I thought it would be interesting for each of us to dig up our first post and see what it looks like now after however long. To find your first post, just click on your handle in any thread (or click "member view" and right under "View new posts" you'll see "Return to advanced search" - click that and search for yourself; "*" in search terms and [your handle] in author)
Anyway, I'll start; this was April 3rd 2004
It seems to me that it is pretty obvious that any finite resource will have a mid point of availability. It isn’t a huge leap them to understand that the high point of discovery indicates the eventual high point of production. While economists can wax about “demand destruction” and “replacement technology” the difference is that this “commodity” is fundamental to our ENTIRE way of life, there is no replacement technology to this fantastically “dense” energy source and the few possibilities will take years and huge investments to even get close. Demand destruction in this case relates to the reduction of the world FOOD supply for kripe sakes!
Believe it or not, I didn’t come to “Peak Oil News” to debate (or rant) about the validity of peak oil, there are lots of sources of information and evidence available for those willing to read and decide for themselves. It is a very scary thing to get your head around, but here are our plans FWIW.
We are going the “Lone Farmer” route; relocating away from large populations, learning more agrarian skills, and preparing for the (hopefully) long slide. In the interim (5,10, ? years) I will continue working as a graphic designer, I can work anywhere there is dependable power and a satellite link to communicate with my rep back in town. This has been our plan for years for early/semi retirement, its just earlier than expected. We don’t look at it as a “bunker” so much as a “school” to teach our kids and grandkids (and ourselves) how our parents and grandparents got by without cheap oil.
We are “Ebaying” and yard-saling our late 20th century technology and replacing it with early 20th century technology; out with the electric guitar and in with the acoustic. Our small budget includes alternative power but also lots of “elbow grease” powered solutions.
I don’t believe there will be an oil “crash” soon, but there certainly could be an economic crash as the cost of oil and virtually everything else begins its inevitable rise. That is the wild card; how long do we have to prepare before the cost of preparing is out of reach or the necessities unavailable?
So at that time we were in California in the midst of the RE boom and that and the credit bubble were top of our minds. We'd already decided to abandon the CA real estate market for (literally) greener pastures but hadn't decided exactly where. I'd become somewhat freaked out after 9/11, not by terrorists but by our Neocon government's response. The credit and RE bubbles on top of PO and "limits" generally, all made me want to get away from the coast. They say it never rains in California and that's true (many parts are desert, even the central valley) but I believe the result of that is that Californians (and really any people massed together like lemmings) have not the slightest idea how to handle adversity or any ability to make do for themselves. IOW, crowds scare me.
What I've learned.
I knew there was a real estate bubble and in our area of the Central Valley where home prices were driven by Bay Area commuters I knew that higher priced fuel would kill the market. I knew that there also must be a credit bubble because I personally knew people who were getting mortgages without proof of income and that when the market popped, so would those mortgages and the local economy. What I didn't know was there was really no control over the "market" and just how far out on a limb the banks were allowed to go in order to rip off their customers.
I believed that there was an oil supply crunch ahead but of course I didn't know just how fast China's demand was going to grow so I didn't expect it so soon. I certainly didn't think we'd already run into the production wall and supply of conventional, cheap, easy oil was already maxed out.
I didn't think we'd go straight from increasing production to decreasing production overnight, IOW, no "oil crash". I did think however that folks would want to understand the reason behind rising prices and would adjust proactively once they understood the situation. That turns out not to be the case for the most part, folks do see the rising gas price and make adjustments reactively but I don't know if very many are thinking of a longer term trend.
As for the "lone farmer" part, we did buy a farm in the Ozarks. The "lone" part refers to owning our own place rather than join an "eco-village" or some other type of formal co-op. Turns out that we've become quite a bit more a part of the community than I'd have thought. No big deal, not Transition Town stuff, just neighborly sharing, trading, helping out, etc. That part of my plan has been very successful, we've learned boat-loads about how to get by.
Again, in the back of my mind I'd thought that about now would be the point where supply would become constricted and prices would rise and keep the economy constantly at the edge of recession and what we'd learned of farming we'd be putting into practice as my income failed. We passed through some of that territory back in '09-'10 and the economy keeps trying to recover but each time the price of oil is right there to slow it back down. Interestingly demand in the US has been falling fairly steadily. Of course employment is falling too but no bread lines as yet...
Anyway, dig up your first post (or second or third
) and share how your views have changed - or not.
