permaculture

[Harmon Seaver <hseaver@gmail.com>]

Marimike6@cs.com wrote:

   (snip)

> I felt like I'd be very unhappy in a world without bananas. And in fact I 
> now 
> live in a place where I can choose from an assortment of (typically) 14,000 
> different foods, all cheaply priced. So I think that's worth something.
> 

   Problem is, that's all going to disappear in the not too distant
future. World oil production has been dropping for the last two years,
while demand has been increasing. By 2015, China alone will need 100% of
the world's oil supply. But so will India. The big North Sea oil field
that has been the mainstay of Europe and has enriched both England and
Norway is dwindling rapidly -- England now has to import oil. Mexico,
which is the #3 oil supplier to the US just announced this last summer
that they would be totally dry in 7 years. The Saudis don't want to tell
how much oil they actually have left, because their people would
ovethrow them if they found out how much had been squandered, but oil
experts say they are pumping up a lot of sea water now, and are drilling
more and more wells but production doesn't increase.
    Canada, which has supplied most of the US natural gas since 2003, is
running out, and needs to build a nuke plant in northern Alberta to be
able to keep boiling the oil out of the tar sands. So the US is going to
also have very little natural gas for heating and power in just a few
short years.


> In order to maintain these fresh kiwis flown in daily from Chile, we do 
> burn 
> a lot of jet fuel, and spew a lot of CO2. But on the upside, it does 
> provide 
> employment to a lot of people. And store bought toilet paper really is 
> better, 
> cheaper and easier to use than corn cobs. Especially when we're providing 
> for 
> the needs of the 6.8 billion fellow earthlings.

   But that will all be gone shortly. We won't even be able to truck
veggies from California to the midwest, let alone haul food from Chile.
And all the farm chemicals are made from either natural gas or oil --
prices on those are going up so rapidly that within 5 years most
non-organic farmers will be out of business. We are going to see a
situation in the US where if you aren't growing your own food, you won't
have any. That means a lot of people are going to be very hungry, even
starving to death.


> 
> So I would submit that we shouldn't be thinking so much about replacing the 
> global economy with one based on small markets. But instead we should 
> supplement the global market with as much market share as we can carve out 
> for our 
> local offerings. There's room for both.    

   The global economy will be gone. Even the International Energy Agency
is warning about this -- they announced just a few months ago that
within 4-5 years the energy crises will be so bad that it will cause
major economic upheaval. But even before that, the subprime mess and the
resulting major depression we are sliding into will essentially end the
global economy, at least as far as the US is concerned. We produce
nothing here, our whole economy has been based for year on building new
houses and the stuff to fill them, and "service". The major job growth
now is for bartenders. The subprime disaster and the rapidly rising oil
prices will ensure that there is no real economy of any kind, other than
pure subsistence.


-- 
Harmon Seaver