DISGRACE!
CORRUPTION!!
I've said it before but no-one seems to care.
gordo and his cronies are spending a billion of OUR money to built a mega-highway from vancouver to Squamish, destroying unique habitat and rare species on the way!!
Why?
To allow the gentrification of my town in the most egregious example of poor urban planning one could ever imagine. Already the gordo minion council has rubber-stamped thousands of luxury condo's all over town, virtually in every available space. Land in the alr is being removed with little opposition to make room for these profit motivated develoments.
And since we have lost almost all of our substantive industry (most since gordo took over) THERE ARE NO REAL JOBS TO SPEAK OF ANYMORE!!!!!
So then what do we have in the new Squamish?
Thousands of new inhabitants who must commute atleast 120 km a day in their largely single occupancy vehichles on a completely taxpayer subsidized highway!!!!
Now thats responsible, long term urban planning!
p.s.-I've also heard that our local mla and her husband are behind the largest single development at the site of our former sawmill!
How many MORE millions than they already have do they stand to make building 1350 units in Squamish for liberal voting yuppies from vancouver.

jesterjogger It is more than disgraceful it is Criminal and if people would stand up and go for a class action Litigation against these Treasonous scum.
"For the People By the People"
Where is our opposition Carol James, Gregor Robertson etc we have 28 seats in BC's Legislature? Silence

I have to agree, people. All the big visions and big projects underway in Vancouver and BC at the moment seem to be inspired by heads tucked firmly in the sand, whether or not you accept Kunstler's apocalyptic view.

I'm more optimistic that people will wake up in time to avert the worst of it, but we need to stop thinking of these things as happening way off in the future because the future is now.

Already, consumers demanding to live "close to everything" are largely fuelling Vancouver's red hot real estate market. East Vancouver's immigrant and blue collar families are increasingly being pressured to sell out and move to Surrey. Suburbia will soon be our new "outer" city wastelands unless leaders start reconfiguring these as self-contained communities.

Globalization? Cuba and other Caribbean islands that rely heavily on imported foods are already screaming about the severe inflationary effects of recent oil prices.

A large world after all? Airlines have nothing left to cut to keep air travel affordable for the masses. Those accustomed to regular vacations in the sun will have to wait for global warming. And just as we've finished ripping up all the train tracks, we're realizing that's exactly what we'll be needing to move goods and people efficiently.

We will need to adapt, no question, and those who see that soonest will end up furthest ahead. We need leaders with vision at exactly the time that we have the blindest, most backwards-looking administrations in years at the local, provincial, national and continental levels.

This is bogus Malthusian Club of Rome doomsaying that is only productive because it sells more books.

The free market and the advance of technology will take care of this problem, as it always does. High prices will encourage conservation and exploration for new sources. It will also encourage others to switch to other forms of energy. There is enormous potential in alternative energy sources.

These types of doomsayers always underestimate the remarkable ability of human beings to adapt.

Doomsayers only preach doom! That's my experience anyway.

I agree with Name and am much more optimistic than Kunstler however I do think that the presenrt mode of development which I see as paving everything from Abbottsford to Squamish with suburban development is just plain stupid and simply cannot be paid for in the long run. The idea that the free market will take care of everything is a falisy that was relied on in the distant past with tragic results. It is necesssary to use mechanisms to insure that maximization of individual choice (ie-i want a house on a big lot in Maple Ridge or Langley only picking on these as they are areas of new construction sprawl, the community pays a higher price to meet my wants in increased traffic congestion, poorer air quality, the loss of public space-parks and the loss of the ability to produce agricultural products locally) does not impose severe costs on the population in aggregate. The free market will not do this.

Moderate densification with dispersal of employment locations (we will get there if price of commuting rises and we don't throw money at the port mann) would make a lot more sence.

Indeed, just as free markets and technology without appropriate societal controls and vision gave the US inner city blight and the rest of the world mega-slums, global warming, acid rain, toxic wastes and asthma, the backlash of radical Arab fundamentalism and Prozac Nations.

For the ultimate summer reading experience, may I suggest: The Long Emergency; Waiting for the Macaws (Glavin); The Weather Makers (Flannery); Revenge of Gaia (Lovelock); An Inconvenient Truth (Gore); and Field Notes From a Catastrophe (Kolbert). You might want to space it out a little. The politicians won't do anything (except, perhaps, Al Gore, if he runs again) until WE push them; the corporations will only do something if they're legislated to change their ways or its shown to make economic sense; but we, as individuals, can and must change our ways, from less reliance on the car to vacations closer to home, from requesting local produce at your supermarket to pestering our politicians, we can, we must, make the changes ourselves.

Just a bit of history; the roman empire collapsed within one year. Who cares you say? Just remeber the fasted way of sending a message was horse courier or a bout 20 or so days for a detailed message to reach from rome to the UK. It took about 15 days for a message to reach Rome to the Middle East.

It took a very long time for bureaucrats to realise that the central government was no more and that, in effect the whole empire was no more.

In 1914 it took one month for countries to mobolize for WW1. Messages could be sent by telegraph and bureaucrats knew only in a few hours, the state of various empires.

In 1929, ther stock market crash was felt world wide within hours of the American exchange flat lining.

In the 21 st century if an event happens with catastophic results, the results will be immediate, no waiting about, no time to think....bang it's done!

The whole point of this excercise is that so called doosayers are only pointing out a scenario and if we plan for it, we can mitigate the damage. The damn fools with rose coloured glasses who believe that the free market will cure everything, etc., etc. live in a fools paradise.

When the oil market collapses due to war or governmental actions or what ever, western society will all but collapse as we depend on oil so much.

Had we better be like Sweeden and wean our dependance on oil within 20 years? I think so, but not so the free marketeers who are afraid of losing a penny.

We have the means to be energy self efficient, why not start now.

Yes, it's good to see that the "market" is doing such a good job looking out for the public good!

No kidding. Imagine the anarchy in the streets if we didn't have the market pumping out such marvelous and indispensable products as electric air fresheners. Of course some sheep apparently like to be fleeced as well, so I guess we get the corporations we deserve.

Is Kunstler a doomsayer or prophet? I won't debate that here. However, think about the infrastructure we have built that is based on the mobility cars and trucks provide. The transportation system for people and goods runs almost exclusively on oil-based fuels.

Yes, the free market will rise to the challenge, but how long will it take? How many vehicles are there in North America alone? Over 100 MILLION, at least. So, imagine having to re-tool that infrastructure to run on a variety of alternative fuels. You will need parts, skilled imstallers, new fueling distribution and retailing, etc. It will not happen overnight!

We are in for a rough ride in the future while that adjustment takes place and those who are less dependent on that infrastructure will fare better, especially the resourceful DIYer's. The survivalist movement of the early 1980s may have been the right thing, but wrong reason and time.

It certainly will not happen overnight, yet look how the market reacts like a cat on a hot tin roof to imagined emergencies. The collapse will be total and catastrophic, becauase as Grumpy says, informatioin (especially "bad" info) is instantaneous.

Besides the marketplace's rise has followed the bell curve of energy (mainly oil) production and pricing. When that plunges, so to shall the marketplace as savior. The FIRST reaction to disaster will be to dump stocks, and withdraw cash to buy gold. Government (or the banks) will step in to prohibit withdrawls, if only because they do not have the reserves to cover large scale demands.

And that may be considered the first step off the cliff.............

Hey editors, can you make it easier to differentiate between question and answer? I know it's not that difficult the way it is, separated by spaces, but wouldn't putting Q before the question and A before the answer, or CM and JHK respectively, or bold/italics and non-bold/italic make it that much easier? Or something? Just an idea.

"Doomsayers only preach doom! That's my experience anyway."

Not true, Mary Jane. For years, we have also been showing better ways to do things, developing newer technologies, and trying to get governments to wise up to what's happening.

It's pretty hard, however, to convince a politician in the pay of/in debt to the moneyed interests. They don't want to see their investments become obsoleted until they've squeezed the last penny out of us.

It was the poorly-named "conservatives" who squandered our futures on extremist ideas that benefitted only the powerful and well-connected. Their slick PR propaganda had no trouble selling us SUV's and plastic garbage while we were transfixed by celebrity gossip.

But don't worry, . . they'll blame it on
Clinton.

Dear GRW: We're addressing it. Technical problems on launch day, don't you know. We'll try and do better by all concerned in the future.

There is another problem not addressed here, although it may be so in the book: It takes us 6-10 calories of oil-based fuel to produce one calorie of food. If we substitute food calories (ethanol feedstocks) for fuel, where does that leave us?

If we factor in the energy it takes to produce the machinery to produce our power, which technologies would we use? Do you think we'll run foundries, machine shops, plastics manufacturing, metals smelting, and microelectronics if we don't have petroleum fuels and feedstocks to even make the machines?

A hard lesson's a-comin'.

Yes, we are reaching the petroleum peak but for Christ sakes we are not going to wake up one morning to no oil. It will be a slow process with the high price of fuel driving new technologies.

We will survive. A few more hurricanes along the way, oceans rising up to the British Properties, etc., but we will survive.

Energy is necessary to run our societies, and we don't have to "run out" of oil to suffer severely. It only takes a small shortage to raise prices dramatically, as users try to outbid each other. That is where the first notices begin, and we're seeing it already, as China and India go around the world buying access to oil reserves.

We have destabilized the system, and its corection will be neither slow nor tidy.

I am most dismayed by economists, who cling to their cherished, politically-inspired theories until they become dogmatic theologians.

The price rise thing is especially worrisome. Economists all think we'll just raise the price to get more.

Contrary to what economists think, it doesn't take money to get oil, it takes energy to get oil. When the energy necessary to find, pump and convert petroleum exceeds its energy content, the game is up. In that case, the best use for the money is to burn it at the wellhead to produce steam for secondary recovery.

Why can't I use the formatting buttons without getting that *%$#@^# irritating notice to use the (unseen) "quick reply" buttons hidden somewhere?

The rush of the BC government to start offshore drilling is the kind of symptom that bears out Kunstler's thesis. The mandarins behind the ideological dimbulbs that are running this province know that energy demand is rising and that there is coming a very difficult supply squeeze. Why else have they been pushing private production of power for BC Hydro (as a second symptom)?

One has to imagine, though, that if offshore oil is valuable NOW, that it will be INCREDIBLY valuable 20 years from now. By that time all the salmon should have succumbed to sea lice and we won't have to worry about polluting the near offshore. . . :) (humour in adversity).

El Gordo could solve the Vancouver traffic problem instantly without a dime spent on gateway by allowing all provincial government/bchydro office type employees to telecommute. Of course no developers campaign donation graft for that.

Add in the usual dinosaurs Telus, BCGas, Fed and municipal government etc and BC's contribution to Kyoto would be paid a century in advance.

To ease the telecommute, we now know that the present cost of the wired city for all tv/cellular/internet/telephone requirements is now down to less than a dollar a month per household due to advances in fibre optic and wireless technology. Most of us pay a 100 times that The phone and cable companies are donating hugely to El Gordo and municipal politicians to keep BC Hydro and/or municipal utilities from shutting down their lucrative ripoff.

Call your MLA and local mayor and council people and ask them how much campaign graft it took to get them to sell out their oath of office.

With the energy return of the Tar Sands at 1.5 to 1, and the high use of natural gas and water. In addition, oil prices have about tripled in three years.
One has to ask, where are the techno-fixs? I mean we are effectively turning gold into lead in Alberta and still no viable alternatives, to provide the energy of oil. What happens is that as oil increases in price, the techo-fixes increase, as they all require energy

No techno fix can make suburbia affordable without cheap fuel and subsidised cars and car infastructure.

Why will we need fortified cities? I think i'm gonna have to check out that book...

I read "TLE" a while back, and in general it takes some very important facts and proposes a bleak possiblilty of the future, which in my opinion will only partially come true.

Hubert calculated the projected peaks of US and world oil production, which will dramatically affect how we live.

But not all of Kunstlers' assumptions will come true. For instance, he suggests we may have to abandon the upper-midwest/prairies, as too cold.

Well, he's right Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota & Minnesota are too damn cold, but they were inhabited 7000 years before Henry Ford started this mess. And being the breadbasket for millions, they will not really be abandoned, will they ?

But a significant failure of the book, in my opinion, is that few alternatives are suggested for mitigating or surviving the effects of Peak Oil.

For instance, Natural Gas is described as being the first petroleum product to peak, having done so already. But there are viable replacements available right now. Geothermal being the most eco-nomical and eco-friendly.

And ironically, the main flaw in the book, is that Kinstler actually adopts a economists viewpoint: that reaching peak will cause economic collapse, as economic growth will be curtailed.

If fact, it is the constant need for economic growth that caused Peak Oil.

The primary solution to peak oil is not petro-decline, or the reduction in oil usage. The solution is the reduction in the need for economic growth. Once we get over the need to grow every facet of civilization like population, GDP, road length, waist size, etc, we will be able to accomodate something actually shrinking, and we won't feel the need to panic.

Thus it was Hubert's other theory that may be the solution, the idea of a steady-state economy. He posited that removing the need for perpetual profits and growth would reduce the labour requirement to a 4-hour workday. That's enough to make him a hero to millions.

In any case, the actual reduction in oil production after peak is estimated to be 4-6% annually, so if we all reduce our consumption by a like amount annually, everything will be ok.

Interesting thought, jwstewart -- I particularly like the 4-hour work day, though not confident that will translate for the self-employed.

"chilled", I agree that "we will survive" -- meaning that some people will survive in any case, but I don't think that's the point. Such a major transition could be extremely painful, if not fatal to many, if it's not managed properly -- i.e. burying our heads in the sand and waking up in panic and chaos at the 11th hour.

Leadership is critical -- i.e providing the right incentives and disincentives and structures to encourage adaptation and mitigation. Markets will undoubtedly also have a role, and of course technology is critical, but there are many individual and collective choices to be made in how we approach and respond to challenges, and the sum of those choices will make a big difference in whether we get doomsday or something better than what we have at present.

jwstewart,

Good post, although I have a few comments. First the man's name is Hubbert, not Hubert.

Second, just who is going to reduce their energy usage by 6-10%? China? India? Us?

Also, geothermal energy is not a replacement for natural gas. You're not going to make fertilizer out of geothermal heat, nor any of the other products for which methane is a feedstock. And you can't transport it, like gas.

Finally, how are you going to reap the harvests in your breadbasket without the 6-10 TIMES the energy in fuel it takes to grow it than we get from the crop itself?

Compound that with global climate change, especially the spectre of the coming Ice Age brought on by global warming, and we won't have sufficient food to keep many people alive on Earth.

The Energy Wars are not far away.

"The Energy Wars are not far away."

which also answers the question about fortified cities.

If cities are to be fortified, it may be to keep the unfortunate inhabitants IN.

Cities are resource hogs, and cannot support themselves. When Nixon and Kissinger carpetbombed Cambodia, they destroyed the country's ability to feed itself. The farmers fled to the cities, that they formerly fed, but found nothing there but Pol Pot. Two million were killed - but Pol Pot got the blame instead of N/K.

It will be much worse this time, because the entire world will be affected.

In the spirit of sharing shown here...

'The Energy Blog'
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/

Especially check out the author's 'Energy Revolution' posts (sidebar second from top).

Cheers :)

gkam;

Geothermal is the best replacement for Methane in building/home heating applications, which use vastly more than the agriculture corporations.

This is evidenced by the fact farmers occasionally purchase fertilizer, while the rest of us have a friggin methane pipeline into our homes and businesses.

Burning methane to heat McHouses is exactly the misallocation of resources Kunstler talks about.

If all us city folk replaced our automobiles with horses, could could sell horseshit as a methane replacement for agriculture.

In fact, we could start using composting toilets and sell peopleshit for fertilizer.

This would solve the gasoline shortage as well.

There are alternatives, and they must be undertaken by individuals. Those who wait for the government, corporations and churches to wipe their asses will remain stinky.

And as for who will be reducing their oil consuption by 6-10% annually, it is YOU, respectfully. Figure out a plan now, cuz those that already have a plan probably already have planned to protect their plan.

My personal plan is to have a geothermally heated log cabin, solar electricity, a veggie garden and a pony.

giddyup :)

JW,

I do understand your points, it's my field. Yes, with 10 cows, a metnane digester, scrubbers, and an IC engine, you can generate all your house's electricity. It still won't produce sufficient fuel to till the fields.

True, there are many methods that will decrease our dependence on petroleum, but they require a staggeringly-difficult effort in making transformations. Meanwhile, many will starve to death.

I am NOT opposed to any/all the measures we will need to save ourselves, just pessimistic that we have the will and the ability to get through to governments already owned by The Rich and the corporations.

I should remind you that the scenario most likely to occur is that which takes place in the movie Dr. Strangelove. When the sh*t hits the fan, and the shelves are bare of food, the veil of civility will disappear completely. Those already prepped for survival in our mine shafts will release the gas. The savagery will end for those who were unlucky enough to be around at this unfortunate, but all too predicatable time in history. Plenty of resources left for the few million survivors to carry out our legacy. Sorry, there is no other way. Short term pain... Ouch!

Dr Strangelove?

More like Soylent Green.

gkam, I'm reminded that many are *already* starving to death amidst all this plenty. This suggests to me that such suffering has less to do with inadequate resources than with the will to ensure that available resources are used in a rational, sustainable manner.

I agree too that we need to look to what we can do as individuals to start tackling the looming challenges, but individual action alone won't do it. The idea of every man for himself, the end of civility etc, is a popular fear, but it's not inevitable. Again, I see it coming down to leadership & foresight or lack thereof.

Sustainable manner? How would we sustain the billions of people on Earth without easily-accessible energy?

I'm not spreading the fear of every-man-for-himself, I am commenting on our dependence on petroleum, and my doubts that we can find the appropriate leadership to deal with it, if possible.

My lament is that we had programs and people in place to start those necessary tasks in the late 1970's but were Reaganed out of the chance.

Now that the entire US government has been taken over by the Bad Guys, what are our chances for good leadership?

steerpike:
Quote:"Why will we need fortified cities?"

To keep people in? In an energy crunch, those who live in the country (not suberbia) will be much better off, being generally much less dependant on "things from away". People in the countryside are far less easy to control than people in the cities as well, and central authority needs to control people. A classic example (although the cities weren't walled per se) was the Boleshevik Revolution, where the cities provided the armies that cold be sent out into the countryside to confiscate the food. The soldiers had no choice bu tto come back, if only because their wives and kids were kept "secure" in the cities. Stalin managed to starve some 40 million peasants that way.

jwstewart:
Quote:"Well, he's right Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota & Minnesota are too damn cold, but they were inhabited 7000 years"

But inhabited only around the rivers and lakes. Until horses made their way far enough north, the Praries were, by and large, as unknown to the native as they were to the later white explorers. Also, the Prairies are drying up. Their reputation as the food basket of the world will soon enough be a footnote in history.

gkam:
Quote: "Compound that with global climate change, especially the spectre of the coming Ice Age brought on by global warming"

Hey! After my own heart! Seems everyone thinks an Ice Age is caused by COLD, and few people pause to think how some 300 feet of ocean around the world had to EVAPORATE to cause all that rain , snow, and ice.......

Quote:"Cities are resource hogs, and cannot support themselves."

Which effectively puts paid to those who think that the re-emergence of city states (as propounded by Peter C. Newman, among others) is so much kaka, because they think that city states are just the cities themselves. City States have always been the cities in question, plus the outlaying regions. (for example Sparta, or Athens, or Vancouver -- oops! that on is next..........)

Quote:"and an IC engine"
Instead of an IC, how about an EC?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

Clubofrome:
Quote:"Dr. Strangelove"
How about Three Days of the Condor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_of_the_Condor

In BC we probably wont run out of electricity. We have plenty of hydro, and tonnes of coal. We also currently only burn 20% of our garbage to generate electricity here.

Interestingly, the reason we only burn 20% of garbage in the lower mainland is because environmentalist think of power plants as being highly polluting. In reality, the pollution from all those garbage trucks driving up to cash creek every day is far more polluting than burning it in the power plant. In power plants you have very good control of combustion temperate, air/fuel ratios, filtering, as well as other pollution reduction techniques. Garbage trucks just spew it all out the tailpipe.

Other regions caught in an energy crunch will likely invest in proven technology like nuclear power rather than investing in research and development necessary for less developed industries like wing, solar, geothermal, etc. We SHOULD invest in those NOW before crunch time, but I doubt it will happen.

The wealthy will have the money to adapt, such as installing geothermal heating in their houses. But average people may not have enough money to afford all the adaptations that may be necessary. They may end up taking a very significant hit in their standard of living - not because there isnt the technology, but because they cant afford the technology.

Those fortified cities may be extensions of the wealthy gated communities springing up now.

Geothermal heat is not available everywhere, unless you are talking about ground-coupled heat pumps. And you need electricity for that.

But we can make houses very efficient by good design and enlightened living.

The trash incineration is a good point. Burning garbage is not a panacea, but probably better than all those trucks hauling it to the dump. But how are you going to get the garbage to the incinerator? Trucks?

And it works only if we have very good pollution control, which will necessitate separation of the burnables and active filtration of effluent gases particulates, and solid residues.

So let's do it.

gkam,

"Geothermal heat is not available everywhere, unless you are talking about ground-coupled heat pumps. And you need electricity for that."

Thank you, most people think the whole thing is some sort of freebie.

------------------------

jwsterwart,

"My personal plan is to have a geothermally heated log cabin, solar electricity, a veggie garden and a pony."

I'm a refrigeration and air conditioning mechanic who has installed and commisioned a few geothermals. Call me when the plans are drawn.....my welding skills suck so I might burn down the cabin, on a good solar / sunny day I'm off to the beach, the garden thing? Thrifty's. As for the pony, gidde-up!!!

I'm sure we will still have enough electricity to run the small pump needed for geothermal. Its just an alternative to natural gas heating which is going to get more and more expensive.

You don't need a small pump for geothermal power, you need a reservoir of very hot rocks, and fluids. Technically, geothermal power implies very hot water from underground being used to drive steam turbines, or to heat another working fluid to do so. Condensate is usually reinjected

I think most folk here think of geothermal as using the stable heat of the Earth as a sink/source of temperature differentials. When we do that, we need heat pumps, since the Earth isn't very hot, at depths where we can easily reach it (at least in Canada and most of the US).

There are places where lower-temperature geothermal could work in simple circulation loops, although they are not widespread.

Yes, once again geothermal is envisioned as 'ol faithful' in Yellowstone. Free energy for the taking. As gkam said, these application are few and far between.

The geothermals ya' all hear so much about are simply a heat pump removing or rejecting heat to the earth. It is a mechanical refrigeration system using pumps, refrigeration compressors, controls, etc., circulating ethanol or glycol in a closed loop.

It ain't a freebie, for every one unit of energy used you get about 3 back at a typical cost of about $20K

Think 20yr payback, think highly complicated, think high service and when doing so, most people think again. But if you really want one, call me!!!!!!!! I do good work. Fully licensed, bonded and insured with 25 yrs experience.

Good work, chilled.

Of course, a system with a COP of 3 ain't bad - it just isn't free.

I think better-designed living machines will make all this complicated stuff less important. Earth-bermed homes, superinsulation, solar electric and thermal systems, integrated with other appropriate systems can take our needs to close to zero, especially in places with temperature extremes, where you can store and reject heat at different times.

Maybe one of the readers will let us build one for him/her.

Oops, . . I mant less complicated mechanically. The integration of systems is complex in itself, but the systems can be simple and reliable - just not cheap.

gkam;

To clarify, I was referring to ground-source heat pumps as opposed to geothermal electric production. I am in Manitoba, so the payback is much less than 20 years, because we have actual cold weather here.

The best case scenario is a new install or replacing a NG furnace 3K$ and electic AC 3K$ which cost 2K$ annually. So a 20K system has payback of approx. 7yrs. (I have a quote of 18K for my future home).

Also, if I have 10 cows and no gas for the tractor, those cows would take turns pulling the plow. :)

Finally, let me attempt to alleviate some of your pessimism. The possibility that energy descent will cause massive starvation, as suggested in Kunstlers' book, is predicated on the abscence of methane to create fertilizer, primarily nitrogen.

The underlying assumption is that this is the best and only option to achieve current crop yields. I think it was simply the easiest option to increase yields and then only during the era of cheap oil.

There is evidence that current sustainable farming methods, which involve crop rotation, nitrogen fixing cover crops, rock dust and kelp fertilizer, etc, can can acheive equal or possibly even superior results.

In fact, there may be a sustainable farmer near you that will provide fresh produce grown without petrochemicals.
http://www.eatwellguide.org/index.cfm

In addition, the farm market in this country is and has been completely saturated for generations. No more dairy, beef, poultry or vegetable farmers are allowed, unless they can buy some marketing board quota or an existing farm. The biggest farm problem is finding customers willing to pay the full cost of production. When export markets close, there is an uproar.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I don't see any Canadians starving anytime soon, oil or no oil.

Finally, the fundamental message of the book was that peak oil is a geological fact, less and less oil will be available as time goes on. It is not a matter of choice. China, Canada, USA, you, me, everybody will be reducing their consuption, without any doubt whatsoever.

Therefore each person needs to plan for this, whether or not their government or the rest of the world does so as well.

Isn't this the latest version of the sky is falling? During the 60's it was communism, the cold war, the nuclear threat. Now its the war between religious ideologies and global warming. I agree that we need to take a non jaundiced look at city planning, and transportation issues, but doom and gloom is not the answer. While not a big fan of suburban sprawl, it is a fact of life for a large number of people in our area. Oil, will not just suddenly disapear, the costs of purchasing it will rise, and there will be market based solutions adressing those costs. We need to look at local solutions realistically, start planning now for an interurban train system, perhaps running down the centre median of the #1? I don't believe our society is in danger of imminent collapse, and that kind of thinking plays into the hands of scare mongers who will manipulate our fears into dangerous right wing waters.

SBW;

There is active debate on when Peak Oil production will occur. Some say now, some say a few years, some say a couple decades.

All seem to agree that, like a recession, it is impossible to tell it has happened until after the fact, when measurements confirm the event.

Therefore, the plan and actions would have to be enacted before the peak, in order to prevent panic.

Logically, that means the changes have to begin now, since we know it hasn't peaked yet, but we also don't know when it will peak.

In effect, if peak demand happens prior to peak production, and demand drops more than production and continues to do so, peak oil might be trouble-free.

Boy, that's optimistic! I'm beginning to get worried.

there is an argument to be made that greater global connectivity of ideas actually enhances the abilty of wingnuts to get their message out. i read the article about kunstler in outside magazine (any idea if he's related to legendary Chicago Seven lawyer Bill Kunstler??) and came away thinking that he's probably a pretty entertaining public speaker spreading a message (the suburbs will destruct!) that a lot of composting, low-flow showerhead types want to hear. unfortunately, i don't think he's got any clue as to what will happen in the future, and will likely one of these days sell a nice script to Hollywood based on his scenarios (though he should note that climate change movies like The Day After Tomorrow have bombed...)
Due to the secrecy around Saudi oil reserves, there is simply a lot that we do not know. what we do know is that oil recovery technology has vastly improved, and will continue to, and that we may get to the point of $20-30 bbl oil, as posited by BP's Lord Browne, whose comments last week have, to some degree, caused a HUGE selloff in oil stocks this past week. somehow or another, i think that Browne, who also happens to be a huge believer in alternative energy sources, has his fingers a little more on the pulse than Kunstler does. alas, the 'inconvenient truth' of cheap oil, as Al Gore would put it, creates huge problems as well.

There are already more than enough examples of collapse in both the west and third world. The causes are diverse but in each case response is slow and recovery long. Weather related incidents are more likely close to home: New Orleans, Quebec ice storms, blizzard in Washington DC all examples of local breakdown of infrastructure. Transportation halted ergo goods and services halted. In other world regions famine, disease and refugees amassed because of local and regional collapse. While these are complicated and often caused by political instability, it still shows lack of ability to respond. If you consider the fragile nature of our specialized global economy, based on oil, energy etc, and world trade, transportation is the obvious weak link. Economic policy does nothing to encourage local production of food, as most of us line up in SUV's to go to the superstore to find the lowest price on kraft dinner... You don't have the means to deal with a man made or natural disaster on the scale of New Orleans. Maximizing share holder profits does not insure sustainability, it reduces it. It's a very complex issue that I can't relate on the scale that I'd like to. But you have to read between the lines. You need to consider loss of habitat and bio diversity, collapse of fisheries and real salmon! Be aware of what Monsanto is trying to do. Most of all learn how to grow your own food. Support local economies so they thrive. Maybe then we will better meet the coming challenges.

Club;
In most of those examples, like New Orleans, Quebec, DC, etc., the individuals are left to fend for themselves, until the govt or corporate infrastructure figures out how to respond.

Therefore, it is prudent for the individual to plan accordingly. For years the govt public preparedness web sites have advocated having 3-days food and water. People having had that in New Orleans would have made a world of difference.

I spent 47 dollars at MEC to get 3-days of "gourmet" dehydrated camping food, and 3 extra jugs for the water cooler.

I have a sail boat with at least one weeks worth of beer and pretzels...

Cows to pull a plough? ha good one. by the time you taught a cow to plough you'd starve but, thanks for the visual and the laugh!!!

My favourite part is where he is talking about the Pacific becoming a "much wilder place", and the political melting down of Asian nations causing their naval equipment to fall into the hands of "freelancers". They'll be looking for "easy pickings along the continental coasts".

So you mean that future lack of oil will cause the collpase of the world as we know it. And if that's not enough, these "freelancers" will somehow have enough fuel to power their ill gotten navy ships to maraude coasts, and even get them ACROSS the Pacific?

This is scary stuff. I'm going for a drive to calm down.

So instead of changing and preparing; planning and designing; building and rebuilding-we are going to depend on technology and scientists?

That is why I will try and stay on Vancoiuver Island-It has a moat, nearby marine resources for food (may have to "fight" for that salmon), relatively mild winter weather, wood (though if we all want it it may not be enough!).

GOOD LUCK everyone!

Then again, avian flu, and west nile virus, and likely some new virus may reduce the global population to a sustainable level.

Of course the "Energy War" may include neutron bombs that will reduce population (kill), thus reducing nergy demand while leaving the infrastructure to produce energy for those that survive!

Well, the cows will either learn to plow, or learn to sit on the barb-b-q, heh-heh.

An Energy War would be the ultimate Dr. Strangelove scenario. Remember the energy is more than half used up, and ever declining amounts will be available.

They will be fighting for rapidly diminishing returns, wasting resources that would be better allocated to finding an alternative solution.

Come to think of it, is sounds entirely plausible.

After the cow barb-b-q, I might be chowing down on my pony.

We must not allow an education gap to occur between our cows and the cows of the rest of the world. It is imperative that our cows rise to the occaison. Funding must start immediately to re-educate our cows before they beccome too docile and just stand around eating all day.

Ok, agreed but best not to tell them lest they get mad. Educating mad cows will get the teachers union complaining.

Then watch the US lift their ban on imported Canadian Beef. Thus starting the era of Cow drain...

steerpike,

another good book to read would be THE SOVERIGN INDIVIDUAL, in order to understand the need to build city fortifications.