[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', ' ')Getting CSA produce or buying from a farmer's market is a step in the right direction.

[Dingbat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FatherOfTwo', 'I')t makes you wonder how Canada will fair. We have ample resources and (currently) a low population. (Too bad Nafta is hanging over us like a noose) We have more public transit and are more socially caring for one another than the US. On the other hand, our energy use is as high as the US, and winters are a bitch here without adequate energy.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', ' ')
I'm not sure what you mean by, "Where's local food production?" Although I live in San Francisco, a big city, lots of food is produced within a hundred miles of here.

[johnmarkos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', ' ')– it seems to me just this simple scenario where property equity evaporates, large numbers of people are retrained to hoe weeds, and close in housing is demoed to make way for vegetable plots seems pretty doomerish.

[Pops]

You and me Brother!

[spudbuddy]

Interesting spread-
(I too am intrigued by what percentage of the doomers are American.)

I love throwing theoretical numbers around.
(hell, I'm a baseball fan)

Let's suppose we have "x" amount of oil, natural gas, biofuel, (coal gas_ etc.,
whatever it is we get energy from...

Let's say at continuing rates of consumption, and continuing rates of increase of consumption, this is good for 20 more years, total.
(before complete or at least serious meltdown)

Let's say within the next five years we figure out enough change and implement that change to reduce that consumption (negative growth)
by 10%.

Let's say within the following five years, we do the same but this time it's a reduction of double that....20% (for a total of 30%)

Let's say in the following 10 years we exponentially reduce by another double. (that's 2X30=60%)
For a total of 90% reduction over 20 years.

How much total energy would that save us?
The end result?
Buying another 2 or 3 or 5 decades? Time for research and development.
Time to implement a game plan of reduction, conservation, and a redesign of how we use energy.
Time to get used to and implement something that is truly sustainable.
So that every parent who truly loves their kids and wants them to have not only a future, but a better one...can actually retain some kind of hope that this is indeed possible.
I know this kind of stuff seems kind of lame when compared with sexy doomsday scenarios.
But I gotta wonder...why didn't the world implode during the 30's?
(I know it got pretty grim)
It didn't implode because people got busy adjusting, adapting.
This pervasive attitude that somehow we are now incapable...I question.

omigod! I just can't get the hell out of my car and onto a commuter train (or intercity tram, light rail, whatever)
Whataya mean I gotta drive a 60mpg pipsqueak tinkertoy?
(Don't worry...the scary big rigs are off the road...traffic has been reduced by at least 50%, and no-one is going over 50mph.
Your pipsqueak is a whole new lease on life.)
Hard to do your Marlboro Man, I know - but get over it.

Take your pick:
-can't imagine suburban McMansions morphing into selected communal subdivided space (apartments) where energy costs are more communally shared. (What about my 600 sq ft of personal space!)
Quick! Talk to someone who sweats in a Malaysian workcamp dorm.

-can't imagine some of these morphing into main floor stores while owner occupants live in apartments upstairs (hell - there's thousands of these in my town...first generation century homes.)

-can't imagine re-located schools that kids can walk to (same for re-allocation of the community to include small libraries, community centers, restaurants, whatever.)
Independent child mobility - harped on religiously.
(I'm talking about anyone under the age of a legal driver's license, people.)

-can't imagine the socio-economic entity surviving without revenue derived from energy-wasteful activities (damn! I'm really gonna miss Nascar and monster trucks crushing old cars!)

You can do it!
Imagine a suburban soccer mom walking yep, walking out her front door to the hairdresser one block over, the coffee shop down on the corner, the grocery store that used to be a McMansion up the street, past the new school reconstructed from 6 McHouses all in a line....
slowly getting used to the idea that all these things can be accessed without burning a drop of gasoline.

I know....a lot of intelligent people basically say suburbia is just fucked.
(especially as it is now laid out.)
Well...then change the damned way it's laid out!
(especially since 67% of the nation lives there.)
That's a lot of people. What can they do when their public will wakes up?
We don't really know, do we? But we'll find out, won't we?
I don't think they're all just going to roll over and die...or immediately move to Cooperstown.

btw (as if you haven't alread guessed) I am a moderate.
I can't help it. Built that way. Optimistic by nature.
This feels like labelling myself (weird)
sorta like pro-life, or Democratic, or atheist, or humanist,
(but still...the only thing you really know about me for sure, is that I love baseball.) That's all.

jp
just let me laugh when it's funny
and when it's sad, let me cry

[johnmarkos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') agree. Do you know how many new CSA farms there are in the "local" area? Any guess at how quickly this alternative is taking over from nonlocal agriculture?

[Madpaddy]

I was a soft lander when I became PO aware 18 months ago but as I have seen no evidence of any type of national or international preparation I am sliding down the scale.

Now I am between moderate and doomer. We are fiddling and a small fire has started outside the Colosseum.

[Laurasia]

I'm between a Moderate and a Doomer, mainly because Peak Oil seems to be arriving faster than I expected, thus causing me to panic.

Regards,

L.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', '
')It might be sort of like the microbrew beer phenomenon in the 80s and 90s.

[johnmarkos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'B')ut John, how many farm laborers frequented the Microbrew pubs?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', ' ')Human nature will be revealed in many places by beautiful peaceful sustainable communities and in many other places by roaming gangs of murders and thugs.

[falser]

I'm a soft lander who believes a long recession, or depression will make oil plateau (supply=demand) for many, many years during a transition to other sources of oil & energy. But I'm developing a taste for brains, just in case.

[holmes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', 'W')ell so far the data is heavily skewed towards Dooooom!


Someone said that doomers think people will just give up. No they won't give up but none of the technology they enjoy now will be around when the worst hits. You simply won't be able to afford anything unless you are rich and were smart enough to get your money into gold before the market tanks (buy the way gold is good investment right now). So you will have to walk or ride your bike to work, which is unfeasable for most of Americas white collar work force (20 million people who will shortly be out of work). Many (most?) factories will close or operate skeleton crews because demand for their goods will plummet in the wake of hyper-inflation. Make no mistake this is the nearest thing to the apacalypse that has ever been seen by humanity. Human nature will be revealed in many places by beautiful peaceful sustainable communities and in many other places by roaming gangs of murders and thugs.

In the United States I think the Great Lakes could be an area of strength but it depends, the resource will be greatly stressed by population growth in the coming decades and places to the west are going to want our water bad.

Canada could really end up strong at some point because southern Canada is going to get warmer and more conducive to agriculture (the effects of global warming will be felt for many centuries to come). Coal can fuel trains for a long time and transport food but we will have to return to the old slow way of mining coal and that will make it a very valuable thing as well. Yes people will survive and find ways to be happy eventually, but kicking the oil habit is going to have extremely serious consequences for most industrialized nations.

[kmann]

The world, being a chaotic system, is equally likely to go down any of the three paths. I vote for lander.

[chrispi]

I'm pretty much a moderate. I mean, if Cuba of all places can survive the fall of the Soviet Union, then so can we. It will however mean getting rid of this damned "markets know everything" philosophy that is currently in fashion, but I know it can be done.

[MagnoliaFan]

{Merged thread by MQ}

My TSHTF timeline is as follows:

2008 Great Depression II
2010 The Great Dieoff Begins (nuclear war, disease, starvation because of food supply lines being depleted)

I see no other exit through this energy crisis other than global thermonuclear war. Oh the war might have a different excuse: China invades Taiwan or some false flag terrorist operation, but at the genetic subconscious level, we will become collectively more warlike because of resource depletion. When animals starve, they fight the other animals for the remaining food. When humans with nuclear weapons starve, well... you can guess the results.

Let's say I'm wrong and there is a slow crash instead of a hard crash. What then? Well, let me sum it up with these simple equations:

Slow Crash = We all become corporate wage slaves on the global plantation

Hard Crash = There'll be no time to worry about your credit cards and the electronic leash that your employer is forcing on you. Those who make it out alive will be those who prepared.

Which 'Crash' do you prefer?

[Ludi]

Slow Crash - we ditch the corporate wage slavery and work cooperatively to improve our own lives and move toward a low-energy way of life.

And pigs fly.

[Sencha]

Hard crash all the way. Somehow I think it would be more difficult to watch all the things I know and love gradually disappear, than vanish all at once.

Its like asking someone if they want to die long and painfully, or quickly and quietly? The hard crash would definitely be more humane in a sense. In other ways of course, probably not. But if we're going to crash it might as well happen sooner than later.