Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society

[Jcrowley]

Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com. Posted February 10, 2007.



The best way to feel hopeful about our looming energy crisis is to get active now and prepare for living arrangements in a post-oil society. Tools


Editor's Note: James Howard Kunstler is a leading writer on the topic of peak oil the problems it poses for American suburbia. Deeply concerned about the future of our petroleum dependent society, Kunstler believes we must take radical steps to avoid the total meltdown of modern society in the face looming oil and gas shortages. For background on this topic, read Kunstler's essay, "Pricey Gas, That's Reality."

Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions" to our looming energy crisis. So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here are my suggestions:

1. Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

2. We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

3. We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami ...) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.

<snip>

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47705/

I strongly suggest folks pan through the comments section of this article. Internet thread of the day perhaps. Practical measures for the coming storm. Get busy.

[Auggie]

1. Sounds like the early 1900s

(with a few whiz-bang technologies added for fun)

[Mortos]

2. Does the author put a timeframe on

the depletion of oil reserves?

[bperci108]

6. Read his book "The Long Emergency".

Your local library likely has it or can get it on interlibrary loan.

He discusses several possibilities, but if I remember correctly, we won't know we've hit Peak Oil until after we have already passed it.

As I usually put it: "Our grandchildren will live in a world far more like that of our great-grandparents than ours."

Even if he might be excessively alarmist in his predictions, Kuntstler is still right; We need to get busy. Daylight's burning. (No pun intended...) ;)

[lectrobyte]

7. Some people think we may already be at peak. Given all the

deliberate misstating of oil reserves for various reasons, it may be very hard to tell. There might be some clues, though:


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aoS6HuXM_pqk

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Norway dropped to fifth place among the world's crude oil exporters last year as the nation's North Sea production declined, the Norwegian energy ministry said. The United Arab Emirates replaced Norway as the world's third-largest exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia, Sissel Edvardsen, a spokeswoman for the ministry, said today in an interview. Iran currently holds fourth place, she said.


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pemex8feb08,1,3031907.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

MEXICO CITY — Production at Mexico's largest oil field is slipping faster than projected and officials see few options for quickly replacing the main source of the nation's oil riches.

The struggles of the world's No. 5 oil producer have implications for an already tight global petroleum market and for the United States, the chief buyer of Mexico's heavy crude. It's also a threat to Mexico's social stability.

Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, which provides about 60% of Mexico's crude, averaged 1.78 million barrels a day in 2006. That's a 13% drop from 2005, said Jesus Reyes Heroles, director of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in a news conference Wednesday.

[Jcrowley]

16. Here's an excellent resource guide

http://www.peakoil.net/

[MadHound]

3. Sorry, while this has a few good points, overall it is an overly pessimistic and unrealistic view

Yes, we need to do some rethinking on matters such as public transportation and farming. However if we wholesale abandon our current infrastructure, we're going to collapse. We simply don't have the ability to make the transition to what this author invisions in a short enough time frame to keep our economy from collapsing.

Rather, let us retain a part of our car culture, and fuel it with something that is clean, non petroleum and renewable. That would be biodiesel, using algae as a feedstock. It has been shown that using algae as a feedstock, we can fulfill all of our fuel needs, and the bonus is that we can grow the algae in wastewater treatment ponds, thus cleaning our water.

This guy also focuses primarily on oil, and yet is willing to have coal fired plants. What an ass! Does he not know that we can fill all of our electrical needs using wind power? I guess not.

Sorry, but this piece sounds more like the author is trying to fill his own personal wish list, ie public transportation, collapse of Wal-Mart, etc., rather than looking at matters in a realistic and practical matter. Yes, we need to change how people in this country use energy, but we need to do so in a way that won't collapse our country or economy. This guy's plan is simply a recipie for disaster.

[SmokingJacket]

9. I think his point is that it's going to collapse anyway...

so we need to anticipate that and plan for alternatives.

I love the bit about overthrowing the faculty of architecture schools!!

Ultimately, though, as much as I love Kunstler, I agree with you that there's no way people are going to pre-emptively give up their cars... though they are very open to switching to more intelligent fuels. I hadn't heard about algae -- interesting.

I've come to realize over the years that NO ONE listens to a prophet. Telling people, Such and such is going to happen sometime in the distant future, we have to prepare now, is pointless. People ONLY react to currently pressing issues. People will use less gas ONLY if it costs too much -- and then the clamor will be to "make it cheaper!" and not to address the deeper causes and effects.

And the only way we'll change our society into a eco-dream such as people like Kunstler (and I) wish for is if/when the old one finally totally falls apart and we can start from scratch. But we are so good at limping along with half-assed solutions that keep us temporarily comfortable, I doubt that will ever happen.

I think the only feasible solutions to our environmental problems will be technological ones that simultaneously make a handful of people very rich AND make Americans continue to feel rich and comfortable.

[MadHound]

20. That is why I think that there are better alternatives

So that this society doesn't collapse. Biodiesel is an alternative fuel that we can easily make, is a sustainable product, and will put much less pollution in the air, all with mimimal transformation shock to the general public. Same with wind and solar.

I would rather develop and implement realistic plans that sustain our country and the world rather than throwing in the towel early and say that all is hopeless, prepare for a return to the dark ages. We can, and should do better than that.

[Leopolds Ghost]

26. Do you consider the 1920's the "Dark Ages"? How about the 1950's/1960's?

The lifestyle of America in those eras was considered a bright light to the entire world. And we drove a quarter to HALF as much and used a quarter to HALF as much resources as we do today.

That is why I can't stand it when people think cutting our resource intake and auto use in half constitutes a return to the "dark ages"!

By the way, before someone says "but now we have cable TV and Internet, we don't need to return to the walkable, geographic communities of the past, our current lifestyle is equally appealing and in some ways better, we have more productivity and more goods", Keep in mind the following:

The most likely prompt for a world-wide oil shortage is a national resource emergency bought on by a war in the Persian Gulf.

100% of all Internet traffic (by design) is funneled through two Internet portals in MAE-East and MAE-West. That is why Silicon Valley exists.

Cable TV and Internet will soon be integrated as predicted in the 1970s and we will all get the same content on the same blue box.

Guess what happens to sites like this one in the event of a national emergency?

That is why geographic communities are important.

The electronic cocoon lifestyle where people leave their houses via garage only is good for talk -- e-mail is good only for talk. Anything that requires concerted community action, especially involving people of other income groups, requires that a geographic community to exist.

A geographic community can't exist in a town where front doors are only for show, and people only leave their house via garage.

[MadHound]

31. No, what I consider "Dark Ages" is basically life without electricity and oil.

Which is what we're facing now. Peak Oil hit, and it isn't going to be a nice gradual descent, it is going to be a plunge off the cliff, taking our economy, society and many of our lives with it.

You speak of the internet, do you fully comprehend how much our society and lives depend on computers? How much are lives have become dependent on electricity? Most modern homes have no capacity for heating them without gas or electricty, people would die. How many lives are directly dependent on electricity, respirators,dialysis, O2, on and on.

This is the Dark Ages, and this is what's staring us in the face. It would be lovely if we could limit the damage to '20-'30s level, though that would be bad enough. No friend, we're talking about our societ going completely without within short order. Our society and government couldn't withstand those sort of economic and infrastructure shocks, it would collapse into complete chaos and anarchy. Yes, small communities would eventually form, mostly rural communities where food can be grown(though in someplaces that is debatable, since the ground in many areas has been rendered sterile through the ongoing use of petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides). But this would only occurr after the loss of tens, possibly hundreds of millions of lives. I know, it is fashionable for many DUers to hope and pray for a massive human die-off, but I can't be that cold-hearted, thus I would rather that we switch to energy sources that will allow us to continue to sustain, for the most part, our current way of life.

I agree with you vision of geographic communities, but it will take generations to establish those, just as in took decades to establish our current car culture. Therefore, we need ideas that span that gap and cushion the shock. Biodiesel, wind and solar are just such solutions, and I would suggest that we use them. Otherwise we will go over that cliff, and it won't be back into the quaint days of the Waltons, oh no. It will be into the days of chaos, anarchy and massive death. Let's try to prevent that.

[Jim Warren]

10. Electrified train transport

I think on closer reading he mentions coal as a means to electrify transport with local CO2 sequestration, not an across the board endorsement.

When you say "we need to change how people in this country use energy, but we need to do so in a way that won't collapse our country or economy", I would add so do we all. However, as it now stands without prompt radical change, we, both country and economy are headed off a cliff.......either with eternal energy war or climate disaster.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. Well, since Brian Schweitzer is pushing zero-emission coal, it'd put a halt to strip-mining in WV!

Brian Schweitzer, governor of MT, says Montana is the "Saudi Arabia of coal" and there is no need to strip mine tar sands of Alberta or the gas fields of the Arctic or mountaintop removal in West Virginia, when we
mine coal in Montana and pump the CO2 back into the ground.

Of course, most Americans will not care because coal is used to power cities and transit, not suburbs and cars where most Americans live.

[Jcrowley]

15. We do not have an economy

we have a very uneconomical financial arrangement that is called an 'economy'. It is dependent on copious amounts of cheap energy and eternal growth. That system is omnicidal in all aspects. The evidence surrounds us and speaks to us every day.

[starroute]

19. You don't have to see it as pessimistic

I know of science fiction stories going back to the 40's -- with their roots in thinking of the 20's and 30's -- that saw the collapse of our over-urbanized culture and return to a more decentralized system as a good thing. That dream got lost in the 50's rush to auto-based surburbs, but there's no reason not to recall it now.

The greatest problem with the farm and small-town life of the late 19th-early 20th century was how narrow and stultifying it was. Story after story of the period told of bright young people fleeing their home towns for the liveliness and challenge of the city. But the Internet offers an obvious answer to that problem of isolation and conformity. A de-urbanized society of the 21 century would be nothing like that of 100 years ago.

In just the last few days I've seen a story about how farmers are using online message boards to swap tips on planting and reviews of farm equipment, something on a push by one of the Democratic candidates (or was it Gore?) to get broadband extended to all the rural areas where the commercial companies don't want to go because it's unprofitable, and somebody writing about how he'd love to be working today on his grandfather's tomato farm that the family had to sell because they couldn't afford to keep it.

As I get older, I think of how much I'd rather spend my golden years living someplace where I could walk a few blocks at a leisurely pace to do my shopping and chat to the neighbors -- instead of being stuck in a retirement community like my father, where he can't even get to the library because he gave up driving and the community only provides transportation to the mall.

There's also the factor that if we're destined to live in a world where terrorism will always be the easy resort of the disenfranchised, a highly decentralized, target-poor environment will necessarily be the safest for us and our children.

The last 10,000 years have been marked by two major novelties -- cities and war. Both of them had to do with the accumulation of wealth. Together, they may have been a necessary step as we boot-strapped our way out of the hunter-gatherer stage. But both have also been the sources of great suffering, deprivation, and damage to the environment. If we now have the ability to move beyond them -- without giving up the advantages of creative ferment and ambitious collective projects that they made possible -- there is every reason to do so.

[MadHound]

21. That is why they're called fiction

There is nothing good about our economy and society heading over a cliff. Too much human suffering, too much enviromental damage, too much retrograde progression towards the dark ages would result. Sorry, but I simply can't by into that sort of dystopia.

And while having everybody return to the life of the farm or small rural town is attractive, it is a practical impossiblity. Cities rose for a very good reason, they are the cheapest and most efficient way, in terms of money and envirormental impact, of having humans structure themselves on this land. If we break into small towns, critical services such as schools and hospitals would be stretched thin, requiring longer amounts of travel. Libraries, markets, all of these necessary structures of our society would wither and perhaps disappear.

Rather, let us keep the city and change our energy sources and energy usage. That way we can combine the best of all worlds without having to suffer a major societal setback.

[starroute]

22. I should add, by the way...

...that the one place I disagree with the article is that I obviously don't see the electrical system as failing. It's a heck of a lot easier to move electrons around than to move large physical objects and people around -- and we will need well-functioning information grids all the more as physical travel declines.

We may have to do with less air conditioning and other luxuries in order to save the power for where it really counts -- but we will do whatever it takes, because that is how humans handle things, once you hit them hard enough to get their attention. (Among other things, all those surburban development shotgun houses with windows only in the front and the back and no cross-ventilation are probably going to become unlivable.)

"Think globally, act locally" isn't just eco-bullshit -- it's the shape of the future. Among other things, it means that the more localized the scale of our (physical) actions becomes, the more our knowledge sphere is going to have to become globalized to compensate.

Once again -- this is old news. It was already laid out in 1940's science fiction stories. It's been no secret how things have to develop. We just need to want a "more green and less noise" world -- and have the perceptiveness to know what of our present society is worth keeping and what can be left behind without regrets.

[Leopolds Ghost]

25. You make some excellent points, but the Hyper-suburbia you are used to is unsustainable.

The sluburbia that is being built now is nothing like the suburbia that was built in the 1950s and 1960s. It is completely energy-unsustainable
and it is economically and infrastructure unsustainable to boot.

Suburbs cannot sustain a booming economy without massive congestion or massive road-building and anti-human scale infrastructure-building of the sort that bankrupted empires and destroyed cities like Nero's Rome.

An uncongested post-1970 suburb is a slum.

My advice for DUers would be:

* Stop living in post-1970 suburbs unless you are willing to accept fixed rail transit and urban centers in place of your strip malls and limited access 8-lane roads.

* Stop using the engines of state, local and national Democratic PArty officials to screw over and displace the poor from the urban core, the home of the social safety net, in the name of "improving their lives" and "allowing new development in the urban core" by completely eradicating lower-income housing from cities like Boston, San Francisco, DC, Manhattan, and New Orleans -- a national policy instituted by Clintonomics and liberals, many of whom don't even live in the city themselves.

* Stop trying to foist ALL urban development, most of it geared to the wealthy, on existing urban centers that were smart enough to create a grid, while illegalizing it in your own communities and destroying existing grids in inner suburbs to make way for auto-oriented "neo-urban" development where 99% of people drive even if transit exists, because of block consolidation, lot consolidation, subdivision ordinances, and applying 1/2 of the cost of a high-rise building to structured FREE parking.

* Stop talking about the car culture and start using transit. Move to the nearest community that has a bus line within walking distance (1/4 mile) of most houses and where all distances within 1/4 mile are walkable (meaning some semblance of a street grid or greenways exist.)

* Make sure that compact, walkable strip malls or town centers are present on that grid or system of greenways. If not, lobby for them.

* If an existing town center or strip mall is ignored by residents because (a) the landlord and municipality are pressing for cap rates that only car-oriented chain stores can pay and (b) it is considered obsolete because it is smaller, closer in, and less auto accessible, LOBBY for increased small business presence in these areas, DAMMIT.

I live in an extremely liberal upper-middle class town with a downtown area, and they are fighting to get rid of the downtown shops because
they drive everywhere and want the freedom to sunbathe nude on their back porch without having to encounter people on foot. I am not joking.

* If there are no service stores within walking distance of a bus or rail stop in your community, take the bus to the nearest hardware store. It is not as hard as you think. 99.5% of Americans shop in their CAR,
even the ones who claim to ride transit everywhere. It is not amusing.
It is a waste of energy regardless of where that energy was extracted from. We are never going to look like Coruscant or Back To the Future II, with flying cars in the sky. 9/11 made sure of that.

The next best alternative is not to be chained to our cars whenever we go shopping in a fashion where local economies are NOT possible because congestion requires auto-oriented shops to be spread out. It is the "Victor Gruen paradox." (Read up on the failure of Victor Gruen's plans for downtown Fort Worth.)

* If you think that a fusion, or wind-powered economy is necessary in order for you to continue to purchase 2-month supply of goods at the superstore, as if you lived on a farm in North Dakota, thus requiring a large vehicle to run ALL errands:

Consider where the resources needed to provide those goods came from, and how much of them came from petroleum.

Anyone seen that new Plastics ad on TV? Where all the things in the house made of plastic disappear? Now how many people here know that
there are only two sources of raw material for plastic: oil, and offal from slaughterhouses?

[MadHound]

32. It took generations to build up the car culture,

The infrastructure, the living arrangements, the mentality. It will take almost the same amount of time to undo it. Sure, it's nice to preach that people should move back to the city, but where are you going to put them all? There isn't enough housing right now to do so, and it will take a couple of decades at least to build that housing.

Mass transit is fine and dandly, I'm all in favor of it. But it's going to take at least a decade to repair and replace all of the track that we had back in the day. It will take even longer to run tracks in such a way as becomes a useful, function grid that can take the place of our highway system. Europe is able to have such a system because each country is dealing with limited space. Large countries like the US and Soviet Union can't easily build or afford such massive rail systems simply due to our sheer size.

This is why it is incumbent to provide a transitional solution, one that will allow us to make the switch that you speak of. Hence, using biodiesel, wind and solar are perfect for us at this point.

Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be moving into a city ever again if I can help it. I like the peace and quiet of the country, where I can grow my own food, generate my own electricity with a wind turbine, make my own biodiesel, and live my own life. Oh, and just for your own information, this is what I use for my thirty four mile round trip commute

Oh, and for your own information, plastic can and is being made out of materials other than oil and offal. Plastic can be made from peanut and soy oil, corn starches, and basically any plant that can serve as biodiesel feedstock, which includes hemp and algae. I don't know about where you live, but out here in farm country, all those little plastic bags that you get at the store are made from a corn starch and are biodegradable(in fact you could eat them if you wished).

[lectrobyte]

4. This peak oil to-do list is good reading. I read Kunstler's blog, but

find it more interesting when he's not ranting about suburbia and cheese doodles, such as that entry from last week.

Anyway, the article I was thinking of, and a brief excerpt:

http://www.energybulletin.net/24399.html

Recite this daily: "Today is better than tomorrow."

I know, this sounds backwards to us and unreasonably pessimistic. But it is not backwards. It is the truth. Healthy peak oil psychology starts here.

We in the prosperous West have been thoroughly brainwashed with the opposite idea: tomorrow will always be better than today. (By "better" I mean as measured by capitalist economic standards, not necessarily by true quality of life standards). If this were not true, no one would ever sign a 30-year mortgage, confident that all that future wealth is already there for the taking. No one would spend their money on an SUV that gets eight miles per gallon. Our whole culture is built on the assumption - no, the conviction - that tomorrow we will have more of everything than we did yesterday. Who can blame us, really? For as long as we've had a steadily increasing supply of energy to fuel economic expansion, it has been true.

[bperci108]

8. Well put. Denial is epidemic, even here amongst the "progressives"...

The thought of giving up that car and the unlimited mobility it offers is just too much for some to face up to.

I don't necessarily agree wholesale with Kuntstler, but it's far better to err on the side of caution rather than trying to desperately cling to a dying lifestyle and a dying system at all costs.

[Jim Warren]

11. MOBILITY!

Mobility is THE catchword of the future, as it was in the distant past before the cheap oil hiatus.

Mobility on a personal human scale of getting from one place to another and.........in the rather gripping context of movement within the social strata.

[lectrobyte]

12. Yes, it does some inconcievable to imagine life without a bunch of cars in

the garage. My grandchildren are surprised when I tell that that when I was their age, our family had one car, and when my Dad drove to work, we stayed home or were walking otherwise. They are even more surprised when I tell them that neither of my grandmothers knew how to drive, nor had driver's licenses.

Kunstler makes a good point on car culture, and that is that just because we like something doesn't mean that it can go on forever. I think I agree that as peak oil hits, it will force us to be more efficient, but unlike some of the posters here, I'm not as confident about our ability to find new energy sources, nor having the economic base to develop them.

[bperci108]

13. It can be done.

It ain't gonna be easy.... ;)

Some are already doing it. Read the Living Car-Free forum over at www.bikeforums.net.

Some of Kunstlers' points are quite prophetic, IMHO:

A return to regional economies.

The end of industrialized agriculture.

The end of the suburban car-culture.

The end of sprawling cities and endless subdivisions of McMansions.

A return to the land and the simpler life that that entails.


Are we up to it? :patriot: (Okay...I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but the point stands.) :rofl:


On a side note, most don't think about how much of their income is devoured by expensive cars, especially two or three of them. A lot of the reason folks are so financially strapped today is what's parked in their driveways and garages.

Why be a slave to a finance company and a machine?

[lectrobyte]

14. I have no doubt -- I try to live an "efficient" lifestyle already. Smaller

house, avoid disposable crap, etc. etc. I experienced the oil shocks of the 1970's, and they made an impression, and I grew up with grandparents who were hit pretty hard by the great depression.

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. I think it's scary that the new generation cannot imagine life without a car

As if cars and cable TV are necessary as fire or indoor plumbing.

The society of the car and the cable television is one of an automobile desert in which people are USED to not being able to walk more than 500 feet without getting run over in the median of one of the automobile sewers that criss-crosses their community, funneling waste water and pesticides into their hollowed-out, denuded creeks and streams. It is nothign like the communities that still existed up until the late 1970s before gentrification and the automization of the remaining walkable historic communities.

[InkAddict]

29. Neither my mother nor my MOL drove a car or had a permanent license.

Neither one of these religious zeolots worked their entire married lives; their tyrant husbands never changed their employers from the time they returned from WWII until retirement. Each family existed with one car. My FIL loved to drive, but my Dad considered it an inconvenience on his precious time. As a kid, I gave up begging him to take me to the library, football games, and on shopping expeditions and I usually had to "mooch" a ride with others. I eagerly anticipated infrequent family vacations to the destination of my father's choosing for a quick sprint in the car to see only the "scenery", but more often visiting relatives in Chicago where we needed to be seen and not heard. You can well imagine the impact that had socially. I swore I would do things differently to enlarge the small world I was forced to endure as a child.

Instead, I found identity in working with others outside the home like most of my peers. I drove on the Interstates and to the grocery (with ingrained trepidation), moved more than several times, and changed jobs at least as many times. As the near future is painted, I'm really conflicted about the thought of returning to what I believe was such a limiting lifestyle since I've invested so much energy to be free of it. Sorry, I'm not yet ready to give up seeing what's a little farther outside my four walls every so often. How can one justify global economies when we won't be able to do more than walk about the north 40 inches to grovel for the Haves and Have Mores. Work at home, not! Virtual travel via HDTV or monitor, NOT! I'd had enough of that poor, pastoral life, and worked hard to achieve the right to explore a bit.

Now, that expansion of experience, along with my home and a means of self-support when I'm really ill and/or elderly is history, stolen away by America's corporatist elite who just handed it over to those across the oceans in the form of our jobs, all the while dropping bombs and feeding foreign sand with the blood of our youth and "swiftboating" our experienced protectors on every place that has a barrel of oil left in the ground.

This GOP base-abused self will not go down quietly. We've been royally screwed along with our kids and grandkids as it stands. Accountability for this grand theft must be prosecuted and impeached. Unless we do something very, very different, we're going to get what we've come to expect and apparently what that base has been aiming at all along. Endless propaganda, war and bloody hell on earth until Armegeddon!

Sorry, storm's coming!

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. K & R, excellent common sense article. My husband and I are talking about just this thing.

Downsizing to one vehicle, and one which is more fuel economic than what we have now. Moving to a small home, with an area that would support a garden for veggies, etc.

Anything we buy now that could be characterized as a "durable good" will be expected to last through the rest of our lives.

Whether it's a car, furniture or a washing machine, we'll be expecting to keep the item, repair as necessary and not keep replacing just because a newer, shinier version becomes available.

I'm already a thrift store shopper, my husband still gets mostly new clothes, although he has worn several things that I've bought for him at thrift stores.

Any purchase we make is scrutinized closely...smart, self sufficient citizens, that's the ticket! MKJ

[bvar22]

17. We are believers!

The suburbs will be the first to collapse, and it won't be pretty.

[kestrel91316]

18. Re alternatives to modern food production/processing:

mandatory book for your shelves: Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living

[AngryAmish]

23. Sounds rather Hobbsian

[Doondoo]

24. k&r

[Kurovski]

30. Al Gore for president! (nt)