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Preparing for Peak Oil and Global Warming
I looked at the list but mostly it didn't seem to
list actions that I personally can take. It is
more directed at governments. Here is my own list
from May 2008
How to prepare for peak oil and global warming:0) Have fewer children
The lower the global population, the better off we will be,
especially in developing nations. Have fewer children than
you think you can afford, because rough economic times are coming.1) Conserve energy
a Drive less, bike more, get a hybrid car (mine gets 51mpg).
b Live in efficient housing (better insulated, compact, solar heated)
power your house with renewable electricity (wind, solar)
c Eat less energy intensive food, home grown, local, organic, no
meat or dairy from CAFOs, no bottled water. Cook at home.
d Avoid wasteful consumerism, especially bulky products shipped
long distances. Buy durable products and repair them.
e Recycle glass, metal, plastic and paper. Compost organic waste.
Conserve water.2) Build social networks
a Meet local farmers and ranchers and patronize them.
b Befriend your neighbors, trade skills and food with them.
c Join local organizations that encourage sustainable practices -
public transit, food and utility assistance for the poor,
and job training programs to ease economic changes.
d Vote for politicians who comprehend the major issues of
overpopulation, peak oil and global warming and support
meaningful action.3) Prepare for difficult economic times
a Save as much money as possible, pay off all debts.
b Invest in land as well as US and international stocks and bonds.
c Invest in efficient housing and transportation.
d Develop skills that don't depend on the global economy (like
construction, sewing, gardening, hunting, repair services).As you can tell, my list is for non-vegetarian
human beings who live in a low enough population
density that hunting is reasonable. Rural areas
like ours also require personal transportation,
because there are not enough people to support
public transportation. I drive to work, in
support of goal 3, and I am going to keep doing
that as long as possible, but I've cut down the
fuel devoted to driving as much as possible. I
know that I have no ability to predict the future.
But all the things on this list are fine to do no
matter what. Some people think that the stock
market is down for good, we have entered a new
economic era and all economic growth will end. I
doubt this, which is why I still invest, but I
have invested in a solar house an hybrid car too.
If this downturn is comparable to the great
depression, I'll be fine.
Cheers,
SusannaOn Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 83 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
What Kunstler wrote
Kunstler wrote in "The Long Emergency"
"Based on everything we know right now, no combination of so-called
alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain daily
life in the United States the way we have been accustomed to running it
under the regime of oil. No combination of alternative fuels will even
permit us to operate a substantial fraction of the systems we currently
run - in everything from food production and manufacturing to electric
power generation, to skyscraper cities, to the ordinary business of
running a household by making multiple car trips per day, to the
operation of giant centralized schools with their fleets of yellow
busses. We are in trouble.....
"You can't manufacture metal wind turbines using wind energy technology.
You can't make lead-acid storage batteries for solar electric systems
using any know solar energy systems.....
"Technology is just the hardware and programming for running that fuel,
but not the fuel itself. And technology is still bound to the laws of
physics and thermodynamics, which both say that you can't get something
for nothing, and there is no such thing as perpetual motion. All of
this is to say that much of our existing technology simply won't work
without petroleum, and without the petroleum ``platform'' to work off,
we may lack the tools to get beyond the current level of fossil-fuel
based technology.....
"The Rocky Mountain region probably contains more political extremists
and cryptoreligious zealots per capita than any other region of the
country. Its remote valleys and mountain keeps are home to a breed of
of super-individualists who abhor authority and harbor paranoid
fantasies about Jews, blacks, Catholics, foreigners, and the ``New World
Order''. The Long Emergency will stoke their paranoia and make the
places that they control extremely dangerous. Though many fancy
themselves survivalists, they will discover the hard way just how
dependant they actually are on fossil fuels and high technology, and
within a relatively short period of time, an inability to grow food will
drive all but a few out of the mountains.....
"Adolescence as we have known it could disappear and childhood will
afford fewer special protections. Reestablished traditional divisions
of labor may undo many of the putative victories of the femanist
revolution. In the context of new circumstances, these altered
relations will come to seem normal and inevitable.
These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. If there is any
positive side to the stark changes coming our way, it may be in the
benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work
intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an
enterprise that really matters, and to to be fully engaged in meaningful
social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom.
The idea of beauty will surely return from its modernist exile, as one
of the few consolations in the years ahead will be our ability to
conciously craft things for reasons other than to shock and astonish. I
believe that cases of what we label "clinical depression" in our effort
to medicalize all aspects of the human condition, will be steeply
reduced, despite universal hardship. When we hear singing at all, we
will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts."He certainly writes glowingly of traditional societies, and he says that
women's liberation will end, and we will have child labor. He seems to
be saying that very little industrial production can be done without
oil. That's somewhat difficult to disprove, since factories are very
price-sensitive and tend to do things the cheapest way, whatever that
is. Here's a little news item that suggests it can be done:http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/tech-watch/g ...
He tries to argue that renewable technologies are like a perpetual
motion machine, they get something for nothing. This is utter hogwash.
Our solar panels replaced the embodied energy of their manufacture
probably less than a year after we installed them. I've got a study
that showed solar panels in Holland replace their embodied energy in 2
years, and we have much more sunlight. The power contained in sunlight
striking the Earth in a year is about 7000 times as great as energy
content of all the fuel and electricity consumed in 2005. Admittedly,
solar power is a bit more expensive than power from coal. Comparing
retail prices, it seems to be about a factor of 3. I don't think
spending three times as much for electricity would bring about the end
of the world as we know it. Wind is even cheaper. And I think if solar
power can run an automobile assembly line, it ought to be capable of
powering a wind-generator plant.
He's got this strange idea of the entire West chock full of bigots,
without a farmer or rancher to be found.The final quote suggests the author needs more human contact and
meaningful work. Since he is lonely, bored and depressed, he thinks all
modern people are lonely, bored and depressed.
He is really looking forward to the future he predicts. Most of us work at jobs
that we consider meaningful, we are not professional couch potatoes.
It's amusing how he confuses modern art with modern technology. He must
have no exposure to the myriad artists and craft-people alive in the
world today who are not modernist. It is clear that he believes that we
won't have any audio recordings made or used in the future, and that
implies a very drastic loss of technology on all levels. He simply says
nothing about life expectancy.
On Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 83 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
automobile carnage
How much carnage to cars actually cause? I am a guilty party myself.
About 1.5 deaths result from every 100 million miles traveled in the
USA. I got that from http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx. If
the average person travels 15,000 miles per year, then their total
exposure is about 1/10,000 per year. How does this compare to other
risks? 39% of the fatalities were alcohol-related, so that strikes me
as an "easy" way to cut down. Easy for me to say, of course, since I
don't drink. What is the overall risk? One way to estimate it is to
compute the total fatality rate in the USA, which is about 1/78, from
all causes. Automobiles cause about 8 tenths of 1% of this. Accidents
cause 4.7% of all deaths, 6.1% among men and 3.3% in women. I got that
from page 21 of http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_05.pdf.
So automobile accidents are roughly 17% of all accidents. There are a
lot of other things that are bigger considerations. It's possible that
driving so much has caused an increase in heart disease, stroke, and
even cancer. Those are the things that cause the most deaths, and the
death rate from heart disease has fallen considerably in recent years,
much more than it would if we eliminated all deaths from automobile
accidents. If we all rode bicycles instead of cars, the death rate from
accidents would probably increase, because bicycles offer considerably
less protection against collision, and they are inherently less stable.
Although the exercise might reduce the risk of heart disease, it isn't a
sure thing, and anyone who actually knows a fair spectrum of human
beings can tell you that they couldn't all ride a bicycle. Just as not
everyone can (or should) drive, not everyone can ride a bicycle. It
takes a certain level of fitness and coordination to ride. I think it's
dreadfully unrealistic to expect everyone to give up automobiles. It is
about as realistic as expecting everyone to give up alcohol. We could
greatly reduce our risk of accidents, child abuse, homocide, heart
disease and liver failure if we all gave up alcohol. It requires a
little knowledge of humanity and history to appreciate how impractical a
suggestion that is. I think we shouldn't waste large amounts of energy
trying to push for impractical things. Now, campaigns to reduce driving
are a whole different thing. That really can work, almost all of us can
drive less, save money and reduce pollution.James Kunstler advocates a return to pre-industrial society, with a life
expectancy less than half of what we have now. If you are worried about safety,
you ought to oppose such a move.Cheers,
SusannaOn Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 83 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
style vs efficiency
I agree with GreenEngineer's main point. I think that green architecture often is interpreted in artistic terms, when the best yardstick is energy consumption per person, and popularity (so you get the most people). I think our house, described at http://strike.colorado.edu/land is the opposite of Arcosanti, it doesn't try to be stylish, it uses an utterly standard modular house that's cheap on top of a very simple variation on a standard concrete basement, and it is more efficient than most fancy architectural designs. Our energy intensity index is around 0.5 BTU/(sq ft HDD), or 1.0 in you include all energy used (its all solar PV). People enjoy style, but its not necessarily related to efficiency, and it can be very expensive. If we're going to get a lot more efficient, it has to be something the average American can afford and appreciate.
Cheers,
Susanna GrossOn Bridging architecture and ecology at Arcosanti posted 1 year, 1 month ago 4 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
cruise control on mountain passes with a HCH
Hi All,
I agree that the effectiveness of cruise
control depends on the driver and the car, but
I would also like to offer my own experience
driving in mountains with a Honda Civic Hybrid
and using cruise control almost all the time.
It really does save a lot of gas, even over
mountain passes. I average 51MPG, and I drive
Kenosha, Trout Creek and Poncha passes every
week on US 285 in Colorado. My car is a manual,
which means I need to select the right gear for
the terrain. With a tiny 1.3 liter engine I can
accelerate from 35 to 50 up a 7% grade using the
resume button on my cruise control. I have found
that I need to do this in third gear, but that's
fine, the engine doesn't redline until 6000 rpm.
It's quite possible that my battries buffer the
hills and make cruise control more effective. and
having a manual transmission means I can inform
the car about the terrain ahead even with cruise
control.
Cheers,
Susanna GrossOn Umbra on cruise control posted 1 year, 1 month ago 8 Responses