The world oil supply is running down and we have no ready substitutes.

Climate change is happening now – stronger storms, more devastating wildfires, rising sea levels, diseases spreading – the list goes on, and there is every indication that it will continue to worsen.

The US economy, upon which the world economy still depends, is unstable due to corruption at the top, from most Congressmen to presidential advisors all being former bank executives.

Our leaders are not moving quickly enough to protect the economy in general, never mind your or my livelihoods in particular. Some of our leaders are actually doing things to worsen the situation, such as denying the very existence of climate change or ignoring the ever-rising price of oil.

We are facing “interesting times.” The turbulence has begun, and it’s buffeting us from all directions. Have you ever had the experience of going for a walk and, no matter which direction you were going, the wind always seemed to be in your face? That’s what the future is going to feel like for many people.

I could (and have) proposed large-scale responses to the situation, which frankly at this point need to be a WWII-scale mobilization to re-industrialize and re-do our living arrangements to drastically cut oil dependence immediately and, long-term, eliminate pollution of all kinds by moving to a ‘restorative economy.’

But we’re not going to do that in the foreseeable future, are we? Or anything even remotely close. If you take your family’s security seriously, then you will do what you can to buffer yourself against the coming storms. The best way I have seen to do that is Transition Initiative, and you should seriously consider joining (or starting) one in your area.

TI is a completely grassroots, apolitical initiative, and this is what they do:

Transition Network helps communities deal with climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy (peak oil). This process, which we call Transition, aims to create stronger, happier communities.

That’s how we’re going to get through this; by working together in local communities. As the Transition Network site puts it well:

What we are convinced of is this:

• • if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late
  • if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little
  • but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Your level of involvement can be minimal or massive; the choice is yours. Here are some things that local TIs do:

• Teach people how to grow a garden, save seeds, preserve foods
• Educate people by showing documentaries about peak oil, climate change, solutions, and more
• Host online and IRL forums to discuss and learn
• Show people how to insulate their homes or build a solar greenhouse

Like it or not, the world is changing. You can adapt, or not.

Following the multiple partial meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, I find it mind-boggling how quickly the pro-nuclear shills are out claiming that a) nuclear is safe, really, and b) it’s our only hope for a future energy source that is sufficient to meet our needs and not destroy the planet via climate change.

Both are utterly bogus, but you can’t tell the shills that; they are fanatics on a par with the climate change deniers. They believe what they want to believe, and that’s that.

a) Nuclear power is NOT safe

Sorry, lads, but it just isn’t and to maintain that in the face of what has happened and is happening in Japan is just nuts. Numerous dolts are trying to claim that nuclear power is perfectly safe, but that can be disproved with a simple Google search, so I must conclude that people who say this are wilfully dense or are paid shills.

As to the safety record of nuclear power generally, it’s really quite poor. Again, numerous pro-nukers want to say the risk of accident is minuscule. Again, not true. It’s easy enough to get a rough calculation of the odds of disaster: Divide the number of nuclear plants on the planet by the number of major disasters:

According to this site, there were 442 plants as of January 2011. According to Wikipedia, there have been at least 18 serious accidents, so the odds of a serious accident are 18/442 = 4%, or 1 in 25.

Those are terrible odds, and that’s not counting the countless smaller leaks that are routinely covered up by the nuclear industry.

(Note: This is being generous. In reality, the odds are worse because most of these accidents happened when there were fewer nuclear reactors on the planet. And the argument that newer reactors is safer is debatable techno-optimism, given the recent meltdowns in Japan.)

The shills often then retreat to the position that nuclear is safer than coal, but this is hardly difficult and not-at-all comforting. We simply have to stop buying into the idea that we have no choice but to trade off the greater evil for the lesser.

b) It’s nuclear or collapse!!!!

This is simply scaremongering by the shills to prevent us thinking sensibly about other options, like heaven forbid, conservation. Or passive solar combined with geothermal storage. Or storing excess wind/solar/wave/tidal/whatever in molten salts, pumped hydro, hydrogen, and whatever else we come up with, none of which risk making large areas of one’s country, and perhaps a few neighbouring ones, uninhabitable by humans for the next 100,000 years or so.

The fact is, we have non-nuclear options and we need to start exploring them. There may well be a further economic collapse as the price of oil increases, but building hundreds more nuclear plants everywhere is a highly risky ‘solution.’ There are better ways to go.

And by-the-way, Japan’s wind turbines survived the earthquake and tsunami.

UPDATE: An interesting article, from the Toronto Sun, of all places. It contains this gem:

The potential power, energy and financial returns were calculated for the indirect subsidy that is currently provided to the U.S. nuclear industry in the form of liability caps, with providing the same level of indirect subsidy to the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry in the form of loan guarantees. The startling results show even if just this one relatively minor subsidy was diverted from nuclear power generation into large-scale solar manufacturing, it would result in both more installed power and more energy produced by mid-century. Such a policy would increase the cumulative solar industry over the 500 TW-hrs mark in just 10 years and by the end of the study the cumulative electricity output of solar amounts to an additional 48,600 TW-hrs worth more than $5 trillion over the nuclear case.

At the rate we’re going, we may not make it even that long. I’m not really a “doomer,” but I have always maintained that political events may bring a sudden end to our current idea of civilization long before climate change or even peak oil really set in. And current political events in the Middle East should be giving any thoughtful person plenty of reason to wonder if they will be a catalyst to rapid change.

By-the-way, apparently the Mayans didn’t really predict the end of the world in 2012; that’s simply when their calendar ran out, and we have interpreted that as the end of times. Interestingly, the Christian tradition predicts an apocalypse – which will start in the Middle East. I’m no expert on either, so readers please feel free to chime in.

I’ll lay out my concern, and I have no doubt that it is shared by the Pentagon, top U.S., British, and other government officials, and anyone with a stake in anything – family or business – in the Middle East.

• There are currently popular uprisings in several countries in the Middle East. The Tunisian government has fallen, Egypt’s government is threatened, and now so is Yemen’s.
• All of these states were tacitly or concretely supported by the U.S. and other Western countries like the U.K. and France.
• All of these states are, or in the case of Tunisia, were dictatorships. Elections, if they took place, were a farce.
• Fundamentalists like the Muslim Brotherhood, while currently keeping relatively quiet, are almost certainly awaiting their opportunity to step in and seize power, as they have done elsewhere.

So far, we are not staring into the abyss, and we can sit comfortably in our developed, more-or-less democratic and peaceful countries and wish the residents of these countries well. We don’t depend upon Tunisia, Egypt, or Yemen in any real way.

However.

Saudi Arabia is also a dictatorship. Iraq is hardly stable. Iran’s autocratic government came close to being overthrown in 2009 in the Green Revolution. These are major oil-producing nations, where Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen are not. If they are destabilized in any way, the price of oil will go through the roof, and the U.S. economy will literally grind to a halt.

I do mean literally; essentially 100% of transportation of people and goods in the United States is via diesel or gas-powered means: Planes, trains, trucks, and cars. Industrial farming is utterly dependent upon oil in various forms. Everything plastic – which these days is almost everything – is made of oil. I have discussed this elsewhere, as have many others better educated on the topic than I. There is a reason the Pentagon is planning for oil depletion.

Whether the reins of power are seized by the Muslim Brotherhood or some other entity, or whether real democracy and elections break out, decades of support by oil-junkie Western nations for the former despotic regimes is hardly likely to endear those who take power to the West.

They may also be economically unsophisticated. Remember the oil shocks of the 1970′s? There were long line-ups at the gas pumps, prices soared, and we experienced nasty recessions. That was when the Iranians persuaded their fellow Arabs to use “the oil weapon” against the United States. It was a very successful weapon of mass economic destruction – but the backlash was that the subsequent recessions caused the price of oil to plunge, and that slashed revenues for the oil-producing nations.

The Saudis and others learned the hard way that their economies – and therefore the security of the despots in power – was directly tied to the economic prosperity of the United States. Incoming, unfriendly governments may well not remember that lesson, or think that it no longer applies, given the tremendous worldwide demand for oil and the current price of ~$90/barrel.

If any major oil-producing nation significantly reduces oil sales to the U.S. for any reason – unfriendly government, terrorist bombing of oil distribution facilities, war, civil unrest – the price of oil is going up-up-up, and our economies are going down-down-down. Fast.

What that leads to is anyone’s guess. Here’s  mine.

First, I should state that what we could and should do are not likely to be what we actually do. We could, for example, immediately redirect much electricity generation to producing wind, solar, nuclear, etc power plants. We could and should immediately start retrofitting cities with electrified buses and light rail. Above all, we could and should fund conservation measures and local agriculture. That has the potential to drastically cut out oil consumption quickly, possibly saving the economy from collapse.

However, again.

We have had years of warnings. We have had “oil shocks” followed by recessions. We are currently in a bad recession, yet suffering food and fuel price inflation. And, the two most important obstacles:

• Our own governments are not as democratic as we like to believe; they are largely captive to monied special interests like oil companies. There is a reason they continue to receive large subsidies despite earning record profits.
• We are all oil junkies; most of us expect to be able to commute to work and Walmart.

Anybody trying to change the nation’s course will have to overcome both these special interests and a mass of people who feel they are entitled.

We could be in for a bumpy ride sooner rather than later. I hope not; I hope we have the time and wisdom to transition our economies off oil dependency. However, up until now we have not demonstrated that wisdom, and it looks like time is running out sooner than expected.

Those of you who follow me know that I have recently ceased making posts urging large-scale reform. The reasons for that are fairly simple, but they involve a psychological hurdle to get over.

I have been communicating with James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and David Holmgren, all of whom I have interviewed, about a Wise Action Plan. The goal was for us to agree on this Plan and then publicly pronounce it in an effort to get some sensible action on peak oil and climate change. Initially, I urged a response that included a revitalization of rail, large-scale wind or solar farms, and other actions that require the federal government to take a strong leadership role.

While the others generally agreed such actions would be a good idea, especially if they have been started 20 or more years ago, two of the three thought they were a waste of time. They had two reasons for this:

1. It’s too late. We needed to be getting off oil while we still had a surplus. Now that we’ve hit peak oil, diverting any oil to build solar panels means there is less for cars or crops.
2. They ain’t gonna. What politician is going to do that, barring an emergency situation? (Emergency is here defined as rioting, fuel rationing, or other severe measures.)

To be fair to our politicians, it’s hard to get elected telling people their lifestyle is going to change drastically, including many of them giving up their cars. The problem is partly cultural; we want what we want, and we’re going to keep electing politicians who give it to us until that is no longer possible.

And to be brutally honest, most of us have bought into the idea of unending growth and improvement, that the market will find solutions to concerns like oil depletion, and that if it were really that bad, somebody would do something.

At that point, we will be well into the emergency.

It has been difficult for me to give up on the idea of leadership from above. I ran federally as a Green Party of Canada candidate last go-round, but wouldn’t do it again. Even in the fantastic unlikelihood that the Greens got a majority next election, they could not do what needs to be done. Still too many people will resist change, and this resistance will be encouraged and financed – by vested interests.

Think Globally, Act Locally

As a result, I’ve gone local. Leadership is going to have to come from the grassroots, from us, from those who understand the reality and are willing to take some action. I believe that every village, town, city, and region should create a Transition Initiative to get off oil.

This is acting locally, and it is vitally important for your survival. Local resilience is ‘in,’ and for good reason. When oil prices go up, imports of everything – including food – are going to get more expensive and harder to get. If you’re already shopping at the farmer’s market, for example, you have helped support a local farmer who will now support you as options in the supermarkets get scarcer and pricier.

This is my new Wise Action Plan:

1. Start or join a Transition Initiative in your area.
2. Reskill.
3. Develop personal self-reliance, which includes everything from starting a garden to insulating your house.

If we’re lucky and good, these local movements will take off, multiply like viruses, and infect the planet. These local movements will bond together and require their governments to do the right thing – to protect us. They will do this not by lobbying or influence-peddling, but by sheer strength of numbers.

I’m reading Joseph Stiglitz’ Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, and he has mentioned several times that the most recent banking crisis was far from the first. In fact, it seems bankers have a history of creating financial disasters; I am old enough to remember the U.S. Savings and Loan crisis, caused by crooked bankers and enabled by crooked politicians, and Stiglitz mentions that there have been many such crises around the world.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that bankers routinely cause financial crises. While Stiglitz cites reality to back up the need for strict oversight of bankers, basic common sense should yield the same conclusion, for two reasons:

• Bankers deal with money – a lot of it. That is going to attract greedy and unethical people.
• Bankers make their money using other people’s money.

Given the immediate and enormous impact money has on our lives, large sums of money will act like a magnet for greedy people, especially those who want something for nothing. And what better way to get something for nothing than by gambling with other people’s money, where you get a huge profit if you win and there is no negative consequence if you lose? The only way to do better than that is outright theft, a la Berbie Madoff, but so far there are still consequences in that field.

The two reasons previously mentioned mean there is a great deal of moral hazard in the banking industry, and while many bankers will be responsible and trustworthy (with sufficient oversight), it only takes a few to thoroughly corrupt the whole system. Those few, of course, will make the most money and therefore will have the resources to buy politicians to remove barriers to making even more money – and more risk. As it becomes easier and easier to get rich quick in the banking industry, more and more unscrupulous people will drive out responsible bankers and sensible laws…until the result is a crisis.

By that point, of course, they have bought enough influence to ensure a bailout for themselves and no oversight that might cramp their style going forward.

This is why banking is best when boring.

The purpose of this site is to find a ‘green’ lever big enough to move the world to sustainability. I titled it Go Green or Die because, well, that is true, we must, and becauseI thought it rather catchy.

That said, I have come to realise that people will not see climate change and peak oil as the crises they are unless and until a social tipping point is reached, where likely we will go from denial to near-panic. Various things can push us toward this tipping point; this site is my own small attempt, as are my The Way Home presentations, but we are not there yet and we are already late getting started on addressing these crises.

And that brings me to the main point. We cannot count upon governments or corporations – large organizations led by people with a strong vested interest in business-as-usual – to wake up and take action on climate change and peak oil in time.

I have come to accept this, and I won’t say I found it easy. I ran as as Green Party of Canada candidate in the last federal election, and as a Green Party of British Columbia candidate in the last provincial election. Clearly I recently thought that action at the national or provincial level was possible; I no longer think so.

It would be a long story to explain all my reasons why, but perhaps a small, real example will help illustrate. In the last provincial election, Lana Popham was one of my opponents as the NDP candidate. She seemed as ‘green’ as me; in talking with her, she clearly understood the threat posed by climate change. Her family runs an organic vineyard. She cycles everywhere.

I nearly withdrew to give her a clear run, but was persuaded otherwise. She won anyway. What has been the result? Her party formed the Opposition, and made her Agriculture Critic. The leaders of the NDP have her spending her time and energy and goodwill campaigning to get bicycles exempted from a new tax.

And that is just a tiny example of why change is unlikely to come from above. It rarely does, really; those entrenched naturally oppose change.

I came to realise that it is up to us. “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” as the song says. We must at least work to save local areas as best we can, to make them sustainable and self-reliant. Done alone, that will not ultimately stop or save anyone from climate change. It will only buffer against the coming oil shock and allow life to continue in a somewhat civilised manner.

The best route I’ve found so far is Transition Initiative, which every town and city and region should be doing. It’s a grassroots movement to make the local region more self-reliant, less dependent upon oil. There is no head office, no Executive Director. There are only guiding principles and local examples.

This is all a long way of saying that I’ve joined my local Transition Initiative. That is where the action is going to come from. The movement has caught on and has spread like wildfire, which gives me hope for wider action. It would be wonderful if ultimately there were thousands and thousands of Transition Towns, and these millions upon millions of people joined forces to end dependence on fossil fuels.

This journey has allowed me to create The Way Home presentation that ends on a positive, optimistic note. I was trained by Al Gore to deliver the An Inconvenient Truth presentation, which I did 40-or-so times to a few thousand people in total. One thing that always bothered me was the lack of realistic solutions offered. I don’t mean just the “Change your lightbulbs” ‘solution,’ but even writing to your elected representative is largely a waste of time at this point.

Transition Initiatives do offer hope. I am going to re-do this site in the next few weeks to reflect the path we must take. Yes, we must ‘go green or die.’ But that message is not inspiring change. In an attempt to communicate the extent of the threat, it inspires fear.

What we need is the truth, which is that things are bad. We have not responded appropriately to warnings from experts, and we are going to pay a price for that. Ok, so what do we do? Reality must be faced, and realistic action must be taken. That is the focus of the Transition Initiative, and also of the new look of this site, which will become The Way Home.

I can’t say precisely when, so by “soon” I mean within two years at most. My reasoning is below; I’d be curious to hear feedback.

Given that the:

1. Price of oil spiked to $147 per barrel in 2008
2. Current oil price is $80, even though we’re in the worst recession since the Great Depression

I reason that:

1. The price of oil remains ~$80 per barrel because demand is keeping it there.
2. The U.S. is in recession with oil at that price, no recovery is coming. We are in a permanent recession.
3. With oil at those prices during a recession – four times that of just a few years ago – indicates we have hit the limits of supply at this price. That is, oil producers cannot pump more to get the price down, even if they wanted to (which most don’t).

However, demand in China continues to grow, and we continue to burn far more oil than we’re finding, so this means another oil price spike is almost certain within two years. The U.S. economy may find a way to recover somewhat, too; perhaps another bubble can be found. And the Americans are starting to drive more, again. That will push demand up.

Demand is going to push on supply, and price is going to go up fast, followed by a crash to a lower level than we are now. We have to reach a level of recession where we are consuming considerably less oil, or are considerably less dependent upon oil.

As we’re not doing anything serious about consuming or being less dependent upon oil, there will be another spike and crash.

Don’t wait for your federal government or even state/provincial government to provide leadership. They will at best respond too late, once we’re mid-crisis or beyond. Make your town a transition town.

Peak oil is that point in time at which we have burned half or all the available oil. After this time, there is progressively less oil, it is harder to get, and the price trends up – likely with nasty, recession-causing price spikes. However, the realization that the oil supply is running down is even more important, because with this awareness will come some significant changes in behaviour.

Oil exporters (Dealers)

Oil exporting nations waking up to the fact that the world oil supply is diminishing, and acknowledging the reality that their own country’s supply has peaked, are almost certain to reduce exports. To do otherwise would be suicidal in most cases. Let’s take Saudi Arabia as an example:

• Population: 28 million
• Oil: 90% of exports and 75% of government revenue
• Country: mostly desert; only 2% arable

This is not a recipe for domestic tranquillity when the oil revenues stop, or even drop. Less revenue means less services, like roads and hospitals and pensions, and that will make the masses restive. It also means fewer imports, and for a country that has far too many people living in the desert, a shortage of food imports will quickly make the masses violent.

Saudi Arabia is an oil exporter. As acceptance of the idea of peak oil sets in, whether that date is now or simply soon, exporters know that:

• They must get off oil themselves or their economy will collapse, people will starve and/or riot, imports will stop, and they will go back to being nomads in the desert. If they survive the riots.
• Oil is only going to go up in price. Repeat that, and think about what it means: Oil is only going to go up in price. That means that every barrel you sell now could have been sold for more – maybe a lot more – within a few years. So what’s the rush to pump it and ship it?

I should point out that this is a predicament, not a problem for Saudi Arabia and many other countries; there is not necessarily a solution. They may have overpopulated their country to the point that they are reliant upon imports for necessities like food and even water. Once they have no more oil to export, the following are likely outcomes but hardly “solutions”:

1. Mass starvation down to a level that the land can support (a die-back)
2. Mass exodus into neighbouring countries, destabilising them
3. Wars for access to water and arable land
4. All of the above

Responses to the Peak Oil Predicament for Exporters

Leaders, as intentionally obtuse as they have been about peak oil, once they ‘get it’ they will work to ensure that they are protected. It is important to think about it from this point of view, as it is the closest to the actual motivation felt by leaders. Their primary motivation will not be you or your lifestyle. They will want to protect (and continue enhancing) their position, power, and money, and that of their cronies. If you are fortunate, your Dear Leader will choose a way that also helps the masses. They have some options:

• Massive force and a police state to keep the masses in check, as the Soviet Union, North Korea, and any number of other dictatorships have done or currently do.
• “Ethnic cleansing,” or any other excuse to reduce the population and provide a target for people’s anger.
• Continue subsidising an unsustainable lifestyle until it all comes crashing down – people are starving and/or rioting, parts of the country are seceding, the centre has lost all credibility. This happened to the U.S.S.R. and has happened to many empires. It is predicted for the United States on its current course.
• Use remaining oil to build a non-oil-dependent, regionally sustainable economy. So far, only the Scandinavian countries are serious about this, although Germany and some of the other European countries, and Brazil are heading in that direction.

The first three options make oil supply unstable. The final option means there will simply be less oil available for export.

Oil importers (Junkies)

Oil importing nations waking up to the reality of oil shortages and price increases are going to be in a world of hurt. The current recession is very likely permanent, and another oil spike will only deepen it. Let’s take the United States as an example:

• Consumes 25% of the global oil supply; possesses only 3% of world oil reserves
• Imports 60% of its oil needs
• Every economic recession in the past 40 years has been preceded by a significant increase in oil prices
• More than 40% of total U.S. energy demands and almost 100% of transportation fuels are oil-based

Any crimp in the oil supply, or any significant increase in prices, and the U.S. is in recession. Industrial-scale farming is also wholly dependent upon oil, so oil price increases mean food price increases. I have previously suggested that the current recession is permanent because the price of oil does not appear to be returning to levels of recent years; it is now ~$80 per barrel versus the $20 per barrel it had been for many years before, even though we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The United States is an oil importer, and as the idea of peak oil becomes accepted, importers know that:

• They must reduce their dependence upon oil very rapidly or their economies will suffer severe setbacks
• Food and transportation prices will increase, leading to poorer and unhappier people
• Oil is going to go up in price from this point forward, and this will only cause further economic contraction

As for exporters, this is a predicament: there are responses but not really solutions. The solution was to ‘get off oil’ starting 20 years ago, but that path was not taken. Leaders will know that people are going to be very angry as living standards decline. They will be looking for someone and/or something to blame, and U.S. leaders from Congressmen to oil company executives will be likely targets.

As oil prices spike and wreck oil-dependent economies, some possible outcomes are:

1. Mass starvation down to a level that the land can support (a die-back)
2. Population decline as recent immigrants leave
3. Wars for access to oil
4. Breakup of the nation into smaller, more self-reliant pieces
5. All of the above

The first is unlikely but not impossible. The second and third are happening now in the U.S., and the fourth, once unimaginable, now seems at least possible given the division within the country – and hard times haven’t even hit yet.

Responses to the Peak Oil Predicament for Importers

Importers can either reduce imports or find a way to keep the oil coming regardless of declining supply. The most recent U.S. overthrow of Iraq was arguably an attempt to keep the oil flowing; certainly the U.S. has overthrown governments in the past to keep the oil flowing. The United States has a large military presence in the Middle East for just that purpose.

Importers, interestingly, also have the same possible responses to peak oil as exporters:

• Massive force and a police state to keep the masses in check, as the Soviet Union, North Korea, and any number of other dictatorships have done or currently do.
• “Ethnic cleansing,” or any other excuse to reduce the population and provide a target for people’s anger.
• Continue subsidising an unsustainable lifestyle until it all comes crashing down – people are starving and/or rioting, parts of the country are seceding, the centre has lost all credibility. This happened to the U.S.S.R. and has happened to many empires. It is predicted for the United States on its current course.
• Use remaining oil to build a non-oil-dependent, regionally sustainable economy. So far, only the Scandinavian countries are serious about this, although Germany and some of the other European countries, and Brazil are heading in that direction.

The first three options don’t “solve” anything, at least not for you and I. Unfortunately, many ‘democracies’ have put in place laws that allow the federal government great power in the event of an “emergency,” especially anything that can be defined as “terrorism.” My friend recently had a rude awakening about this when the police showed up at his door to ask about an email he had sent that mentioned blockading the Canadian tar sands; how they got the email they would not say.

The final option is not being pursued or even seriously considered in countries like the United States, as the third option is flogged to death. This makes the first two options more likely in the long run.

Awareness is a Powerful Thing

We do not have to actually hit the ‘peak’ of oil for the previously mentioned things to start happening. All that has to happen is for enough people – especially those in power – to realise peak oil is coming and what it will mean.

The responses to oil supply concerns so far by importers have destabilised world peace and the world economy. There is no reason to believe that the current crop of world leaders will take serious action to ‘get off oil,’ making a crash progressively more likely.

Here is the ideal post-collapse (meat) meal.* For future hunter-gatherers, here’s an easy meal when you just want to warm yourself around an open fire on a cool spring evening, drinking some mead and laughing with family and tribe. (Update below with recipe in English.)

My wife and family are from Colombia, which means that my wife’s mother retains memories of and skills from a more self-reliant age. She can turn milk into cheese using only the sun and a powder called “Milkset,” for example. And every now and again, my wife, who has the memories but not the skills, because like most of us in the developing world, her generation never had to use them, still occasionally goes back to her roots.

This dish – Lomo al trapo – likely has very old roots. It’s the sort of thing people have been cooking for thousands of years, because the requirements are simple: cloth, string, fire, beer, salt, hunk of meat.

The instructions below are in Spanish below (here’s the original), but essentially here’s how it goes:

1. Lay out a square of cotton large enough to wrap a hunk of meat.
2. Spread 1 kg of salt over the cloth.
3. Soak another cloth in beer and lay it over the first.
4. Put the meat in the middle, wrap it up and tie it.
5. Cook for approximately 30 minutes per side over an open fire.

I can imagine people cooking this back in the middle ages and even much further back for a small feast.

It looked delicious, and I’m told it was. (As a vegetarian, I didn’t partake in the meat portion of the meal.)

* If you’ve read other articles on this site, you’ll know that I normally write about what we can expect in a future of declining oil supplies, climate change, and worse-than-useless leaders.)

Lomo al trapo

UPDATE: Lomo al Trapo – Beef Tenderloin in Cloth (English recipe)

Comensales: 6
País: Colombia
Tiempo de preparación: 15 mins
Tiempo de cocción: 40 mins
Tiempo total: 55 mins

Preparación:

El lomo debe ser bien fino, largo y sin nervios o grasa.
Mojar el trapo de algodón y cubrirlo con un kilo de sal; colocar el lomo en el centro, y cubrirlo con el resto de la sal. Cerrar bien la tela, cuidando de que la carne quede bien cubierta de sal; superponer los bordes largos y doblar hacia adentro los extremos. Atar muy bien con hilo de cocina, ajustando cada 5 cm. para evitar que se escape la sal.

Colocar en la parilla, cuidando de que las brasas no quemen la tela; cocinar por 8 minutos de cada lado, si le gusta bien jugoso. Si no, extender el tiempo de cocción a 10 minutos para término medio; y 12, si lo desea bien cocido.

Al voltearlo, se nota que la sal se solidificó por efecto del calor. Para retirar la carne, hay que romper esta capa de sal, y quitar bien con un cuchillo lo que puede haber quedado sobre el lomo, el cual debe estar seco por fuera y tierno por dentro.

Climate change is not a clear and present danger. It is clear to scientists, to those who take the trouble to understand the science, and to those who trust the former or the latter. It is not at all clear to anyone else, and of course the truth and danger are deliberately obscured by paid deniers.

Climate change is also not a present danger, meaning it is not an immediate threat. The longer we put off confronting climate change, the more damage it will do, but the nature of the threat is creeping and exponential. Some changes are occurring right now and many may realise that climate change is a contributory factor, but the danger is distant and remote. Later, as we go up the exponential damage curve, climate change becomes a clear and present danger but it will be too late to stop the worst.

Humanity does face a clear and present danger, however, and combating this crisis will go a long way toward fighting climate change. Environmentalists must not waste this crisis. Despite forty years of environmental activism and some major battles won, the war is all but lost.

If you want to win, it is time to change strategy. The crisis is peak oil, and is dead simple:

1. There is only so much oil;
2. At some point, the peak, we will have used half of all the oil;
3. After that point, there will only be less oil; and
4. Our entire civilisation, especially transportation and food, is dependent upon oil.
5. No substitutes are anywhere near available.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that unless our need for oil remains less than the supply of oil, the price of oil is going to go up. Way up, given how dependent we are upon it.

From The Oil Drum

After the price of oil spikes, there will be a recession, and the price may come back down. That has been the pattern in recent recessions caused by oil price increases. This time, however, we have passed peak oil and that means the supply is less than it way – which means the price is not going to go down as much as it used to.

We are in a permanent recession as a result of the fact that oil prices are roughly four times what they were a few years ago. Because virtually 100% of our transportation – trucks, trains, planes, ships, and of course cars – runs on oil or its derivatives, the price of transportation has increased. The same effect exists with food, where pesticides are petroleum based, and of course tractors run on diesel. Inflation lately has been driven by these increases in transportation and food costs, and as people have to spend more on necessities like food and transportation, they will have less to spend on other things. This means less consumer demand and therefore a recession.

This recession is permanent and will probably deepen. Just prior to the recession, the price of oil spiked to $147 per barrel, and it is now approximately $80 per barrel. This is four times the price of only a few years ago, when the economy was booming. We are now in the worst recession since the Great Depression. The price of oil is not going down.

How does this recession fit into environmentalism? It is a crisis that will continue until we greatly reduce our demand for oil. Which, coincidentally and interestingly, is also a big part of the cure for climate change.

Climate change warriors need to get behind a plan to get off oil. The peak oil crisis is now, and people will respond. Whether they respond by invading another oil-bearing country, by dissolving into poverty and despair, or by conserving and moving to renewable energy is currently an open question.

Environmentalists, climate warriors, peak oilers, nationalists, and democratic reformers need to pile onto peak oil. The longer we delay, the more damage we suffer from recession, from peak oil, and from climate change. Replacing oil with conservation and renewables makes the nation energy-independent, creates a secure food supply, eliminates oil-induced inflation and recessions, and slashes greenhouse gas emissions.

Peak oil is a clear and present danger to the nation, to our prosperity, and to civilisation, and the protective steps for peak oil will greatly help with climate change. All of us need to join together to combat it.