[ROCKMAN]

pstarr - You're just a young PO whippersnapper. I'm about to hit my 40th anniversary of becoming PO aware. LOL.

Your list of fixes is good but we've known what needed to be done for many years. But the problem remains the same: capital. Look at the debt the US has developed just by the effort to maintain BAU. Some folks foolishly believe we can give up BAU and redirect those funds towards the "solutions". But I've yet to see one of them willing to give up even half of the BAU that supports their lifestyle. And that's the easy part: now convince the majority of the population to demand politicians degrade their lifestyles by redirecting monies to the effort away from BAU.

You know as well as I do: there's no free lunch. Forget the rest of the planet...just focus on the US. A simple question: if we don't cut back spending on BAU where will the $trillions come from to fund a Manhattan style rush to develop alternatives? Obvious we don't have 40 - 50 years to make the transition slowly...like we could have started in 1975 when the need should have been apparent? Borrow the money? That's how we've been financing BAU. The country can't put 5% down on the transition cost and finance the rest. That's what led to the mortgage meltdown. The govt made that buying frenzy by dropping interest rates so a great many could buy a house they couldn't really afford one. How did that work for the country? LOL.

I've teased about it before: I really don't need to read another post about what we need to do to deal with the energy transition. What I would be thrilled to see is anyone post a PRACTICAL and DOABLE plan to pay for the transition. As that nice smelling lady on the corner says: “First the money…then the cloths”. So: First the money…then the alts.

[ROCKMAN]

pstarr - Sounds good. Now explain the PRACTACLE and DOABLE part of the plan where the majority of the population supports the politicians that would push through your proposal.

Not picking on you...I know you're being sincere. But once again I have to repeat those words spoken by Pogo long ago: We have met the enemy...and he is us. These are the same politicians that have been too afraid to raise motor fuel taxes even 1 cent per gallon for THE LAST 20 YEARS. One can only assume there hasn't been enough reason to encourage out citizens to consume so much oil. LOL.

[Paulo1]

re Rockman's point: "What I would be thrilled to see is anyone post a PRACTICAL and DOABLE plan to pay for the transition."

This is being done by individuals right now; by those with the foresight and energy (excuse the intentional pun) and willingness to get started. We can't wait for 'they'/'them' to do what needs doing. We the people, are the only ones who can make it happen. There is no way to pay for what is not admitted to even be an issue. No one in leadership will agree to sacrifice the safe paradigm of plenty and entitlements for the sake of the greater good.

I have been PO aware for 6 years. My wife and I went through many stages of grief and worry and have done what we can for ourselves and family. I have mentioned some of these preps in the past, but this isn't really what I want to say right now.

I would like to thank so many of you for your personal stories of dealing with PO and sharing your insights and preps. It has often been a strange sense of companionship and shared purpose, checking the posts over morning coffee and lunch. I still miss TOD but this site blended with Ron's seems to fill the void.

Got my elk yesterday evening. Fish and fowl in the freezer...veggies for the next year or so, wine stored away and firewood sheds bursting....ammo and tools. On and on we go. I hope.

regards...paulo

[GHung]

Here's the thing, Rock; our Govt. and the Fed didn't have big problems shoveling $trillions into the banks and Wall Street for the last few years, and they didn't have too much trouble funding trillion dollar wars not-of-necessity. Think of how much of that funny money has been off-shored forever and how little of that ended up circulating in the US Homeland economy. We've pretty much shot that wad, but think about if that money had been pumped directly into domestic jobs, domestic production and domestic spending. Could have gone a long way towards accomplishing the things P suggests, and that kind of money goes round and round rather than sitting in some bond fund paying interest into hedge funds and pensions which probably won't exist in a few years anyway. But I'm with you; never going to happen; never was.

BTW: I had a crazy genius uncle explain the concept of peak oil to me when I was 13, about the time US production was peaking. He was a professor of advanced mathematics, really out there, but what he said made perfect sense at the time, 43 years ago: "In your lifetime, oil will be too rare and expensive to fool with". I was gassing up my minibike at the time.

[Synapsid]

ROCKMAN,

That was Albert, the 'gator, not Pogo.

Accuracy in all things!

[frankthetank]

I've come and gone and come back. 10 years ago I thought by now the whole thing would have crashed. I was way off. I think we still easily have 10 years before this thing crumbles, if not longer. Famous last words? who knows. I guess it could go tomorrow...i do wonder how long the fracking boom can hold up.

To another 10 years!

[Ibon]

35 years ago in the university all of the ecological studies talked about the consequences if we didn't act and all those consequences back then had an end date of around 40 years. So now we are here. And yes, I have come to bear witness to many of those predictions.

Back then the thought of failing to act was unimaginable and I was sure we would wise up.

One of the main differences to then and now is the loss of belief in our ability to retool and reinvent ourselves. This growing consensus that we are collectively incapable is actually an early indicator that we are heading toward some inflection point.

Hey Pstarr, I am right behind you on Dec 4!

[noobtube]

There is a growing fatalism in the United States.

It is as if Americans know they don't have it in themselves to change. So, why not just waste what's left on enjoyment and entertainment and business-as-usual.

Americans are wearing down.

And, when that last flicker of self-entitlement is gone, America, as anyone understands it today, will cease to exist.

[Northwest Resident]

noob -- It isn't just the Americans that are "wearing down". Look at Europe. Look at the ME. Look at China. We're all in that big commode, swirling down together.

I'm amazed that some people have been aware of Peak Oil and its consequences for so many years. I come from that vast majority of people who go on about their daily lives, wrestling with marriage and children and work and so wrapped up in other things that they are aware of very little that the MSM doesn't report. But a little over a year ago my antennae suddenly stood up on end and I realized that something was really wrong. At the time, I was a political junkie, always reading political news and commentary, caught up in just exactly the us-versus-them mentality that TPTB instigate to keep the masses distracted and unaware of the real issues. My first inclination was to start searching for information regarding the world economy, because that is what I sensed was in very deep trouble. While reading articles and comments on that subject, I came across the concept of peak oil for the first time. Searching on that term lead me to TOD. Reading comments and articles on that site kicked my awareness into a whole new dimension, and I became aware.

I respect and admire the people that have crunched the numbers, that have analyzed the trends, that through application of scientific and logical reasoning came to the realization that BAU could not continue indefinitely due to the finite oil supply and other resources. But for me, the initial "realization" was more like an animal sniffing the wind and sensing that something wasn't right. The hair was raising on my back and I was feeling the tingles of "fight or flight" before I figured out what the reason was behind those feelings. I sensed our doom approaching, I guess. And since then, I have found a steady stream of factual information that confirms and validates my initial sense that something was and IS really, really wrong.

I still trust my "gut feeling". It tells me that now is the time for urgent action to prepare for the coming storm. I do not believe that any plan will save us, or that any plan will even mitigate the effects of what is about to happen. Collectively speaking, humans are just a herd of cattle grazing in the pasture, unaware of the wolves closing in around the perimeter. Those few of us who perceive what is really happening and have a good sense of what is about to descend upon humanity can only do their best to prepare individually, and to make arrangements that will enable us to include close kin or friends or perhaps random others behind the battlements that we are building to weather the storm. My gut feeling is, that storm is not far away, and approaching fast. I guess we'll find out soon enough if my gut feeling is right or wrong.

[JuanP]

Happy anniversary, Pstarr!
I can't remember when I became aware of Peak Oil. I was born in 1969 and as far back as I can remember I've always been worried about overpopulation, limits to growth, environmental destruction, pollution, and depleting resources.
Some of my earlier memories are of cleaning the street and the beach before I was six and worrying that the coastal dunes ecosystem in front of my parents' house was being destroyed very fast. I still pick up trash everywhere I go 40 years later. Today I picked two large black bags on the island I visited in my raft.
We will not stop destroying and consuming, it is our nature. Living things consume, grow, and reproduce, it's just what we do. We are smarter than bacteria, but we will end just like bacteria in sugar on a Petri dish. There is no hope!

[Numbersman]

it seems to me that we essentially have a "political problem". we haven't "blown our wad" at the fed just yet. heck, we ware still pumping 80 billion per month of magic money into the economy via government spending without corresponding tax revenues. And since we borrow it from the department of treasury, we don't have to pay it back unless we want too. I certainly expected to see much worse inflation, but it hasn't shown up in the places I expected it. rehash: we can keep printing money for a while. fight wars or build out renewables? but alas, it's not that easy. if we don't keep the world running on oil, our military might and control by proxy of most of the worlds oil, might not mean as much. And maybe we can't get away with money printing. So, likely there is a levitation under way, and if we stop to think about it, it goes poof like Wile E Coyote looking down after he runs off the cliff and hovers a while in ignorance. I don't have the answers, heck, I can't even get a handle on the true problem(s)..... on the one hand, would like to see more sane action. on the other, I don't want to bring on crises of biblical proportion. As fun as it would be to live on deer and fish, I do expect my camp would be pillaged, and my family miserable. I would hat to be the POTUS and have to confront this....

[TemplarMyst]

Happy anniversary pstarr. Er, uh, I think...

I guess I've been PO aware since some time not long after the 2008 meltdown. Like others, I wound up at TOD for a while, but not until I'd wandered a while first.

I feel pretty lucky, in a lot of ways. For reasons unrelated to PO or any other reason other than a basic lack of desire, the wife and I opted out of having children. Have lots of family and friends who do, and continue to be amazed by friends who are looking forward to welcoming a new baby into their lives. Have a good friend with a new arrival just this past week.

Folks just aren't aware of things. Or, as some others have pointed out, mebbe we're the ones who are crazy. Mebbe Julian Simon was right, and Al Bartlett was all wrong. That just seems so incredibly unlikely to me, but hey, mebbe there's some magic out there PO aware folks ain't aware of... ditto for CC.

I can't imagine a way out at this point, though I keep trying to think up one. One thing that seems pretty clear to me at this point is any potential solution would have to look, and feel, a lot like BAU in order to get anyone to go along with it. At a basic level, management of the carbon cycle would have to, well, be profitable. The carbon cycle is just one piece of the puzzle, but the basic idea - of a profitable way to manage things, would have to apply, or no one will give it a second thought.

Have no idea how that might work. From a physics/energy point of view, I think we might be able to do much with the actinides, given their energy density, but how to do anything on anything like the scale and in the time frame which would be needed is utterly beyond me. France did fundamentally change it's energy systems in about a decade. So perhaps that Manhattan Project is theoretically possible, I suppose.

But outside of the fairly small community of PO/CC aware folks, no one is really even seriously talking about this, at least not in any meaningful way. If only one could make it profitable, the conversation would happen all on it's own.

Can't see it happening, but who knows.

[basil_hayden]

Happy Anniversary pstarr; but it won't be your last.

Wait until we figure out how to pump all the extra carbon dioxide with some catalysts down the same holes we extracted it from and use the ambient temperatures and pressures at depth to turn it back into petroleum hydrocarbons - the carbon forever loop.

Merry Geothermalling!

[Herr Meier]

can only do their best to prepare individually.

There's nothing you can do to prepare, with the exception of a few month of food storage which you should have anyways in case of any disaster.

The idea that you can prepare and "survive" a bottle-neck where 90% of humanity dies leaving behind a brave new world of peace and beauty worth waiting for is nonsense.

You live now! Enjoy life and its opportunities now.