A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Non-Automotive Transportation

I have to admit that sometimes I am intimidated at the thought of writing this blog. There are others whose background on key topics related to adaptations to Peak Oil is much stronger than mine. I think of Sharon Astyk, who can (and has) written volumes on small scale agriculture, food preservation and home economics; or Jeff Vail, who writes extensively on the effects of resource constraints on the global geopolitical scene and relations between nations. There are also geologists and other scientists and mathematicians who explore the actual geology of oil discoveries and extraction in great technical detail, as well as discussing the social and technological impacts of resource constraints on modern society. Most of these people have been writing about these issues for years. My awakening has been rather recent, by comparison. Yet there is one thing I know about intimately, and that is non-automotive transportation, especially bicycle commuting. Therefore I am happy to throw in my two cents' worth on this subject.

But before I begin, I think it's appropriate to give a few reminders of why alternatives to our present economic and social arrangements are necessary. So I will give a few highlights of news I have read in the last few weeks. First, the International Energy Agency (IEA) September Oil Market Report states that world petroleum production fell by around 1 million barrels per day in August 2008 – before any hurricane-related production problems. The October IEA Oil Market Report states that global petroleum supply decreased again in September, by over 1 million barrels per day. The current IEA estimate of global daily oil production is 85.6 million barrels per day. I think that the IEA estimate is overly optimistic, and that actual global petroleum production is lower. Still, the most recent IEA figures show a drop of over 2 million barrels per day within the very recent past.

Secondly, the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) weekly petroleum inventory statistics show that gasoline stockpiles in the U.S. have started dropping again, and that the growth in crude stocks is slowing dramatically. It would not be surprising if next week's report showed a decrease in American inventories of all categories of petroleum products. If the U.S. starts rapidly and deeply drawing down its crude and refined petroleum stocks again, this may lead to a choice between another spike in prices or the re-appearance of shortages such as those we saw in the wake of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Prices are low now because of the perception of greatly reduced demand, not because of new supplies of oil. The trouble is that these low prices may be starting to increase demand for petroleum products, putting pressure on American petroleum stocks.

Next is the discovery by scientists at the University of East Anglia that manmade climate change is affecting every continent on earth, including Antarctica. The changes seen in the Antarctic are impossible to explain by any other means. And according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the atmospheric concentration of the potent greenhouse gas methane rose sharply in 2007. Here are two more pieces of evidence that our modern lifestyle of high-energy overconsumption is destroying the earth.

Lastly, there is the financial crisis and the efforts by rich elites to pass the cost of this crisis onto the poor. The present financial crisis was caused by a number of factors, the biggest being that the rich seized the lion's share of the fruits of productive economic activity while paying their laborers the lowest possible wage. In order to keep a “consumer” economy going in the industrialized West, the rich offered the poor the opportunity to buy things on credit, since very few working-class people could afford to pay cash for many of the things they needed or that they were taught by advertising to want. Then the loans made to these poor and working-class people were bundled into certificates of “worth” and used as investments to borrow ever-larger sums of money.

The only trouble is that the spike in energy and food prices caused by energy and resource constraints wiped out many poor and working-class people and made the investments of the rich – their certificates of “worth” based on loans – worthless, as poor and working-class people started to default en masse on those loans. Now the rich in several countries, including the U.S., have persuaded the governments of those countries to turn most of their citizens into “collateral” for the worthless paper certificates of the rich, by means of government-backed “bailouts” that will never be paid back. The rich created a system by which they could get something for nothing, forcing the rest of us to bear the cost of operating that system. Now that the system is breaking, they seek to use the poor and the working class to grease the wheels of that system for one last run before its almost certain breakdown.

Yet there are signs that some of the lifestyle choices of the poor and working class are causing that system to fail a bit faster than the rich had expected. It seems that increasing numbers of Americans are becoming frugal, learning to delay gratification, and learning to live more simply. This is a threat to the consumer economy and to the fortunes of a significant number of large corporations, lenders and rich executives, as noted here. And there are bloggers who are making the connection between poor or working class people learning to be self-sufficient and the weakening of the “official” economy. Do you want to be a street-legal revolutionary? Disentangle yourself from relying on the “official” system and build alternatives for yourself. Learn to live more simply; learn to live on less. Let those in particular who call themselves Christians learn to live for something other than acquiring lots of material possessions. And everyone, regardlses of religion, start by killing your TV. Don't let your appetite be swollen by advertising to a size larger than the biceps of some major league baseball slugger.

And now on to alternative transportation. My discussion of this topic will fall into a few broad categories, namely, bicycle transportation, walking and public transit (both bus and rail). In my next post I will discuss how I became a bicycle commuter, as well as tips and tricks I learned (and how much fun it is!). I'll also talk about my bike (of course!) and the kinds of equipment I like to use, as well as traffic laws and survival strategies for cyclists. I will then analyze the cycling culture in the United States and discuss whether that culture is a help or a hindrance to the adoption of cycling as basic transportation in this country. I will finish with a discussion of the hindrances and dangers which our present system presents to cycling as alternative transportation.

Other non-automotive transportation options will also be discussed, as well as the car-free culture and the present worldwide car-free movement. For those who are looking at dollars and cents, I will be sure to tell you how much you can save by going car-free or “car-lite.” And I will provide plenty of references for those who want to read about these things in more depth. This will be a fun subject to talk about. Stay tuned!

Portraits Of Alternative Transport

Now is the time for some of the pictures I promised I'd post on this blog. All of these pictures portray people who are finding and using alternatives to automobile-based transportation. But I also have a few comments to make, comments provoked by a New York Times piece I read today.

That article, titled, “Completely Unplugged, Fully Green,” contained descriptions of the lives of several people who are trying to radically reduce their carbon footprint by living simply and self-reliantly. The article revealed a few interesting details about each of the people interviewed; yet the tone of the article implied not-so-subtly that these people were (at least mildly) freaks. One of those interviewed was Sharon Astyk, author of the blog, Casaubon's Book, who with her husband Eric Woods is raising a family of four boys. The Times writer, Joanne Kaufman, described how Astyk's boys were prevented by their mother from joining a Saturday Little League baseball team because joining the team would involve making an unnecessary trip by car, as well as how her boys slept together to conserve body heat in the winter. The article also described a man by the name of Jay Matsueda, who lives in Culver City, California, and who does not use heat or air conditioning for his condominium.

The tone in which the actions of Astyk and Matsueda are portrayed suggests that these are highly unusual lifestyle choices which fall far, far outside the mainstream. In fact, a Google search for the article reveals that it is also titled, “Extreme Approaches Toward Living A Green Life.” But the Times article goes further, coining a new word, “carborexia,” to describe those people who are radically and deeply limiting their consumption and dependence on the present economic system in order to reduce their carbon footprint. And with the introduction of this new term, which sounds suspiciously like the psychological disorder known as “anorexia,” the Times writer also includes interviews with psychologists who discuss the “unhealthy” side of those who devote themselves “excessively” to a sustainable lifestyle.

I think the Times article is childish, immature and inaccurate. For one thing, Sharon Astyk is Jewish and that's why her family does not participate in league sports on Saturdays. Is that so unusual? But when I think of the near shock expressed by the Times concerning some of the other lifestyle choices described in their article, I have to laugh out loud. Consider how the Times writer wrote about Jay Matsueda's decision to forego air conditioning and heating for his Culver City condo.

Culver City is in Southern California, about five miles from the Pacific Ocean and around, oh, 30 miles away from where I used to live in North Orange County. Don't tell anyone this, but I only used my heater twice during the year and a half before I moved out of California. And my home did not have air conditioning. Were there days I would have liked A/C? Sure! But my point is that I didn't die or suffer irreparable harm. Is Matsueda a freak? Not in my book. Of course, I also became a bicycle commuter in 2005, when California gasoline prices first rose above $3.00 a gallon. Maybe that makes me a freak; I don't know.

The biggest flaw of the Times article is that it both trivializes a serious issue and seeks to marginalize those who are trying to address this issue by a more simple lifestyle. This is entirely understandable, since the Times gets most of its revenue from advertising and because the Times is part of a global economic system whose aim is to foster ever-increasing growth of that system and ever-increasing dependence on that system among the general public. It is only natural for the masters of such a system to feel threatened by those who are trying for the sake of principle or conscience to disentangle themselves from the system. It is only natural for the masters of the present system to try to demonize those who are seeking to break free from the system.

Such demonizing is not only inaccurate, it also neglects the fact that increasing numbers of people are cutting back on their consumption and moving toward simpler lifestyles by force and not by choice, as the system known as the “official” economy continues its breakdown. Already there are hundreds of thousands of families in the United States whose children have been forced to forgo not only Saturday league sports, but iPods, GameBoys, big screen TV's, sleepovers, extravagant birthday parties, hanging out at the mall, the latest clothes, new cars, and much more – all because of the evaporation of their parents' livelihoods during the last several months. Whether we like it or not, the growth economy is in serious – perhaps terminal – trouble. The well has run dry. We will all be forced to live more simply.

Since that is the case, the intelligent people are the ones who are taking steps now by choice to adapt to a simpler life rather than waiting until the choice is forced on them. I therefore present pictures of some intelligent people I have met over the last several months. There are many such people here where I now live. Notice that they all seem to be having fun; at the very least they don't seem to be deprived souls, nor are they freaks. Also check out some of their cool rides!

Here's a picture of my odometer today after returning home from work, just so you know that I practice what I preach.

This vehicle is known as a "Bakfiets," and is a Dutch invention. I saw a lady riding one to a grocery store a few weeks ago. Her son was riding inside the wooden carriage. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera at the time, or you all could have seen a Bakfiets in action...

And here's a picture for those of us who ride public transit on occasion. See how serene and stress-free your commute can be! Take a hint from these kids...

Future posts on this blog will continue the theme of alternative systems, focusing on bicycle transportation. Stay tuned!

A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Places To Live

In his thought-provoking book Reinventing Collapse, Dmitri Orlov compares the United States in its present condition to the Soviet Union just prior to the Soviet collapse. He notes a number of similarities between the two countries, including a large military bogged down in useless and harmful adventures, a huge and increasing national debt held largely by foreigners, a negative trade balance due to the collapse of domestic means of meeting basic societal needs and a corresponding reliance on imported goods, the maintaining and expansion of world empires by morally flawed means, and the imprisonment of a large portion of the population. His conclusion is that these conditions precipitated the Soviet collapse, and that they will cause the collapse of the United States as well.

But he also examines those peculiarly Soviet societal characteristics which in his view allowed ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union to survive the collapse without suffering a major societal breakdown. In particular, the communal, state-run, collectively owned nature of all major institutions and of basic assets such as land and housing prevented millions of people from facing the sorts of severe trouble experienced by people without money in the U.S. There were no “Hoovervilles,” no tent cities like the camp for financially distressed people that sprang up in Ontario, California last year as the home mortgage crisis gathered steam (See “Tent City In Suburbs Is Cost Of Home Crisis,” Reuters, 20 December 2007, http://features.us.reuters.com/cover/news/D8C99CD0-AF35-11DC-9E67-616F0DA5.html).

No one in the Soviet Union was evicted from house or apartment because of a lack of funds to pay rent, since housing was free. Land was communally owned and people had for a long time grown kitchen gardens to supplement the goods available from the “official” Communist stores. Therefore, when things collapsed, people had some means of taking care of their basic needs. The collapse was by no means fun or pretty; it was a significant hardship. But it was at least survivable, because of the communal factors mentioned. The same thing can also be said of Cuba's experience after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Cuba suddenly lost all Soviet material support and had to find homegrown solutions to sudden shortfalls of food and petroleum. The Cuban crisis also was survivable because of the communal nature of Cuban institutions and assets. It is not recorded that there was mass starvation of any kind in Cuba during those years, even though people did not have nearly as much to eat as they would have liked. And Cuba, like Russia, recovered from its crisis.

Our American system is very different. Here, one does not get even basic necessities unless one is able to pay for them. And the quality of the necessities provided is directly proportional to the amount of money paid. Moreover, our economic and political systems are being gamed by the rich elites in order to eliminate any government-sponsored social safety net which exists to protect those who lose the ability to pay for things provided by the “official” economy. Examples of this include a number of Oregon ballot initiatives financed by Oregon multimillionaires Loren Parks, Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix, initiatives such as Measure 59, which would allow Oregon taxpayers to deduct the full amount of Federal income tax paid from their state taxable income. This measure would decimate the state treasuries and force cutbacks in essential services provided to children, the disabled and the elderly. Then there is Measure 26, which has not yet qualified for a ballot, which would allow employers to deduct the cost of health benefits from the minimum wage paid to workers.

“Home ownership” has been one of the biggest examples of the risky nature of participation in the American system. To buy a home, a person had to take out a loan to buy a house or condominium, unless that person was able to pay the full price up front. The loan was made at interest, so that the amount of money given to pay off a mortgage was usually at least twice as much as the actual price of the house, assuming that one paid the minimum payment each month on a fixed rate mortgage. And if a “homeowner” who had made several years' worth of payments suddenly lost his or her ability to pay the mortgage for an extended period, that person lost not only the house, but all the equity they had paid into the house.

Renters were not much better off, except that at least renters knew up front that they would never own the properties on which they made monthly payments, whereas home “buyers” were gambling that everything would work out right over a thirty-year period, so that they would eventually be able to throw a “burn the mortgage” party in their golden years. But now as the official economy is breaking, many people are finding themselves homeless or in danger of becoming homeless and searching for alternatives. In this country, those alternatives consist of things like finding relatives who will take you in; finding a cheap slum apartment; going to a rescue mission; moving into a housing project (not recommended unless you want neighbors like the “Bounty Hunter Bloods” of the Nickerson Gardens project in L.A.); getting yourself arrested and checked into the “Gray Bar Hotel”; or finding a shopping cart, a tarp, and a convenient freeway underpass where you can camp out.

This is not very encouraging. One key to maintaining a stable society even in hardship is the availability of reasonably clean and safe places to live. Places which have a bit of land are even better, because they can be used to grow food, herbs and fruit for people who are trying to lessen their dependence on a breaking economic system. The total plot size does not have to be large. Jules Dervaes of Path To Freedom was featured in a 2007 Los Angeles Times article on urban homesteading. He grows over 6000 pounds of food per year on a portion of a 9000-square foot lot. The Oregonian newspaper also printed a recent feature on edible urban gardens. And there are other advantages to the availability of adequate places to live – namely, that if people stay in those places long enough, they begin to form connections with their neighbors and learn to rely on each other and to help each other out. These interconnections become very important as official systems start to break.

I think it's fairly certain that our present government, at a national and state level, will not try to create a safety net of affordable housing for working-class people, since our elected officials are largely the servants of the rich. But what can private citizens do to create their own safety nets?

One answer is cohousing. Cohousing is a communal living arrangement in which a number of people agree to live in a locality, whether a house or a group of homes, and agree to share all the expenses and benefits of such a living arrangement. I have run across the concept over the years while doing Internet research on other subjects, but last week I got to actually see a cohousing arrangement in person. The occasion was a benefit concert for the Portland Fruit Tree Project, held in the backyard of a house which is part of a five-house community. There I had a chance to interview a woman named Katy, one of the founders of the Portland Fruit Tree Project and a member of the cohousing community. We talked about the birth of the Fruit Tree Project as well as the arrangement shared by Katy and the others in her cohousing community.

While the members share responsibilities for chores, their arrangement is not highly structured or hierarchical. Besides chores and chipping into pay bills, the only other obligation is a communal dinner held twice a week. The members of Katy's household are all “active” activists – each is involved in a social cause which is near to his or her heart. Thus they don't have much time to sit and watch television (I did not see a TV when I was there, but I am told that they keep one in a closet somewhere). They do spend time together on occasion to make music together; almost everyone in the household can play a musical instrument.

According to Katy, their cohousing group was founded nearly twenty years ago, and even though some members have moved on to other things, these former members frequently join the regulars for the community meals. Their group has managed to remain remarkably stable, and has even evolved a very small-scale egg and goat milk economic cooperative in which neighbors participate.

Cohousing seems to be a promising answer to some of the uncertainties of our present American crisis. But it takes land and houses and an ability to pay for these. As the economy continues to be squeezed, where can people interested in forming cohousing communities turn for resources?

One answer is to look for properties in areas hit hard by foreclosure or economic blight. Detroit, Michigan is a poster child for such areas. (See http://www.detroitruins.net/ for an example.) One can easily buy a modest two or three bedroom home there for under $50,000. There are places in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California which have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, where prices of modest (I repeat, modest) homes have fallen drastically. Such places would be beyond both the ability and the interest of those who are addicted to living beyond their means. But these places might be easily affordable by people who have chosen frugality and wisdom rather than allowing themselves to be turned into “consumatrons,” and who therefore have some money saved up. Such people might be able to put up enough money to pay the price of a house right up front, bypassing the need to take out a loan.

People relocating to distressed areas would also need two other things: a vision of the sort of intentional community they would like to create, and a plan or vision of how they as a community could bless, beautify and improve the larger community in which they live. Their impact on the larger community would be especially important, in order to remove any resentment which might spring up because of the threat of displacement of long-time residents due to gentrification. A cohousing community in a distressed area would ideally consist of people with skills suited to meeting the needs of their neighbors – people skilled in local urban agriculture, teaching, medicine, construction, salvage economies and other necessary skills. And this sort of cohousing community would succeed best by living simply, not flaunting wealth in front of the surrounding neighbors, and being ever ready to lend a helping hand to those in need.

I believe that cohousing is a viable safety net for those who are willing to live modestly and to share what they have with others. And cohousing holds great promise as a means to provide stability to neighborhoods that would otherwise be blighted by the breakdown of our present system. But cohousing is like seeds planted to produce a harvest – there is an urgency to the planting season, because the winter of our society may be fast approaching.

Below are a few pictures of the Portland cohousing community I visited. Also, here are two links for those who want more information on cohousing: www.cohousing.org/2003/review and http://www.cohousing.org/cm/Creating+Cohousing. Enjoy!

A Portrait of Urban Beauty

Last week I mentioned an upcoming bicycle tour to visit some backyard chicken raising operations in my city, and I promised to share pictures I took on that tour. I did indeed participate in the tour, and I will give a brief report of the event in this post. But first, I want to mention a few news items relating to the oil situation.

The June 2008 edition of the full free version of the International Energy Agency's monthly Oil Market Report was published on Monday or Tuesday of last week (I should keep better track of dates; I promise to do better next time). This was around ten days later than the IEA had promised, which was a bit unusual. (Their next report is due on 12 August, by the way.) According to page 16 of the report, global petroleum liquid supply in June increased by 285,000 barrels per day from the previous month to reach 86.5 million barrels per day. This increase is said to have come largely from OPEC, since non-OPEC output slipped by 65,000 barrels per day during the same period. According to the IEA, therefore, world petroleum production is still growing.

However, the IEA reports have several known weaknesses. First, in computing daily and monthly production values for “petroleum liquids,” they count not only crude oil and condensates, but also tar sands, extra-heavy oil and biofuels. Secondly, their initial estimates for a particular month's production are usually revised downwards as time passes. The world crude oil and petroleum liquids production figures published by the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) are usually at least a million barrels per day lower than those published by the IEA for a given month. The EIA figures show that world petroleum liquids production has not risen significantly above 85 million barrels per day from 2005 until March of this year.

But the most significant weakness of the IEA figures is that at least a few well-placed oil industry experts have pointed out that the reliability of the IEA figures depends on the good faith of oil producing countries in truthfully reporting their production numbers. Some of these experts believe that some of the reporting countries have exaggerated their production figures this year. A case in point is Matt Simmons, president of Simmons and Company International, an energy investment banking company, and oil industry expert. He has objected to claims by Saudi Arabia that their country is producing oil at the levels claimed in the IEA OMR. He has stated that there is no evidence that Saudi production is as high as the Saudis claim (9.5 to 9.7 million barrels per day), and that actual Saudi production is 1.5 million barrels lower than claimed. In his view, world petroleum production is now beginning to falter. (Sources: CNBC Video, “Peak Oil Theory,” 31 July 2008, http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=809266970; “Business Matters: Surviving the Oil Crisis,” Global Public Media, http://globalpublicmedia.com/business_matters_surviving_the_oil_crisis)

Accusations about falsely high production numbers were also made last year by Henry Groppe of Groppe, Long and Littel, a petroleum and chemical consulting firm. In an interview with David Strahan of Global Public Media (“IEA to Blame for $100 Oil Spike,” 16 December 2007, http://globalpublicmedia.com/groppe_iea_oil_spike), Mr. Groppe asserted that OPEC typically overstates its production figures by up to 2 million barrels per day when reporting its production figures to the IEA. If accusations by these men are true (and in the case of Matt Simmons, the accusations may be rather easy to check simply by examining the IEA OMR figures and doing some arithmetic), this has serious implications. First, this may mean that world oil production has indeed peaked and is now in decline, as stated in the German Energy Watch Group report on oil supplies which was published last October. It also means that reporting agencies and national governments may be trying to keep that fact from public view for as long as possible.

There is an interesting recent news item which seems to bear out this suspicion. On 28 July, an article appeared in the Saudi Gazette whose headline read, “Saudi Aramco Denies Shortage of Fuel to Rural Areas,” (http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008072812923). Apparently, farmers and truck drivers in rural areas of Saudi Arabia have begun to experience diesel fuel shortages after Saudi Arabia promised recently to raise its global production and exports to world markets. The link between these two situations may be that Saudi production is constrained and cannot grow, and that in order to boost petroleum exports they are having to deny fuel to some of their own citizens. This is rather like an addict selling his own blood to pay his bills.

Lastly, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the following words on 31 July, during a press conference: “Producers, unfortunately, have not made the investments necessary to keep pace with this growing demand. Because production capacity and investment has been curtailed over the last decade, supply now barely offsets declining production in older fields, let alone meets new demand.” (Source: http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/hp1107.htm) There are more and more signs appearing which tell us that worldwide petroleum production has peaked, even though oil prices have pulled back a bit recently.

Concerning oil prices, I wrote about price volatility or “bumpiness” during the peaking period in my post titled, “A Bumpier Plateau.” I believe that we will see several rather rapid cycles of price spikes, falling demand because people can't afford petroleum products, falling price which fools people into consuming more petroleum, and re-appearing price spikes because of revived demand. It will be rather like a man who's out of shape and has coronary artery disease, who has severe chest pain whenever he exerts himself, but who feels fine while resting, and who, while resting, fools himself into believing that he's fine – even though the bouts of chest pain grow more severe and occur at lower thresholds of exertion as time passes. We had better stop fooling ourselves, before it's too late.

* * *

Now for backyard chickens. I was introduced to this subject by listening to podcasts of episodes of Deconstructing Dinner, a regular radio show produced by Kootenay Co-Op Radio in Canada. Deconstructing Dinner discusses the many disadvantages of our present globalized, agribusiness-dominated food system, and explores alternatives that can be implemented by ordinary people. One of their series is titled, “Farming In The City,” and it explores various aspects of urban agriculture. Recently they have been covering what could be called “the urban chicken-raising movement,” and they have featured guest appearances by a radio character named Bucky Buckaw, who also has a weekly radio show on Radio Boise (http://www.radioboise.org/sagebrush/bucky/).

Listening to these podcasts piqued my interest, since they pointed out the fragility of our present food system and its vulnerability to the energy and resource shortages that will exist in a post-Peak world. I began to think to myself, “I've had a dog and a few cats as pets during my life. Why not try a chicken or two?” An urban agriculture group in our city was hosting a chicken-raising class and backyard coop bicycle tour, so I joined in. Now that I've seen and heard a bit, I still don't know if I'm ready to take the plunge into chicken-rearing. But as Bucky Buckaw would say, “I had a good time” learning about chickens.

And here are some pictures of a typical chicken-raising house. Note how not only are occupants raising chickens, but they have transformed an ugly urban lot into a place of nutritious beauty within the space of less than a year.

Radical Appetite Surgery

I actually want to start talking about the sort of personal adjustments that will be necessary for many Americans to adjust to the realities of Peak Oil. But I keep getting distracted by weekly news from the oil patch. So this week I will start by indulging my distraction.

In my post titled, “The Myth of Inadequate Investment,” I wrote of my perception that American and European international oil companies (IOC's), along with American and European media outlets, were blaming the present oil crisis on “inadequate investment” and lack of expertise on the part of many state-owned oil companies based in non-European nations. I believe this to be a public relations campaign that is part of a larger push by the IOC's to force these nations to open their fields to Western oil companies, on Western terms (as in obtaining ownership rights over the oil reserves of a country, extracting all the oil from that country, and pocketing most of the profits in Western banks while paying a small pittance of a bribe to the governments of the country in which the oil resides). Since I wrote that post, I have been searching for evidence to disprove the IOC propaganda.

I found some interesting bits of news during the last two weeks – news items which directly address this issue. I want to thank Leanan at the Oil Drum site (www.theoildrum.com) for posting these items on the Drumbeat. First there was an article carried by Reuters on 2 July whose title reads, “Oil Reform Won't Reverse Pemex Woes – Mexico Finmin.” The article deals with the continued steep decline in Mexican oil production due to the decline of the Mexican-owned Cantarell oil field. Mexican president Felipe Calderon has been proclaiming for several months that the only way to reverse the decline in his country's oil production is to revise Mexican law to allow foreign investment (as in obtaining ownership) in the state-owned Mexican oil company PEMEX, as well as allowing foreign development of Mexican oil resources. Calderon's statements have provoked a strong backlash among the left-leaning portion of the Mexican electorate, who quite naturally see Calderon's proposal as a ploy to give Mexico's wealth and natural resource away to foreign control.

Now it seems that Mexican Finance Minister Agustin Carstens is also against the proposal, stating that it “...would not solve PEMEX's problems over the next 20 to 30 years.” He has a point. The American and European oil majors would like the world to believe that if only they owned Mexican oil assets, they could boost oil production from Mexican fields. But the fact is that Mexican oil production has peaked due to geology, and is now in irreversible decline. Transferring ownership of Mexican fields to Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell or BP won't reverse this. After all, when US production peaked in 1970, the private oil companies who owned American oilfields were not able to reverse the subsequent decline, even though they had the best equipment and no restrictions on drilling.

Another article was posted on the Rigzone site on 1 July, and is titled, “National Oil Firms Well Placed to Take on Majors,” from AFX News Limited. This story contains statements from Algeria's energy minister, a Mr. Khelil, about how the national, state-owned energy firms are now just as competent as the IOC's. He cited Algeria's own state-run company, Sonatrach as an example, as well as Malaysia's Petronas and China's CNPC and Sinoc. Khelil stated that the state-run companies are well-equipped to compete against the IOC's in developing the world's remaining resources, including resources located in other countries.

The last major article I saw is titled, “Of Nations' Pride and Access to Resources,” by Syed Rashid Husain, and was posted in the Arab News today. Mr. Husain accurately dissects the source of the West's interest in the Mideast, describing how in 1953, when Iranian president Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian energy assets, he was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by American interests. He also states the now-obvious conclusion that the American invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein was solely about oil.

Mr. Husain cites the current propaganda campaign being waged by the IOC's and Western governments such as the current U.S. presidency to force increased access to Mideast oil for the IOC's by portraying the state-owned oil companies as inefficient and lacking in expertise. Unfortunately for the IOC's, however, one of their own let the truth slip out recently. Mark Finley, general manager of Global Energy Markets for BP, was forced during the recent International Energy Forum Secretariat to grudgingly admit that the state-run Saudi Aramco has the technical expertise to manage Saudi fields, and that the IOC's cannot do very much more than what Aramco can do by itself.

These are fascinating articles, but you won't find them in most American newspapers or on CNN or Fox News. No talk-show radio hosts are discussing these things. Of course that is because the media outlets in the US and other wealthy English-speaking countries is owned by corporate interests who have an agenda. I found other news this week concerning the rape of Iraqi oil by American IOC's, and the renewal of plans to build an oil and gas pipeline from Central Asia to India through Afghanistan, bypassing Russia and Iran. These plans had been stalled by the Afghan government since August 2001, and may have led to the US-orchestrated “regime change” which took place in Afghanistan in 2002. But I will leave it to you to peruse those stories. I want to switch to the main topic of this post.

The main point of this blog is that the world is now facing functional, structural limits to economic growth and energy use, due to the exhaustion of our natural resources, especially petroleum. The decline in availability of energy and other resources is a particular threat to the Western way of life. In fact, many very wise people are predicting that the present Western way of life – in particular, the American way of life – is about to end.

When confronted with this threat, many Americans and other First-World citizens start babbling about how technology can rescue our way of life, and that the answer to our energy/climate/resource crunch is to aggressively invest in new technology. Or when they see the threat to our financial system, they look for the perfect presidential candidate who will guarantee that good times will continue. These people view our lifestyle as sacred and inviolable, and are willing to spare no expense in their fight to maintain it. Technology is seen as some magic remedy which will allow people to continue a life of ever expanding consumption motivated by appetites swollen to monstrous size by steroidal advertising. And people who are bothered by the environmental and social cost of their hyperconsumption look to the technologists for some fix which will allow them to live large and go green at the same time.

This is as unrealistic as an obese man looking for a technological solution to his obesity while he insists on slamming down ten pounds of french fries every day. And such an attitude overlooks the fact that we already possess a powerful solution to the problems of energy and resource depletion, and the financial problems which are now arising from declining resources. That solution consists of learning to live on less. But too many of us don't have a very good idea of what it means to consciously choose to live on less. So I have provided a simple illustration.

Consider three houses. House A is part of a nine-house development finished in November 2007. Each house in the development is selling for $1,690,000. The development is located next to a shady two-lane road in a hilly, beautiful part of the Pacific Northwest, and is in a very affluent school district. Lot sizes for the homes range from 9,000 to almost 11,000 square feet, and I estimate that the floor plan for the pictured house is at least 3,000 square feet.

House B is a 1945-vintage three-bedroom, one bath bungalow with a basement. It is located in a working-class neighborhood with a growing minority population, near a couple of Winco supermarkets and a Fred Meyer store (for those in Southern California, think Target or Wal-Mart). The school system is decent. Even with three bedrooms, the floor area probably does not exceed 900 square feet. But the insulation has recently been upgraded. It is selling for $199,800.

House C is another three-bedroom, one bath home built in 1953. It has a new roof and its garage has been converted into a family room. It is located in the same school district as House B. It is selling for $159,000.

Which house has the most value? Pause and think about this for a moment.

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Now, here are some additional questions:

• The price of natural gas worldwide is rapidly escalating, and on a per-BTU basis it may equal the price of oil before very long. What percentage of a typical family budget would be spent on heating and cooling House A? House B? House C?

• Houses B and C are conveniently located within a mile of grocery stores and a light rail line that goes directly through the center of the city in which they are located. Also, houses B and C are near frequently-visited bus stops. House A is adjacent to a road along which is a bus line, but the bus runs infrequently and is unavailable for large portions of the day. House A is also located several miles from grocery stores, schools and places of employment. What percentage of a typical family budget would be spent on commuting from each of these houses?

• How many people do you know who have 20 percent of $1,690,000 in savings? How about 20 percent of $199,800? 20 percent of $159,000? How long would it take for most people you know to pay off a loan for any of these amounts?

• House A has a large yard in which one could grow vegetables to promote self-sufficiency, but House B also has a large yard. Houses B and C are also located within two miles of a local farmers' market which sells produce at a junior high school every Saturday. How much benefit would people provide to local economies and their own health by supporting the farmers' market near Houses B and C?

• How many hours per week would an average husband and wife duo have to work in order to make the monthly payments on House A? House B? House C?

• Do indebtedness and money worries cause you to lose sleep? Have they ever caused stress in your marriage? Would you be more likely to get a good night's rest in House A? House B? House C?

• Does anyone still want House A? Then let me suggest that such a person may need radical appetite surgery.