Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Nov 14, 2007, at 9:56 PM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

> > Do we know of any economic interest groups that do not have paid
> cheerleaders?
>
> No.  There aren’t any.  All the more reason to not use any of them  
> as a
> source of information.

Yet it would appear that the reason for their proliferation is not  
just the dollars they feed the DC Whorehouse but their ability to  
provide "official" information about the various industries to  
congress-people who need info before writing or voting on bills. We  
here don't have unlimited time to find the facts about myriad items;  
senators have less. Finding sources one can trust is a modern dilemma.
> My posit is this:  Oil provides so much of the world’s energy, and  
> especially
> the energy used in the US, and oil is so convenient, energy dense,  
> portable,
> storable, flexible, and right now, abundant, that there IS no  
> alternate nor
> combination of alternates that bid fair to replace any but a small  
> fraction of
> the energy from oil.

Atomic energy seems an obvious answer. Lovelock, in the terrific  
piece Jerry posted, makes the valid point that the positives far  
outweigh the negatives.
> In a lot of ways, saying that we will find an alternative for oil  
> is like
> saying we will find an alternative for water or soil.

It is ridiculous to posit that anything can replace oil completely.  
Various technologies and practices will each replace some, not all,  
of the many features of oil. For instance something will replace IC  
engines. Something will replace some plastic, but some existing  
plastic may be recycled efficiently. Something new will act as a  
lubricant. Something else will serve as filler in processed foods.
> Here is where the economists trip up.  Suppose you have a farm  
> vehicle that,
> for the sake of easy arithmetic, has a ten gallon tank and gets ten  
> miles to
> the gallon. . . . Then that service station closes (forever) and  
> the next nearest station is
> sixty miles away.  At this point the economics don’t matter any  
> more.  There is
> no way for you to get to the service station and arrive back at the  
> farm.
> You’d be out of gas before you got there.  At this point you lose  
> the use of your
> vehicle.

Too many words, James.

Think beyond oil.

> To the economist it’s just a matter of oil getting so expensive  
> that solar or
> wind will be "cheaper" and everything will equal out.

I don't care what economists are thinking. I care about being a  
successful homesteader, being as much as possible in charge of my  
life. That will always require adjustments to local and world  
conditions. Energy sources are but one item.
> What is requires, which we don’t have now, is an entirely new way  
> of viewing
> what our culture is all about.  Looking about for something else to  
> stuff in
> the gas tank when the oil is gone is not going to get us anywhere.

Agreed.
> Or as Al Einstein put it: "We can't solve problems by using the  
> same kind of
> thinking we used when we created them."

And there you have it. Think bigger.