Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era in America per se and the puerile fantasy of personal liberation that allowed it to become such a curse to us.
Of course, many Nobel prize-winning economists would argue that it has only been a blessing for us, but that only shows how the newspapers are committing suicide-by-irrelevance. And if other societies, such as China's late-entry industrial start-up, want to adopt a similar fantasy, they will only find themselves all the sooner in history's garage with a tailpipe in their mouths.
Here in the USA, we will mount the most strenuous campaign to keep the motoring system going -- in fact, we're already doing it -- but it will fail just as surely as two (so far) of the "big three" automakers have failed. It will fail because car-making is only one facet of a larger network of systems that is coming undone, namely a revolving debt cheap energy economy.
Americans will never again buy as many new cars as they were able to do before 2008 on the terms that were normal until then: installment loans. Our credit system is completely broken. It choked to death on securitized debt engineered by computer magic and business school hubris. That complex of frauds and swindles coincided with the background force of peak oil, which meant, among other things, that economic growth based on ever-increasing energy resources was over, and along with it ever-increasing credit. What it boils down to now is that we can't service our debt at any level, personal, corporate, or government -- and that translates into comprehensive societal bankruptcy.
The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the "non-performing" debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility. I'm not saying this to be a "pessimistic" grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion.
Another consequence of the debt problem is that we won't be able to maintain the network of gold-plated highways and lesser roads that was as necessary as the cars themselves to make the motoring system work. The trouble is you have to keep gold-plating it, year after year. Traffic engineers refer to this as "level-of-service." They've learned that if the level-of-service is less than immaculate, the highways quickly enter a spiral of disintegration. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported several years ago that the condition of many highway bridges and tunnels was at the "D-minus" level, so we had already fallen far behind on a highway system that had simply grown too large to fix even when we thought we were wealthy enough to keep up. Right now, we're pretending that the "stimulus" program will carry us over long enough to resume the old method of state-and-federal spending based largely on bonding (that is, debt).
The political dimension of the collapse of motoring is the least discussed part of problem: as fewer and fewer citizens find themselves able to buy and run cars, they will feel increasingly aggrieved at the system set up to make motoring virtually mandatory for all the chores of everyday life, and their resentments will rise against the elite that can still manage to enjoy it. Because our car-dependency is so extreme, the reaction of the dis-entitled classes is liable to be extreme and probably delusional to an extreme, too.
You can already see it being baked in the cake. Happy Motoring is so entangled in our national identity that the loss of it is bound to cause a national identity crisis. In places like the American south, the old Dixie states, motoring lifted more than half the population out of the dust, and became the basis of the New South economy. The sons and grandsons of starving sharecroppers became Chevy dealers and developers of suburban housing tracts, malls, and strip malls. They don't have any nostalgia for the historical reality of hookworm and 14-hour-days of serf labor in hundred-degree heat. Theirs is a nostalgia for the present, for air-conditioned comfort and convenience and the groaning all-you-can-eat Shoney's breakfast buffet off the freeway ramp. When it is withdrawn from them by the mandate of events, they will be furious.
Given the history of the region and the predilections of its dominant ethnic group, one might imagine that they will want to take out their gall and grievance on the half-African politician who presides over the situation. Among the ever-expanding classes dis-entitled from the so-called American Dream, the crisis is only marginally different in other regions of the nation. Mr. Obama faces a range of awful dilemmas, and it is painful to see them go unrecognized and unacknowledged by his White House. It's hard to imagine that the president and his elite advisors are blind to these equations, but as the weeks tick by they seem stuck in a box of limited perception.
We're in a strange hiatus for now. "Hope" levitates the legitimacy of the dollar, the stock markets, and the authority of leadership. In the background, implosion continues, debt goes unpaid, banks ignore bad loans to keep them off their books, jobs and incomes vanish, cars and other things go unsold, and a tragic wishfulness strains to sustain the unsustainable. Our expectations are inconsistent with what is happening to us.
It will be very painful for us to walk away from the car-centered life. Half the population faces the ugly obstacle of being hopelessly over-invested in a suburban house and all the life-ways associated with it. There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are.
Mr. Obama should not waste another week pretending that we can keep this old system going. The public needs to know that we will be making our livings differently, inhabiting the landscape differently, and spending our days and nights differently -- even while we suffer our losses. The public needs to hear this from more figures than Mr. Obama, too, from leaders in the state capitals, and the agencies, and business and education and what remains of the clergy. But somebody has to set in motion the chain of recognition, or events will soon do it for us.
____________________________________
My 2008 novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available in paperback at all booksellers.
"I'm not saying this to be "pessimistic" grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion."
yea, me too - but the only way is for all of America to be on the same page. That will never happen.
"I'm not saying this to be "pessimistic" ..."
We can't handle the truth.
"Mr. Obama ... they seem stuck in a box of limited perception."
I think O and the Boyz know what is going on.
Thanks again JK. Always looking forward to your writing.
People don't get it. They see happy motoring and easy credit as their rights, and are just waiting for a return to these "rights" in the next few months or years. It's sad that so few can connect the dots. It isn't rocket science. We are not returning to the boom times of the last 15 years.
A sad example is a family I know that insists on bringing their kids to Disney World next summer, despite recently going bankrupt and losing their house. No clue.
"There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are."
Here in lies the rub. This once great nation was made great by its diversity. Its that diversity that will bread the hate and resentment toward whomever's scapegoat." That will be the unwinding of the social fabric. That will not be pretty I'm afraid...
Thanks for the weekly does of pessimistic reality Jim. It always set the tone for my week.
Obama's non-reaction is easy to understand, (1) go to opensecrets.org and examine his contributors, (2)read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Everyone reaches a point of power, even American Presidents (if they have gotten this far already without it), where they are offered the blue pill and the red pill. The red pill means joining the pirates as a willing participant and beneficiary in looting wealth and power, the blue pill leads to a "lone" assassin of the former spook variety and the avoidance of open cars, balconies, and small airplanes.
One can almost trace Obama's tenure back to the day he received such an offer.
Look, if Obama can totally screw up matters as in his Cairo speech, he can likewise not see the oncoming demise. For political reasons, our President has already deviated from his promise of transparency in his dealings. If you cannot see obvious things, can you likewise see things even slightly obscured by dreamers?
Clearly, we are in deep doo-doo and this schmo in the White House is blind to them. Oh, but, he's so brilliant, such a good speaker,, so all-around wonderful, he would never fail to tell us the realities of the day. Americans of the left leaning persuasion cannot see his subterfuge, they are part of the conspiracy. Europe leans right in recent elections? We are leaning more left than ever? It may be too late to even pee and moan at this time. We may get called out on strikes, never having even waved the bat at the ball. You voted for this guy, not me.
Jim, We are a nation of financial adolescents. Teenagers know they shouldn't text message while driving, but they keep doing it until they have the pants scared off of them with, hopefully, nothing more than a crumpled car. We were destined to keep on keepin' on until we were totally fucked. That moment apeears to be now.
Thanks for your stuff. It's all good. Rod
Trusting your earned wealth to the government is like boarding your dog at a taxidermist - sure, you'll get it back. Poverty is the process by which opportunity requires personal responsibility. Universal opportunity creates pandemic poverty because only workers have money to spend. Government can and must provide for the deserving (less user fees) by vigorously flensing the productive.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=3m&s=%5EVIX&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=gld
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=3m&s=%5EVIX&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=oil
The VIX is commonly known as the fear index. Curious anti-correlations here. One anticipates propaganda will be overtaken by real time events.
Old Macdonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on his farm he grew fuel corn, E-I-E-I-O
With a "blurp-blurp" here and a "blurp-blurp" there
Here a "blurp" there a "blurp"
Everywhere a "blurp-blurp"
Old Macdonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
Old Macdonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on his farm he had a lien, E-I-E-I-O
With "foreclosure" here and "foreclosure" there
Here "foreclosure" there "foreclosure"
Everywhere a big "foreclosure"
Old Macdonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
Old Macdonald lost his farm, E-I-E-I-O
Old Macdonald went insane, E-I-E-I-O
He shot his wife, she shot his kids
He killed his stock, he burned his barn
He manured his well, he slashed his wrists
Washington now owns his farm, E-I-E-I-O
Now kids, remember, E-I-E-I-O
Your government is here to help, E-I-E-I-O
With an H-U-D and a Head Start here,
With a Fanny here, and a Freddy there,
Medicaid and Welfare sweet, Fed'ral pensions can't be beat.
All they want is all you've got, E-I-E-I-O
And pay much more or you'll be shot, EEE-III-EEE-III-O.
First --
Obama's role seems to be a purveyor of (knowingly false) "good" news to avert panic. I think he knows what is up and is managing the problem to the advantage of the elite who put him in power and against the well-being of the masses who were deceived in the process. This will go on for as long as the masses can be duped by his skin color and charisma.
Speaking of "the masses", a threshhold will have passed when NASCAR can no longer operate in the emerging energy/financial environment. And think of how the failure of GM and Chrysler play into that eventual scenario. When NASCAR fails, Obama will have become irrelevant as a purveyor of "hope" and "change".
JHK is encouraged to write a sequel to "World Made by Hand" called "Cars Made by Hand", which will continue the story of the first epic. Citizens will learn how to make non-motorized vehicles from the frames of old Buicks and Plymouths taken from scrap yards, deweighted, and made to be pulled by horses, oxen, or our own asses (Doodlebugs). Only JHK could tell this story...
S.Moore
Maybe just maybe we still have a chance. If anyone saw this article in the NYTimes you have to ask yourself. Is the MSM waking up to reality? I for one was surprised that the Times of all people actually let this article go to print. Thanks for another Monday morning dose of reality Jim.
I've been getting the impression lately that Peak Oil does not the end of the entire world, rather it is just the straw that is breaking the back of the global empire that arose during the oil age. Every major era of human history has had a major empire or two, and they always fall when things change.
I do understand that China, India etc are investing in cars and related infrastructure. However, many countries, including China, are also investing in rail and public transit. I've been finding a lot of comparative profiles of intra city rail networks (both light rails and metros), and what struck me is that most European and Asian cities, including quite a few secondary metropolises, now have better networks than American cities (with the exception of New York). Even Latin America appears to be moving ahead.
It's not just transportation policy, either. It seems like the US is caught up in a fluffy, feel good energy campaign that only focuses on solar and wind (I'll only speak for the left here, as, while I support natural gas as a bridge fuel, I don't even want to get started about "drill baby drill"). Meanwhile, much of the real innovation in alternatives (which go way beyond just solar and wind) is going on abroad.
I think we are just a paralyzed people with broken political and financial systems. Therefore, I think a lot of Americans will be emigrating. Those with debt will be taking jobs abroad to pay back what they owe, or to escape what they owe. Creative people, even those who are debt free, will also be leaving for places where their ideas will be heard out.
As these change agents and proactive souls leave, America will sink further into imaged based delusions, endorsement based decision making and feel good fluff based policies. Once this decline hits a critical mass, the empire will fall and history will once again repeat itself.
You know, I've already noticed a reduction in road maintenance. In San Diego, where I live at the moment, the streets are noticeably deteriorating and it's taking the city longer to patch the holes. I find myself driving an obstacle course trying to avoid the holes.
Dave - Erstwhile Urban Wanderer
The U.S. has not had the funds for years to fix the roads and has been "charging" the cost to the national debt. The funds raised by gasoline taxes are decidedly insufficient. Road construction has been going at a rapid rate over the past decades and the cost to maintain this huge network has been increasing sharply.
The cost of the asphalt used primarily as a road surface has increased dramatically with the cost of crude oil. With oil becoming increasingly more scarce and expensive in the years ahead it looks like the national highway system is in serious trouble. The light at the end of the tunnel is looking more like a train.
Speaking of trains, I think this mode of transportation offers the best prospects for future interstate travel both for people and goods. After all, it was the original preferred mode of transport until the Interstate Highway System came along.
At this stage of the game, maybe some existing roadbeds can be converted to railroad beds and electrified. A standard speed electrified rail network might still be possible. High speed rail may be too expensive to implement at this time considering the state of the "economy".
The many roadbeds are probably going to go into a state of disrepair anyway in the not too distant future. This includes some "Interstate" highway as well. Placing rails on these existing corridors may be the easiest way to get an expanded rail network up and running. Wind turbines and solar panels along the railway can supply additional power to the overhead lines.
I don't think there is much of a future for highways and personal automobiles. Small electric vehicles may be used for local errands alongside public transport. However, I doubt they can be made viable for long distance transport over the existing interstate highway system. Even if they could be who will pay to keep up the interstate highway system when the oil is $250 per barrel or higher?
Airlines I am sorry to say don't appear to have a future at all. A few planes will probably be flying on ultra expensive airplane fuel or some kind of plant-based fuel - probably mostly military aircraft at that.
In conclusion I think trains are the future of transportation. Unfortunately, I don't see many politicians or people in general who share this view or are taking steps to make it happen. They are still concerned with maintaining and building more roads!!! LOL!
JHK;
I appreciate you keeping it very real. The majority of the public is in deep denial. Fantasy is that spoon full of sugar. Media and the HiFi-Oligarchy keeps it all alive and hopeful. Hope lives in Pandora's box, so the myth says.
When the reality sinks in after being whacked upside the head with a 2 X 4, there is going to be retribution meeting our nemesis.
It doe not have to be this way, but we all know as George Carlin said: The public Sucks! It's hard to imagine that things will work out any other way, given the high level of ignorance and stupidity in this nation.
Jim:
Obama for all of his "new ideas" bs is
A) a product of his times, he grew up in the era o'plenty, the world of the Sunday Drive and the car cult, and
B) as much as he was intent to avoid the "bubble" he has been in that bubble since his election to the Senate, he is now entrapped like a Jurassic fly in amber in the bubble, the people that have is ear (or real email address or Crack berry number) are also most likely deluded by the false profits such as the CERA Boyz,
Obama is NOT going to do as required, because he has no clue, and anyone who could inform him will not be let into his circle,
So the push will go on for giving Billions to Chrysler which will end up benefiting FIAT (Fix it Again Tony), once Fiat has bled out the Stimulus funds from Chrysler, it will fold up that tent much like the Chinese did when they bought MG from the Brits took the cash the name plates and closed down the UK production.
The result will be that things will continue on the way they are for now, Because of a small bump caused by the excess spending Obama and his allies may make it to the Mid term elections, and people may eve buy the Audacity of Hope for 2012, but when things again crash and there is no one to borrow money from and when Inflation is used to wipe out the government debt, (and with it the last bit of hard earned wealth of a hundred million or so Adult voters then the time for crises will be here and because Obama and Gehitner and friends are not addressing the real problem (Peak Oil, and Capital flight to China and the Mid east et cet) The crash will hit us harder and worse than otherwise would have occurred,
Obama's current actions are taking the country down the wrong path and he has gone almost too far to back track and re orient. A few more months and there will be no "hope" for the economic future of this country,
As usual, a brutally honest assessment of what lies in store for us. Brings to mind that popular Don McLean song, with a twist:
So bye-bye, this american life
Drove a Chevy since the 70's
But now it's a bike that I ride
And them good old boys are getting frisky to riot
Saying, I'll give up my truck when I die
I'll give up my truck when I die
Nouriel Roubini has just referred to those green shoots as yellow weeds. He believes the recession will last another 6-9 months and then there will be very slow growth after that.
US car sales which peaked at around 17-18 million units per year are down to 8-9 million. I believe there are 260 million cars and light trucks currently on the road with an annual scrappage rate of around 5%. Even if we assume a higher scrappage rate going forward and further declines in vehicle sales, the American motoring way of life will be around for quite some time.
Less cars on the road and less driving means lower demand, means lower prices at the pump, which cycles into higher demand and greater affordability.
It is wishful thinking to believe that the current recession will be the quick end to anything.
Roger Penske of NASCAR, IndyCar, and Grand-Am sportscar fame and the 2009 winner of the Indiannapolis 500 is reportedly in negotiations to take over Saturn. Notice that he is not considering Hummer (which a Chinese outfit wants). GM would continue making Saturns (which have never made a profit) while Penske manages the dealerships. The rumor is that Renault would take over manufacturing at some later date. Renault is a large, successful, European manufacturer along the lines of VW which specializes in smaller more efficient cars. Renault makes a competitive Formula 1 chassis and engine. GM does not.
What this means is that the American car industry will adapt to competitive, sane, European standards. It also signals the end of overprivileged, overpaid jobs in Detroit. It doesn’t mean the end of driving in America. Not for a few decades at least.
Greetings - just got my Monday Morning fix at CFN (not the newspeak one) and, as usual, a great read. So, now that Tim the Lesser's China gig is History, one wonders if the 'Nuclear Option' is now, not only on the table, but in fast-forward mode. With the long bond circling the bowl, China's dumping bonds would really crack the porcelain. We live in interesting times - indeed!
Cheers,
Ted
@Dave Eriqat - Poor roads were one of the first things I noticed when I worked in New Orleans for a month this past winter. It was almost as if they never bothered to repave them after the Katrina flooding caused massive bucking and cracks. Even cyclists needed to have a pretty sturdy mountain bike to get around there!
@Draffen - I've been sketching out those kinds of interstate retrofit concepts in my head for years now, so thanks for bringing it up. The three digit interstates in our metro areas would be perfect for light and commuter rail. The networks in a lot of our cities, even the smaller ones (e.g. Little Rock and the rust belt Thruway corridor cities of Upstate NY - all have a grossly excessive amount of loop and spur expressways), is essentially the same. The bypass loops could host suburban commuter rail, with transfer stations to cross city spur interstate light rail lines inside the exit ramps.
It would be best to build these rail lines in the outer lanes to give people better access to the stations. If you've ever seen the Owings Mills Metro station in Baltimore and the I-66 Metro stations in Fairfax, Northern Virginia, you'll know what I mean. Pedestrian bridges and tunnels are major turnoffs in a culture that (sadly) is aversive to walking more than a few feet.
All of these great ideas, though, brings us back to my earlier point about what we've become as a people. I'll illustrate with an anecdote involving the 2005 Syracuse mayoral elections, which I followed closely. The democrat and republican both would talk sweetly about the feel good "green" (but highly auto dependent) redevelopment at "Destiny USA." The green party candidate, meanwhile, had a "Sustainable Syracuse" blueprint that included light rail line running along the revived Erie canal, which would have involved tearing out the desolate and potholed six lane Erie Boulevard. Well, the green candidate only got a few hundred votes (probably all from myself, my mother and people I knew from my classes) while the major parties split the rest of the suckers fifty-fifty.
So we have a long ways to go as a culture, but that doesn't mean we should stop dreaming, sketching and calculating out our futures.
"The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the "non-performing" debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility."
Amen, brother Jim. Amen.
From each and every one of my clients that DEMANDED to keep some portion of their money "in the stock market to keep up with inflation"
rather than take the suggestion of either cash or a boring old fixed annuity, I've heard some version of the same thing: "Well, I'm thinking that once we come out of this recession and people start buying cars again, the market should pick up and start making some money..." or some such nonsense.
Picture a typical retiree couple, their earning days behind them, living off the fruits of their multiple decades of service to GM, Ford, Texas Instruments, or one of any number of other major employers. Loyalty used to mean something in this country, as did honesty. So their unflinching loyalty had them hold on to their GMAC "Smart Notes" (anything BUT smart...) or their company stock ("They took care of me while I was working for them, I believe they'll take care of me now
that I'm retired...").
And now? Even after the in-your-face experience that the market doesn't always go up and that companies don't always tell the truth?
Their unflinching loyalty has them holding on to the false hope of the government "doing something about it" and making things all better. And what are 99% of the financial advisors out there suggesting that people do with whatever's left of their hard-earned money? Why, put it into the stock market of course. "You don't want to be out of the market when all this stimulus starts working." Look at any ad from a mutual fund company, stock brokerage company, or financial services firm. It's the same mantra - STAY IN THE MARKET!
And when I say "You know, cash, or gold, or silver doesn't look too bad right now..." I get blasted with "Well, the guy on the news said the recession is almost over and it's a good time to get into stocks..."
What's an honest financial advisor to do? I know... I'll take a road trip!
I tend to agree that Obama has been entirely too Clintonesque in an era where FDR was more what is needed. I'm very disappointed that he has failed to level with the American people in any meaningful way about the serious economic adjustments which will need to be made going forward. This could lead to his failure in the next election with God knows what, winning from the "Party of the Past". A radical Friedmann style economic dislocation could be the result. Obama would be largely responsible for this.
That being said I saw an interesting statistic yesterday, regarding petrol use in France during WWII. It dropped an astounding 92% from pre-war to 1944! Keep in mind this happened without social collapse. I'm not making any direct comparisons, just pointing out an interesting measure of economic adaptability.
wow, i would never expected so many Fox News leaning people read JHK. 2-3 years ago i felt that Jim was much to optimistic. Then, i was predicting an 80% die-off of the human race and a complete end of civilization for about 1000 to 3000 years. But Obama is a genius on a level only seen every couple hundred years. The world has never been in better shape. Oh, well, i can already hear you moaning and wailing. I would tell you more about it but i have to skip back to my stimulus funded job and check on my alt-energy stocks which are performing at about 50-60% over the past couple months. bye.
Big a fan of this site as I am, must say think it is totally unrealistic to expect Obama or anyone else to "level" with the American public. No politician--not one--has taken that risk since Carter was demonized after his "life is not fair" speech. Does anyone seriously think that had Bush and then Obama simply allowed the economy to fall off a cliff without making some effort at "saving" it, that citizens would have been able to deal with it? Nonviolently? JHK can make condescending fun of the "NASCAR tailgating cheez doodle public as he wants, but guess what? He is not exactly free of magical thinking either.
I am not optimistic. I only support the Big O because I like him not because I think he will do anything productive or remotely beneficial. The established, built environment and its required lifestyle are doomed and because many people do not and will not recognize the fact means that things will be more difficult. I am relatively prepared.
Good luck to y'all.
Here in Portland, Oregon, the madness seems to be expanding in all directions at the same time. Our government is obsessed with giving all things to all people, regardless of the cost. They are building a huge, unbelievably expensive new highway bridge for the main West Coast North-South interstate highway. They build a $100 million ski-slope tramway to move doctors between a huge new med lab-condo neighborhood and the giant hospital complex that is located in the most inaccessible place in the city, atop a 1000-ft mountain ridge. The mayor told us when this tram was 'under planning' that it wouldn't cost more than $10 million. They are planning to build a $100 million dollar stadium for a minor league baseball team in the middle of a white-trash slum that has more meth labs than paved streets. When we have the second highest unemployment rate in the USA and no realistic hope of near-future turnaround, they raise the vehicle registration fee from $30/yr to $125 a year.
We have an endless stream of media people coming here from around the country to be bamboozled about this city and how it 'works with modern green solutions'. It's all basically a lot hot air generated by an underemployed, over-educated cadre of self-righteous white people who believe that used french-fry oil and creative dumpster diving will save humanity.
Don't get me wrong, I love these people and I am, in many ways, one of these people. But their obsessive pathological inability to accept basic reality is beginning to truly wear on my nerves.
Take for instance, this puerile obsession with bicycling. I was bicycling 20 years ago when no one was. I'm used to little children pointing their fingers at the sight of grown adult pumping a stupid bicycle while they drive by in the huge SUV. I've fixed a hundred flat tires, in the rain, far from home. I understand the entire 'bicycling thing'. Been there: done that. Done my green penance, please don't make me do it anymore.
Portland has a 1000 ft mountain range between the cheap housing section of the city and the place where all the jobs (such that they are) are located. You have to climb it, every single day, each way. Or you can take a 7 mile detour and go through a pass that is only 400 ft high. The only alternatives are to take your small car and ignore the entire 'whole Earth natural organic goodness bicycle' mentality, or to pay $2.50 each way to the local public transport network to transport you and your bike over this mountain range. Which is rather expensive for all the people who are making $10 an hour and paying the high rents and college loans.
Bicycling is cute and it 'works', it's green and all that other good sh*t. But it only works when it's dry (it rains here eight months of the year), it's flat and the commute is short, and the people in cars aren't hippy-hating psychos.
Which brings up another point. While Portland gets a lot of press for being 'progressive and green', it's actually a small minority of well-media-connected people who actually are that way. Most people here are urban cowboy rednecks who can't understand why they can't cut down every last standing tree in order to buy another BFT huge truck with 4-ft tires. The 'green, save-the-earth' progressive mentality stops at the last revolutionary people's co-op coffee house about a mile away from downtown. After that you're in the dirt-eating West-Coast version of Alabama. These people will never accept any version of new-age limited-resource ecologically-balanced planetary-consciousness that the snarky downtown hippy bike-riders come up with.
Everyone has dreams of a place that they can go to create a new vision of the future. Many of these people in particularly nasty rat-holes around the USA dream of Portland Oregon. Although I don't want to bust your dream, this is not the place of your dream. Go rebuild Detroit or San Jose or East St. Louis or Dallas. Or if you can, learn to speak French and go to Canada. Portland isn't what the news media is telling everyone that it is.
Dave @ 10:38,
I hear you. Here in the "great state of New Mexico," even before the current financial hoo-ha, the practice on many/most of the secondary "improved" roads (especially in some of the poorer counties - which in NM means pret' near ALL counties) was to rough up the surface of the road in question and then - I shit you not - dump a mixture of dirt and gravel (straight from a dump truck, no smoothing required) followed immediately by a tanker truck sprinkling a watered down noxious oil mixture (recycled motor oil maybe?) over the top. I was absolutley incredulous the first time I watched this process in action, and was only slightly less so after driving over the newly "improved" road surface. I can only imagine how state highway officials plan to cope with any further budget shortfalls, but I'm thinking it won't be long before we're back on horseback out here in the Wild, Wild, West.
The death of the auto industry is wonderful. Well deserved, too.
I'm still waiting for the oil industry to die as a result of Peak Oil. The sooner that happens, the better.
This world should end. It cannot last forever and there is no reason whatosever why future generations should feel the brunt of this generations irresponsibility and recklessness and destructiveness.
We've made a mess of this planet and it is extremely likely that this generation will live long enough to experience the sorrows which must inevitably result.
So I am very much in favor of poverty for Americans, the end of the automotive culture, the collapse of the American empire, the end of technological civilization, and (ultimately, inevitably) the extinction of the Homo sapiens.
If humans have demonstrated anything at all over the last 10,000 years it is that humans cannot live at peace with anything. To be a human is to be perpetually at war with everything.
If this is the byproduce of intelligence, self-awareness, an opposable thumb and tool-making it must be concluded that humankind's special traits aren't compatible with the long term survival of our species.
Humankind is an evolutionary experiment which failed. This has happened millions of times in the history of the Earth so humans shouldn't feel so terrible about the failure of the species ... well, given the manner in which humankind has failed perhaps guilt and remorse are an appropriate human response to the failure of the species.
As for myself, I am thoroughly devoted to more enduring things ...
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
The only living planet in the Universe is too valuable to leave in human hands. Nature will reassert her dominance again.
Humans have lived in the worst possible manner and our species will suffer the worst possible fate.
If only our species had loved peace ...
My partner is interning, as a translation student, at Stanford University's medical complex for about 7 weeks. We rented an apartment for the period, from an owner who seemed inattentive to details. As we moved in, a neighbor told us that the unit is in foreclosure. After checking the mail, there was a letter to occupant notifying whomever that the unit was to be sold at auction by a court on June 18. The letter was dated late May, and we moved in around June 4.
We're not sure who the owner is right now. We may be squatters.
It is now 8:56 am Monday morning, and our landlord has just emailed asking whether everything is OK. Not.
I think I may need a little JHK statuette beside my pudgy buddha.
Jim, my roommate wondered the other day if you eat factory farmed chicken. Do you?
"The 'green, save-the-earth' progressive mentality stops at the last revolutionary people's co-op coffee house about a mile away from downtown."
Not quite. It stopped at a Burger King in Tennessee.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tennessee-burger-king-defends-its-global-warming-is-baloney-sign-2009-6
Great blog, always gives me a much needed dose of depression on a Monday morning.
I'd be interested to hear people's views on the peak oil / economic crisis vis-a-vis Canada. My interest in this is that I'm a British expat living in Ontario, Canada (recently visited by JHK on a speaking engagement).
The way I see it is: Canada exports to the US roughly half the oil we produce, and use the other half for ourselves. But if the US dollar becomes worthless, and if there is a rising public perception that we should be keeping our oil for domestic consumption (and there were mutterings about this during the oil price spike last summer) then public pressure is going to grow for Canada to opt out of NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement). Realistically, I can see there being serious talk about this during the next oil price spike, and action taken during the next oil spike but one. Which will probably be good for us, because I don't see why you should be using Canadian oil to prop up US Happy Motoring, but probably bad for the US.
The death of the auto industry, or more generally what JHK calls Happy Motoring, is nothing to lament. Except, of course, by the people formerly employed in it. Local roads may revert to gravel, as they're easier to maintain, and cash-strapped road departments can focus the bulk of their funds on keeping the main highways going.
But I don't think there's a major uprising in the cards -- doesn't matter how many people aren't driving. If Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous didn't get people reaching for their torches & pitchforks, nothing will. Actually, one thing will get people in the streets: loss of TV. As long as the power is on, and the lumpies can get their Wheel of Fortune and unreality shows, things will not likely get past the lone gunman stage.
Draffen & Free_way, I also have a concept for converting highways to transit lines; in FAR Future I call it RoadTrain. It's essentially a multi-segmented bus with some smarts to keep a long vehicle in the same lane. It's probably not sustainable over centuries, but would be a useful bridge technology.
Speaking of FAR Future: in Episode 91, the fate of the nation rests in the hands of a drummer and a guitarist. We're covered.
Cleverbenevolence,
JHK has said many times on his weekly podcast that he is now a vegan (not entirely by choice). So one must assume he isn't eating any chicken at the moment.
At the end of this podcast, he talks about the food he's now growing for himself in his garden:
http://kunstlercast.com/shows/KunstlerCast_67_Jaime_Correa.html
JK,
You must have stumbled through the Times piece prior to whipping up this article Essentially, whether you talk "pretense" or "recognition" - the results have been the same.
I've written to the Times often, and what repeatedly strikes me as insane is how the people in charge of the matters discussed (the government) can so successfully dismiss and ignore the timely and accurate expositions. I assure the Times editors, that their efforts are not in vain, and that "normal" people, out in "fly-over" country understand the nature of current events.
There's no shortage or lagging of recognition by the little people. When, where or if a "movement" materializes is open to speculation. To be sure, the "idling down" of thousands of auto-industry workers may become a seminal event.
Did anyone see the puff piece "interview"
"60 Minutes" did with Fed chair Bernanke on June 7?
Much was made of the fact that a Federal Reserve Bank chairman had never been interviewed before. He still hasn't. "Sixty Minutes" assigned its youngest and most gee-whiz talking head to throw softball questions at Bernanke, who gave dishonest, but soothing answers. It was complete bullshit propaganda, designed to lull the population into thinking the financial system was sound and that everything was going to be fine.
On the other hand, the op-ed piece in the NYT on Sunday was fucking amazing. The authors asked Obama all the tough questions that nobody dares ask him in person. I like Obama, but he is a wholly owned subsidiary of the big corporations who run the US. Don't look to him for change. Pay off your house, if you are buying one, buy silver and start growing and preserving food. The Big One is coming. And for Christ's sake, stay out of the stock market!
SJH51
Seattle
David Mathews,
Had to wonder if you're comments were merely sarcastic, but I'll take from the photos that you were actually serious. I agree with your conclusions for the most part, although I'm not sure I actually want, nor do I think that it matters whether or not we want, the worst case scenario you described to actually happen. We've sewn the seeds for our collective demise, and it now appears inevitable that we're gonna reap that bitter harvest in full measure.
I'll give it 100 years or so - 200 tops (assuming we don't go out in a magnificent blaze of nuclear and/or biological glory first) - during which social unrest and turbulence will be the rule of the day. By that time, the oil will be gone, technology will have atrophied, governments will have given way to local tribal structures, and tribal warfare over remaining resources will have winnowed the population down to a possibly sustainable few. Unfortunately for them, global warming/climate change and its myriad number of side effects will finish them off as well.
In the end, evolution doesn't give one rat's ass whether or not we survive for the long term or not, and judging from our actions, it appears that we don't either.
SJH51,
Yeah, just left a comment on it over at Atlantic.com on one of Ta'Nehisi Coates' blog posts. The thread was addressing the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of using historical analogy to draw parallels to current situations. Bernanke's main sales pitch is that he's "been preparing for the current financial situation all his life," due to the fact that his academic research has centered on the lessons to be learned from the Great Depression.
Granted, I'm just an armchair economist, but even I can see that there's some very significant differences between now and then. I'll tell any one that will listen that this is just the calm before the storm. The big one will come when both the US government and the private sector financial house of cards collapse simultaneously. The current federal debt/projected deficits have now locked us into that scenario in my view.
Oh well, if it's inevitable anyway, we might as well get on with it...
I went to a funeral yesterday...small country church (170) members in rural Mississippi. At least $3 million worth of rolling stock in the parking lot. Only one vehicle older than my 2001 model. I know these neighbors. Many have pistols tucked under the seats. Casket-making will have a future.
David, why don't you lead and show us how this is done? Are you a real person or just some would-be talk show host on a Green Channel? We'd be grateful to you, David.
Everybody get ready for dollar and foreign currency crises. Time to buy oil and natural gas futures.
One thing greatly vexes me. It's been said that Bernanke was tossed softball questions on 60 Minutes. Well, at press conferences with Obama, he either gets softballs or the reporter is shitcanned from further meetings. Transparency, yes, indeed.
But, let's say Obama is nuts and his economic policies will sink the country. Does that mean his advisors like Larry Summers, etc are suck-ups and just go along with his policies? Can we accuse the underlings of being mere stooges to Obama? The whole team has to be on the same team ultimately, but since Obama is a fathead, I'm sure he wants things his way all the time. "OK, folks, here's what I want to do, now create some economic policies so I can get what I want". Create questions from answers, in other words. Is Larry Summers wrong? Is Bernanke in over his head?
Government is business as usual. Guaranteed that Obama is bought and paid for...already. Obama works for the man with the deep pockets, not the American public. We're screwed, folks. Just like always.
Hey Jimini,
I'm a Eugene native who's planning on moving to Portland. I love what you wrote, and I kind of know that I've been a bit bamboozled myself regarding Portland. I love Oregon and wish to remain in the state; part of me thinks it would be best to move to Newport or somewhere on the coast, where there's no BS about what it's like there.
Looking back in time, it's hard to find any examples of smooth transitions from one epoch to the next--the events around the change are almost always violent and bloody, or, as my new age friends like to say, a lot like a birth. Why we should think our fates will be any different, I don't know. The nervous chatter in coffee houses and Denny's restaurants covers the full spectrum of possibilities: whether it be a paradigm shift or a general revolt, our actions will match the extremity of our needs, and if elementals like food and water are lacking, then I would look for the triumph of the lowest common denominator, ie, angry mobs with collective IQs well below the century mark. This may seem pessimistic, and in a way it admittedly is, but on the other hand, it's probably a psychological truism that every failed relationship must go through some kind of messy denouement before the healing and understanding can begin. And our relationship with the earth and her abundant resources is surely well beyond the point where a simple weekend retreat with helpful advisors can accomplish much more than hugs and platitudes and tearful promises to leave the seat down and take out the trash more regularly. It's looking more like a divorce to me, and the question of who gets custody of planet is so heavily weighted in favor of Mother Nature that I'm quite sure we'll be spending decades if not centuries trying to repair a situation that only got so bad because even after we saw it coming, our first reaction was to turn up the TV and ignore the pleading voices standing inches from our ears.
bahmi,
I think its a case where the administration economists/financiers truly cannot even bring themselves to contemplate what now seems embarrassingly obvious to a great many - that the whole system is teetering and groaning like the WTC towers before their inevitable collapse.
Granted, the only alternative would have been to somehow try to cushion an orderly collapse last fall/winter, and that would have been extremely painful as well. Certainly a newly elected Obama was not going to allow that to happen.
Unfortunately, now we're gonna get another run up in phony "asset" prices and HUGE amounts of additional government debt before the inevitable happens again anyway, with the additional "benefit" that the government will be completely helpless to assist next time. Judging from current events, that's probably a good thing, as its the only way the current mess will ever have a chance at getting sorted out anyway.
Funny to read the comments about Portland. I worked for the PDC for a number of years back in the 90's. While I respect anyone who rides a bicycle in Portland weather, I think you have to be a little nuts to do it.
I was a real pariah while there for being very critical of the "light rail". IMO, it was little more than a federally funded make work project, with stations you couldn't get out of the rain in and at the time, was 80% taxpayer funded (instead of rider fees). I gather it worked out a little better in recent years. Still, when a city official from Vancouver B.C. came for a visit, he laughed and said that several of his cities bus lines each carried more people then the entire light rail at a fraction of the cost.
Comparitively speaking however, the Portland population IS pretty green. If you want to meet some rednecks come to Idaho!
Congratulations on being a paid obstructionist for the business-front PDC, dale. Fantastic.
I'd invite you to come back and try to cram into a Max car with me on pretty much any weekday afternoon.
Meanwhile, thanks to paid shills like dale, Portland is indeed massively over-rated as a place to commute by bicycle. If we actually cared half as much about that as we do about keeping business good for road builder and car dealers and real-estate agents, the weather wouldn't matter much. Riding in the rain on a dedicated bike road would be a delight, especially is coffee houses, libraries, and eateries lined it. Alas, that's as far from reality here in Stumptown as it is elsewhere in this sinking nation.
As to Obama waking up to reality, good luck with that one, Jim. He's as dutiful a servant of the vested interests as W., and a lot more marketable one, at that. He isn't interested in people or reality. He'd rather fall on his own sword that bite the hand that feeds him.
The earth is possibly 4.5 billion years old and the human race is likely no older than 250,000 years. The earth is a thermo-mechanical system driven by the heat stored in its core; but this heat will eventually extingush itself and, maybe in another 2 billion years, the planet itself will sease to exist and become just another dead cold rock littering the solar system.
Life as we know it is the result of a unique confluence of ingredients and conditions and evolutionary accidents that have led us to where we are today.
Enjoy the ride while it lasts, fellow humans. Learn all you can about the science of our existence and about the history of our species. So what if GM and Chrysler failed; so what if the Masters of the Universe stole your retirement fund. Be thankful for all the knowledge that our age has brought us and absorb it.
Having recently moved I had a chance to inventory my vast library and realized how much more knowledge I've yet to pursue.
Here in New Jersey, we're counting the lumpenprol with eleven fingers.
Portland's entirely superficial level of commitment to sustainability and obliviousness to reality is perfectly captured by its lust to build a $4.2 billion 12-lane megabridge over the Columbia to ease commuting for people out in Battle Grand and Amboy and points north.
Oregon is similarly deluded, having just gutted the decent elements out of a transportation bill, which turned into a highway porkfest extravaganza, the biggest roads bill in Oregon history, complete with earmarks intended to mire the state into spending hundreds of millions more to promote happy motoring from Portland to the coast.
I'm finding out how big a task it is to promote rational forethought. I'm hoping to get some sidewalks put into my town of 50k people, and you'd think I was asking for the city to launch a lunar expedition!
Maybe if I could get the NASCAR logo stamped into the wet cement, they'd go for it. Oh well.
p.s. JHK - a facebook linking button on the site would be really handy.
Johnny,
IIRC, the world will be completely out of oil in about 25-30 years, just from geological reserve decline. Long before that, unless the USA is successful in Middle East/South America/Africa military takeovers (e.g., Iraq?) the country will be out of imported oil, assuming we could still afford it. Then there's highway maintenance and the cost of asphalt.
And, add to the mix a societal breakdown brought on by the ongoing financial crisis. If law and order break down, or a government-military response throws up check points and blockcades, it's the end of the Eisenhauer Interstate system, at least for the masses.
The present US automotive transportation system is rigged for more than just mobility collapse. With its failure will come a collapse of industrial agriculture, and all other aspects of our just-in-time food supply. Getting food to people may be the next great hurdle.
For the next few years, though, a four-wheel drive SUV could be a good investment, as all streets, roads and highways fall into permanent disrepair. Crossing highway bridges will bring back the thrill of driving for those who will miss NASCAR on the tellie!
There's this untrusting corner of my brain that suspects Simonetta (above) of trying to keep people from moving to Portland, OR!
But she's right I think. You don't need to move to Portland to find a revolution. I read Eric Weiner's "The Geography of Bliss" earlier this year, and the take-home message was that there is no "kind" of place that makes people happy. Happiness does in fact come from within, and can be found anywhere (although having a lot of new money and no unifying culture seems to be a sure road to misery!).
Week after week I see people commenting on this website about how we can rescue the economy, or how we can keep Happy Motoring alive, when what needs to happen is just the opposite. Let it die! The toughest sell on earth is convincing people that they'd be better off without it. But every fruit tree I plant, every cord I unplug, every egg I collect from my city yardbirds, brings a new measure of happiness that I never knew existed. My wife and I are currently designing an iceroom in the basement so we can dump the 'fridge. It gets addictive!
Do yourself a favor. Find out about permaculture.
Tripp
David, you asserted "The only living planet in the Universe is too valuable to leave in human hands. Nature will reassert her dominance again."
Me thinks you may have a bit of a human ego centric concept that the living Earth is the only planet with life in the "Universe". As cosmologists and astronomers have finally become able to ascertain the existence of planets revolving about stars other than our Sun it is becoming blatantly obvious that far more stars support solar systems than previously estimated. It now appears that finding a star sans planets is far more difficult than finding one with. If only 1/100 of 1% (0.0001 or 1 out of 10,000) of the, conservative estimate of, 5*10^22 stars in the observable universe had Earth like planets there would be about 5*10^18 (5 billion billion or 5 with 18 zeros after it) Earth type planets capable of supporting life in the Universe. Somehow I doubt that the Earth is the only living planet in the observable Universe.
On the other hand I do whole heartily agree that greedy fucking humans (literally) have fucked the planet Earth in an amazingly short span of time and that they are about to receive their just desserts.
Here in Pittsburgh, where the G-20 summit will decamp in September, sand hogs are still busy building a tunnel under the river, so that people can take the light rail system to the North Side. Enlightened? Hardly!
This link (which could have been made by retrofitting an existing rail bridge) will (quelle suprise!) bring people not to work, but to the fucking stadium, baseball park and casino! As with all such projects, it is massively over-budget. My guess is that, in a few years it will be used as a storage depot for the homeless, just as the Tube in London was used as a bomb shelter during The Blitz.
I see the inevitable, and it is approaching us with increasing speed. The potential for disaster is extreme and my neighbors just do not get it. I have stopped speaking to most folks about the need to grow our food locally and accumulate some real money in the form of silver and gold because they think I am insane.
It will come to pass that America descends into the abyss of lawless violence, when the entitlement checks stop coming in the mail, and fewer and fewer people can afford to buy gasoline. Our crumbling and antiquated electrical infrastructure is one lightning bolt away from meltdown, so rather than repair it we give fifty billion dollars to a car company with a 900 million dollar market cap.
Our fearless leaders live in an alternative universe, one with plentiful Chilean Sea Bass, Egyptian pomegranates and north sea caviar. They travel to climate change conferences in their leased jumbo jets and preach to us about carbon footprints from their bully pulpits.
Rather than repair our transnational railroad system to accommodate passenger and freight service on a greater scale, we purchased [by blackmail] AIG. The dollars wasted in that black hole would have accomplished a significant amount of up-grading to the rail system.
I am absolutely pixilated by the complete lack of understanding Washington has about our current condition. We are expected to be a compliant sound-bite nation, getting our news from the "media outlets" in three minute bites, coming from panels of "experts" who usually turn out to be wrong in their position or diagnosis.
While I am doing what I can to create my own future, one in which I am prepared for the coming austerity, I cannot help but be sad for my daughter's future.
Hello America! Greetings from Wales in the UK. How are things in the colonies these days? Getting along OK without us?
Anyway, back to the nature of the debate.
We have slightly different problems to you. Over here most people work and shop within 10 miles of where they live, so the slow death of the motorcar won't affect us as quickly as yourselves.
What we have is a massive & complicated debt problem.
Ireland (a little neighbour of ours just off our west coast) has just had it's S & P credit rating downgraded for the second time in three months. They belong to a 'Mickey Mouse' currency called the Euro (which, daft as we are and in the EU with them, we weren't daft enough to join a false currency). Then we have the Baltic states - Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Latvia is a basket case. It will devalue it's currency some time this week as well as slash public sector pay. It is on the verge of total collapse financially and socially ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5438615/Latvian-debt-crisis-shakes-Eastern-Europe.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5446658/European-banks-in-spotlight-as-Baltic-crisis-hits-Sweden.html ). Their neighbours (Lithuania and Estonia) are heavily entwined with them and also financially in ruins. In turn, Scandanavian banks - particularly Sweden, are heavily exposed and underwriting them in turn is Switzerland and Germany. A little bit further over is Ukraine - also on the verge of collapse and serious social upheavel. The only people who are willing to help Ukraine are the Russinas - but only if they move out of the west's sphere of influence into theirs (similar deal on the table for the Baltic states. The re-birth of the USSR perhaps?) And then in our country we have neo-nazis winning electoral respectability and our two main poiltical parties mired in sleaze and financial scandal.
So over here in Europe, it's like a giant game of Jenga. Only we're playing it drunk, in blindfolds, with boxing gloves.
See you all next week.
Mark is absolutely right. We are on the cusp of the inevitable. And don't feel bad, Mark. Everyone visiting this site is probably viewed as a kook or some sort. I recently discovered Jim and this site and must say it is relief to know I'm not alone in my thinking. Most Americans have blinders on when it comes to reality. While they couldn't begin to name the head of the Fed or Treasury, they can certainly rattle off win, place or show from "American Idol" three years ago. Soon the new reality show will be "American Idle." Instead of text messaging each other worthless drivel every couple of minutes, Americans need to take some time to educate themselves as to what is happening to their country. As "Jimini" said, "if it's inevitable, let's get it over with."
Or is Obama the better tillerman on the Titanic, knowing to steer away initially, then steer back, allowing the stern to swing out from the obstruction? Merely steering away causes the ass end to slide toward the iceberg..
But on to the chase, here on the lower decks. Military people pre-Vietnam era may recall the railway in logistics. In fact, the rail component was referred to as "Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform". Quick look at National Defense rationale for the railway, issued at the time Ike signed the freeway act:
"Rail Transport And The Winning Of Wars", by James A. Van Fleet, get from AAR Library (202-639-2100). Prescient narrative includes warnings of homeland attack and vulnerabilities inherent with oil importing strategy. Even with military escort of oil flow, Van Fleet considered rubber tire emphasis a downhill scheme, unless the full complement of US railway mains, branchlines/Interurban Routes, and local interface warehousing were kept intact.
Of course, we witnessed the demise of the greater part of the US rail matrix over the last half-century. As some have noted above, China has invested a fair portion of the round-eyes hair dryer money on railway infrastructure. Mag-Lev to Shanghai Airport gets news coverage, but 90%+ is plain old Parallel Bar Therapy. There are some stateside readers who are curious and want more data on the rail footprint in their respective locales. Try spv.co.uk and get a copy of the US Rail Map Atlas Volumes for your region.
Maybe Senator Burris can be the conduit for bringing rail savvy planning to the Obama administration, via the Illinois Delegation. Shunned as he is, this would be a worthwhile endeavor. His staff could get Peaking Oil briefing from Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, (R-Md). Also, see the methodologies of the Pacific Electric, and for the Chicago people, try histories on the CA&E, and the CSS&SB. Hands off, Gov. Palin, this is for Roland. You can keep on drillin'.
As mentioned, few will take this avenue, preferring to moan and get out the Hoppes' #9. Or stash gold coins & bullion. Maybe, better for you and loved ones to put same in local railway rehab projects, before the feds call in the Au, to shore up the currency. Time will tell. Those in charge in DC will lay on the Federal Executive Orders soon enough, either on heels of disatrous hurricane or attack, or Iran/North Korean action. We are in the eye of whatever is about to hit us next.
Students home from school, get copy of "ELECTRIC WATER" by Christopher C. Swan, and soak up a systems approach to transport, renewables energy, and local supply of potable water. Do it.
Um, hello? Is anyone listening? Stop analyzing this thing to death. As soon as you stop buying their crap they all go away...
It was a culture of overconsumption that created this quagmire, and a culture of overconsumption is what's keeping our rebirth as a respectable species on this planet at bay. Period. As long as you keep consuming everything they throw at you, some semblence of this madness will continue.
Stop buying. We'll be OK! Trade your fiat currency in for silver and gold. Plant a big garden and share it with everyone. Shop local, meet the people growing your food, and stop going to the supermarket. Pull your money from the banks and the stock market. Turn off the TV and the talk radio.
But for god's sake, please stop trying to solve contraction problems with growth logic!
25-30 years? Good Lord, Doom, we'll surely all be dead long before that from nucular combat toe-to-to with the Norf Koreans, Pakis, or the second coming of Saladin himself.
Right again Rico, so let's party at your place! (Things could get a little hot out here in the Pacific-NOT if the North Koreans use us as target practice.)
25-30 years? Good Lord, Doom, we'll surely all be dead long before that from nucular combat toe-to-to with the Norf Koreans, Pakis, or the second coming of Saladin himself.
whoops
"I like Obama, but he is a wholly owned subsidiary of the big corporations who run the US."
That has got to be one of the most schizophrenic statements I've ever seen in print. If this is an example of the opinions of the "informed" we really are in deep shit.
"I like being lied to and treated as a borderline mental defective without the capacity for independent thought by our leader, but......"
LOL
"So over here in Europe, it's like a giant game of Jenga. Only we're playing it drunk, in blindfolds, with boxing gloves."
"See you all next week."
Nobody, and I mean nobody has a sense of humor like the British (technically Wales is part of Great Britain, just don't tell the Welshman! ;-) ).
Jim Kunstler is watching people in his travels and has generalized his observations according to who he is. I'd like to disagree with him about what is wrong with America, but I can't. He's devastatingly accurate, IMO.
I am sorry not to be a great writer, too, so I'd like to improve here. If it is a zinger and you do it, can it be conjugated "to zing"? If so, he zang in there again on the obese, this time slamming the southerners. I weighed myself: 245.
Thus, I am one of the ones who make up the bulk of the problem. I wondered what I could do about it; I called my wife and told her we should have gone to the beach instead of the movies. You know, these others in the family don't seem to get it. However, there may be an intelligent way to do it. You change yourself first, and then the others get on board.
I am being somewhat facetious, and, the problem here in America, too, seems way too big to be fixed. There's no, "The president's doing it wrong". You can't overintellectualize, thinking marriage, children, and hard work are for the masses. We can't both be members of alternate legitimate views. We have kids and if they are born sometime before we die, that is a bloody victory. It kills us to have them. Nothing runs "right". You aren't going to sit there and make saps out of us since without love, where would you be now?
I like the idea that there's a solution out of the mess we're in, and this week's post was excellent. Every word tells. today's word is, 'the end of the puerile fantasy that allowed (motoring) to become such a curse'. Oh, look! I can get a dic. toolbar. It's a boyish fantasy, trivial, immature. Actually, it comes from 1652 and that's part of my birthday, 4/16/52. So, okay, thanks. And you are trying to promote French and Italian now. Next week, thermodynamics again, please. And, why did you put gravity in there once? The energy crisis isn't gravity-related, is it? What is it we don't appreciate about gravity? This isn't formulaic, is it? BTW, you've laid off Las Vegas too much. We are ready over here for a spot of doom in the sun belt.
The internet's pretty puerile, and is that a pledge pin on your uniform?
I have successfully advanced. In a generation, we have produced a 20-year old who is getting out of college. I got a bunch of shit. You can't go around stealing a human being, except from people like me. I got reamed for putting her name on my blog. I had to delete posts so HR can Google her name and they won't have a nutcase for a father. Hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Oh, I almost forgot, or, "almost forgot". I'm going to leave out words, too. That's sexy. This guy on here in the comments says San Diego's streets have potholes. No. Not the case. Something is wrong everywhere but San Diego. I'm sure you suspected as much. Yeah. The earthquakes and fires, same thing. Go there. It won't implode from the whole country moving there. They don't have weather. You have it.
Oh, yeah. Lisa Ling, no, yeah. Its Lisa Ling who came out narrating a giant phony show about methamphetamine. Now her sister can just do 12 years. Thanks to Kim Jong Il. Why doesn't the media take a break from their LYING!? Try reporting how they all come over here shopping for nuclear lab equipment and take it quietly back home (Pakistan from Occidental Petroleum auction).
I thought Heart, "Barracuda" lyrics went, "I bet you gotta handful of speed". No, it goes
"You're lying so low in the weeds
I bet your gonna ambush me"
Golden Earring, "Radar Love"
No more speed, I'm almost there
Gotta keep cool, now gotta take care
Last car to pass, here I go
And the line of cars drove down real slow
And the radio played that forgotten song
Brenda Lee's "Coming on Strong"
And the newsman sang his same song
One more radar lover gone
http://sbillinghurst.wordpress.com
HOW TO MAKE METHAMPHETAMINE
S.Moore sez:
"JHK is encouraged to write a sequel to "World Made by Hand" called "Cars Made by Hand", which will continue the story of the first epic. Citizens will learn how to make non-motorized vehicles from the frames of old Buicks and Plymouths taken from scrap yards, deweighted, and made to be pulled by horses, oxen, or our own asses (Doodlebugs). Only JHK could tell this story..."
Well that was one of the biggest disappointments I found in "World Made By Hand", his totally unrealistic view of how friking trivial it is to make all the fuel you need if you have a little bit of land. Even 5 acres would be all you would need to provide all your food and fuel. Unfortunately, JHK has very little knowledge of farming and living off the land and the like. Yes, indeed, the people in the cities are going to be totally screwed, and biofuels are not going to help most of them in the least, but for individuals, family groups, and intentional communities with some land, we will never be out of fuel for tractors and other vehicles.
Wow. Amid the Kunstler lovefest on this site, apparently few are aware of Kunstler's stellar track-record in making predictions:
- JHK predicted the end of the world as we know it on midnight Dec 31 2000, due to a massive worldwide Y2K meltdown. (Hint: that never happened.)
- About 4 years ago, and then again 3 years ago, JHK confidently predicted a Dow Jones Industrial Average stock-market meltdown to 4,000. At today's 8,700 figure, he's as close as he's yet been, yet he's still off by, oh, about 115%. Maybe next year.
- JHK has been predicting the imminent demise of WalMart for as long as I can remember. As it turns out, one of the few companies to experience a record profits during the 2008/9 economic meltdown has been -- you guessed it -- WalMart.
In short, to paraphrase the cliche, JHK has successfully predicted 17 of the last two economic crises.
I'm not bashing the dude. I enjoy JHK's very spirited and entertaining writing. And I happen to agree with his basic critique of our contemporary unsustainable lifestyle in the U.S. and, indeed, in most of the industrial world. Things simply cannot go on as they have. This is not an opinion, it is a fact.
But the people commenting here need to get a grip. The amount of energy 'slack' remaining in the U.S. economy is phenomenal. We waste so much energy that simple and commonsense conservation could carry us halfway toward a solution. Hell, if push comes to shove, some as-yet-unforeseen combination of carpooling and motorscooters and jitneys and electric cars and socially-acceptable hitchhiking and god-only-knows-what will allow us to muddle along through any foreseeable energy crisis over the next decade, even with the unfortunate blight of suburban sprawal surrouding us.
Moreover, as much as I'd like to believe that Peak Oil has arrived and that our society is now going to have to face up to the reality of limited resources, there is no evidence that the world has reached that tipping point yet. Sorry. Maybe in 10 years. Maybe in 20. And lord knows we should be getting prepared for that inevitable day NOW. But the major sh*t ain't gonna hit the fan for a few more years yet.
All the more reason for us to work to begin turning around this aircraft carrier known as the consumer economy while we still can.
Instead, I see a long, slow slide into a lower standard of living in the United States and in much of the 'developed' world over the coming decades. That's not necessarily a bad thing; we can re-discover what really makes life interesting and worthwhile. Provided we don't end up electing crypto-fascists like Palin or Cheney because we are so angry with the inevitable change.
As JHK might point out, we'll need to adapt to the fact that we can't just drive down to the nearest Walgreens at 3 a.m. to buy Cheez Doodles whenever we wish. On that he and I agree.
That said, I'm not sitting in my basement waiting for the End of the World to arrive at my doorstep between now and Thanksgiving. Many countries (e.g., see Cuba, 1992) have experienced far more apocalyptic energy shocks than we will ever see in the U.S., and they've lived to muddle on.
Man, I wish a major energy and economic shock would kick the United States consumer in the butt and wake them up. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for at least another decade. So it's up to us to start doing the kicking.
TrippTicket,
Thanks for pointing out what to me has become incredibly obvious. Stop consuming so much! This seems like such a simple concept, yet people appear to be oblivious. A good example is my neighbor who drives his F150 truck less than a quarter of a mile to work! Why? We live in a very permeable neighborhood in Austin and it does not rain everyday. In fact the weather has been gorgeous.
When "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, I took a serious look at my own carbon footprint and have done my best to change. I walk to work now. That one change has had a huge impact on my health. I have lost over 25 lbs and feel great. The other added bonus is I know all of my locally owned businesses.
I am growing my own vegetables in containers. I live in an apartment but have two patios. I am growing Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Basil, Peppers, 7 kinds of lettuce, Celery, Watermelon, cantalope, spinach, zuchini, eggplant and strawberries. I adapted some of the Square Foot Gardening methods to container gardening and now have some of my neighbors getting involved. I would eventually like to see us building a community of growers that can bond together to protect our crops in the event of some serious upheaval. Which I am sure is coming.
Anyway your post made me feel better that at least I am trying.
"That being said I saw an interesting statistic yesterday, regarding petrol use in France during WWII. It dropped an astounding 92% from pre-war to 1944! Keep in mind this happened without social collapse. I'm not making any direct comparisons, just pointing out an interesting measure of economic adaptability."
That's because they switched to biofuel, literally. Happened all over Europe -- the military took all the petrol and diesel, the civilians built gaifiers and ran their tractors and vehicles on wood smoke. Real simple technology. You can only get about 50-60% of your normal rated HP for that engine, but at least you are still on the road.
Whoops that is gasifiers, not gaifiers. Look it up at http://www.woodgas.com
It blows my mind that the masses seem to still not be aware of peak oil and what it means to our way of life. The transistion will be rough, but I don't think the sh!t will hit the fan quite as fast as Jim thinks.
James, you are the loudspeaker blaring the message that life must change in America and it begins with how we look at our cars and trucks. It's underlying message is that we need to extricate ourselves from foreign fossil fuel oil. It is hard to do when the leaders of this nation place no value on converting GM and Chrysler into an FDR-type auto plant conversion to build intra-city mass transit -rail-networks. No one is saying, let us take some of our highway lanes and lay track for rail. Counties are not extending bus systems. Many suburban neighborhoods are not designed to accommodate bikeways allowing riders to easily reach express buses.
This will only happen out of chaos. It is odd that Krugman is now saying that the recession maybe over in the next few months! That might take the wind out of rail.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King's horses and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Obama envies European nations for their high-speed rail service, but morons who extol the personal freedom of the car dismiss that as a frill. Too many of them, alas, are in Congress. One of them, George Will, writes for Newsweek. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wants to pursue more transit options, it's just not being reported enough.
"Wow. Amid the Kunstler lovefest on this site, apparently few are aware of Kunstler's stellar track-record in making predictions:"
Not necessarily true. I can't speak for these other people. Most of them seem like noobs today. Apparently they were the ones who couldn't figure out Google before.
Most of the regulars and old-timers are quite aware of JHK's prediction record and have their own thoughts concerning it. They just haven't made it over to the new site yet.
Yours looks a little sparse. Where'd you copy and paste it from? It looks so cliche, that's all. I've written that stuff myself a few times.
Oh!... but you're "not bashing the dude." Why not? What better a place to do it?
It's a blog on the internet. Chill out, jackass.
"regarding petrol use in France during WWII. It dropped an astounding 92% from pre-war to 1944!"
It would be interesting to see the corresponding numbers for Germany for the same timeframe. As the French were winding down, Rommel and company were headed for the Channel. I'm guessing the Mark III and Mark IVs consumed more than a gallon per hour.
Then again, even in this era a huge amount of transport was literally done with horse power. The Wehrmacht was a lot less mechanized than you would think. The whole blitzkrieg thing is part myth. The French were actually a competent and well-equipped force. But that's another story.
Does anybody have any good sources for these figures, or are they all just pseudo-facts that are handed done through obscure, energy-related wiki entries?
It would also be interesting to add the American military's fuel usage in Europe to France's to see what the net result would be.
Re: the comment that my liking Obama in spite of his being owned by the corporations is schizophrenic. So what?
After eight years of that drooling idiot W and the calculated evil of his puppeteer Cheney, Obama is a class act. He is no more a liberal than Clinton was, nor will he effect any significant change. I didn't expect anything of him except a change in style, so I am not disappointed.
It seems clear that Obama and his corporate masters will destroy the country. But at least he doesn't make me want to barf whenever I hear his voice or see him on the tee-vee. He's smooth and articulate, can speak proper English and occasionally displays a conscience. It's more pleasant to have him presiding over our demise than the Texas chain-saw massacre gang.
Susan
"idiot W and the calculated evil of his puppeteer Cheney"
Thank you. We've never heard that line before. Now could you go grace the Huffington Post or Matt Savinar's site with your presence.
"He's smooth and articulate, can speak proper English and occasionally displays a conscience."
Susan?
Please stop writing like this. What you said before wasn't necessarily schizo, but it didn't make sense. Most people are like that. Big deal.
But the way you reacted was slightly mental and makes even less sense.
Just say you understand you didn't make sense. Don't back it up. Just admit Obama is not the messiah you and JHK were trying to convince us he was 9 months ago. And drop it.
It don't matter. Do you know asoka? Or Bob Snowjob? Once these guys start posting again, you'll understand the term "batshit crazy."
"I'm not bashing the dude."
Oh yes you are! Be a man, and admit it.
"But the people commenting here need to get a grip. The amount of energy 'slack' remaining in the U.S. economy is phenomenal. We waste so much energy that simple and commonsense conservation could carry us halfway toward a solution. Hell, if push comes to shove, some as-yet-unforeseen combination of carpooling and motorscooters and jitneys and electric cars and socially-acceptable hitchhiking and god-only-knows-what will allow us to muddle along through any foreseeable energy crisis over the next decade, even with the unfortunate blight of suburban sprawal surrouding us."
You used the "muddle through" phrase. Now I must kill you! Did it ever occur to you that all that energy slack you're proposing we use as savings credits comes from fossil fuels, which are depleting? Yes, we'll do all those things you list, and it still won't be enough, as in relentless decline. Sure, let's do them, so we can prolong our lives a little longer, buy some time, etc. Once you realize how late we are to the fix, you'll shit yourself--no kidding.
"Moreover, as much as I'd like to believe that Peak Oil has arrived and that our society is now going to have to face up to the reality of limited resources, there is no evidence that the world has reached that tipping point yet. Sorry. Maybe in 10 years. Maybe in 20. And lord knows we should be getting prepared for that inevitable day NOW. But the major sh*t ain't gonna hit the fan for a few more years yet."
What moron evidence you do need for a tipping point being reached? Does a fat fuck in a purple jumpsuit with gold chains have to drive his Escalade into the closed doors of the Safeway before it dawns on you that we may have a problem?
"All the more reason for us to work to begin turning around this aircraft carrier known as the consumer economy while we still can."
At least you understand that there is a momentum problem here.
"Instead, I see a long, slow slide into a lower standard of living in the United States and in much of the 'developed' world over the coming decades. That's not necessarily a bad thing; we can re-discover what really makes life interesting and worthwhile. Provided we don't end up electing crypto-fascists like Palin or Cheney because we are so angry with the inevitable change."
Fine, except that some folks might riot, meanwhile. See Iceland, and they don't have guns, BTW.
"As JHK might point out, we'll need to adapt to the fact that we can't just drive down to the nearest Walgreens at 3 a.m. to buy Cheez Doodles whenever we wish. On that he and I agree."
Why not, gas is still cheap, and today was a lot like yesterday, and tomorrow will probably be a lot like today, la-la-la-la!
"That said, I'm not sitting in my basement waiting for the End of the World to arrive at my doorstep between now and Thanksgiving. Many countries (e.g., see Cuba, 1992) have experienced far more apocalyptic energy shocks than we will ever see in the U.S., and they've lived to muddle on."
May I remind you that this isn't Cuba. Did I mention that we have guns?
"Man, I wish a major energy and economic shock would kick the United States consumer in the butt and wake them up. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for at least another decade. So it's up to us to start doing the kicking."
Be careful what you wish for, grasshopper
"some as-yet-unforeseen combination of carpooling and motorscooters and jitneys and electric cars and socially-acceptable hitchhiking and god-only-knows-what will allow"
That's the phrase that kills me, Doom. This mudderpucker has some killer crystal ball. He just "knows."
Doom, you catching Stern on Letterman? I know you got TVs in Hawaii. Maybe not HD widescreen, but you get reception.
Letterman won't be on for another 90 minutes here, JR. We get all digital HD widescreen TV in our grass shacks.
Even if you don't like Stern or watch Letterman, this is a classic. More informative than any half hour on 60 minutes since Biden and Obama last Labor Day. Good stuff.
Stern rips Jay Leno. Calls him cheezy scum and professes his allegiance to Dave.
I cried. I did.
I think I've seen most of the Letterman-Stern encounters. They were all way too tense. This one is good. Breaks new ground.
No other guest gets this attention and time on Letterman.
JHK needs a guest like that. Maybe OEO. But OEO can be kinda crude sometimes. Maybe somebody that is actually a pro on the energy issues.
Agree, I nominate you as JHK's first energy guest.
Regarding Jay Leno, I tried to watch his last Tonight Show episode, but I just couldn't stand it, so I ended up watching Letterman instead. Nice enough guy, but low-ball scum humorist.
The good news is Conan O'Brien is actually pretty funny, so now late night channel flipping is all the rage again at our shack.
Naw. I'm strictly behind the scenes. Plus I'd get a boner if that Kris Kan was all walkin around nekkid talkin that filthy oil talk.
I want want my trash with a little meat on 'em like Palin. Blood on their gums and expensive, Italian, black-frame glasses.
No vegans in my life. Or Trekkies, or whatever you call em. Unless they're redheads. Then you own me.
Doom, I don't think anybody is gonna mess with us.
Yes, isn't it nice how we let JHK pretend to be hosting our blog?
I'm disavowing 06.09.09.
YO! She being charged. Fuck that. It didn't happen.
It didn't happen wipe. it. wipe it now.
Wipe it. YOU biyches wanna hop. Evere heard Johhny Rico.
Free bird.
These suckers do suck baby
SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS:
1) The only real possible transportation alternative to private cars are public cars and simple buses. Public cars, as in different forms of private and or public simple taxi services, that small private companies or local communities set up to transport people from point A to point B, through internet calling, figuring out a decent price system. Maybe food for some smart startup in America to create a really good private car, taxi system, through internt calling ? Also private bus systems, companies could set up bus systems to get their workers to the offices - plants or whatever ? also good private bus systems and also good old good public buses, public transportation ? private luxury buses systems ? the possibilities are endless, you save on gas, on car expenses, insurance expenses, you use the huge road infrastructure already present all across the USA, no need to build new very costly train services, or hydrogen economy, or alternate complex probably undoable systems, like the electric car.
2) Get rid of the idea of buying houses, this idea has destroyed so much wealth, get back to simply renting homes, renting them at a good price level, maybe between 300 and 800 dollars a month for 2 bedroom homes ? Renting homes is so much more flexible, you can always change your mind and live somewhere else, or change the kind of house you are living in by simply renting a different house. If you are layed off or fired, no problem you can change location and rent in the new location. This idea of home ownership goes copmletely agains all the mantras of the "new economies", the "flexible economies", the idea that you must always change jobs and location so many times in a lifetime. Then why has everyonme been obsessed with owning a home ? What an idiotic idea.
3) Reduce the workday, no more than 4 hours a day since their isn't enough work and get back to a simple public health system, what the heck, all the other western countries have this and they are not dying, they are constantly increasing their life expectancy.
"Does a fat fuck in a purple jumpsuit with gold chains have to drive his Escalade into the closed doors of the Safeway before it dawns on you that we may have a problem?"
Remember the newbs, dude.
If you wish to quote CFN axioms without quotes, it must be in Latin. To be fair the penalty for muddling IS death, so you haven't left any witnesses.
Oh, and HARMON sez:-
Even 5 acres would be all you would need to provide all your food and fuel.
Congratulations, you have just won the Stuart Staniford challenge; a lifetime of hauling rocks by hand under the watchful eye of your drunken overlords.
and no, you ARE too stupid to know what that means.
"That being said I saw an interesting statistic yesterday, regarding petrol use in France during WWII. It dropped an astounding 92% from pre-war to 1944! Keep in mind this happened without social collapse."
What? Without social collapse? IT WAS WW II!!! If that's no social collapse, I don't know what is!!
mmm, I seem to remember a population reduction occurring about that time, too.
Another reason US labor is no longer competitive is because of the huge costs of property, offices, health care etc. Companies are forced to pay high salaries to people if they have to pay high rents, high mortgages, high health care, etc. Is the value of property more important than jobs ? NO, so let the home prices go back to where they belong, 80,000 dollars for a 2 bedroom single family, or 500 dollars a month rent. Same for the costs of offices and same for health insurance and costs. Then, companies could pay a much smaller salary like the ones in Brazil or Europe, 1,200 dollars a month and people could live compfortably with it.
Another reason US labor is no longer competitive is because of the huge costs of property, offices, health care etc. Companies are forced to pay high salaries to people if they have to pay high rents, high mortgages, high health care, etc. Is the value of property more important than jobs ? NO, so let the home prices go back to where they belong, 80,000 dollars for a 2 bedroom single family, or 500 dollars a month rent. Same for the costs of offices and same for health insurance and costs. Then, companies could pay a much smaller salary like the ones in Brazil or Europe, 1,200 dollars a month and people could live compfortably with it.
But if the US dollar becomes worthless, and if there is a rising public perception that we should be keeping our oil for domestic consumption (and there were mutterings about this during the oil price spike last summer) then public pressure is going to grow for Canada to opt out of NAFTA
-----------------
I've been wondering who will own us in the next few decades: China or the US?
Right now, none of the two have to worry too much because we let them buy us up what they like when they feel like it. Since we haven't been putting much money in our National defence, it's not like we can stop them anyway!
But on second thought, I don't think it makes sense for the US to own us. To get our resources, they will need to mine ALL of Alberta and will need to deviate water from the Great Lakes to Arizona or those other dry southern states. With this American enviro-green movement building up, owning Canada would be too onerous and messy. Harper and our Canadian Neocons will just let them rape us anyways so why not just keep us as their modren day slaves (like Chinese workers working for peanuts)?
As for NAFTA, someone will blow a gasket. US protectinism is picking up and our Canadian exporters are already feeling the pinch as "US Made" clauses are being introduced in all projects even when they don't respect NAFTA.
I don't understand why Canada even bothered with NAFTA. We could have spent our time and energy creating something productive instead of making deals with the Americans who always opt out when it does not suit them anymore.
Eightm, I would like to comment on "you use the huge road infrastructure already present all across the USA" - That I think is going to be one of the first things to go away, this huge road infrastructure - it takes far too much energy and funds to maintain it and the cost and availability of asphalt in the future may mean few roads can be maintained in the future.
In the CBS documentary Earth 2100, they showed Lucy and her family traveling across the desolate desert southwest on what appeared to be prestine roads! That was the one thing I noticed that seemed out of place! I would have expected to see the remains of what had been roads, deep potholes, whole sections of pavement eroded away, bridges out, etc. That is how things may very well look 20 years from now.
Some key roads will be maintained, no doubt, due to their strategic importance both economically and militarily, however, I see no way the whole network or even a substantial part of it can be maintained with asphalt prices ten times what they are today.
Eightm, I would like to comment on "you use the huge road infrastructure already present all across the USA" - That I think is going to be one of the first things to go away, this huge road infrastructure - it takes far too much energy and funds to maintain it and the cost and availability of asphalt in the future may mean few roads can be maintained in the future.
In the CBS documentary Earth 2100, they showed Lucy and her family traveling across the desolate desert southwest on what appeared to be prestine roads! That was the one thing I noticed that seemed out of place! I would have expected to see the remains of what had been roads, deep potholes, whole sections of pavement eroded away, bridges out, etc. That is how things may very well look 20 years from now.
Some key roads will be maintained, no doubt, due to their strategic importance both economically and militarily, however, I see no way the whole network or even a substantial part of it can be maintained with asphalt prices ten times what they are today.
Another reason US labor is no longer competitive is because of the huge costs of property, offices, health care etc. Companies are forced to pay high salaries to people if they have to pay high rents, high mortgages, high health care, etc. Is the value of property more important than jobs ? NO, so let the home prices go back to where they belong, 80,000 dollars for a 2 bedroom single family, or 500 dollars a month rent. Same for the costs of offices and same for health insurance and costs. Then, companies could pay a much smaller salary like the ones in Brazil or Europe, 1,200 dollars a month and people could live compfortably with it.
Eightm, I would like to comment on "you use the huge road infrastructure already present all across the USA" - That I think is going to be one of the first things to go away, this huge road infrastructure - it takes far too much energy and funds to maintain it and the cost and availability of asphalt in the future may mean few roads can be maintained in the future.
In the CBS documentary Earth 2100, they showed Lucy and her family traveling across the desolate desert southwest on what appeared to be pristine roads! That was the one thing I noticed that seemed out of place! I would have expected to see the remains of what had been roads, deep potholes, whole sections of pavement eroded away, bridges out, etc. That is how things may very well look 20 years from now.
Some key roads will be maintained, no doubt, due to their strategic importance both economically and militarily, however, I see no way the whole network or even a substantial part of it can be maintained with asphalt prices ten times what they are today.
Probably if rails are put down on some of the existing roadbeds then we could run trains for the indefinite future. Trains are handsomely scaleable to electric and alternative power and can move large loads day in and day out with only modest wear and tear on the rails. Just a thought!
Eightm, I would like to comment on "you use the huge road infrastructure already present all across the USA" - That I think is going to be one of the first things to go away, this huge road infrastructure - it takes far too much energy and funds to maintain it and the cost and availability of asphalt in the future may mean few roads can be maintained in the future.
In the CBS documentary Earth 2100, they showed Lucy and her family traveling across the desolate desert southwest on what appeared to be pristine roads! That was the one thing I noticed that seemed out of place! I would have expected to see the remains of what had been roads, deep potholes, whole sections of pavement eroded away, bridges out, etc. That is how things may very well look 20 years from now.
Some key roads will be maintained, no doubt, due to their strategic importance both economically and militarily, however, I see no way the whole network or even a substantial part of it can be maintained with asphalt prices ten times what they are today.
Probably if rails are put down on some of the existing roadbeds then we could run trains for the indefinite future. Trains are handsomely scaleable to electric and alternative power and can move large loads day in and day out with only modest wear and tear on the rails. Just a thought!
But if the US dollar becomes worthless, and if there is a rising public perception that we should be keeping our oil for domestic consumption (and there were mutterings about this during the oil price spike last summer) then public pressure is going to grow for Canada to opt out of NAFTA
-----------------
I've been wondering who will own us in the next few decades: China or the US?
Right now, none of the two have to worry too much because we let them buy us up what they like when they feel like it. Since we haven't been putting much money in our National defence, it's not like we can stop them anyway!
But on second thought, I don't think it makes sense for the US to own us. To get our resources, they will need to mine ALL of Alberta and will need to deviate water from the Great Lakes to Arizona or those other dry southern states. With this American enviro-green movement building up, owning Canada would be too onerous and messy. Harper and our Canadian Neocons will just let them rape us anyways so why not just keep us as their modren day slaves (like Chinese workers working for peanuts)?
As for NAFTA, someone will blow a gasket. US protectinism is picking up and our Canadian exporters are already feeling the pinch as "US Made" clauses are being introduced in all projects even when they don't respect NAFTA.
I don't understand why Canada even bothered with NAFTA. We could have spent our time and energy creating something productive instead of making deals with the Americans who always opt out when it does not suit them anymore.
Just wanted to let the members here know that their debate and common interest in JHK's views would be welcome in the Kunstlercast.com forums. It originally started as a place to discuss JHK podcasts w/ Duncan, now it has all types of fun JHK relevant threads. It has a small number of members @564 right now. Come take a peek.
http://kunstlercast.com/forum/index.php?board=1.0
http://kunstlercast.com/
Regards,
rpm
It is happening in MIssouri already.
MoDOT is in a total panic. MoDOT has started an astroturf org to CHANGE THE MISSOURI CONSTITUTION in order to keep it's network of state highways maintained.
In the midst of this, they believe they will still be expanding the system.
I went to their KC sales pitch at M.A.R.C. and invoked the law of holes. It seemed to take the wind out of their sails when they discovered 0% buy in for their plans.
My heart bleeds.
Rico,
The comment on reduction of oil use in France during WW2 was from the "The Third Reich At War" by Richard J. Evans. Part of his trilogy on the topic of the Third Reich. I don't know what his citation is for that quantity but I'm sure there is one.
Donny Don,
Stop being so rational, around here you're only suppose to remember when JHK gets something right. The average poster here has already torn his hair out from fear and is practicing eating only twigs and grass on Fridays. (kind of a religious observation) Most still drive their cars (of course) but imagine themselves superior to anyone who get 2 MPG less than they do.
Dale, your statistic regarding French use of automobiles during the occupation may be accurate. The advantage they had, though, was a lifestyle and living space organization that was profoundly local. While a lack of automobiles made activities like deliveries more difficult, most of what they needed could be obtained locally. Our situation in the U.S. today is unfortunately different. As JK predicts, I expect that we'll see the suburbs collapse and a "reverse white flight" from the 'burbs to the cities because the cities will appear to be the only sustainable places anymore.
Cheers
montsegur,
In the original citation I mentioned 'no direct comparison is intended (with the US)'.
You mentioned one big difference in local organization, another is simply that they were at war. That being said, I suspect that people who make sweeping statements regarding collapse etc. will nonetheless be surprised by the countless adaptations which will occur and how much of a decline in oil use could occur and still be adapted to without anything resembling collapse.
Dale, understand your comments and concur that people have capacity for adaptation. My only addition is that some collapse will occur, but the degree to which it occurs will vary with the local situation -- i.e., it will be a reflection of whatever the local reality is. Of course, reality is complex when one examines it in detail -- and so the Long Emergency will wind out in many different ways in different locations.
It is curious to realize that it will likely be our generation that will have to face the pain of adapting to the change that will be forced upon us. Subsequent generations won't give it much thought because they'll grow up in a world that has already changed and adapted.
Cheers
Most of what anyone "predicts" is just that. And at this current juncture in history - where social systems are failing to address realities that have never before been dealt with - any chance of foresight - is just that -chance.
My own perspective suggests that the great loss of the "rule of law" occurred as the so -called "mainstream media" accepted the "war on terror" as reality-based construct.
Of course there had been constant disintegration of "law based" government since Ronnie Rayguns told us that "star wars" defense systems work perfectly. But the last eight years of the Bush admin, has resulted in a night mare "looking glass" legislation - which has now come to fruition.
The 200 year experiment has failed. Although, test results are still being recorded, expect confirmation of the "real score" within a decade or two.
Most of what anyone "predicts" is just that. And at this current juncture in history - where social systems are failing to address realities that have never before been dealt with - any chance of foresight - is just that -chance.
My own perspective suggests that the great loss of the "rule of law" occurred as the so -called "mainstream media" accepted the "war on terror" as reality-based construct.
Of course there had been constant disintegration of "law based" government since Ronnie Rayguns told us that "star wars" defense systems work perfectly. But the last eight years of the Bush admin, has resulted in a night mare "looking glass" legislation - which has now come to fruition.
The 200 year experiment has failed. Although, test results are still being recorded, expect confirmation of the "real score" within a decade or two.
dale,
In the 30s and 40s there weren't nearly as much cars and trucks as there are now.
The transportation wasn't so dependent on motor vehicles and people didn't get all their foods from away countries. The world now is much more connected and everything is faster.
Of course will adapt, but it will take some time and a lot of people will suffer and probably at first balk against changes just like we see now.
People were used to simple lives then.
I can see it in front of me, spoiled little dimwits used to getting force fed and entertained 24 hours a day suddenly without luck. They'll love it for sure.
Pipi Langstrumpf pontificates:
"Oh, and HARMON sez:-
Even 5 acres would be all you would need to provide all your food and fuel.
Congratulations, you have just won the Stuart Staniford challenge; a lifetime of hauling rocks by hand under the watchful eye of your drunken overlords.
and no, you ARE too stupid to know what that means."
No, it's you who are too stupid to know enough about permaculture and substainable agriculture to know how trivial it actually is to supply all the fuel a family needs on approximately an acre of land. If I have a moist area (which I have) I can easily get 1700 gallons of ethanol from cattails per year on that one acre with no fertilizer or pesticide inputs. That's enough for us. If it were a dryer area, I could instead grow buffalo gourd and get about 800 gallons of ethanol and 100 gallons of biodiesel from the seeds.
But, that's just the fuel -- along with that, from my one acres of cattails, I get 28 dry tons of spent mash, which is very high protein (from all the yeast that ate the sugar and starch) and is supreme hog and other livestock feed. I can grow 100 hogs to market size on that 28 tons of spent mash. That's a log of food and a lot of money on the market, plus I get more fuel than I really need so I can sell some of that too. Not a bad deal for one acre of land which never has to be plowed or planted or hoed or fertilized.
But it's stupid people like yourself that will be starving and either just die or get themselves shot trying to raid my fields. I love shooting stupid people, and the hogs love the meat, and the bones cook down and get ground up into fertilizer.
Love your style Harmon. Shooting stupid people trying to raid your setup is much more fun than shooting rats at the dump. Stupid people move much slower than rats and that allows more time to 'linger over the target'.
Ever try fodder beets for alcohol production?
«As JK predicts, I expect that we'll see the suburbs collapse and a "reverse white flight" from the 'burbs to the cities because the cities will appear to be the only sustainable places anymore.»
Logic — and more so, logistics — suggest otherwise. It's easier to move (or create) a few businesses to better serve hundreds of families than to move those hundreds of families closer to the businesses.
Suburbia, or the concept itself anyway, is truly dying. But the places and many/most clusters of people designated "suburban" will still be around in 20 years. The places will have changed radically, but the places themselves will still be there and inhabited. I envision winding lanes through small farmsteads or market gardens, with houses subdivided or torn down & rebuilt along more efficient lines. Almost no cars on the road, making the places automatically more walkable & bikeable. The denizens will actually get to *know* each other, amazing as it sounds.
I guess it all depends on what happens. A singularity-style event would throw everything up in the air. But incremental changes are dealt with incrementally, often grumbled about, but often just done without even thinking much about it.
I was wondering what was going on with all the multiple posts today. Now I know.
Pipi Langstrumpf pontificates:
"Oh, and HARMON sez:-
Even 5 acres would be all you would need to provide all your food and fuel.
Congratulations, you have just won the Stuart Staniford challenge; a lifetime of hauling rocks by hand under the watchful eye of your drunken overlords.
and no, you ARE too stupid to know what that means."
No, it's you who are too stupid to know enough about permaculture and substainable agriculture to know how trivial it actually is to supply all the fuel a family needs on approximately an acre of land. If I have a moist area (which I have) I can easily get 1700 gallons of ethanol from cattails per year on that one acre with no fertilizer or pesticide inputs. That's enough for us. If it were a dryer area, I could instead grow buffalo gourd and get about 800 gallons of ethanol and 100 gallons of biodiesel from the seeds.
But, that's just the fuel -- along with that, from my one acres of cattails, I get 28 dry tons of spent mash, which is very high protein (from all the yeast that ate the sugar and starch) and is supreme hog and other livestock feed. I can grow 100 hogs to market size on that 28 tons of spent mash. That's a log of food and a lot of money on the market, plus I get more fuel than I really need so I can sell some of that too. Not a bad deal for one acre of land which never has to be plowed or planted or hoed or fertilized.
But it's stupid people like yourself that will be starving and either just die or get themselves shot trying to raid my fields. I love shooting stupid people, and the hogs love the meat, and the bones cook down and get ground up into fertilizer.
Good Lord, this thing is being TypoPad-level flaky today!
Well, I have been following James blog for a long time and I tend to agree on many issues with him. However, this blog looks like an ultimate in doomsters blogs. It is obvious problems exist and of course a lot of things going to be done differently, but I see no point in all this doom and gloom and especially in conspiracy theories.
I am originally from Russia and I would say, it does not matter how you guys screwed yourself up, cause it is you who screwed US, not those presidents whom you elected by the way. You will never experience what Russia experienced. You still have good land with good climate and enough resources to live off your farms ;-) If this scenario will happen. However, besides building more public transportation and of course rail and water transport, i see no reason to panic.
I have been through worse ;-)
The chances of Obama undermining his economic and political song and dance right when all the power players are starting to buy stock in it is not something most of us who are reading at a College level are anticipating. One of the biggest revivals of happy motoring-culture memes at the grass roots level that I am hearing is the belief that there is "plenty of oil". This notion had suffered badly when gas was hovering around 4$ but it is now back, becoming omnipresent and with less criticism. In essence Obama has made no serious committments on this front and continues to talk about clean coal. No significant increase in credibility or MSM coverage has been given to those who predicted the financial collapse and least to those who see connections to oil. I suspect the POV's of Kunstler, Klare, Roubini, Schechter, Simmons will get less not more coverage. The interests in keeping things arranged as they are is the stuff of wars and empires. The capitalists and the bankers have been in charge for awhile and seem to be able to lose trillions of other people's money and still own virtually the whole system. We are duped into wars and torture and giving money to thieves and continue to wave the flag as though that were the universal band aid for anything from nicks to cancer. Is anybody in the Obama administration talking about the Hirsch report?
So what are the mechanisms that might unify the US or any political configuration of the people of North America to move to plan B? The Democrats seem to be as much of a lost cause as the Republicans. I think a realistic measure of the possibility of change is the possibility of electing a decisive majority of independents or radical democrats ala Nader, Sanders, Boxer, Feingold, Kucinich, Gravel and independent conservatives, libertarian types Ron Paul like John Duncan. The point is not these specific politicians, but how hard it would be to imagine a bunch of non-corporate/party/jingoist-sellouts gaining an FDR type broad based political mandate.
Farfetched sez:
"Ever try fodder beets for alcohol production? "
No, they'll work, of course, and it's a far better feedstock than corn, but you want permaculture, meaning a crop that you plant just once and never have to replant, plow, hoe, or any of that stuff again. Plus cattails far, far, outproduce fodder beets in gallons per acre --- some of the newer varieties of fodder beets get you 1000 gallons per acre, but you have all the field crop problems, replanting every year, fertilizing, cultivating or hoeing (or herbiciding). And, because of problems with nematodes, it's not practical to grow beets in the same field except once every 4 years.
Hey, read David Blume's book "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" (http://www.permaculture.com), he's got a whole section on beets for alcohol.
But cattails are the way to go -- only plant once, and 1700 gallons with no fertilizer. Fertilize them and they go nuts. They are a plant that has some almost miraculous ability to get more from fertilizer than other plants do, that's why they are becoming such a pest in wetlands and that's why wetlands in farm areas usually become a 100% monoculture of cattails in a very short time. But they also purify the water, so they are the perfect crop to grow as secondary sewage treatment, both to clean the water and to provide a fantastic ethanol feedstock. Cattails grown in Minnesota, in the wild with no inputs will produce 30 tons dry weight per acre and that's 40% minimum starch. Cattails grown on sewage effluent will produce 65-75 tons dry weight per acre. Warmer climates will do much more.
Harmon, I like what you have to contribute here, BUT two words: cattail fungus. Are you planning to put all that fuel stuff into the lone cattail basket? Nothing yet known kills/stunts cattails?
Also, good idea to recycle nutrients such as phosphate by grinding bones. Do you plan to bake them in bread first, or just apply directly to the soil?
Harmon, that wasn't me before — the new comments put the name at the top — but I do have a question or two. Don't cattails require a lot of water? Would the beets work better in a dryer area?
The purification part sounds like a twofold good: sewage fertilizes the cattails, the cattails clean up the poo. Then there's the go-juice… what does it take (in terms of energy) to brew up the ethanol, otherwise asked as what's the EROEI?
Interesting idea string from Dmitry Orlov's blog site "ClubOrlov":
"Here are some topics for you to choose from or add to (ahead of time) by submitting comments. The venue happens to be in New York, and I can talk fast, so let it rip. (This list came from Phil who organized the event. I'll pick items of interest based on the feedback I get.)
How our society has moved from one of generalists to specialists making us especially vulnerable and resistant to reengaging with nature and our ability to have numerous skills.
The continuing attraction of obtaining advanced degrees despite evidence that only debt and unemployment are the end results of such efforts.
People returning to school recently for degrees in Urban Planning, Ecology, etc., with the belief that the degree will result in some great future: are they going to make a paradigm shift, or are they just smoking crack?
The talk by many older “star” authors and speakers that there is a mass movement by our youth to recapture the spirit of the 1960’s and to correct the state of the world as it exists.
The belief that the Internet and Digital Media are here to stay.
Permaculture: There seems to be a real disconnect between theory and putting it into practice.
Fixation with Permaculture as The Solution; how is that similar to/different from fixating on technology in general?
Why is there a dire shortage of hippies in the country and what should the government do to address it?
The ethics of reducing population and resource share: is there a distinction between planned population reduction and fascism?
Can Permaculture avoid the trap of other movements that wind up in power when those in charge come to believe theirs is the only solution.
Will Permaculture teachers continue jetting around until there is no jet fuel left?
What can we do about the desire and pressure to continue having children while acknowledging the limited carrying capacity of the planet?
Vegetarians and Vegans – How can not eating certain things solve the problem?
Can a green economy help us continue on the road of exponential growth.
What of all the talk of products and patents locked up by the evil oil companies that can deliver us from the problems we’ve created?
Is a utopian society possible? What, at this point, qualifies as a utopian society? How would it be different from a dystopia?
Are people ready or willing to make drastic changes and take the huge personal risks that circumstances demand?
With so many forms of media at our disposal, are we less able to communicate than ever before.
Are we on information overload. Can we still differentiation between what is true and false. How does one navigate this? Is it even possible?
Why is there an enduring allure of technology as the great fix?
Russia vs the US - where is Russia today? Where is the US today?
How can we shield ourselves from the disintegration of social services, the money system, and other bits of communal life support?
What things happened in Russia during descent that will/will not occur in the U.S.
How do I feel knowing about this? How do I go on?
What do I think of the Transition Town movement? Is it workable for all cities no matter their size?
The Left: is it so fractured that the pieces can accomplish nothing of substance?
Why is each segment seem oblivious to the interconnection that exists between the environment, energy and economy?
Why is there still a belief that Obama can correct the situation despite evidence that it is business as usual (banking, healthcare, new automobile standards, automotive industry bailout, build more roads, etc.)?
Why is the food movement focusing on bringing food to you instead of bringing you to food?
Why is there all this talk of making changes, but little understanding that what is being suggested is akin to bailing out the Titanic using teaspoons?
Why is there no understand that we don’t have 30 more years to course-correct?
Why are those who speak the hard truth labeled as being ‘Doomers”?
What would it mean to bear responsibility for the role each and every one of us plays in what is unfolding?
How do we tap the creative spirit in ourselves?"
TreeHuggingLiberalPinko,
Be helpful and tell us which alt energy stocks.
Johnny Rico calling other people crazy. LMAO. Classic.
"Nothing yet known kills/stunts cattails?"
Growing up in upstate NY I became used to seeing wet areas and shorelines filled with cattails. Now those same areas are full of Argentine pampa grass and exotic purple loosestrife which has crowded out the native cattails. Forget about growing cattails for fuel here. They die.
http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/purple_loosestrife.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alex_wild/3406091844/
dale,
I hope some horrible, fatal calamity befalls you, thus sparing us from having to read any more of your puerile "I'm okay, you're okay" crap.
Please don't look both ways when crossing the street. And make sure to clean your firearms while they are loaded and you are drunk.
Have a nice day, ya smarmy po-dunk douche bag. I hope you die soon.
Hey HARMON,
Like Jim Carrey said after he farted in the lift,
"IT WAS ME!!"
Show us some pictures of your cattail distillery, hoggery, your butcher, your garden. No hurry.
In fact, I'd be more impressed if you could show me pictures of all that stuff actually working in 20 years.
To be fair, I know you've been making great strides with all the software to control it all, and you've got great links to kick-arse operating systems on your web-site.
Hey, Robinson Crusoe.
Why don't you stop posting here and go work on your little experiment in self-sufficiency until it is done? That ought to keep you away for a long time.
Yeah, Harmon. After society collapses, you're going to protect yourself against the rampaging hordes trying to steal your beets by deploying your Rambo-like shooting skills. Because none of their bullets could possibly hit you, right? Life is just like an action movie, I agree. Where can I sign-up to become part of the beet and cattail utopia you are planning?
I wish you "doomer" types could get a grip. (and forget gardening as well)
At first, a couple more cities look like Detroit. Then a little later, a lot more. (like most of the industrial mid west)
Meanwhile the exo-burbs seem to peter out -some make it on their own -but many morph into non-incorporated rural space. (empty strip mall - dead big box store, government reverts to County rule)
All the while inflation of utility costs, and commodity expenses for the creation of all food related staples destroys disposable income for over half the population.
The destruction of disposable consumption bleeds what's left of gainful employment and profits away from what's left of the "middle class."
The US resembles the social architecture of India or China - but with more hand guns, more angst and more insane disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the population.
End of story - all played out by 2030 or so...
The car is what the horse used to be-a means
of mobility and thus, freedom. The Liberal Elite
want to outlaw cars and herd us into the cities
to make us urban peasants on the cube farm. They
want nature all to themselves. Well Stan, it aint
going to happen. You'll have to pry the steering
wheel from our cold, dead hands.
By the way, any Northern European who works
outside or gardens will get a red neck from the
sun. It's an old insult from the Urban Elite that
has been adopted by the minorities. It is amazing
how comfortable Liberals are with this slander.
Mr. K. --
Your oft-repeated admonitions about the coming New-World-Made-By-Hand are still vibrant. However, as a nearly life-long Southerner, the NASCAR caricature is becoming a little tiresome, as is shorthanding everyone with a tattoo into a fat, jack-booted loser. I don't have a tat, but I know nice, hard-working people who do. It's a fad, not a moral failing. Charleston WV is not Charleston SC and Miami FL bears little resemblance to Jacksonville FL. So. Can we put down the broad brush now?
I agree about Dead Man Driving.
Happy Motoring isn't just the newest zombie. It's the biggest. But I don't think it will take long for the Right-To-Drive protests to die. There are huge meteors hitting this culture every day. Peak Oil. Peak Credit. Peak Stasis. It has become commonplace to hear the phrase, "Who would have imagined five years ago that ____________ would fail?" (Insert Countrywide, GM, or the GOP.) Eight hundred Chrysler dealerships are closing almost overnight. If Future Shock is "too much change in too short a period of time" then we are experiencing FS on meth. The jobless rate hit 9.4% ten days ago. Oil hit $70/bbl today. It's a race to the cliff.
You and others have written often that Mr. Obama needs to level with the American people and tell them the truth. My question is, which American people? The 69.5 million who voted for hope, change, or at least, "different"? I think many of us have gotten the message and are working toward a simpler, more local life. Or are you talking about the nearly 60 million who voted for the Party That Wrecked America? Think about what you're demanding. Re-read your own withering descriptions of these cheeze-doodles and remember the words of Col. Jessep about handling the truth. They can't. I repeat, 60,000,000 people voted for the party of Palin, Limbaugh, Hewitt, Hannity, Inhofe, Romney, O'Reilly, McCain, McConnell, Cheney, Huckabee, and George W. Bush. You live in a nice small town, James. Would you be willing to invite the most passionate, paranoid citizen of Limbaugh Nation to your apartment, crack him across the face with the Truth and then hand him a loaded gun?
Of course not.
Yet you seem to demand that very thing from Mr. Obama. You demand that he "stop pretending" and get in our faces. I don't agree. I think it is YOUR responsibility as a new kind of old-testament prophet to speak these dangerous truths to all of us. Those who have ears will listen. But it is Mr. Obama's responsibility to land this thing safely on the Hudson River. Inflaming and terrifying the passengers would be stupid and homicidal.
Mr. Obama has raised the bar to unheard-of levels. We seem to forget that a young Kansan-Kenyan beat the ever-loving hell out of a pre-crowned Clinton and then won the home state of Jesse Helms four months to the day after we finally put his racist butt in the cold ground. So, yes, I still trust the guy. I still believe that Mr. Obama has yet to be a second-tier intellect in any given room. Jesus, Jim, it's been less than five months since he took office. Ask yourself what McCain would be doing right now.
I bought your book, The Long Emergency, two years ago. I read it once and made plans to move. I finally sold my house last December to the one and only person who made me an offer. It was like walking out of a bank with all my money just before it crashed. I now live near fresh water, beautiful mountains, an active railroad line, and am surrounded by small, successful farms. The hospitals are good. The schools are first-rate. And, yes, the local gun shops are running low on bullets. But the overall attitude is progressive and growing more so each day. So I am one of the ones who is listening.
Keep preaching. Keep writing. Just realize that half this country wouldn't hesitate to burn the other half. The last thing we need to do is ask the President to hand them a torch.
Garden report for Bud4: everything is looking good. Corn and pole beans are knee-high, tomatoes setting fruit. Foliage has that nice deep green color. Aged horse manure, compost, wood ashes, and rainwater are great stuff, dontcha' think?
"I am very much in favor of poverty for Americans, the end of the automotive culture, the collapse of the American empire, the end of technological civilization, and (ultimately, inevitably) the extinction of the Homo sapiens." -- david mathews
It is so obvious that a man wrote this. I hear this doomsday/extinction talk only from men. Women have an intrinsic motivation to sustain life.
Get ready for a new feminine movement.
I can’t help but cringe at the naivete of people everytime I read a post shelling out some blanket statement (you can live on 1 acre without any effort) or some other navel-gazing comment.
I thought geography and history were compulsory courses or have American schools left them out to make more space for public speaking and marketing?
In case you never noticed, land is not as productive across various regions. And in case you never took those history classes, some people (i.e. the Vikings) who got the not so productive got quite restless and invaded those with the goods.
If you think that could not happen today, you’re in for a surprise.
Jim,
I work as a contractor and yesterday I found myself on Wellesley Island in the St. Lawrence River doing an installation. It was at a million dollar plus home on the waterfront next to another million dollar home, next to another million dollar home, next to a 4 million dollar palace. In fact the whole neighborhood was made up of million dollar plus properties, 90% of which were second homes. The homeowner was a NYC investment banker who had recently quit one job where he was only making a paltry 11 million dollars a year to move on to a better paying position at a different firm.
As we watch our big banks scrambling to pay back their TARP money so they can escape the executive compensation restrictions that come along with it and I stood in the very midst of these overly luxurious second homes, most of which stood empty on a tuesday with their $100,000 boats bobbing at the docks, I was struck with the thought that these people living these lives are so entrenched in the American Dream, that they probably wouldn't be able to see any of what we have been talking about even if they got slapped in the face with the cold fish of reality. And when I mentioned my thoughts of the future to this multi-millionaire, he laughed with scorn and said: "Hey, those of us with this kind of money will always have money." Then he ran down to the waterfront and hopped on one of his three jet-skis and shot off through the waves. I could almost hear him giggling with glee. I didn't even bother to tell him he better enjoy it while it lasts, he wouldn't have heard me anyhow with ears ringing from counting his piles and piles of cash.
The gap between the classes here in America is already crazy. And it is a matter of historical fact that the haves live in such a disconnected fantasy world from the have-nots, that they can almost never see past their own noses.
And my helper turned to me and said: "Maybe one day you could afford a place like this..."
My response left him speechless.
"What the hell would I want a place like this for?"
I went back home to the rural section of Onondaga County, outside of Syracuse, NY and made sure to stop at Dick's along the way and buy another box of ammunition.
"Hey, those of us with this kind of money will always have money." Then he ran down to the waterfront and hopped on one of his three jet-skis and shot off through the waves.
------------
Just think of Louis XVI and his beloved Marie-Antoinette.
They'll have it until they don't anymore.
All I know is that I don't want to look rich when the pitchforks come marching down the road.
"Why is there a dire shortage of hippies in the country and what should the government do to address it?"
---------------------------------------------
I suggest a subsidy from the TARP fund to produce low cost bell bottom pants and tie dye shirts for mass distribution. It's a "supply side" problem I tell you, if you make them they will be worn!
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
"After eight years of that drooling idiot W and the calculated evil of his puppeteer Cheney, Obama is a class act. He is no more a liberal than Clinton was, nor will he effect any significant change. I didn't expect anything of him except a change in style, so I am not disappointed."
"It seems clear that Obama and his corporate masters will destroy the country. But at least he doesn't make me want to barf whenever I hear his voice or see him on the tee-vee. He's smooth and articulate, can speak proper English and occasionally displays a conscience. It's more pleasant to have him presiding over our demise than the Texas chain-saw massacre gang."
I think you were trying to make your original comment sound better with more explaining, but all you did was make it sounds worse. Your view towards our "leader" is directly comparable to what is wrong with this country as a whole in MANY MANY facets...you don't care about the product, you only care about the packaging.
I guess i prefer a turd that smells like a turd, cause it's not fooling anybody with an IQ. Our new turd has so much perfume on, supposedly smart people are closing their eyes and enjoying the aural change.
Peter,
I'm a fellow Canadian and worry about how all this limited amount of oil, regardless of it's home of origin, is literally going up in smoke.
I overlook a 6 lane expressway (the 400, which is the vehicular link from Toronto to Northern Ontario and the West) and it is forever filled with vehicles. It, and thousands like it worldwide, are overflowing with personal transportation devices, with people flitting all over the place, much like organized rats.
Example: little Johnny is getting his ride to soccer practice in a vehicle that barely gets 15mpg on a limited fuel source. Instead of that fuel being used to heat a home or manufacture a medicine or means of renewable energy, we're blowing it out our collective tailpipes.... never to have any future value. Instead, ironically, the fuels' combustion which turns into what seemed to be a harmless gas (CO2) is turning out to be our and the planet's demise. So it looks like the great transportation experiment of the 20th century has been a collosal failure.
I agree with simonetta's point about the hordes of neandertals living just outside the borders of the "underemployed, over-educated cadre of self-righteous white people who believe that used french-fry oil and creative dumpster diving will save humanity" won't be happy giving up their "right" to personal transportation (as well as their suburban lifestyles), in whatever exhorbitant form it takes.
The momentum for all this madness is so great, I'm not even convinced a spike in oil prices will be enough to put the stake in this beast's heart.
Time will tell. I'm holding on as I suspect it to be a rough ride.
http://envirorants.blogspot.com
Dr. Doom,
The Orlov materials are the first thing I have seen in a while that look like they are asking questions that might be pushing an edge. And even there, not much.
All of you with a happy go lucky, it will be okay, lets keep driving fairy dust burning cars, pry it from my cold dead hands, types, I am only one voice. I know it won't get through. But I gotta try.
Wake the fuck up! Pry those lips off of what you think is the wonderful "nipple of sustenance" and look at it carefully. That is a fucking tailpipe you are sucking on. Might feel good for a minute, but it was never good for you.
Cars brought you:
Obesity-don't burn calories
Weakness-don't use muscles
Isolation-not much human contact
Dependency-need transport for everything
Misplaced sense of identity- that is really your ego thinking you are what you drive
Misplaced sense of values- i.e. consumerism
Debt
Stress
Culture Shock- I don't have a better label for this one, what I mean is the numbness that we must cultivate to counter the "speed up" that sends our system into disequilibrium.
Too fast a paced life style
Over-hyped expectations of what life is supposed to be that has us focused on "surfaces" rather than depth.
Cars and Trucks have been amazing and have made a whole bunch of things possible. Their presence in our way of life is now lopsided and like the economy, a rebalance is coming in one form or another. We can try to be conscious and ease our way into car independence or we can muddle on until we are forced into it.
I think we will muddle and have the roads pulled out from under us.
Maybe I should just go photograph manatees with David Mathews in Florida.
To the extent that anything I have said is responsible for your outpouring of hateful bile, I apologize. May you find peace and happiness in your life.
Hi Dale,
Can you tell me what is hateful or bile about my post please?
Sorry Dale, you addressed that to someone else.
Cavegal,
Happy to hear that you are taking your food supply into your own hands; we all should be! I have found that to be the most empowering thing I've ever done. Gardening must be one of the most dangerous things people can do. For the corporations that is.
I've been on this journey for 4 years now, but the most exciting stuff just started happening this year. Don't know if you saw my first post, but I highly recommend checking out permaculture, or maybe give Masanobu Fukuoka's "The One Straw Revolution" a read. Powerful stuff. Very threatening to the status quo. And I mean ALL of the status quo...
Cheers!
What I've been doing for about a year now is stopping at the dumpster back of the DAV in Springfield (nearest town) and seeing what's in there I can use or want. The trash collector comes about 8:30 pm and scrunches all of it after it picks it up and dumps it in its mouth. An incredible waste just because it didn't sell after 3 markdowns. Last year I spent 2 hours getting one of those greenhouse windows out of there. Some guy finally agreed to help me and then I couldn't get it in my car so I left it outside for someone else.
What I notice is that the Hispanics regularly check the dumpsters. They know how to maximize what they have, what's important, and how to get it free. They help you get something you want as they jump inside. It's an entire little sub culture doing this. Someone in NYC wrote an article for New Yorker I think it was on this. She got 2 bags while doing it full of cashmere sweaters. It really is incredible when you stop to think about it in this way. The mentality of people who throw really good stuff in the trash and that counts for the DAV thrift and the Salvation Army thrift. The only difference is that the SA has sensors that call the police on you and they are really mean and threatening. Their time is coming. I read today that police tasered and shot a dog three times as it bit one trying to get it (cornered dogs do that). It was a chuahuahua! I am beginning to understand why the druglords kill them.
And BTW the druglords are coming to a town near you. They wait until hispanics move in the neighborhood. This gives them cover. They are moving north.
Please end this prohibition. It didn't work last time and just increased crime. Doesn't anyone ever learn anything? Doesn't anyone ever remember anything?
If you can get junk silver coins and gold. If you have extra you can put away, that is. And keep reading Lovecraft. He is clairvoyant.
What I've been doing for about a year now is stopping at the dumpster back of the DAV in Springfield (nearest town) and seeing what's in there I can use or want. The trash collector comes about 8:30 pm and scrunches all of it after it picks it up and dumps it in its mouth. An incredible waste just because it didn't sell after 3 markdowns. Last year I spent 2 hours getting one of those greenhouse windows out of there. Some guy finally agreed to help me and then I couldn't get it in my car so I left it outside for someone else.
What I notice is that the Hispanics regularly check the dumpsters. They know how to maximize what they have, what's important, and how to get it free. They help you get something you want as they jump inside. It's an entire little sub culture doing this. Someone in NYC wrote an article for New Yorker I think it was on this. She got 2 bags while doing it full of cashmere sweaters. It really is incredible when you stop to think about it in this way. The mentality of people who throw really good stuff in the trash and that counts for the DAV thrift and the Salvation Army thrift. The only difference is that the SA has sensors that call the police on you and they are really mean and threatening. Their time is coming. I read today that police tasered and shot a dog three times as it bit one trying to get it (cornered dogs do that). It was a chuahuahua! I am beginning to understand why the druglords kill them.
And BTW the druglords are coming to a town near you. They wait until hispanics move in the neighborhood. This gives them cover. They are moving north.
Please end this prohibition. It didn't work last time and just increased crime. Doesn't anyone ever learn anything? Doesn't anyone ever remember anything?
If you can get junk silver coins and gold. If you have extra you can put away, that is. And keep reading Lovecraft. He is clairvoyant.
What I've been doing for about a year now is stopping at the dumpster back of the DAV in Springfield (nearest town) and seeing what's in there I can use or want. The trash collector comes about 8:30 pm and scrunches all of it after it picks it up and dumps it in its mouth. An incredible waste just because it didn't sell after 3 markdowns. Last year I spent 2 hours getting one of those greenhouse windows out of there. Some guy finally agreed to help me and then I couldn't get it in my car so I left it outside for someone else.
What I notice is that the Hispanics regularly check the dumpsters. They know how to maximize what they have, what's important, and how to get it free. They help you get something you want as they jump inside. It's an entire little sub culture doing this. Someone in NYC wrote an article for New Yorker I think it was on this. She got 2 bags while doing it full of cashmere sweaters. It really is incredible when you stop to think about it in this way. The mentality of people who throw really good stuff in the trash and that counts for the DAV thrift and the Salvation Army thrift. The only difference is that the SA has sensors that call the police on you and they are really mean and threatening. Their time is coming. I read today that police tasered and shot a dog three times as it bit one trying to get it (cornered dogs do that). It was a chuahuahua! I am beginning to understand why the druglords kill them.
And BTW the druglords are coming to a town near you. They wait until hispanics move in the neighborhood. This gives them cover. They are moving north.
Please end this prohibition. It didn't work last time and just increased crime. Doesn't anyone ever learn anything? Doesn't anyone ever remember anything?
If you can get junk silver coins and gold. If you have extra you can put away, that is. And keep reading Lovecraft. He is clairvoyant.
The largest infrastructure the USA has is roads. The smartest, quickest and cheapest way to have mass transit, either public or private is BUSES. Company buses, private buses, quiet electric, or simply very quite buses to not disturb the suburbs, luxury buses with compartments so as to respect privacy, buses that can be called from the internet, route analysis by startups from internet, etc. It can be done, should be done, gradually. This would create jobs in bus - mass transit service, would save much money on gas, save money on cars, many 2 car garage families would gain an extra room by getting rid of one car and converting one of the garages in a bedroom, etc. The USA still remains and will probably forever the most well equipped country in terms of roads, the sheer numbers, sizes, and connections all over the place can never be compared to anything worldwide. So this is what they can use, to save on gas, to calm global warming, etc.
It is a no brainer, it is a win win situation, you will never get rid of private cars, it is not necessary, but by greatly and gradually increasing bus services, maybe private taxis, etc. you can make constant gains.
Also the USA has many homes, some say too many, so turn them into rents, cheap rents, from 300 to 600 dollars a month, this would greatly help the economy, it is a no brainer a win win situation. Why are people so stupid ? Can't they see the solutions under their very eyes ?
On the dumpster guy, America is a society that has already reached a utopian state: there is by far enough houses, wealth, education, infrastructure for everyone to live as was once envisioned in a communist utopia. In fact I would go so far as to say that america has achieved that goal, it is exactly a communist utopia in terms of excess capacity, resources, education, wealth. An infinite resource society. And this is the problem: it is so rich that it can't stand the idea of sharing it with everyone, it can't bear the idea that there is enough for everyone, so what do they do ? they fight each other, they chew out their own guts by insane health care systems, insane fire - hire systems, by constantly creating all kinds of insecurites, mega stress, internal fights of all kinds, etc.
In fact the USA demonstrates that no progress is possible as long as human nature doesn't change, as long as most people start reasoning in terms of what a technological society can offer, in terms of repressing our competition and fight intincts. There is a huge amount of room for the USA to become even much more wealthy, by mass transit, simple health care systems, gauranteed social salary, reduced 4 hour a day work day, since work has been automated by computers, cheap rents, walkable communities, higher density living, etc. But can human nature be controlled ? can humans accept peace ? No, people suck, they will just keep on fighting and repressing each other until some other culture overtakes the western society.
EIGHTM, your question, "Why are people so stupid ? Can't they see the solutions under their very eyes?" my mother repeatedly taught us that most solutions are within an arms-reach before us, and, I've practiced her advice productively throughout out life,
I appreciate your contemplations and suggestions,
I think greed plays an unfortunate role in misuse of existing resources, resources that used wisely would extensively spare us of so much waste and environmental and social degradation,
well, just thought I'd pipe in here,
Berig Vintrange
The largest infrastructure the USA has is roads. The USA still remains and will probably forever the most well equipped country in terms of roads, the sheer numbers, sizes, and connections all over the place can never be compared to anything worldwide. So this is what they can use, to save on gas, to calm global warming, etc.
I don't think you've done the math. Roads deteriorate fast and need lots of oil/energy for upkeep. Main roads are obviously essential but I'd be willing to bet that a huge percentage of the network needs to disappear.
------------------
Also the USA has many homes, some say too many, so turn them into rents, cheap rents, from 300 to 600 dollars a month, this would greatly help the economy, it is a no brainer a win win situation. Why are people so stupid ? Can't they see the solutions under their very eyes ?
You just watch what happens to the price of your house if you start giving away freebies!
The real issues in the US is that the haves do not want to share with the have nots. They like to feel superior. The whole US culture thrives on this. The have nots even want to believe in the system because they've been brainwashed into thinking that if they worl hard enough they or their offspring will "make it".
The irony is that the most disenfranchised will even vote against their best interest (usually right wing policies) thinking it's easier to take away other people's goodies than trying to get some goodies for themselves.
"The new [American] President is leading by example as he does things that require many people working and much more oil. His latest Saturday night date took place in Paris and he used one airplane to fly home—his family used another. None of his entourage used the natural wind power that Americans used for decades to travel to and return from Europe. " M.S.
Turkle said,
“Be helpful and tell us which alt energy stocks.”
Thanks for asking, I was feeling ignored, especially after my troll bate post didn’t start a firestorm. Let me first restate, with less sarcasm, my original point.
I heard Jim speak at West Chester Univ., PA about 8 years ago, thereafter, I read all of his books along with other’s of the same ilk (Jacobs, Crawford, Downs, Calthorpe, Duany, Cervero). As a result, I picked Urban Planning as a major and have worked for public transit agencies since graduation. In an email Jim once told me I would be a very busy person in a couple years. However, the years under the Bush administration have been very hard. I have worked as a temp for 3 years at one place, waiting for a hiring freeze to end – I could go on. Finally, NOW, with President Obama things are changing in major ways, I feel vindicated, for believing and acting on the vision Jim set forth. Thank you, Jim.
But the real source of my optimism is that, as Jim has said, its not whether we will have a shift in the way we live. The quest is will it be a controlled shift or a cataclysmic shift. Before Obama took office my bet was on cataclysm, now while I am still have trepidations I think we may actually pull off a controlled shift. Yes, I would like to see Obama just outlaw cars, but lets be realistic. He is moving in the right direction, at a rather decent pace. Sure, I’d like it to go faster, but too fast isn’t good either – transit agencies have had cut service for the past 30 years to meet politically motivated budget demands. Now, they are being asked to do something they have no experience with – adding service, its taking a bit of time to adjust.
Ok, stocks. Rather than “give you a fish” let me teach you how to fish.
1) follow the money. Obama’s budget is pouring money into health care, education and the environment/alt energy (wind, solar and geothermal). I don’t know much about health care or education but I do know alt energy. Which leads to the next point
2) invest in want you know. Its not about studying balance sheets (accounting is all about how to lie with balance sheets anyway) it is about looking at what a company is making (high efficacy solar cells – look up EMKR or low cost wind – look up MMGW) and saying this is something I think will work.
3) Stay ahead of the curve. First it was low-cost standard solar. Now its wind, and high efficacy solar. Soon geothermal with be the big thing. Than the support items – electric generators/turbines, batteries, power converters. Than the less sexy but promising bio-fuels.
4) Open an Ameritrade account, Scott trade or similar account – brokers are a thing of the past. Don’t relay on advice news letters, they are playing pump-and-dump and you are the sucker at the poker table when you read and invest based on their advice – do you own research. Which leads to my last point.
5) Google is your friend. Google “solar cell manufactures” follow links, read alt-energy blobs and environmental newsletters and websites. I just heard about thin film solar, googled it and found PFLM.
As an added bonus I can feel good that I am help finance companies that may save civilization. Here are some others to get you started: GE (a no-brainer), SOLF, SOL, HTM, TSL, STP, WMI, TGRW, AWNE, PWER, FSLR, ASYS, ASTI, ESLR. Most of these have doubled in the past 3 months.
Good luck and do something positive with the wake up call and vision Jim as set forth, hope to see all of you prospering in “the World Make by Hand.”
Time for an update:
Current Score: Status Quo----- 1
---------------Obama Admin---- 0
In Finance:"Vested Interests"---- 1
------------New Investment------- 0
Clusterfuck Ratings Index------6/10/09
Dow Jones Myopic Industries----8,766
Ideologue No-futures Index-----6,666
Rational Infrastructure Bonds--.-12,000,000,000
Someone ask Obama where GM will be in five years.
Some one ask Obama the status of the Fed's balance sheet?
God, some one ask anyone in power, if they can look beyond the next election cycle?
Worth discussing. Drawing a line in the sand with respect to sustainability. For instance, had the US implemented some kind of compulsory population control and the US population was currently 230,000,000 instead of 330,000,000 - how would it be affecting our position with respect to Peak Oil if all others world cultures had continued at their own pace?
How would it affect our current debt levels, both in house and extra-national?
Hmmm?
Time for an update:
Current Score: Status Quo----- 1
---------------Obama Admin---- 0
In Finance:"Vested Interests"---- 1
------------New Investment------- 0
Clusterfuck Ratings Index------6/10/09
Dow Jones Myopic Industries----8,766
Ideologue No-futures Index-----6,666
Rational Infrastructure Bonds--.-12,000,000,000
Someone ask Obama where GM will be in five years.
Some one ask Obama the status of the Fed's balance sheet?
God, some one ask anyone in power, if they can look beyond the next election cycle?
Worth discussing. Drawing a line in the sand with respect to sustainability. For instance, had the US implemented some kind of compulsory population control and the US population was currently 230,000,000 instead of 330,000,000 - how would it be affecting our position with respect to Peak Oil if all others world cultures had continued at their own pace?
How would it affect our current debt levels, both in house and extra-national?
Hmmm?
I love it when mooks repeat the old-time right-wing claim that the car critics are the elitists! That's some funny shit!
If ever there was an elitist product, it is the automobile. It is (or at least has been) the core commodity sustaining the corporate investor stratum, i.e., the rich folks who abolished Adam Smith's small business capitalism because it was killing their bottom lines.
The basic fact is that cars-first transportation was at least as much dictated to us from above as it was popularly "chosen."
Prying stuff from cold, dead hands, however, is exactly the right frame. If the mooks don't pull their crania away from the farting backside of the overclass (e.g., stop listening to the mentally ill clown George Will in between episodes of "24"), there's gonna be a lot of prying & dying going on down in mookland.
TreeHuggingLiberalPinko,
Thanks. Best post this thread!
Cthulhu wonders how productive cattails are after the bio-mass and nutrients are removed from the locale, and not left to decompose locally.
Cthulhu wonders if any smart fire-apes have learned to bookmark the last comment in the new blog. Cthulhu uses IE 8.
Cthulhu wonders why the dumb nom d'post, and why Cthulhu uses the third-person voice, when, after all, Cthulhu is a cosmic entity. (Although not as omniscient as BunnBunn, praise be his incisors and ears).
Cthulhu senses the spirit of typo-pad haunts the new blog with demon twin postings and satanic cgi errors wafting throughout the interwebs like fog on a single lane two way road, in early November. BEGONE!
Cattails need to be scaled up.
To cat-o-nine-tails!
Smile for your overlord now as you pass, and dip your lid in respect.
Cthulhu,
Do you have to smoke that hawaiian gangja as soon as you get home????
"Obama’s budget is pouring money into health care, education and the environment/alt energy (wind, solar and geothermal). I don’t know much about health care or education but I do know alt energy."
THLP, whatcha smoking? Not a dime has gone into health care or education, as Wall Street, banks, and the car corps have gotten trillions. In fact, Obama is now talking about CUTTING Medicare! On schools, he's doing literally zero.
Alt energy, meanwhile, is a pipedream. I thought you said you read Jim's books. Check out page 31 of Long Emergency again, my friend.
This society is not doing anything right, Obama included.
Obama not doing anything right?
He's clearly buying the best missiles & drones. How many Pakistani villagers can YOU kill with one shot?
Want to do something to increase the resilience of your neighborhood in preparation for the Long Emergency? Join or start a Kunstler Club!
What is a Kunstler Club?
A Kunstler Club is a small group of neighbors who are taking concrete steps to increase the resilience of their neighborhood in the event of economic collapse, energy or resource shortages, and/or natural or manmade disasters. Click here to learn more.
The battle between the inner and outer suburbs has begun in the Philadelphia suburbs. SEPTA (Southeastern PA Transportaton Authority) wants to build a 600 car parking garage at the historic and beautiful Jenkintown-Wyncote train station located just outside the city. More than 500 residents of that very walkable community are fighting to preserve their model circa 1900 neighborhoods by demanding that the commuter rail service be improved and extended so that the McMansion crowd can park closer to home at smaller rail stations in the far suburbs. Local politicians are getting dumped and old school transit planners are confused at the loud public rejection of their "happy motoring" outdated logic. Google Cheltenham Chamber of Citizens to follow the struggle.
The battle between the inner and outer suburbs has begun in the Philadelphia suburbs. SEPTA (Southeastern PA Transportaton Authority) wants to build a 600 car parking garage at the historic and beautiful Jenkintown-Wyncote train station located just outside the city. More than 500 residents of that very walkable community are fighting to preserve their model circa 1900 neighborhoods by demanding that the commuter rail service be improved and extended so that the McMansion crowd can park closer to home at smaller rail stations in the far suburbs. Local politicians are getting dumped and old school transit planners are confused at the loud public rejection of their "happy motoring" outdated logic. Google Cheltenham Chamber of Citizens to follow the struggle.
Hey Kunstlerclubs, did you get JHK's blessing on using his name first? There still are laws and lawyers in the land.
Also, many communities have this agency called Civil Defense. Usually, it's a county or city thing, maybe state and federal, too. Jay Hanson and I were discussing the role of CD in any economic, energy or food crisis in Hawaii. Jay initially thought this was a good idea, but was later discouraged by the potential politics. Seems to me politics get into all human endeavors. So, just a thought, but there are structures in place for natural disasters, and The Long Emergency does seem to qualify on many levels.
Cthulhu sounds like a JR nom de guerre!
Hi, Bud4wiser, I always enjoy your comments and MOSTLY agree, but not this time.
We don't need compulsory population control any more than we ever needed mandatory breeding. It is because most cultures used & continue to use FORCE to induce people, specifically women, to breed and breed and breed, that we are now insanely overpopulated. Even our own society still legally "privileges" breeding and parenthood, mainly by taxing the non-breeding population excessively while providing multitudes of inducements to childbearing to parents.
The best way to induce the population of poor countries, as well as our own, to practice contraception is to leave people free to make their choices, specifically female people who actually have the babies and are responsible for them, and hold them responsible for their freely-made choices.
If we had applied the same principle- complete freedom along with complete responsibility for the costs and results- all along, in every society, we would not have 6.7 billion people, most of them living in dire poverty, globally.
Hi, Bud4wiser, I always enjoy your comments and MOSTLY agree, but not this time.
We don't need compulsory population control any more than we ever needed mandatory breeding. It is because most cultures used & continue to use FORCE to induce people, specifically women, to breed and breed and breed, that we are now insanely overpopulated. Even our own society still legally "privileges" breeding and parenthood, mainly by taxing the non-breeding population excessively while providing multitudes of inducements to childbearing to parents.
The best way to induce the population of poor countries, as well as our own, to practice contraception is to leave people free to make their choices, specifically female people who actually have the babies and are responsible for them, and hold them responsible for their freely-made choices.
If we had applied the same principle- complete freedom along with complete responsibility for the costs and results- all along, in every society, we would not have 6.7 billion people, most of them living in dire poverty, globally.
For those interested in joining a "Kunstlerclub" ,
there is the Transition Towns movement. Check online for a chapter in your area. There is one in mine, and it has a like purpose, to form a network to exchange information and prepare our community for steeply lower levels of energy consumption and for a more complete emergency response than the authorities can provide.
For those interested in joining a "Kunstlerclub" ,
there is the Transition Towns movement. Check online for a chapter in your area. There is one in mine, and it has a like purpose, to form a network to exchange information and prepare our community for steeply lower levels of energy consumption and for a more complete emergency response than the authorities can provide.
Strange thing with the comment section here- my comments are posting TWICE. This is a new computer, yet the site seems very slow, and posts everything 2X.
Hey Prez Obamawamayou, howz about repealing those nasty Patriot Acts I and II after you get around to closing Gitmo, pulling out of Iraq, and indicting all those Wall Street insider fat cats?
Or is there some reason you're contented on keeping them on the books, despite no significant terrorist activities (other than those pesky Iraqi insurgents, wanting our troops out of their country) in years?
Frankly, I could wait on universal health care, why not reinstate our freedoms in the "Land O' De Free"?
PS Please define "insurgent"--was Paul Revere an American Revolutionary insurgent?
Americans don't care about the Patriot Act. Noah is correct, the only "rights" Americans care about is the right to drive - faster than 55, at that.
I wish that when the manure hits the fan, the rage will be directed at the correct folks, but we can already see that it won't.
The bankers and automakers may have gotten us into this mess, but the Unitarians, abortion doctors, Blacks and Jews are going to be the ones who pay for it.
The million dollar investments in the Limbaughs, Hannnitys and Coulters are paying off nicely for the owning classes.
Who made all those rules for "Kunstler clubs," which I presume Jim isn't central to? Why would I join a group that had all these arbitrary constraints? What would do more good -- doing some errands with 13 people in one neighborhood, or spreading the word about our problems?
As to over-population, it's caused by two thing: poverty and sexism.
How and why would anybody want to "hold people responsible" without fixing the situational causes?
Michael,
Not only in “the Long Emergency” but numerous times in Cluster Fuck Nation, Jim has stated that alt-energy/technology will not provide enough power to sustain our current living arrangement.
However, I am not a Kunstler bobble head, nor am I an Obama bobble head. At this juncture I am hoping that the warning provided in the long emergency was heard and averted. Only time will tell.
If it is possible to transition into a sustainable world, it will be through alt-energy. Yes, it doesn’t produce nearly as much energy per unit as oil. We will have to learn to conserve, do with less, live and produce power locally. Communities that do will thrive and those that don’t won’t.
Treehugger, nobody that counts has been warned (because they don't believe it). What was averted? The Long Emergency? It's only just begun!
If your logic dictates that only alt energy will save us, then we will have to do with a whole lot less energy, like maybe only a few percent of what we're using now. How do you define "thrive"? It's looking to be neolithic to me, at least for most folks. Is that state thriving, and what about those folks too shell shocked to put up much of a fight?
Hell, most folks I know think that education-technosavy will save the day. Think that's going to do it?
Yes, Michael Dawson, you are dead on.. situational constraints, such as legal, institutionalized sexism, and the poverty that results from lack of freedom under the yolk of patriarchal religions and fascist legal systems are the causes of overpopulation.
Freedom requires responsibility, and responsibility needs freedom. One is not possible without the other. Only under conditions of freedom from oppressive religions and sexist legal systems can people make the appropriate choices for their lives.
If we seriously want to reduce the population and the deep poverty that goes with it, we need to foster gender equality, freedom from religion, and freedom from oppressive statist governments.
Peak oil is for real: it's not mainstream news but if they ran it, it would sure put a crimp in Obama's plans and squash the green shoots. http://www.alternet.org/environment/140599/peak_oil_is_for_real%3A_the_era_of_cheap_oil_is_officially_over/
Laura, You contend "If we seriously want to reduce the population and the deep poverty that goes with it, we need to foster gender equality, freedom from religion, and freedom from oppressive statist governments."
The freedoms for which you yearn are NOT available in, probably, greater than 95% of the countries on the Earth. What is your rational for rejecting human population control in favor of the current out of control exponential human procreation fest? In my lifetime the Earth's human population has nearly tripled. How many major problems faced by the current crop of humans are the effects of too damn many humans NOT a significant affect?
You want to save planet Earth? Sterilize EVERY human swinging a dick and testicles; start today.
my mac shows one bite
a GOOD OLE BOY told me America would rather "shit a brick" than ride bicycle
We don't own this place, though we act as if we did,
It's a loan from the children of our children's kids.
The actual owners haven't even been born yet.
But we never tend the garden and rarely we pay the rent,
Some of it is broken and the rest of it is bent
Put it all on plastic and I wonder where we'll be when the bills hit.
[Chorus:]
We can run,
But we can't hide from it.
Of all possible worlds,
We only got one:
We gotta to ride on it.
Whatever we've done,
We'll never get far from what we leave behind,
Baby, we can run, run, run, but we can't hide.
Oh no, we can't hide.
I'm dumpin' my trash in your back yard
Makin' certain you don't notice really isn't so hard
You're so busy with your guns and all of your excuses to use them.
Well, it's oil for the rich and babies for the poor,
We got everyone believin' that more is more,
If a reckoning comes, maybe we will know what to do then. Brent Mydland
Echoing Ken, Laura, it's way too late in the human population explosion to make a significant reduction in our numbers with birth control. It will be reduced, though, using dramatically increased mortality like the human population has never before witnessed. Just basic Ecology 101.
Ken, I appreciate the sentiments behind your call for forcible sterilization of all males, but that's been tried, by a woman named Indira Ghandi, and we can see how well it worked for her and her country.
All that would be accomplished by forcing sterilization on males at gunpoint would be to harden male resistance to any form of contraception, either for males or for females. I'll never forget the reaction of the Black Power movement back in the seventies, when clinics were opened offering free tubal ligations to women who were poor and already saddled with huge numbers of children. GENOCIDE!!!! shrieked all the Black Panthers. Those voices were all males. There were demonstrations protesting this.
So I promise you that any authority that attempted such a program would be hounded out of power swiftly, and if the authorities persisted, out would come the pitchforks and firebombs.
Men tend to be extremely sensitive about any suggestion that you alter their privies, or mess with them in any way. I sympathize somewhat. My belief is that it's much easier to get the women to do it, and you could get them to do it voluntarily. Just make it free, and keep guards on the clinics so the guys don't try to bar the doors. Make sure the women have privacy entering and leaving. It's better that way, because the woman doesn't have to decide whether or not to believe the guy when he says he's had a vasectomy. She KNOWS that she will be safe no matter what when her tubes are tied. I did it myself at age 28 and it's the biggest favor I ever did myself.
Population control begins at home, and the U.S. is not setting a very good example. We still "privilege" breeding by means of numerous tax breaks and indirect subsidies. Even though I am single and childless, I pay taxes for our schools, pay more income taxes while parents get exemptions for each child. A family of ten living in a single family house here in Chicago gets their trash picked up gratis by the city while my apt. building full of singles has to pay a private hauler. A SF house likewise gets charged a flat rate for water, no matter how many people dwell in the house, while my apt building's water is metered, even though we use far less per household and are making far more efficient use of our land. The official policy in this country is and always has been to promote family formation and child bearing, at the expense of singles and childless couples. And our own population is growing at 5% a year while our resources are depleting at 2% a year or more- pretty scary arithmetic.
It is because of all of this that we must respect people's core rights to make their own decisions while holding them responsible for them. Make birth control, sterilization, and abortion free to indigent women. Right now, a woman on welfare cannot get a tubal ligation unless pregnancy would pose a direct threat to her health, or she is able to score the handful of "pro bono" procedures available at the public hospital here. The waiting list is 3 years long, there is so much demand. The cost of oral contraceptives is about $75 a month and often not covered by medical insurance, which creates a real hardship not only for poor women, but most of all for lower-middle class women who must work to support their kids and who are hard put to it to keep the rent paid and food on the table for a couple of kids, already. So more people are relying on old fashioned 'barricade' methods that are tricky to use and have a high failure rate.
Let's clean our own house first, then we can help get the rest of the world in hand.
I AM I THE VICTIM OR THE CRIME?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozyYkQuSKrY&feature=related
L, and the rest of you, thanks for commenting about population control - or not.
The point of my post was hardly meant to promote a particular strategy of birth or population control.
My point was to illuminate the relationship between ANY type of energy conservation or "more sustainable" social-political models.
At some point in time, this continually myopic approach to resource allocation will have to give way to "pragmatic" discussions about who, when and how many will continue to bear children.
Regardless of how succinctly or eloquently anyone makes a case for Peak Oil, it is irrelevant without an acknowledgment of that "some number" constitutes a sustainable population.
Again, my argument - for theory only - what would our USA look like right now with only 230,000,000 people...? And of course, what is the time line for a USA with 440,000,000?
If PO doesn't make you sick - 440,000,000 twits will......
L, I guess I get your comments -to make poor people "get more responsible" - its best to arrange a society where they die off, right?
though I am single and childless, I pay taxes for our schools, pay more income taxes while parents get exemptions for each child
-----------------
Have you seen the net worth of DINKs couples vs. couples with kids.. don't talk to me about tax breaks!
Having kids is incredibly costly and I sure hope my kids unbderstand the huge advantage you got and will be taking care of me before taking care of you.
Having kids is NATURAL. It's natural for species to overpopulate when nature is good to them. Mother Nature will do a better job at regulating our growth than we could ever do.
Of course her methods scare us and some people want to play God to make sure they luck out.
Unfortunately, we will probably destroy the planet before we are controlled but at more than 6 billion, who can actually think we still have control?
Yes, having kids is costly, and it's a cost parents CHOSE, in our society. Yes, if you are an American, you made your choices. You should be able to shoulder the cost before you breed. If not, don't breed.
Part of the reason we are in the predicament we are in, of overrunning our environment and depleting our necessary resources, is because we have made it too easy for people to shift the costs of their own choices to the society at large, whether it's having too many kids, or living large 60 miles from work in a 3500 sq ft house with three cars in the garage. We subsidize 5.7 million miles of highway AND the defense of our foreign oil supply to make it possible for people to pretend it's cheap to drive a car, when they wouldn't be able to get near the 3-car lifestyle without huge tax subsidies. Make the user pay all the costs associated with his car to the degree he uses them, and how fast people unload their second, third, and even primary cars. Same with having too many kids, or, if you can't afford it, any kids at all. If the only way you can breed is on the back of the taxpayers, maybe you can't afford it.
Your attitude that contraception is "playing God" and that Mother Nature does a better job of controlling the population via the 4 horsemen, is profoundly anti-life and anti-human, and won't spare you or yours just because you decided to live "naturally" and have as many kids as she decrees. And she won't necessarily spare you or yours when she decides that the species needs some radical pruning.
Yes Laura,
That's the problem with Americans. Despite everything that is happening around them and proof to the contrary, they cling to the belief that they can control everything in their lives.
Have you ever wondered why Americans are so litigious? Maybe it's because you are brainwashed into believing that you can control everything in your lives but deep down you know that shit happens and your only mode of protection is to make someone else pay for your mistakes.
Yes Laura,
That's the problem with Americans. Despite everything that is happening around them and proof to the contrary, they cling to the belief that they can control everything in their lives.
Have you ever wondered why Americans are so litigious? Maybe it's because you are brainwashed into believing that you can control everything in your lives but deep down you know that shit happens and your only mode of protection is to make someone else pay for your mistakes.
Laura:
So when you get old and needy, who's going to nurse those bedsores? Muslims you hope America will let immigrate to the US?
There is no little black book on how to live you life.
I do believe that being in the Western world I did benefit from making my own decision in having kids. But I also believe that Mother Nature gave me the nurturing instanct and the dsire to have kids.
No matter how civilized we thing we are, we are still animals. And I also happen to beleive that we migh be the most intelligent animal on this planet but with more than 6 billion, I don't think we have waht it takes to fix our problems. The issues are bigger than our mostly linear thinking can work with.
Laura:
A few years ago, I could have been the one writing your entry but many things have happened to me making me think the way I do now. Beleive it or not, life happens.
I'm a VERY analytical and disciplined person. In fact, I've been called a calculator by many people.
My decision to have children was quite calculated. I decided to wait until my career was well established because it would be easier to maintain my career with good experience. And who would want to have kids without financial stability? Unly irresponsible people do that.
And of course having kids after 30 was out of the question because that would mean more risks and less healthy eggs.
I even had all the bloodwork done before trying and got healthy months in advance. I avoided all drugs and made sure I ate all the right foods.
Then at 32 weeks the fetus went in distress and gave birth to a 3 pound boy with Down syndrome and a congenital heart defect. He's 10 now and the love of our life. Of course, you must be appalled... these types of people are probably an inefficient use of our precious resources!
I can't even begin to tell you all the other decisions that were the best at the time they were made but ended up sub-optimal in hindsight.
So basically what I am saying is that if we can't even make the most optimal decisions on a personal level how on earth can we fix the planet's problems?
I control what I can but I now accept that there will be a lot of surprises along the way.
I have no argument with your personal choices, and I'm not about to deem a child with Down's Syndrome an "inefficient use of resources." Your child has no less and no more a right to live than any other person in this world.
All born, living human beings have a right to live, and to do what they have to do to make their lives as pleasurable as possible.... provided they don't step on other people in order to do it. I have just as much a right, no more or no less, to what I have and earn as the couple down the street with 6 kids, and they have the right to their choices within their means.
Your Special Needs child will have a much better chance in a world where people who don't want kids or just plain can't support them opt out of breeding. Were the childless in this country all to start breeding, there would be far less help available for your child.
As for having children to care for you in your old age, don't believe for a minute that your kids are going to provide it. Time mag interviewed a Chinese peasant couple in their 90s whose 6 kids long since departed for the big city. The kids all have good jobs and are much better off than Mom and Dad ever were, yet they are contributing NOTHING to the care of their parents- don't send them money and never even visit them. If you're concerned about being cared for in your old age, live on half your income and save the rest, because your kids will do what they will do. I long ago got used to the idea that I will probably have to depend upon a support group of other old women in my dotage.
The point of my previous posts is that we have jointly and individually been living beyond our means in the matter of resource consumption and breeding for a long time, and the bills are now coming due, back-ending us like an 80-10-10 Pay Option ARM. In this country, we've disguised the true costs of all this by spreading the load to all the taxpayers, and now the load has become so great that it can no longer be spread. Everything has to be paid for, and if people knew the costs upfront and were held responsible for them, they might make wiser choices more in keeping with the reality of our dismal resource situation and the limited means of the planet.
And maybe your carbon footprint has nothing to do with whether or not you have children and everything to do with your income.
Let's examine 2 couples: DINKs and a couple with children. Let's say the 2 couples make 100K. Those 100K will be used up no matter what the children situation is.
Maybe the DINKs will not be spending as much and saving the difference but they will expect a return on that investment so they will be banking on growth.
And since our economic system is based on GDP growth, they are implicitly promoting population growth.
Your Special Needs child will have a much better chance in a world where people who don't want kids or just plain can't support them opt out of breeding
Services maybe but money no certainty there. I am expecting the boomers to bankrupt the system. I don't expect much money for special needs.
-----------
As for having children to care for you in your old age, don't believe for a minute that your kids are going to provide it.
I am quite aware of this but basically your strategy is to capitalize on my earnings and hard work raising them. And this makes the world a better place how?
-------------
I essentially agree with what you are saying. My beef with your arguments is your population control measures and your general assumption that we can plan our lives.
I truly believe that we can control some actions but the law of unintented consequences is overpowering.
And maybe the population explosion on this planet is the Western world's fault!
If we weren't using as much oil as we are, would there be as much population growth in the middle east as there is?
Although my male sterilization suggestion was obviously tongue in cheek, as pointed out by Dr Doom, birth control is an impotent process for effecting significant human population reduction. Laura pointed out men would undoubtedly resist such a program as evidenced by a similarly oriented program promoted by Indira Ghandi. Interestingly I had heard not of the Indian attempts but upon frantically rushing to Wikipedia I did find that a minimal effort was put forth by the Indian's from 1975-77. Moreover, perhaps most if not all of the Earth's gommerments have utilized the practices at one time or another, aimed at those considered inferior. Setting aside political and male objections, I am suggesting that total, "total", Earth wide male sterilization with the exception of those still in the gestation cycle would give the Earth a bit of a breather and perhaps enable the few thinking humans time to reflect upon the lunacy of exponential human procreation. In 15-20 years when the to be born crop of live sperm donor's have matured perhaps the human population will have surmised that human population control is absolutely desirable. If not, "fuck us all", we obviously don't deserve a planet as fabulous as the Earth once was.
Although my male sterilization suggestion was obviously tongue in cheek, as pointed out by Dr Doom, birth control is an impotent process for effecting significant human population reduction. Laura pointed out men would undoubtedly resist such a program as evidenced by a similarly oriented program promoted by Indira Ghandi. Interestingly I had heard not of the Indian attempts but upon frantically rushing to Wikipedia I did find that a minimal effort was put forth by the Indian's from 1975-77. Moreover, perhaps most if not all of the Earth's gommerments have utilized the practices at one time or another, aimed at those considered inferior. Setting aside political and male objections, I am suggesting that total, "total", Earth wide male sterilization with the exception of those still in the gestation cycle would give the Earth a bit of a breather and perhaps enable the few thinking humans time to reflect upon the lunacy of exponential human procreation. In 15-20 years when the to be born crop of live sperm donor's have matured perhaps the human population will have surmised that human population control is absolutely desirable. If not, "fuck us all", we obviously don't deserve a planet as fabulous as the Earth once was.
The growth in population in the US is caused by immigration,not high birth rates.
That said, I do not believe in coercive sterilization. That is oppressive. It should be voluntary.
However, there should be incentives. And not free sterilization for the indigent or black.
Just like Social Security, everyone should be entitled to a cash payment for voluntary sterilization.
A tubal is more complicated than a vasectomy, therefore the payment should be greater.
Say that a vasectomy is worth $5,000 and a tubal is worth $7,000. A couple could both be sterilized and have a nestegg of $12,000, to pay for college or a down payment on a house, or whatever.
It would be paid to people who don't have any kids,and people who have five, to the rich and to the poor.
That is the only way to work it.
I personally know 2 women who have had over 9 kids. Neither is raising them. One hands them over to her mother, and one has them taken by the state. One is too irresponsible to be sterilized, but I bet she would if she was paid!
The other asked to be sterilized after her 5th, but the doctor refused.
I know another woman who asked to be sterilized before her first child and after her first child and had to raise holy hell to get her tubal after her second baby. The doctor told her that she should try for a girl! (She had two boys)
There are too many bible thumping OBs in this country, as well as stupid breeders and just plain irresponsible people.
If we paid people to be sterilized, we could make a real dent in our population.
Let me keep saying this in different ways, so Bud4, Ken, Laura and Danm will get it. I believe current US population growth is about 2%, not sure how much of that is from immigration. We are experiencing oil declines of about 5%, mostly from the giant oil fields that we have relied upon for several decades. Those declines presently manifest themselves as higher crude oil prices. The decline rates will increase, to perhaps 7-10% by 2020 or so. At some point, our societal structure will break, probably after one of the many oil price runups, like the one we are experiencing again now. The data are few, but it appears the recurrence interval is about 12 months.
So, we have population growth (consumption) at 2%, vital energy decline at -5% (spread of 7%), with the distinct possibility of US and global (?) societal collapse at any time from now on out into the future.
Why are you even talking about population control? How does that help now or in the future? Yes, it's the long-term cause of our problems, but it's the short-term problems (running out of cheap oil, especially imported cheap oil) that are going to get us.
Now here is something interesting...I wonder if they will make these smaller cities walkable/bikable or will people just trade in the gas misers for a Chinese hummer because they have smaller distances to travel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html
Forgot the link
Quite right, left. There is no "our" anymore. Massive third world immigration has seen
to that. As the great environmentalists Edward
Abbey said, unless we stop the Mexican influx, all
is for naught. The silence of the environmental
movement is deafening. Why? Because unfortunately
it developed in the context of Liberalism. And
Liberalism has turned to self hatred of our coun-
try, race, and Western Civilization itself. It
didn't start out that way, but that's where it is
now. No one wants to hear it, but the facts are
the facts: we are an amazingly progressive people
compared to the rest of the World. Our birth rate
is below replacement level. If we let ourselves be
replaced by Mexicans and Muslims, there is no hope
at all for the World what to speak of our country.
We have to save ourselves first before we can help
anyone else. And we save ourselves by sealing our
borders. Is that sufficient? Of course not, but
it is necessary. You can't solve a problem or per-
form an experiment if you are always adding new
factors. As one poster pointed out, they plan on
having over 400 million people here by 2050, almost all of them third world immigrants or the
children thereof. Another politically incorrect point: our culture developed the ethos of environ-
mentalism. No it has not spread throughout all of
our Culture. But it is making good progress. Wes-
tern Europe is further ahead than we are. But it
will be derailed by a hundred million new mouths
to feed and water-even if they were as committed
to it as we are, which they are not.
Well -color me uninformed - population doubles in less than 50 years, and its immigration that caused it!! (sarcasm intended)
What I trying to hammer home is that at some point - at any point - some one - any one - will have to tell the truth - or the truth will be told by reality - that no amount of stimulus money, no amount on wind farms and solar cells are going to keep up with demand.
I would hope - that this pre-fabricated disaster concocted by wall street -- which is forcing the first contraction of economies in world history could be a longer-term blessing, if it somehow triggers the kind of preemptive pain and suffering that results in social changes that acknowledge a finite world.
But then again - I guess this topic is beyond Clusterfuck - it assumes die-off isn't coming in the next 10 years...... Does anyone believe we can sustain a doubling of population in another 50 years or less years?
I don't - end of world as we know it - 2040-2050.
Cthulhu says watch this video on immigration:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/resources/video/recommended/immigration-gumballs.html
more info:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/immigration-numbers-projections.html
Gee, now wouldn't I have just LOVED to have gotten paid to have my tubes tied back in 1980. I had to pay about $600, which seemed cheap, and I was grateful as hell that I could even find a doctor who would consent to sterilizing a young, healthy, childless woman of any race, which in my case is white. Believe me, I had to search for a while, and so did other women friends of mine who did the same thing.
I believe that if the operation were free, you wouldn't have to pay women to do it. It is not really a much more complex operation than vasectom- you can walk around in about a day, the pain is minimal,and you're about your business in three or four days. But right now, the operation costs $3000, which is a real obstacle not only for poor women, but for those of the broad lower-middle-class, whose health insurance mostly no longer covers this. Dig it- health insurance must cover in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, that cost $20,000 minum and usually much more, but do not have to cover tubal ligation or even contraception, even though the latter are much more important for maintaining a woman's health. Cook County does a very small number of "pro bono" procedures but the waiting list is 3 years, last I heard.
Lots of good comments this week. My 2 cents:
Population control as either a big government or, especially, as an international effort will never work. Too many religious, personal freedom, and compliance issues for that ever to be taken seriously. Futher, the idea that the government could/would provide financial incentives to promote it is likewise misguided. What, is the Treasury going to borrow even MORE money from the Chinese (that we'll default on anyway) to finance the effort? What COULD THEORETICALLY work is to eliminate tax deductions for dependents (or, over one or two), or, even harsher still, TAX dependents over one or two. Yeah right! Good luck with EVER passing something like that, and even better luck with ever enforcinbg it if you did. Population control WILL come eventually the same way it always has; increased mortality rates due to whatever form of calmity hits us first in whatever locality you're in. In some cases it will be starvation, in some warfare, in many it will likely be just desperation and a quiet resignation that the world has changed and isn't worth inhabiting anymore.
Controlling immigration is likewise pointless, ineffective, and costly. Living in New Mexico, my observation is that the illegals here (I know several) work harder and contribute more than the native borns. Controlling immigrants is much like controlling the illegal drugs that they often bring with them. Where the demand and economic incentives exist, no amount of interdiction efforts will ever stop it, although corrupt public and private enterprise WILL quickly form to take advantage of the huge inflows of money into the black market it creates.
Funding issues regarding climate change and related peak oil and new energy economy "green" issues have NOTHING to do with the costs of illegal immigrants and EVERTHING to do with the fact that we are SIMPLY BROKE! $13T+ BROKE! Why? Because we've fallen for the twin sirens' songs of military global empire financed by an American dictated global financial system that exists only to funnel the world's wealth into the United States and its closely allied sycophants, and then further, up the economic ladder to the top .1% of the population, all predicated on the laughable economic proposition that from there it will "trickle down" benevolently to the great unwashed masses, making them clean and rejoicing in the wonder of the many miracles that American style global capitalism has wrought. Now that we've all played our part and transferred our wealth for generations to come to these priveleged few what do we get in return? The promise that if we'll just transfer another $T or two of public money (well actually, its mostly CHINESE public money) into their hands, they'll once again be willing to lend us OUR OWN money back to us, at a suitable rate of interest of course.
In short, I think "big government" solutions to ANYTHING are pointless at this point, as government default and break up is now locked in. At this point, perversely, all incentives reverse. As more and more people come to realize that default is inevitable (and I think a great many of the political and financial elite have already LONG realized this), efforts will switch from trying to save or prop up the failing system, and instead focus on extracting wealth and advantage for ones' self, family, and alliances. The current and ongoing government bailouts are proof enough of all that, with minor side issues such as universal healthcare meant only to sweeten the taste of the bitter and noxious pill as it goes down.
Here's an idea to eliminate the entire US national debt that would free up enormous amounts of public money to address all of our current problems as well as directly address (in a small way) the likewise enormous income and wealth disparity that currently exists. Rest assured, for obvious reasons, I'm under no illusion that this could or would ever actually happen.
Assess the aggregate net worth of all the private citizens/families in the US, and then send a bill for their percentage of the whole * the current national debt. I don't know how the numbers would work out, but I think the result would still be well within the means to pay for all involved. For the ~50% of citizens with negative net worth, this would mean a $0.00 tax bill (sorry, no rebates. That's not the point of this exercise). For those with modest means, the bill would still be modest. The ultra wealthy would feel a little more pinch, just as it should be.
I played around with the idea in Excel, and the numbers looked reasonable, although I have no idea whether my net worth numbers were remotely accurate. I used 330M population, average networths of $100k, $500K, and $1M (even accounting for all the negative values) to estimate total aggregate, $13T for the debt (even though that also includes debt that we owe "ourselves"), and then did the math with various individual net worths. The tax burdens appeared to be reasonable, although they certainly wouldn't be pallatable.
In an ideal world we'd perform this little exercise every generation (~20-30 years) just to keep things under control. Wanna bet THIS wouldn't help control government spending, at least among the wealthy? Of course there would be untold numbers of ways to game the system, but it's nice to imagine that in a perfect world we could all be responsible for our public debt (and NO, this is no more socialist than the current income tax system, its just a hell of lot more progressive).
Let's modify the above proposition with a minimum payment of say, $100. You'd have to have some minimum buy in among the worthless to make it remotely "fair" for the ultra rich.
Another point on climate change etc. The REAL challenge if we are to be remotely serious about addressing global climate change will not be the costs in converting the US and other first world countries, hard as that alone will be (keeping in mind the US must bear cannabalization costs as well, the cost of getting rid of all the energy inefficient shit we've already built). The real challenge will of course be in developing technological fixes that will be cheap enough that third world developing countries can implement immediately and so leapfrog the dirtier 20th century technologies that will enable them to transition quicker. This alone will be a MONUMENTAL task, and given current and projected world population distributions, one that dwarfs any prospective gains to be had by getting the US's house in order sooner rather than later, as daunting as that task alone will be.
My money's on climate change (as well as peak oil) coming out the winner in this one, and once again, perverse incentives will apply. Once the handwriting's on the wall, it will be in everyone but the most altruistic among us's best interest to abuse remaining resources in one last gasp of collective narcissism. Oh what a time it will be!
I really do wish I could be more optimistic, but given current attitudes and political realities, I think the only reasonable conclusion is that we're all collectively fucked over the course of the next century or so.
Well we’re just the third chimpanzee and haven’t really traveled that far from the tree.
In the chimp world the most powerful chimp is the unbeatable male who takes the top of the tree as his rightful place. Humans strive to get the top floor office and penthouse as their rightful place.
When the top chimp craps, it falls on the chimps in the tree below. Humans are fully aware that ‘sh*t rolls down hill’. And since we don’t live in trees anymore, the appropriate thing for the top banana is to crap in a gold plated toilet.
In the chimp world, the territory of other groups of chimps is invaded and the chimps displaced so a dominant group can have more resources. Humans control, invade and/or displace other people in order to take their resources. This can occur at the level of the nation as well as at the level of the corporation with a corporate/government takeover. And let’s not forget the national and local gangs that take territories from others just because they can.
In the chimp world, the chimps swing freely through the trees in search of needed food. Humans cruise freely (once upon a time) through the landscape in their cars on the Happy Motoring highways. Just picture the happy motorist cruising a half mile to the store in a 2 ton SUV, to buy a package of cheese doodles.
In the chimp world, the amount of resources taken from the environment is just enough for the groups needs. Humans tend to take as many resources/wealth as they can grab from the environment, with many having no satiation limit.
In the documentary ‘The Planet Earth’, the victorious chimps celebrate by eating a defeated chimp’s baby. Humans use napalm and phosphorus to remotely burn the babys of the enemy.
Is this really evolution or are we devo?
Well we’re just the third chimpanzee and haven’t really traveled that far from the tree.
In the chimp world the most powerful chimp is the unbeatable male who takes the top of the tree as his rightful place. Humans strive to get the top floor office and penthouse as their rightful place.
When the top chimp craps, it falls on the chimps in the tree below. Humans are fully aware that ‘sh*t rolls down hill’. And since we don’t live in trees anymore, the appropriate thing for the top banana is to crap in a gold plated toilet.
In the chimp world, the territory of other groups of chimps is invaded and the chimps displaced so a dominant group can have more resources. Humans control, invade and/or displace other people in order to take their resources. This can occur at the level of the nation as well as at the level of the corporation with a corporate/government takeover. And let’s not forget the national and local gangs that take territories from others just because they can.
In the chimp world, the chimps swing freely through the trees in search of needed food. Humans cruise freely (once upon a time) through the landscape in their cars on the Happy Motoring highways. Just picture the happy motorist cruising a half mile to the store in a 2 ton SUV, to buy a package of cheese doodles.
In the chimp world, the amount of resources taken from the environment is just enough for the groups needs. Humans tend to take as many resources/wealth as they can grab from the environment, with many having no satiation limit.
In the documentary ‘The Planet Earth’, the victorious chimps celebrate by eating a defeated chimp’s baby. Humans use napalm and phosphorus to remotely burn the babys of the enemy.
Is this really evolution or are we devo?
Thanks Cthulhu for the information on US immigration. The video and extra info links were superb. Hope we get that Mexican border made invasion-proof soon!
Thanks, Dr D.
I know its very un-PC to want to limit the level of immigration. The Sierra Club had a big dust up several years ago regarding this very issue. Many people just "don't want to know", they think compact florescents and driving a Prius will save the environment, no need to limit the population.
Its not zenophopbia or racism. Unfortunately, there are racists that want to limit immigration. This clouds the issue greatly.
For a lefty's viewpoint, read:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm
"Today's Immigration Battle" by Thom Hartmann
He wrote a Peak Oil book, "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight", and is/was ? on Air America.
So all you pinkos ☺, don't be afraid to consider a different viewpoint.
2) Get rid of the idea of buying houses, this idea has destroyed so much wealth, get back to simply renting homes, renting them at a good price level, maybe between 300 and 800 dollars a month for 2 bedroom homes ? Renting homes is so much more flexible, you can always change your mind and live somewhere else, or change the kind of house you are living in by simply renting a different house. If you are layed off or fired, no problem you can change location and rent in the new location. This idea of home ownership goes copmletely agains all the mantras of the "new economies", the "flexible economies", the idea that you must always change jobs and location so many times in a lifetime. Then why has everyonme been obsessed with owning a home ? What an idiotic idea.
Well, this idea works, unless:
a) you receive your landlord's foreclosure notice as someone else posted here and is all too common across the country;
b) landlords realize they have you by the short hairs and decide to collectively put the screws to renters with ever-increasing rents. I think this is already happening in my town, since a mortgage payment on a 2600 sq ft house is significantly less than what a 3 bedroom apartment rents for;
c) You lose your job/income and can no longer afford your rent. Next stop - living under the Main Street bridge; and
d) you don't want be beholden to a landowner. Historically, things haven't gone well for renters (think: serfs, sharecroppers, etc.)
Unless, of course, you're talking about state-owned real estate...see the former Soviet Union for how well that works.
Oh, and forgot to mention, re:
"Renting homes is so much more flexible, you can always change your mind and live somewhere else, or change the kind of house you are living in by simply renting a different house. If you are layed off or fired, no problem you can change location and rent in the new location."
Don't know when the last time was that you tried to rent a place, but most landlords are kind of sticklers about having a job.
Job=income=ability to pay rent.
This is why western economies are dying, the USA, EU and JAPAN (along with some others) are doomed because the conditions for economic growth are no longer applicable. These societies will slowly degrade and chew out themselves (aka fight each other within the societies), this is the end of PROGRESS.
Chck out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=168540
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=168156
Plans for the future!
The prophet said we were the jewel of the SOUTH! Birmingham is to become the center of good (soccer) football and cycling! JHK, You wait and see.
Plans for the future!
The prophet said we were the jewel of the SOUTH! Birmingham is to become the center of good (soccer) football and cycling! JHK, You wait and see.
Housing worldwide exposes the deception of progress: you often hear that if cars made the same progress as computers in the last 30 years, then they could travel hundreds of miles for a few pennies and the cars would cost only a few hundered dollars. This is true, but why doesn't anyone ever compare housing, real estate to the "progress" of computers ? why doesn't anyone ever say if houses made the same progress of computers they would cost only a few thouand dollars ? some would say because houses are limited by land: this is NOT TRUE, because if you wanted to use only 10% of the land area of only one country in the world like the USA, there would be enough homes for 50 billion people, especially if you use modern apartment constructions like those used in Europe, 5 stories high, etc. So what gives ? Why isn't there any progress in the technology of "houses" ? It is not like the technology can't progress like a fusion reactor or the cure for cancer, heck civil engineering today can do anything it wants at any cost ! because houses is the instrument used to repress the lower classes, it is used to exploit those that can't afford to buy and have to rent, and have to be under the dictatorship of landlords.
So what is all this talk about "progress" ? what progress ? and be sure that if homes did became cheap, which they could become easily, something else would become very expensive such as healthcare. And by the way, hasn't medicine, that is both science and technology progressed at all ? Shouldn't we say that if medicine progressed like computwrs, healthcare should cost only a few hundred dollars a year ? Oh, I see, another corporate interest, of insurance companies and doctors that have found a way to strangle the weak. So why don't the economist just cut the crap about "progress", the "trickle down" effect, advanced economies, etc. when the truth is that people will do anything to squeeze others on any basic need.
Housing worldwide exposes the deception of progress: you often hear that if cars made the same progress as computers in the last 30 years, then they could travel hundreds of miles for a few pennies and the cars would cost only a few hundered dollars. This is true, but why doesn't anyone ever compare housing, real estate to the "progress" of computers ? why doesn't anyone ever say if houses made the same progress of computers they would cost only a few thouand dollars ? some would say because houses are limited by land: this is NOT TRUE, because if you wanted to use only 10% of the land area of only one country in the world like the USA, there would be enough homes for 50 billion people, especially if you use modern apartment constructions like those used in Europe, 5 stories high, etc. So what gives ? Why isn't there any progress in the technology of "houses" ? It is not like the technology can't progress like a fusion reactor or the cure for cancer, heck civil engineering today can do anything it wants at any cost ! because houses is the instrument used to repress the lower classes, it is used to exploit those that can't afford to buy and have to rent, and have to be under the dictatorship of landlords.
So what is all this talk about "progress" ? what progress ? and be sure that if homes did became cheap, which they could become easily, something else would become very expensive such as healthcare. And by the way, hasn't medicine, that is both science and technology progressed at all ? Shouldn't we say that if medicine progressed like computers, healthcare should cost only a few hundred dollars a year ? Oh, I see, another corporate interest, of insurance companies and doctors that have found a way to strangle the weak. So why don't the economists just cut the crap about "progress", the "trickle down" effect, advanced economies, etc. when the truth is that people will do anything to squeeze others on any basic need.
Home ownership is definitely preferable to paying rent, and it's reasonable to pay a slight premium over Rent Parity to have something that you can control, that you cannot be put out of when you've paid for it.
However the advantages of home ownership have been lost in the past couple of decades. When you're paying twice as much to live in it as you would a comparable rental because you paid an inflated price that has no relationship to the rentals for a comparable, and you're tied to a 30 year mortgage, you are just another rent payer.
The property taxes have also gone beyond reason. There has to be a better way to tax than this. I would suggest much larger contract fees for all contracts that you want to be enforced in court, the fee related to the money involved, to replace property taxes. The property tax is a brutally regressive tax, hitting low income owners much harder than more affluent ones, and worse, it means you never really own your property. This is why I don't argue with Chicago sales and "sin" taxes too much, for our property taxes (and the hunk of my rent that goes to pay them) are thereby kept halfway reasonable.
The very tall buildings are very sophisticated structurally and mechanically. Their systems of heating and air conditioning, their water supply systems, their garbage disposal systems, their sewage systems, their elevators; these systems are very complicated installations which require constant support and maintenance. These systems are mostly automated and use computer hardware and software. In absence of their very special parts and replacement components the maintenance will not be possible at all. Also, the possible interruption in electricity supply will be of the mortal nature for most of these systems. All of them will come to the screeching halt without electricity. The emergency energy sources will be a very poor replacement of the real thing.
Also, without proper temperature and humidify balance the building's windows (which are also somewhat complicated nowadays) will not withstand inside and outside elements and will crack at no time.
The above definition is applicable for any very large structure (tall, wide or long).
These buildings will be useless and, therefore, will be abandoned very quickly.
I am enjoying the discussion regarding population control, which has been quite interesting. I tend to agree with those who rightly observe that the only way overpopulation is ever addressed is by NATURE. When populations exceed the carrying capacity of the resource bases they rely upon, massive die-off's occur, thus re-balancing the population to a more sustainable level.
One of the major adjustments we need to make as a society is to quit giving private and public aid to organizations seeking to "relieve hunger" in places where nature is trying to correct the overpopulation problem. Such intervention may make us feel like great humanitarians, but we are only postponing the inevitable. Feeding people who cannot feed themselves merely delays the day of reckoning and makes the future die-off even more massive.
It's really not unlike the problem with the zombie banks we're facing. Continuing to infuse money into a terminally insolvent institution, only puts off the day when the bank must finally admit it is bankrupt and the losses to the public are exponentially greater.
BTW - I notice that the same people who cannot wait to send their dollars to "Save the Children" and similar causes, are also the ones who defend to the death the "right" (I use this word loosely here...) of illegal aliens to run into this country and create millions of anchor babies, thus contributing immensely to the USA's growing population problem. Illegal aliens from Latin America current constitute the most fecund class of persons residing in this country and they breed like rabbits. (My apologies to rabbits everywhere....)
We clearly would not be at a population currently exceeding 300 million in this country if many of the same people who so passionately embrace population control (in theory) would do something concrete to deal with the population problem in this country like supporting efforts to control our Southern border and to expel those who have entered this country unlawfully.
If logic were the dominant force in their political thinking, they would be compelled to support any and all efforts to deal with the illegal immigration problem. But logic has never been the strong suit of the Left. Fuzzy-headed emotionalism rules the day for such people.
Let’s all congratulate ourselves for being above paying any attention to Michael Jackson’s death. Then let’s talk about it all morning!
Jim, maybe for next week’s column you can draw some parallels between the USA and Billy Mays? You could title it, “From Mays to December”.
factoids about population
mexico had 10M people as of 1900
10% of them moved to usa during 30 year mex civil war ..and they assimilated..no multicultural society then
now mexico has 100m and there are 50 m ' latinos' here...THERE WAS NO SUCH GROUPING 50 YEARS AGO
ITS SAID IN ANOTHER 80 OR SO YEARS
mexico will have 300 million people
i say...even another 20 million mexicans...many moving here
WILL EAT AMERICA ALIVE
remeber 1 in 4? mexicans that moves here is illiterate? IN SPANISH
SEE BEST SELLER ' ALIEN NATION' BY PETE BRIMLOW
20 years I believe...while Jessie jackson rails against 'limiting the numbers'
He either refuses to see or refuses to acknowledge what immigrations doing to ' his' people...jobs/ college scholarships/ housing/ crime
as well as the enviornment
'vWell -color me uninformed - population doubles in less than 50 years, and its immigration that caused it!! (sarcasm intended']
YES I DO CALL YOU VERY UNIMFORMED
IN THE USA YES...worldwide NO
The USA is a 'dump' for the 3rd worlds unemployed masses .....educated middle class woman who chosse to have children usually have 1 to 3..world wide