Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Tilting at oil derricks

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tilting at oil derricks
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:13:49 -0600


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.





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page