO of Baker Tool who said the price of oil was about to go from $2 per barrel to $5 per barrel and war in the Middle East could break out. The next day I bought a little fuel-efficient Honda Civic (brand new to the states), and a week later all his predictions came true.

The handwriting was on the wall. Our president took the opportunity to get everyone to conserve and develop alternate sources of fuel. We were seeing the first really big episode in the effects of supply and demand on a limited resource, a resource that would be desired by every other country in the world.

It was about that time that the Commons concept really came under attack. As a result we forgot about conservation, returned to gas-guzzling cars, and kicked our lives into high gear.

As the attitude that the US was the strongest and most important nation in the world grew, our desires for big material things grew. What we personally owned became more important than whoever might be affected by our getting it. The world out there was our resource, and too many people in this country developed the attitude that we deserved it all, we had nothing really in common with the other countries.

Growth, growth, and more growth became our mantra. Growth in our homes, growth in our possessions, growth in our incomes, and growth in our big bellies all became the standards to strive for. Whoever could drive the biggest, flashiest car the fastest was the best. A curse on those people who drove slow in front of you on the freeway. Shoot 'em. You owned the road, they didn't.

Globalization, formerly known as World Trade, became a measure of success. It was the engine that gave all us US citizens the things we wanted. Look, we were providing all those third-class, third-world citizens with menial jobs so they could turn out cheap, cheap goods and toys for us to buy. Isn't that great? So what if they were polluting the world doing it. And all those unemployed workers here in the states. It was about time they got an education and learned a new trade. So what if we go to monoculture farms. ADM says they are more profitable that way.

As our demand for fuel rose, we began to take more proactive measures to ensure its availability. After all, we were the strongest nation in the world. Might makes right. And if the price of oil goes up, it must be because those vague evil doers around the world are conspiring against us. Fundamental supply and demand has nothing to do with it.

Using the power of mass marketing and money, corporations who looked only two quarters ahead began to maximize their profits. They used mass marketing to brainwash far too many people on the perceived value of growing material wealth. They contributed money to the politicians who would push their interests ahead the most, and used the people to whom they sold the idea to force the politicians to do their bidding.

Nowhere is that situation can I find the concept of Commons. It is all Me, Me, Me, whether you are talking about a person or the country. Our society has learned well the lessons of how to over-indulge. By failing to realize that there are consequences to what we are doing, we have made no corrective course changes. Everyone believed this mad party could go on forever.

Then we ran out of oil. So much for the past. How can the Commons Concept help us now?

I do not think a single person living in the world alone will survive very long. Maybe Tarzan can, but he had the animals to help him, didn't he? We have even lost most of those.

Mankind needs to work together to provide what is needed for survival: food, water, clothing, sustenance, companionship. I contend this work is best accomplished as cooperative efforts using common resources. We have to understand how much our common areas and efforts can sustain. We cannot have one person or group taking over everything. There will be a lot to learn, and for many, to unlearn. We can no longer over-indulge. Growth is not the answer anymore.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Quality of Life

Notes on an alternate world, a World Without Oil

Back before the world "ran out of oil" my wife and I adopted a philosophy that has made our life, especially our life in retirement, a good life. The basic principle is to always maximize our happiness. We focused on the quality of our life, not the quantity.

We find that in this new world, it is still a good philosophy. In fact, it is a necessary philosophy if we are to survive these times.

But the idea of always maximizing happiness must be tempered by a careful understanding of what maximizing means, what happiness really is, and some of the things that happiness is not.

If you are a mathematician you will understand when I say that the variable you maximize is the area under the good feelings curve, integrated over time. In laymen terms, that means you want to build up good feelings over time; collect as many as you can each hour. Being ecstatic for only one minute out an hour has a low value. Better to be half-ecstatic for ten minutes, or even just feel good for the whole hour. And if at all possible, avoid those times when your feel-good goes negative, turning into feel-bad.

If you are a pessimist or always look for the bad in things, you don't have many good feelings to collect, so your level of happiness will be low. But if you are an optimist and always look for the good in things, you collect a lot of happiness.

There have been times when I wanted to eat the whole pie, and when I was a kid, I did that a couple of times. Boy, did I get sick. How did it all come out? My total happiness was negative.

People who must get high on drugs or booze have very little happiness. For an instant they may feel awesome, but all the negative times that follow cancel out all those good feelings, and the net result is little or no happiness.

So how does this apply to a World Without Oil?

In a world of diminishing resources, it is better to go for the best than to go for everything you can get. You do not have to drive 1,000 miles to see beauty; it is outside your back door, or around the corner. You do not have to eat a double whopper with super-size fries; take it slow and enjoy a small salad. You do not have to fly to Paris for a vacation; take a hike in the local state park. You do not have to eat grapes grown in Chili; you can buy something special at the local farmer's market.

We are content living in 240 square feet of living space. Of course, we have the whole outdoors available to us. It is the quality of our living space that is important, not the quantity.

Those who are going out and working on missions, those who are learning new ways to do things, those who are learning how to get by on less, those are all the ones who are working at maximizing their happiness. I cannot promise that everything will be rosy, but at least those people don't spend their time being sniveling whiners and losers.

Do what you can to improve your quality of life, and find ways to maximize your happiness.

Try it, you will like it.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Now you may be wondering why I should be waxing so philosophical. It is because I have found it too easy to sink into WWO and become so pessimistic I see everything as hopeless. But back here in the real world, there are things we all can do to make a difference. We can affect the future of our real world. It is not easy, but by maximizing your happiness in the real world and improving the quality of your life rather than building on the quantity you get, you can and will make a difference. Living for a while in WWO makes a person realize just how important that difference is. sjp

 

Finances, Retirement, and Banking

Notes from an alternate world, a World Without Oil.

Living in retirement means your income is limited to what you get from your pension and retirement savings accounts. Oh, and don't forget contributions from the kids. If, when you retire, you decide to take up full-time RVing, your identity becomes vague, at least in some official eyes.

This WWO thing has changed things a lot. We have a growing fear that our income and identity are both at serious risk.

As full-time RVers we have a legal domicile in Texas, but rarely are we physically there -- in fact, with the price of fuel we will probably never see the place again. Once in a while different companies and the government get concerned when they find we are in some other state, but so far we have been able to avoid any problem. If Homeland Security starts cracking down and tries to put people into their place, we may become suspects of one sort or another. We don't fit their proper profile.

We have bank and investment accounts with Schwab, in effect giving us country-wide coverage. When we cannot use credit cards for purchases, we use ATMs to get the necessary cash. BTW, we are strict about paying off the total on the credit cards each month. The credit companies are searching for ways they can get something more out of us, but so far we have stayed ahead of their game.

Now there are an increasing number of businesses that don't take credit cards. I suppose this is because of concerns about whether the credit card companies will go belly up (people are not paying their bills, and uncollected interest isn't worth much), and the lines of communications are becoming unreliable. Also, with the inflation rising so fast, and the shortages becoming worse, you are seeing the start of a black market, and those folks only deal in cash and barter. They do not want any record of what they took in.

We collect social security. That is a system where what people who are working pay in today is supposed to cover what we retirees are receiving. Of course, with more and more people out of work, the SS system is approaching bankruptcy at a faster rate, but I am not worried. The government will just print more money to pay us, and inflation will have made it nearly worthless by that time anyway. (Sorry, I am being a bit pessimistic here).

Our social security payments are sent by EFT to our bank account at Schwab.  They are not enough to cover our expenses, even after we have reduced our outlays (virtually no more driving, so not much eating out, etc.). From time to time I have to take money out of our IRA retirement accounts.

Our IRAs are suffering from today's WWO world. A couple of years ago (when I first started reading about peak oil) I re-allocated and put 10% into gold mining stocks, 30% into energy-related stocks, 30% into international funds and stocks, and the remainder in top-rated US mutual funds. My wife has insisted we stay with the gold, so we have followed it up and down, and we are about even at this point. The energy stocks have been strong gainers. The international stocks gained in the beginning but recently have weakened as the rest of the world is trying to learn how to live without oil and the US consumer market has mostly dried up. The mutual funds have gone into the toilet along with most of the major market averages. Thank goodness I am not in real estate at this point.

I am thinking I should cash out my losers and put more into gold and energy stock holdings. 

But when you take it all to the bottom line, I am not sure it makes much of a difference. The US dollar has dropped in value as inflation is eating into our economy. I think we are going into a world where globalization has almost ended because of the expense of transporting the goods back and forth. Air travel is mostly coming to an end, except for the Air Force.

I am looking into trade items now. What goods do I have or can I get that I can trade with others in my area. I will be doing a lot more cooperative efforts to produce home-grown food and do collective shopping trips. My credit cards will probably become useless. Just hope the bank stays going long enough for me to use their ATM to get cash. Before long, the greenback may go the way of the Confederate dollar.

Sam
the Prudent RVer

Shortages

Notes from an alternate world, a World Without Oil

Things are still relatively calm here in Oregon, with most of the savagery taking place in the urban areas. So that has given me time to inventory what we have in the way of supplies, equipment, and tools to build a list of what to replenish or stock up on. I am finding some surprising things.

Toilet paper. For the sewage holding tanks to work properly in an RV, you need to use toilet paper that is digestible by the enzymes that work on waste. Most toilet paper in the stores works okay, but pages from an old catalog or newspapers do not. That is for the outdoor privies. Another alternative from the old days on the farm is a special set of cloth scraps that you use and wash in a separate tub each week. Better than nothing.

Coffee, Cocoa, and Splenda. In the past we loved to make our own mochas of a morning, but I guess we are going to just have to give up the habit. The price of coffee has already doubled when you can find it, and the food distribution system is mostly gone, The supplies from Colombia and Java, etc. are going to be history soon as the world economy dries up. Same with Cocoa. Splenda is a great substitute for sugar for those of us who need to cut carbs, but it comes from a chemical process on raw sugar that is done at only a few plants down along the Mississippi River. Too far away from Oregon. Raw sugar will be around somewhat because it comes from sugar cane and sugar beets grown around the country and processed locally. But we were importing most of our sugar from places like Brazil, so the supply is not big. Actually, I guess I should just give up refined sugar for the most part. I did see some jars of local honey from around these parts.

Batteries. I don't expect to ever again buy a throw-away AA battery. We will need more rechargeables if we can find them, else our LED flashlights will become useless. Even rechargeable batteries go bad over time, so if we find a supply we will overstock for the future. They should also be good bartering items in the future.

I do worry about our main 12volt batteries that we charge from the solar panels. They are lead -acid and normally last about 6 years. Our current batteries are about 2 years old, so there is time to go shopping, but supply will undoubtedly be an issue.

I remember when I was a kid that some of the other farmers had windmills to produce electricity and used some very large glass containers to hold the parts of the battery. I need to research how to build our own batteries for the future. That means I will need a supply of lead, copper, and acid.

When I look around my rig I see lots of electronics: cellphones, calculators, PDAs, DVD-CD players, radios, computers, satellite receivers, routers, and a TV. I hadn't really thought of it before now, but all those things will eventually go away. From my experience in Silicon Valley, I know electronics has a limited life. It may be several years, but usually not more than ten. Some of the older tube stuff may still be working, but most of the semiconductor circuits will have died.

I think this fuel shortage has probably broken the back of our electronics industry since most of these things were made in the Far East anyway. There will not be a way to replace them. Interesting how in the past we lived in a world of planned obsolescence, and now we have to live in a world of inevitable obsolescence.

Salt. We don't use much salt, but it is vital from time to time. I checked, and we are down to the bottom of the shaker. So we need to stock up on a supply of several packages of salt.

Soap. We have a good stock at this point, but sometime in the future we need to find an alternative source. Unfortunately, that soap requires some kind of fat. Time to check into old-time recipes. And maybe I better buy some of those old style tubs.

Clothes. We are in good shape now, but in time everything will probably wear out. I don't know what will happen in the future. Most of the cloth made in the world is made outside the US.

All in all, doing this inventory makes me worried about future shortages. This country just does not have the right kind of industries to support us. Things have been going bad with this currently fuel crisis, but we have more problems coming up in the future that may make these times look bright.

Sam
the Prudent RVer