Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

I'm with you on this, Jack. I'm not optimistic either --certainly not
as regards our large corporate models of doing business, producing food
and generally living (as the wanton consumers they would have us be.)
And I realize that I am (we all are) a part of the 'they' in the sense
that if our economy as we know it falls flat, then virtually all of us
are out of jobs whether or not we are directly employed by large
corporations. Our whole system rises and falls together.

BUT, having ruminated about this for a while, I don't just roll over
--not yet anyway. Glenn seems to focus on the hopelessness of feeding
the big bad hungry energy machine that wants to keep growing. And if
the goal is to keep that monster growing, then yes, things look pretty
hopeless. So what if we try to drive less or leave the air conditioner
off just a bit more. Conservation, cleaner energy sources, whatever
other options we exercise do pale beside that growing monster of our
consumption. Glenn is right about that. But what I'm hoping is that
instead of blindly plowing forward as a nation (& international
'community' as well) we are able to exercise all these 'little' options
enough along with other lifestyle changes (like de-centralizing are food
distribution systems --doing more locally with gardens, animals, local
resources) and, of course, painfully altering our lifestyles to having
less convenience, less packaged goodies, etc... If enough of us can
be cajoled towards this painful switch before the monster falls over
dead, then perhaps it will just shrivel down but without the
catastrophic collapse. Most of the world already knows how to live like
this, but we N. Americans don't. And most of us will go down that road
kicking and screaming, as the merciless market prods us on.

Glenn can scoff at solar and its negligible (if any) contribution to the
power grid. But that grid is just the bowels of our big bad machine,
and not what solar is good for anyway. Solar is for localized use.
You don't feed it to a grid. You run a few small things. Wind energy
is big enough to contribute to the grid, but not enough for our
voracious energy appetites as they now are. But all these sources are
invaluable, and if our appetites can get pared down, then those may turn
out to be very significant assets. One other thing; the grid has
already experienced cascading blackouts (like the northeast in '65 I
believe), and now has a faster capacity to dump loads as necessary so
that the whole grid doesn't go down when portions of it do. So Glenn's
concern about a lone wind-farm or solar station electrocuting hapless
workers isn't accurate. He is right that such things by themselves are
nowhere close to supporting the entire grid. But their contributions
are invaluable, nonetheless --especially when they deliver during peak
demand. In Kansas we now have several hundred MW worth of wind-farms
online, and more being planned.

By the way, a coal-fired plant is its own biggest consumer. Getting one
started and keeping it running requires huge portions of its own
produced power. The 'startup' & running of a wind-farm depends only
on.... the wind!

I would love to see groups like this contribute to threads about 'what
we can do'. People like Glenn are good at giving us the kick in the
pants. Now we need to be discussing all the things we CAN do to soften
that future blow, or delay and draw it out. Most of the things I'm
trying to move my family towards are win-win propositions anyway. I've
never been much of a gardener, but I'm trying to expand on that each
year, for example. Whether or not (or when) the gloom and doom comes
true, either way it's a good lifestyle to grow towards.

--Merv
(the book titled 'The Party's Over" that shows the man holding the gas
nozzle to his head has a title that says it all... I can't remember the
author, but it sounds like something Glenn would write. Has anybody
read it?)

Jack wrote:
> So what is your solution Glenn? I respect your opinion. I dont like
> your short fuse. I think Ian and others have gently raised arguments
> against what you claim, which if true sounds like we are all doomed.
> I am probably 30 years younger than you, and have children as young as
> 2, so I have a larger stake in the future than you do I suspect.
>
> I am not at all optimistic about the future, in fact I am very
> pessimistic. But, I am wearing rose colored glasses compared to you.
> So, again, do you see any hope for the future? If you do, can you
> describe it?

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Received on Sat Jun 7 21:02:57 2008