[SeaGypsy]

The first who didn't run away from the rainbow revolution, as far as I know, yes.
SA, despite the violence is possibly the most likely English speaking country to grok these issues; though as a country per se it is unlikely.
Welcome!

[Hedgewitch]

Greetings, I just found you while surfing the news from Egypt and what it might mean in the near-term and long term for our oil-addicted world!

I'm a graying boomer hoping to escape the cancerous sprawl of LA to someplace wet and green and establish our little family there before the bottom falls out. We are so utterly dependent on imported oil, water, food -- everything here in the LA area, and this megalopolis is hopelessly unsustainable. When the prices soar and food, fuel, water and everything become scarce, all the oil-dependent businesses start to fail -- it'll be very ugly around here. I'm getting involved with a newly-formed Transition Town movement here but hold little hope it will do any good if the bottom falls out precipitously. Bound here for years by family ties but the elders are falling off the twig fast now, the 4 of us will soon be free to leave.

Goal is to retire in about 3 years (if not sooner) and relocate to the North Coast, behind the Redwood Curtain, and join the local, sustainable food movement already going strong there, grow food & raise critters on the permaculture model in a defensible space with strong community ties to neighbors. Grew up rural, love the life, come from a line of food gardeners descended from Missouri farm families (pre-industrial/corporate model) who managed to feed themselves mostly from a large city lot in Burbank during the Depression -- swapped with neighbors what they didn't grow themselves. Hope it doesn't come to collapse on the scale of James Kuntzler's World Made By Hand and his non-fiction, but it could....

[FairMaiden]

Hi and welcome!

I've been around the site for 7 years now (crazy how time flies) but remain more of a lurker than poster. I think the part about growing food prompted me to respond. I have a great respect for ppl who can grow food and nourishment from soil. I have a small backyard but have yet to grow anything worthwhile...a few good herbs and smallish sickly tomatoes...so I understand that it's not as easy as just planting seeds. Good luck and I hope you make it Redwood soon.

[Pops]

Good for you.

Compared to SoCa we were in heaven in the San Joaquin but we ran away too.

Ignore the squabbling here and just jump in anywhere.


Mind yer speakers...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9K2NhRF ... re=related

[pedalling_faster]

Goal is to retire in about 3 years (if not sooner) and relocate to the North Coast, behind the Redwood Curtain, and join the local, sustainable food movement already going strong there, grow food & raise critters on the permaculture model in a defensible space with strong community ties to neighbors.

http://www.realtor.com/

/\ not my website ... but it helped me find an affordable home on 15 acres.

[Queaks]

Hi!
I have watched and read now for almost 3 years. Thought it was time to join in. The hyperbole gets intense sometimes, perhaps beyond what is called for? It makes me wonder.

As near as I can figure, any decline in oil will have an impact on the world slow enough that most of us alive will not be severely impacted. The economic downturn we have been in for the past few years has certainly impacted my local area more than any future "peak oil". After all peak oil is not the end of oil just the theoretical peak of our collection of oil. Oil is fungible, but then so is most energy. It is the use of that energy and the possible failure to find substitutes that will cause us issues, but I just don't see the impact affecting my life to a great extent. Perhaps having a decent "nest egg" allows me a freedom that I would not have if I lived from hand to mouth, I don't know.

The question I pose here is if oil has peaked or will soon, what about that will affect us greatly (life style changes) in the next 20 years or so?

In my neighborhood Range Rovers and Cadillacs outsell Priuses, and the last time I bought a car I went for power /comfort over economy. $4 a gallon of gas or even $5 or $10 is not material enough to cause me to make real changes, so to paraphrase the thought from Mad magazine from my childhood " what , me worry?". What would shake up the upper middle class demographic about peak oil?

Not trying to be a smart ass, and I see a lot of serious posts on here painting dire times, but what would be a great enough shift in the world "order" to affect the professional class like me?

Be gentle, I am a peakoil posting virgin...

Queaks

[papa moose]

Mate, nothing personal but i don't believe you.
If you truly have been reading this forum for 3 years and you still need to ask this question then you have a serious problem with basic comphrension of the written word.
I'm not putting to you that "DOOooooooomM" is the only possible outcome to PO, but if you truely can't see any potential for it to affect you, you must be blind.

[Adelaidewonderer]

Queaks, having a certian level of money may not be a guranatee in the future. The UK government has recently raised the issue of energy quotas in the near future. If in future each UK resident is going to be entitled to 1 barrel of oil a year for example, then this should place each person in the same dire position, whether they be rich or poor.

[dolanbaker]

Queaks, having a certian level of money may not be a guranatee in the future. The UK government has recently raised the issue of energy quotas in the near future. If in future each UK resident is going to be entitled to 1 barrel of oil a year for example, then this should place each person in the same dire position, whether they be rich or poor.

Interesting, sounds like a repeat of WWII rationing!

Do you have a link to that, I missed that story.

[Adelaidewonderer]

Interesting, sounds like a repeat of WWII rationing! Do you have a link to that, I missed that story.

There were quite a few articles in the mainstream at the time, cant find them all now, but i guess just google Uk energy quotas: rationing

Obvioulsy something they are toying with, but at some point, governments will enshrine something along similar lines. We have progressed too far as a species for the majority (those not rich), to think they shouldnt have an equal right to natural resources as the rich. If it ever did occur, its going to quite pointless having 10 cars, a mansion and a boat, if you havent got the energy to run them. Of course the richman is probably going to be able to buy others peoples energy quotas, but he will probably have to sell some cars, and the boat or even the mansion to do it.

[dolanbaker]

Thanks, Just found the official web site for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil.

At least one government is taking the subject seriously.

[dolanbaker]

Here is the white paper on the subject.

[Queaks]

Yes I have been reading for quite a while and my reading comprehension is just fine. I see the hype but the reality does not spell doom (or dooooom) in any scenario I envision.Since I have started reading here my personal net worth has doubled and not all my income is job related, its hard to see "doooom" when everything is improving in your personal life, but i grant that is one individual's situation and may not be typical of most over the last 3 years.

Now the thought of rationing is one I really hadn't considered. I guess my take on the availability is that rationing would be done based on a capitalist supply and demand, not an equal distribution. Bit then as it happened in WWII it certainly can happen. I'll give that some thought. I have assumed that the basic access to capital and spending would continue, and I can handle that just fine. When several of my workers came to me and bitched about the priced of gas two years ago and said they were going to boycott buying gas on a particular day, I bought oil stocks and futures. I didn't make a killing but I sold when they stopped bitching and paid for all my gas for a year. Why didn't everyone do that instead of complaining? The options , equities and futures market lets you make money on the "doom" thoughts.

However, I will give consideration to the government intervention model of rationing, as that I can't profit or speculate on. I just don't see that as a likely out come though do you? I guess as a glass half full type I see things as improving not declining. And why would the government intervene anyway? In a gradual decline the market would be orderly, and the open markets handle that better than the government 6 days out of 7. Some profit some lose, but we all lose if the government intervenes. If that happens I grant the equation changes, but is it really that bleak?

Maybe I have optimistic glasses on, but why would the government intervene when the free markets do it better?

[americandream]

Energy commodity failure contemplates compulsion. As long as governments enjoy the luxury of choice, our energy supplies are adequate. When commodity shortfalls are sufficient to warrant government intervention (being of a calibre that cannot be mitigated by any means whatsoever, whenever that is) and abandonment of the market, capitalism and free markets will just about be done.

[papa moose]

Maybe I have optimistic glasses on, but why would the government intervene when the free markets do it better?

Sort of like how the free market set the price of bread in Egypt?
As opposed to how the price of petrol is determined in Iran?

[Adelaidewonderer]

Maybe I have optimistic glasses on, but why would the government intervene when the free markets do it better?

Governments intervene all the time to protect individuals. A rich man doesnt have a police force, and a poor man not. At the point that governments start to intervene in resource allocation, I suspect we will be at the point that it doesnt matter if government intervention makes the process less economical. It will come down to protecting individuals, and ensuring everyman is created equally. Surely you cant look at the world now, and say that if the basics in life (food, shelter etc), then the poor are going to sit back and take it.

Its not about saying your rich, you can have what you want, its about saying, if i dont share with those less fortunate, they will just take it.

[lper100km]

The adage about the market taking care of things is just fine so long as there is no supply restriction. The moment there is a consistently declining supply, as opposed to a temporary reduction in capacity, the market goes ape. This is the reason why government intervention will be necessary and inevitable. It needs to set priorities and allocate resources to sustain a national economy in a way that a ‘free’ market could never accomplish. Someone posted that such intervention reminds them of a wartime scenario. Well, that’s apt, because that is exactly what is likely to happen. Having money will not be of great advantage when tshtf.

Kudos to the UK gov for recognizing the potential situation and for openly starting to plan for the eventuality and mitigate the downside.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Welcome Queaks. As a moderate, in my mind, you ask reasonable questions and make mostly reasonable points.

A few thoughts as an "old guy" probably somewhere roughly in your "comfortable" financial ballpark, who came here primarily for investment insight.

1). No one can say what will happen economically. Watching, for example, how the left touts economic policies that "JUST HAPPEN" to favor big government and (naturally) the right "JUST HAPPENS" to favor just the opposite, when these positions match their political inclinations -- I am CONVINCED that economics is more a religion (a set of beliefs driven mostly by emotion) than a true science. (There, I said it, folks can flame away).

2). So, all you can do (primarily) to protect yourself economically long term is diversify. Reading here has primarily increased my inclination to hedge against the dollar -- but use more commodities to do so. Just my take. (I also still like stocks for their dividends, tendency to grow dividends over time, long term relative hedge against inflation, and long term (multi-decade) high relative return, despite all the cries of doom on sites like this. Energy MLP's vs. bonds would be a clear-cut example of this preference).

3). Since we don't know what will happen, but we continue to see LOTS of evidence of lots of resource PRESSURE on the planet, largely due (in my opinion) to BAU growth including massive population increases -- your casual attitude about consuming whatever energy suits your wallet bothers me a bit.

If all you care about is you and yours for as long as you happen to live, that should work out. If you have a bit of a larger view IN CASE we really are running into serious resource constraints -- wouldn't a more conservative resource consumption stance make you a better "global citizen"? If only for the benefit of your current and future family/friends/children/etc?

(I was a Boy Scout, and even though I'm not at all religious, I actually believe in principles they taught like "do a good turn daily" just from a common sense moral standpoint. Perhaps that makes me biased or just a sucker -- just one man's viewpoint. Driving a Corolla or Yaris or Prius might be one small example of this philosophy, even if you don't believe in resource constraints or planetary damage by humanity).

Cheers.

[Sixstrings]

Be gentle, I am a peakoil posting virgin...

What I get from your post is that you're saying you have a nice "nest egg," you're in the "professional class," and $10 per gallon gas wouldn't cramp your style one bit since you're doing so well. And so peak oil is nothing for you to worry about.

That may all be true.. but you're still a member of a larger society, and what happens to them affects you. For example, you might get carjacked while filling up that Range Rover with $10 per gallon gas.

As for what happens in the next twenty years.. none of us knows for sure. But history shows that apparently stable systems can suddenly fall apart with remarkable speed.. look at the collapse of the USSR, look at what's happening right now in the Middle East.

If I had to make a prediction for the next 20 years, I would say that oil shortages will continue to knock the global economy down one peg at a time. So depression / recession, then weak recovery with a bit of growth that just pushes the oil envelope again and then the economy resets at a lower level. As for the US it may never get to "doom" in 20 years but doom is how you define it. Some would call Mexico "doom," some wouldn't -- I think we'll look more like Mexico in 20 years.

In a gradual decline the market would be orderly, and the open markets handle that better than the government 6 days out of 7.

I actually agree with that, free open market is better than rationing. But.. look at WWII. If shortage is severe enough, we'll have rationing with little coupon books and all (although that rationing was more about military production priority).

As for orderly markets.. do you read Zerohedge? The markets are propped up by the government / Fed. And then you have all the high frequency trading algorithms.. I'm not so sure about a perpetually orderly market.

Lastly, if you want to understand peak oil then here's a fantastic documentary Ludi posted a while back:

http://cdn.static.viddler.com/flash/pub%20...%20y=ce56603d

[Pops]

Hi Queaks, thanks for posting.

It seems logical that inflating prices in basic commodities will generally hurt people on the low end of the ladder more than at the top and those living week to week sooner than those living below their means.

On the other hand, I'm not sure having a larger income alone is a sure bet or even a high net worth if the income goes away and the assets evaporate, like lots of people's have with the RE bust and market gyrations the last decade.

Why didn't everyone do that [hedge oil] instead of complaining?

Your employees earn enough to speculate on commodities?

its hard to see "doooom" when everything is improving in your personal life

This is really the conundrum with peak whatever, everything looks peachy - it is the peak after all.

There are hundreds or millions of scenarios depending on however many variables of income sources, location, assets, liabilities who knows. Check the Tipping Points paper (link in my sig) for why I think virtual assets are not the way to go.

I hope you add your experience and outlook in wherever you can here.