Oil is on the rise again. Note how volatility in the market is expected for the coming year. Demand is expected to increase due to rising consumption associated with the expected economic recovery. This means that our economic demand is dependent on economic stability. Due to instability in world markets, this means that there are going to be large fluctuations in the demand, the supply and the cost of oil. We have seen (are seeing) this happen before (right now). We will continue to see volatility in the oil market until the entire system crashes. This is a result of the peak oil syndrome. We will never run out of oil. This is because our socio-economic system will crash long before all the oil is gone. We use nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day. What would our society look like if we had to reduce to 15 million barrels a day? What about 5 million (just about as much as we produced in 2009)? The collapse of our society, as we know it, is inevitable. What are you doing about it? As always, the solutions lie within our selves. It is us that will need to create the solutions to our current and future crises.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Peak Oil: the doomsday diatribe (part 1 of 3)
“It’s the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine.”
REM
Peak Oil, muthaf’ers, is the concept that we (as the entire world), have used up half of the world’s oil supplies. Why does this matter? Because the first half of the world’s supply was the CHEAP and EASY half, while the second half will be the HARD and EXPENSIVE half. Now think of how much our society depends on the presence of cheap petroleum. From our plastics to our clothing to our electronics to $.99 drive-thru shitburgers to the fact that everything in our supply chain of services and products are somehow reliant on the use of petroleum for TRANSPORTATION. Add to this that the only way the world’s breadbaskets can produce enough calories for the world to support 6.7 billion people is through the use of highly effective petroleum based fertilizer and petroleum based machinery, and you begin to understand how dependent the world is on petroleum for our basic survival needs. Everything is going to get tighter, more expensive, more difficult to get and the Fed printing more and more paper money will not save us.
A few facts to consider:
• the US reached peak oil in 1970, producing over 9 million barrels per day
• we now produce around 5 mbpd
• we consume around 20 mbpd
• We need to import the other 15 mpbd
• transportation accounts for 71% of our crude oil consumption
• Three of our top 5 importers have reached peak oil (Venezuala 1970, Mexico 2004, Nigeria 2005)
• Peak Oil for the world is inevitable; it is only the timing that is in question.
As all nations try to emulate the US in our advanced modern capitalistic society, they also proportionally emulate our energy needs (think China and India). Now here is a question to ponder. What is going to happen when the consumption rates of our top importers outgrows their excess production capabilities? (the answer: they will stop importing to the US). As Mexico’s oil production slides down the back side of Hubbert’s bell curve, and its consumption of oil remains constant (or increases), their ability to export to the US will disappear.
We are living at the end of the age of Cheap Oil. We are at the beginning of a profound cultural change and whether we like it or not, we are beginning the transition into a post-oil world. Rob Hopkins talks about three possibilities in his book The Transition Handbook: 1. Long-Term Transition where a 50% reduction in oil consumption over the next 20 years allows us to gradually grow our post-oil culture, 2. Oil Shock where severe supply disruptions and price hikes produce “periodic sustained emergencies”, and 3. Disintegration where the impacts of oil deprivation become so severe that the “fabric of society begins to unravel, leading to socially catastrophic competition for scarce resources, including food shelter and energy”. Which scenario would you like to see? Which scenario do your lifestyle habits support?
Get educated. Our window of figuring this out is shrinking quicker than we think. The day most people will realize what is happening is the day the shovel hits the face. Wikipedia has a good overview of Peak Oil, while The Oil Drum provides easily understood technical and analytical discussions on the topic. Remember, it is our ability to create local solutions to local issues that are going to help us transition through our upcoming crises. Next diatribe: Climate Change.
Peace,
thevermontpatriot
and I feel fine.”
REM
Peak Oil, muthaf’ers, is the concept that we (as the entire world), have used up half of the world’s oil supplies. Why does this matter? Because the first half of the world’s supply was the CHEAP and EASY half, while the second half will be the HARD and EXPENSIVE half. Now think of how much our society depends on the presence of cheap petroleum. From our plastics to our clothing to our electronics to $.99 drive-thru shitburgers to the fact that everything in our supply chain of services and products are somehow reliant on the use of petroleum for TRANSPORTATION. Add to this that the only way the world’s breadbaskets can produce enough calories for the world to support 6.7 billion people is through the use of highly effective petroleum based fertilizer and petroleum based machinery, and you begin to understand how dependent the world is on petroleum for our basic survival needs. Everything is going to get tighter, more expensive, more difficult to get and the Fed printing more and more paper money will not save us.
A few facts to consider:
• the US reached peak oil in 1970, producing over 9 million barrels per day
• we now produce around 5 mbpd
• we consume around 20 mbpd
• We need to import the other 15 mpbd
• transportation accounts for 71% of our crude oil consumption
• Three of our top 5 importers have reached peak oil (Venezuala 1970, Mexico 2004, Nigeria 2005)
• Peak Oil for the world is inevitable; it is only the timing that is in question.
As all nations try to emulate the US in our advanced modern capitalistic society, they also proportionally emulate our energy needs (think China and India). Now here is a question to ponder. What is going to happen when the consumption rates of our top importers outgrows their excess production capabilities? (the answer: they will stop importing to the US). As Mexico’s oil production slides down the back side of Hubbert’s bell curve, and its consumption of oil remains constant (or increases), their ability to export to the US will disappear.
We are living at the end of the age of Cheap Oil. We are at the beginning of a profound cultural change and whether we like it or not, we are beginning the transition into a post-oil world. Rob Hopkins talks about three possibilities in his book The Transition Handbook: 1. Long-Term Transition where a 50% reduction in oil consumption over the next 20 years allows us to gradually grow our post-oil culture, 2. Oil Shock where severe supply disruptions and price hikes produce “periodic sustained emergencies”, and 3. Disintegration where the impacts of oil deprivation become so severe that the “fabric of society begins to unravel, leading to socially catastrophic competition for scarce resources, including food shelter and energy”. Which scenario would you like to see? Which scenario do your lifestyle habits support?Get educated. Our window of figuring this out is shrinking quicker than we think. The day most people will realize what is happening is the day the shovel hits the face. Wikipedia has a good overview of Peak Oil, while The Oil Drum provides easily understood technical and analytical discussions on the topic. Remember, it is our ability to create local solutions to local issues that are going to help us transition through our upcoming crises. Next diatribe: Climate Change.
Peace,
thevermontpatriot
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Positive Transition
Thank you all for taking the time to read this blog. I especially thank those who have taken the time to provide an on-going commentary to my original posts. They are thought provoking and informative.
My mother read the first posts and she said "You need to be more positive". I intend, in this blog, to focus on the ever-deepening crisis that is beginning to affect the United States as well as the world as a whole. At times, it will be difficult to focus on the positives while detailing the elements of the collapse of our known civilization. We are experiencing change on a scale rarely seen in human and global history. I do believe there are inherent positives in this process. We will, by necessity, become kinder to our planet, our global empire based on human exploitation will fail due to its overreach and we will learn that it is only our local communities that can provide the emotional, spiritual and physical needs of our survival.
Here will be the constant message: a local community based democracy, confederated with other local community based democracies is the only way to provide solutions that can honestly and effectively meet our community needs. Healthcare is a local issue, food is a local issue, energy is a local issue, everything is a local issue: it is our parents, it is our children, it is our neighbors, it is our selves that we will need to depend upon to survive the impending transition.
Another constant message: it is through the perfect storm of peak oil (see Chris Martenson's crash course), massive environmental degradation (i.e. climate change, water supplies, food supplies) and over-population that our society will be irrevocably changed. When the shit goes down (and it will go down), it is only ourselves who can provide any relevant solution. Ultimately, that is the hope that I provide as an answer to my mother: through local collaboration, we can provide a more egalitarian, a more just and a better quality of life. I implore each and every one of you to commit yourselves to this cause. It truly is our only hope.
Here is an excerpt from the Vermont Commons, a bi-monthly newspaper dedicated to creating strong, local community governance through the act of secession. This excerpt, by Adrian Kuzminski, succinctly explains the historical context that can help guide us to a better form of governance:
Here is a link to the full article: Vermont - The First Populist Republic.
My mother read the first posts and she said "You need to be more positive". I intend, in this blog, to focus on the ever-deepening crisis that is beginning to affect the United States as well as the world as a whole. At times, it will be difficult to focus on the positives while detailing the elements of the collapse of our known civilization. We are experiencing change on a scale rarely seen in human and global history. I do believe there are inherent positives in this process. We will, by necessity, become kinder to our planet, our global empire based on human exploitation will fail due to its overreach and we will learn that it is only our local communities that can provide the emotional, spiritual and physical needs of our survival.
Here will be the constant message: a local community based democracy, confederated with other local community based democracies is the only way to provide solutions that can honestly and effectively meet our community needs. Healthcare is a local issue, food is a local issue, energy is a local issue, everything is a local issue: it is our parents, it is our children, it is our neighbors, it is our selves that we will need to depend upon to survive the impending transition.
Another constant message: it is through the perfect storm of peak oil (see Chris Martenson's crash course), massive environmental degradation (i.e. climate change, water supplies, food supplies) and over-population that our society will be irrevocably changed. When the shit goes down (and it will go down), it is only ourselves who can provide any relevant solution. Ultimately, that is the hope that I provide as an answer to my mother: through local collaboration, we can provide a more egalitarian, a more just and a better quality of life. I implore each and every one of you to commit yourselves to this cause. It truly is our only hope.
Here is an excerpt from the Vermont Commons, a bi-monthly newspaper dedicated to creating strong, local community governance through the act of secession. This excerpt, by Adrian Kuzminski, succinctly explains the historical context that can help guide us to a better form of governance:
Few Americans are aware that Vermont, the fourteenth state admitted to the Union in 1791, was not a colony like the others; it was a pre-existing independent republic spontaneously created by its residents who rejected the authority of neighboring colonies, particularly New York which had the strongest claim to its territory.
In its 14 years of formal independence, beginning in 1777, it very nearly fulfilled the textbook image of a society created voluntarily by free persons living in the state of nature – a favorite motif of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century social contract political philosophers. Texas, California, and Hawaii also enjoyed periods as independent republics, but Vermont's example reflects a greater equality of persons and resources. In the case of Vermont, in the face of a trend toward oligarchy in America evident even in the eighteenth century – an egalitarian, democratic community for a time found almost complete realization.
Here is a link to the full article: Vermont - The First Populist Republic.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Homer's Healthcare
America's health care system is second only to Japan ... Canada, Sweden, Great Britain ... well, all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay! Homer Simpson
Healthcare is a right. It is not a privilege. If we are so unlucky as to be mauled in a car accident, one hopes they are not to be asked who they are before they receive any sort of medical attention. Can you imagine an ambulance driving away without you because you were not the correct member of society? As a society, we believe that we must help each and every one of us. We know this is true because we would expect the help if we were the one mauled in that car accident. If this premise is accepted, (and frankly it is only a recently perceived right compared to the ancient rights of speech, public assembly, habeus corpus, etc…), then one must demand that our self-elected gov’t guarantees that right. For is that not what our gov’t must do? to protect our rights? is not that what our Founding Fathers fought for? that the great ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy would guarantee these rights?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Thomas Jefferson The Declaration of Independence 1776
The idea that someone is making enormous amounts of fat money off of my sick and dying family and neighbors is intolerable. It is immoral. And it really angers me. While people scream about keeping gov’t out of our healthcare, gov’t programs are quietly working for us everyday: Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system and here in Vermont we have Dr. Dynosaur which keeps 98% of children insured. Gov’t programs work. Private industry has failed to guarantee health care for every citizen. They have proven to be notoriously unreliable, intrusive and self-interested. Our healthcare model is horrible. According to the CIA World Factbook, we rank 47th in infant mortality. Why does Iceland have a three times better rate than we do? Almost any reform is good reform.
The persistent difficulty is how do we afford it? This is only going to become more difficult as the baby boomer generation continues to age. Once we realize that public health care is a basic human right (why do we guarantee education but not health care?) we then will figure it out. Our society is not going to abandon healthcare because we are going to add another trillion over ten years to our national debt. It will not make our national gov’t go bankrupt (see chrismartenson.com’s crash course to see why we are going to go bankrupt!). There are many better models around the world from Switzerland to Singapore where the average citizen is getting better health care than here in the USA.
I believe that Washington DC will fail to bring meaningful reform to our healthcare system. They will not be able to recognize that healthcare is a basic human right. The rich will continue to get richer and the poor will be saddled with overworked primary care staff or emergency room-only visits (which, by the way, was George W. Bush’s version of universal healthcare). Insurers will continue to drop clients and they will continue to heavily influence the decisions made in the doctors office. Truly it is time we stop looking to Washington DC for the answers but begin to look to ourselves for the solution. As climate change and global restructuring takes place, it is only ourselves that will be able to create the answers. This is why I believe we must separate from the cancer that is the home to our global empire, Washington DC. This is why I believe we must secede and once again become independent.
I will close with the very next sentence after the above quote from the Declaration of Independence:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness".
thevermontpatriot
Healthcare is a right. It is not a privilege. If we are so unlucky as to be mauled in a car accident, one hopes they are not to be asked who they are before they receive any sort of medical attention. Can you imagine an ambulance driving away without you because you were not the correct member of society? As a society, we believe that we must help each and every one of us. We know this is true because we would expect the help if we were the one mauled in that car accident. If this premise is accepted, (and frankly it is only a recently perceived right compared to the ancient rights of speech, public assembly, habeus corpus, etc…), then one must demand that our self-elected gov’t guarantees that right. For is that not what our gov’t must do? to protect our rights? is not that what our Founding Fathers fought for? that the great ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy would guarantee these rights?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Thomas Jefferson The Declaration of Independence 1776
The idea that someone is making enormous amounts of fat money off of my sick and dying family and neighbors is intolerable. It is immoral. And it really angers me. While people scream about keeping gov’t out of our healthcare, gov’t programs are quietly working for us everyday: Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system and here in Vermont we have Dr. Dynosaur which keeps 98% of children insured. Gov’t programs work. Private industry has failed to guarantee health care for every citizen. They have proven to be notoriously unreliable, intrusive and self-interested. Our healthcare model is horrible. According to the CIA World Factbook, we rank 47th in infant mortality. Why does Iceland have a three times better rate than we do? Almost any reform is good reform.
The persistent difficulty is how do we afford it? This is only going to become more difficult as the baby boomer generation continues to age. Once we realize that public health care is a basic human right (why do we guarantee education but not health care?) we then will figure it out. Our society is not going to abandon healthcare because we are going to add another trillion over ten years to our national debt. It will not make our national gov’t go bankrupt (see chrismartenson.com’s crash course to see why we are going to go bankrupt!). There are many better models around the world from Switzerland to Singapore where the average citizen is getting better health care than here in the USA.
I believe that Washington DC will fail to bring meaningful reform to our healthcare system. They will not be able to recognize that healthcare is a basic human right. The rich will continue to get richer and the poor will be saddled with overworked primary care staff or emergency room-only visits (which, by the way, was George W. Bush’s version of universal healthcare). Insurers will continue to drop clients and they will continue to heavily influence the decisions made in the doctors office. Truly it is time we stop looking to Washington DC for the answers but begin to look to ourselves for the solution. As climate change and global restructuring takes place, it is only ourselves that will be able to create the answers. This is why I believe we must separate from the cancer that is the home to our global empire, Washington DC. This is why I believe we must secede and once again become independent.
I will close with the very next sentence after the above quote from the Declaration of Independence:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness".
thevermontpatriot
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Welcome/Introduction:
Thank you for taking the time to visit and participate in this blog. This is an experiment for me and I hope you can excuse any gross errors, wild rants and other various vulgarities. Especially beware any blog posted after 2 AM. Consider yourself forewarned.
In this blog I hope to provide a steady commentary on our society as it transitions from the 20th century version of industrialization and globalization into the 21st century unknown. I hope to use historical context to help understand current situations which will then help us understand possible future outcomes. What is causing our global crisis and why? What are the actions and motivations that are being expressed on the global stage? What can you and I do that will make a difference? How can we prepare ourselves for the unknown future?
My basic premise is that when (not if, but when) global systems fail due to the perfect storm of peak oil, overpopulation and environmental degradation, it is you and me that will be responsible for the continuing survival of our progeny and our communities. Always, we must ask: what skills do I have that will help me survive when our global transportation system breaks down and our supermarket shelves become empty? What will you do when the sea levels rise a couple of feet and our coastal cities will have to evacuate? What will happen when the world’s 5th largest economy (California) experiences “the big one” and fails to function? Do you think our gov’t in Washington DC can effectively handle that crisis? Do you think the mass starvation of billions of people worldwide will affect your life?
We are on the edge of a re-awakening as our current global social system begins to disintegrate; we see the evidence everyday in the news and at the gas station. I believe that a localized communitarian based democracy is the only form of gov’t that will lead us through the looming crisis. Sustainability in every action is the key to our survival. It is my hope, through this blog, to educate, influence and inspire both common thought and common action towards a more egalitarian, communal and peaceful society.
Congratulations, by completing this post, you have passed the ADHD test. Make sure you take the poll and check out the links for lots more information.
Peace,
the vermont patriot
In this blog I hope to provide a steady commentary on our society as it transitions from the 20th century version of industrialization and globalization into the 21st century unknown. I hope to use historical context to help understand current situations which will then help us understand possible future outcomes. What is causing our global crisis and why? What are the actions and motivations that are being expressed on the global stage? What can you and I do that will make a difference? How can we prepare ourselves for the unknown future?
My basic premise is that when (not if, but when) global systems fail due to the perfect storm of peak oil, overpopulation and environmental degradation, it is you and me that will be responsible for the continuing survival of our progeny and our communities. Always, we must ask: what skills do I have that will help me survive when our global transportation system breaks down and our supermarket shelves become empty? What will you do when the sea levels rise a couple of feet and our coastal cities will have to evacuate? What will happen when the world’s 5th largest economy (California) experiences “the big one” and fails to function? Do you think our gov’t in Washington DC can effectively handle that crisis? Do you think the mass starvation of billions of people worldwide will affect your life?
We are on the edge of a re-awakening as our current global social system begins to disintegrate; we see the evidence everyday in the news and at the gas station. I believe that a localized communitarian based democracy is the only form of gov’t that will lead us through the looming crisis. Sustainability in every action is the key to our survival. It is my hope, through this blog, to educate, influence and inspire both common thought and common action towards a more egalitarian, communal and peaceful society.
Congratulations, by completing this post, you have passed the ADHD test. Make sure you take the poll and check out the links for lots more information.
Peace,
the vermont patriot
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