It's Back.

[ecosophia]

I don't know how many of my readers have been keeping track of the price of oil, but -- ahem -- it's rising again. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), one of the two standard benchmark grades of crude oil, ended the day a little below $70 a barrel; Brent -- the other standard benchmark -- was just below $75 a barrel. Just a few years ago they bottomed out in the low $40s. Now some thoughtful observers are starting to warn of an imminent oil shock. 

It's hard to tell at this point whether the price of oil will keep going up until it cracks $100 a barrel and once again starts drawing blood from the world's economy, or whether we'll see another downward lurch before the next oil price spike. My guess is that we're nearing the next spike. The gimmicks that kept petroleum prices under control for a while -- frantic extraction of shale oil and tar sands, on the one hand, and economic policies that suppressed demand by forcing a growing fraction of people in the industrial world into poverty, on the other -- were never more than temporary kluges; they postponed the problem while doing nothing to fix it and, inevitably, made the final consequences worse. 

The predicament we're in isn't hard to understand. The Earth is a sphere, and therefore contains a finite amount of fossil fuels; we're drawing down that stock of fossil fuels at a breakneck pace; most of the good stuff -- light sweet crude, anthracite coal, and so on -- was extracted and burned a long time ago; and now we're trying to keep the global industrial system running on low-grade fuels that are increasingly costly to extract and yield less and less energy. Renewable resources can't meet more than a small fraction of the demand -- despite whopping government subsidies in many nations, renewables account for only 9% of energy production worldwide, and 7% of that consists of hydroelectric; wind, solar, and all the other renewable resources produce a fraction of one per cent each. 

The solution isn't hard to understand, either.  We have to reduce our consumption of energy, and the products of energy, to levels that can be supported indefinitely by renewable resources -- let's say, 10% of current energy consumption. "We," furthermore, means you, personally, and me, and everyone else. The only choice we have is  whether we do this deliberately, or whether shortages, soaring prices, and economic dysfunction do it for us. 

You've heard this before, dear reader. I've talked about it at length since the early days of my old blog, The Archdruid Report.  The only thing that's changed since then is that billions more barrels of oil from our planet's dwindling supplies have been extracted and burnt. There may be another round of short-term fixes that will push off the day of reckoning a little further...or there may not. What will you do? 

Comments

Car culture

[(Anonymous)]

1.) Gas is up to around $3.09 and rising in the Chicago area. It goes up a little every week. 2.) Today was a beautiful, sunny picture postcard of a Saturday. The streets were clogged with cars when I drove to and from work. This made absolutely no sense to me. Why would anyone waste such a beautiful day by getting in a car if they didn't have to? -Kimberly

Re: Car culture

[ecosophia]

I have no idea. I ride with people from time to time, mostly when it's the most convenient option for them -- I have a fair number of friends who are elderly, disabled, etc., and under present conditions it's easier for them to drive than otherwise -- but left to myself? Feet, buses, and trains are my transport of choice.

[drhooves]

Yeah, some of the recent trends in oil supplies, most notably new discoveries (2014 to 2017 are the four lowest years of new discoveries since the 1940s), indicate one thing: the jig is about up. I couldn't agree more that higher prices, shortages and economic dysfunction lie ahead. I was thinking we'd really start to feel the pinch by 2030, but now I'm rolling that back to 2025. Shortages could come and go over the next few years, with many of us being priced out of flying or long driving trips by then. Look for "carbon credits" restrictions for commercial air travel soon. And we'd be just one geopolitical crisis away from Uncle Sam rationing fuels for the military, winter heating and farming requirements.

What am I going to do about it? Move up my schedule of collapsing now, and avoiding the rush. I'll probably be relocating for work soon, and will be looking to live within walking distance of a grocery store and possibly work (or working from home), and near a bus line. When I moved to the Portland area four years ago, I thought it'd be nice to travel to Hawaii and Alaska from here - I don't need to do that, as the Columbia River Gorge is pretty sweet. I've got a motorcycle and a car, and don't need both, though it rains here a lot and I love the bike. Ugh.

I plan to support public policies promoting (sensible) public transportation, sustainable and lower energy food production, consumption taxes on Humvees, and education methods promoting good math and basic science skills to be used for improving critical thinking by everyone as we make choices ahead, and maybe head off a bit, a fraction, a tiny morsel of the pain.

There is awareness of this predicament by many, but as you've mentioned in the past, the necessary sacrifices to our current lifestyles to meet the 10% target for energy use is easier said than done. I may get into contingency planning, depending on the next job I land, as without a doubt there are crises ahead, of which we (as in society in general) are woefully unprepared. There are some sensible ways to mitigate some aspects of the decline, though it's become more obvious we're gonna hit the iceberg.

I don't feel nearly as much like Chicken Little as I used to....

[ecosophia]

Excellent -- good to see that somebody's looking at the discovery curves, and also thinking in practical terms. (Living close to work, errands, and a regular bus line will spare you a lot of grief.)

Urgh...

[(Anonymous)]

What, you mean like stop driving a car! Ye gads.

The infrastructure of daily life in the UK (outside the cities) is so built on the car that it feels like an impossible choice. My wife and I are experimenting with it. I went to the hospital (15miles away) by bus and not only does it take a few hours (and connections) it also costs a chunk. But it is doable! The terrible thing is, the traffic was horrendous and it was full of cars with one person in them - creeping along. While the bus was empty, except for the one full of hyper school kids. How did we get it so wrong?
I think the bigger changes will be driven by finances - when the costs just get too high for car ownership/travel.

And I think these are smaller impacts of fuel use than the cost of transport of most of our goods and production of our food. We will be priced into a sustainable way of life. Unfortunately, costs of living and fuel are a political nightmare, so I can't see it happening in time. Meanwhile, the councils are cutting local services and reducing buses - all in the name of saving money - putting costs back on the consumer - who either pay more or miss out.

So after i read a post of yours last month, my wife and I are now looking at a cycling holiday instead of the common weekend city break - you know you can get return flights to cities in Europe for sometimes under £30! So actually the sustainable option is for the privileged who can either afford a train or can take the time. I know these aren't big problems, but at the moment, we are encouraged to drive/fly by huge subsidies and "economic necessity"... It's really tough to make another choice, but we are doing it slowly.

I wonder if part of the issue is that there is also a philosophical/psychological element? It seems our culture now so celebrates the whims of the individual above all else that we can find it "life-threatening" if we can't get what we want. If that is so, isn't that what needs to change rather than focusing on sustainable behaviours? What do you think? If so, how might we go about that? I know this is a central theme of ADR, but I'm thinking psychologically as well.

I can feel my own contentment with my surroundings growing through walks in nature and possibly the CGD work I'm doing, (And my need for consumtion reducing...). But, i am privileged enough to have the time & space for these things. Many don't. And I'm still along way from 10% energy use! Ye gads, I'm vexxed and a little overwhelmed when I read articles like this. What next?

Re: Urgh...

[ecosophia]

The psychological dimension is crucial, but it's very easy for people to mouth the right slogans and then climb into their SUVs -- I used to see that all the time in the peak oil circuit. That's why making changes in one's own lifestyle is so crucial. Your personal actions are where the rubber -- or the shoe leather! -- really meets the road.

Global problem.

[(Anonymous)]

"The only choice we have is whether we do this deliberately, or whether shortages, soaring prices, and economic dysfunction do it for us."

The unfortunate reality is that even if the West went out of its way to deliberately reduce energy consumption, the rest of the world probably would not follow along.

In places like China and India, life is materially a lot more comfortable for many people than it was even ten years ago, to say nothing of the differences in standard of living between the generations. Mobile phones, automobiles, washing machines, 24/7 electricity, air conditioning, etc, are new and offer social status. Environmental concerns are almost always directed to the government. "They need to deal with this!"

India has the most polluted cities in the world (well beyond China). The air in Delhi is so toxic it is vomit-inducing (I experienced it personally), but there are billboards announcing how X amount of kilometers of paved roads were constructed in the last few years. They tell the farmers in Punjab to stop burning their fields, but everyday new cars hit the roads and factories go online to get that 7~10% annual growth.

I am pessimistic. People will tolerate toxic air, soil and water so long as they have new kitchen counters and smartphones, even when their kids are struggling to breath due to asthma brought on by pollution.

Jeffrey

Re: Global problem.

[(Anonymous)]

I've been to Delhi too. It's awful. The scary part is I think you're right. I expect to see environmental laws disappear in the West too, since it'll be hard to keep our material standards of living otherwise.

peak oil vindicated

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve been anticipating this post for a while, given the recent flurry of news items mentioning the rise in oil prices. Of course, since the media roundly ridiculed “peak oil” some years back, they have to come up with a whole bunch of other explanations (which, while superficially true, mask the underlying long-term reality that with each passing year our industrial civilization is being fueled more and more with low-grade “junk”). It will be entertaining to watch how the media will try to squelch the “peak oilers” during the coming oil price spike. Less entertaining, of course, is the price spike’s impact on economies at all scales.

My strategy has been to live in the best-planned neighbourhood in the city (virtually every product and service one could want [excepting a book store, of course – it is, after all, suburbia] is within a 10-15 minute walk of my front door. Also, being more active in the community (volunteering at community garden) and commuting less to work. House is energy efficient and small. Even have a Green Wizard “plan B” going in case an oil spike triggers an economic depression and pulls my employer down with it. Are my plans sufficient? Only time will tell!

Ron M

Re: peak oil vindicated

[ecosophia]

Entertaining indeed. I plan on talking about peak oil again, explaining why the media's handwaving isn't worth the electrons it's printed on, and helping those who are willing to get a clue accomplish that useful task.

Time for action is now

[(Anonymous)]

I've been blessed to have gotten my family out of the city and on to a small farm, working from home most days,traded flight for rail for my few long trips, I reject Amazon and it's clones, and heat mostly with wood from a managed wood lot. But plastics, a key profit center of the petrolium industry, seem nearly impossible to avoid.Replacing plastic and building passive solar into the buildings here are top of the list this year. Mechanical or wind water pumps next.

Re: Time for action is now

[ecosophia]

Excellent. Your timing is good!

what-could-have-been

[dfr1973]

So here I am, again thinking of my question that I had been meaning to ask in more than one open post (and was probably typing it as you posted and closed the most recent open post: If we collectively did not refuse the call at the end of the 70s, and instead kept working towards lower energy use through the 80s until today, what kind of things would we see? Obviously we wouldn't see the internet, nor all the SUVs, nor the exurbs and long commutes. I'm thinking we'd see more backyard gardening and chickening, and not just as a fad for yuppies (or whatever they call themselves these days - would that be hipsters?). From Retrotopia, I gather we'd see better public transportation in the urban areas, and probably more carpooling and ride sharing, along with more bicycle and pedestrian areas. You've also mentioned solar water heaters on the rooftops. I just wasn't aware enough yet when the cultural whiplash occurred to recall much else.

Re: what-could-have-been

[ecosophia]

I'm seriously considering a post on this subject on the main blog.

[(Anonymous)]

I figure the rush to get the Transmountain Pipeline done here in Canada is a sign that the Canadian government is thinking similar things to what you're saying. There's no other reason to rush things the way they did, especially since it looks like it's going to be highly embarrassing, even if they pull it off.

How close do you think we are to the end of business as usual?

Will J

[ecosophia]

There won't be a single date at which business as usual stops. What I expect to happen instead is what we've seen to date -- a slow whittling away of business as usual, with massive changes happening at a pace that you can avoid noticing if you really want to. I look around at the United States today, with its collapsing infrastructure, its increasingly intractable social conflicts, its Potemkin-village economy, and the rest of it, and it takes a bit of an effort to remember that twenty years ago things weren't anything like this bad. In the same way, in 2040 or so, it's quite possible that people will still be insisting that nothing has changed, even though half the US population in that year has no access to electricity or running water and the military junta that runs the country in that year is fighting a losing war against ongoing insurgencies in the South and the mountain West.

What will you do?

[(Anonymous)]

Try to reduce consumption, continue composting and growing vegetables, and restart my tinkling with thermal solar energy...

All my attempts to raise awareness of energy issue here in Mauritius have not resulted in much. By and large people are uninterested or believe in the great god of progress bailing us out in due time.

Hence I tend to believe that it is next to impossible to avoid serious and long lasting economic and social disruptions.

I have done some calculations about the impact of oil prices on the mauritian economy. It appears that around US $100 per barrel, economic growth begins to drop significantly. Above US $ 120 - 140 per barrel economic growth drops to zero or becomes slightly negative. beyond that price level I do not think any one can model how the mauritian economy will behave. It becomes terra incognita from an economic perspective.

Karim from Mauritius

Re: What will you do?

[ecosophia]

I think you're probably right. Here in the US, for that matter, even among those people who are willing to admit the possibility that our society may be running out of fossil fuels, the great majority insist airily that renewables or fusion or something else will infallibly save us. Very, very few are willing to think about the possibility that the energy fairy hasn't promised us a nice new energy source to replace the ones we've wasted so pointlessly!

[(Anonymous)]

Just lost our main job and have to move. Really wish we could wait until after the speculative real estate collapse but unfortunately rents are still sky high for the moment. Funny how the same people who question the value of production of real goods and services have no ethical issue raising the rent to obscene levels, and then turn around and complain "someone should do something" about the exploding homeless population.

We also had two beloved cars die recently but now thinking the timing isn't so bad. I could fix them but it would be very expensive and time consuming, and maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.

[ecosophia]

Good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

For one thing I will be scouting local yard sales to find a second hand bicycle. Advantages being it will be hopefully cheaper and even better already put together (I'm a bit tool-challenged). Curiously I have found myself feverishly reading through my book collection, ditching books that no longer appeal to me. The nice thing is that it makes room for the new books I have gotten. But I find myself full of an odd sense of urgency about this. It may just simply be because I am approaching retirement and will have to downsize in any case. But I can't help wondering if something significant is on the horizon.

Possible signs of the times; the local Sonoco gas station has just been torn down. Taking its place will not be a bigger and better gas station but a convenience store, a puzzling choice as we already have a million of them up here. The Northern Pass project is currently dead in the water (being unkindly referred to by some as 'Walking Dead - Northern Pass edition), its advocates still plaintively appealing to the NH SEC for a permit. If a major crisis in the economy triggered by unstable oil prices happens, these two endeavors may very well topple out of sight with Northern Pass being missed even less than a convenience store.

JLfromNH

[(Anonymous)]

I struggled to find a good bike for about a year, then I got lucky on day and found a great bike on Facebook for free. Cost me about $25 to get it road worthy. Tubes, a few spokes, and break pads. It was a cheap 90's "mountain bike" the kind that isn't actually meant to go on a mountain, but is great for a dirt road. A simple bike is the perfect thing to work on being tool challenged, every part is simple enough you can figure it out from an instructional video and a spare hour of goofing around.

Good luck getting a nice bike.

Ray Wharton

[fluiddruid]

I will keep cutting my consumption to stay ahead of the curve, as much as possible. So far it has not been too difficult, but time will tell. I suppose people in oil producing nations like Russia and Saudi Arabia will be happy about the coming oil price spike, that is until the global economy crashes again. I have a feeling that we are actually going to see global oil production going into terminal decline in early 2020s. I also think that the short-term fixes in the US will take the form of scrapping of the existing environmental regulations on oil drilling.

I’m already affected

[(Anonymous)]

@ Kimberly - Only $3.09 a gallon? Lucky you! I’ve seen $3.69 around here (SF area) and higher.

I’m already affected, not so much by petroleum (yet), but by natgas prices. The criminal organization known to me as Putin Gas and Electric (for their Gazprom-like extortion tactics) has shut off the gas to me and my family, so we’re down to cold water. Our situation is somewhat akin to that of those folks in Detroit and Baltimore who’ve had their water shut off, though not quite so extreme, praise the gods.

I’m looking into on-demand electric water heaters, but as we’re renters this may be tricky; and it’ll take a miracle to afford them. If we had money, we wouldn’t have lost the gas, right? But I’d gladly pay break-even just to stick it to The Man. Local city rates for electricity are a lot more reasonable. Not that that’s clean or sustainable or anything.

I regard this as a stair step down the slope of decline as experienced on an individual level. There are worse ones, and I’ll feel lucky to avoid them.

Re: I’m already affected

[jenniferkobernik]

I don't know if this would work for you, but I have found solar showers to work quite well. They make them for camping, and they amount to a black plastic water bladder with a hose attached which you fill with cold water and then put out in the sun for a few hours (you can hang it out a window if you have no yard) and it heats up in the sun. They can get quite hot. You can hang it in your normal shower/bath stall or above your sink for washing dishes.

[auntlili]

For some reason, this post put me in mind of the Knox mine disaster. The only anthracite in the US came from northeastern Pennsylvania. If you don't know the tale, one day a very foolish mining concern decided to dig underneath the mighty Susquehanna River. They ended up punching a hole in the riverbed which promptly drowned a dozen miners. By the time they managed to seal the hole it had flooded the entire formation. I'm just waiting for some charlatan to propose draining and reopening the mines.

In answer to your question: I reduced my energy consumption by around 90% many years ago and have never had cause to regret it. My next project is to replace my aging gas heater with electric. It's now eight years past its life expectancy because I use it as infrequently as possible, but fracked gas is still fracked gas, so its days are numbered.

Tudor Monastery Farm

[(Anonymous)]

We collapsed and avoided the rush some time ago but I don't pretend that we are at 10% of our former expenditure. Still, we have great flexibility living as we do on a remote island without a car. My husband has a motorcycle which is a luxury but really energy efficient.

We have been improving our soil and gardening and raising livestock for ten years now and these things are a fascinating hobby. We used to spend $300 per month on groceries a few years ago. Since then, prices have gone up considerably and now we spend $300 on groceries every 6 weeks. We are managing to do this comfortably because we produce so many basic items here as well as luxury items, medicines and cosmetics.

My sources for walking backwards in time so successfully are the BBC series Tudor Monastery Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, and Secrets of the Castle. I am hoping to build a Tudor dairy this year which will keep my sheep's' milk cheeses at 10 degrees Celsius with no electricity used. You really have to taste my Stilton to appreciate how much better life is in the post-industrial world.

Please don't worry. There will be humps and bumps but we are on our way to a happier and better life.
Max Rogers on Denman Island

Re: Tudor Monastery Farm

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Max, how do you keep things cold w/o electricity if there’s no creek handy?

[jenniferkobernik]

I am living in my truck (I have a truck, and not something more fuel efficient, because I was a rancher for several years while caring for my father) because I can't afford rent, and have found some work (in national forests, for instance) that work well with this circumstance, although the work is low-paying and far away. Unfortunately, although living in the truck cuts down on my need for money and my consumption in general, my need for fuel is obviously quite high, especially when traveling out of state for work, which I will be doing this summer. It really bothers me. I have switched entirely to a solar cooker and obviously I don't buy much since I have nowhere to put it, but the amount of fuel I use troubles me greatly, although I cannot currently see many good options for reducing it. I am glad to see oil and gas prices rising to something marginally more reflective of reality, despite the economic consequences, but I will certainly be feeling the pinch in a couple weeks when I head to my job in California.

[(Anonymous)]

Living in a Truck can be fairly environmental, especially if you can find a place to leave it parked for a while at a time. A buddy of mind lives in a van, but only drives it every couple of weeks, doing day to day getting around on a bicycle mounted from the back hitch. If you were paying rent, you can bet some where down the line that rent check is going to end up spent of fuel for somebody to do something.

How wide of a range do you travel on job expeditions?

It's Back

[talkingcargo]

You can count me as one of your readers who follows the price of oil closely because it is so important to our economy. When the price gets too high it is likely to trigger a recession, and I've been expecting a major recession for some time. Of course I can't predict when it might happen or how high the price of oil would have to go to trigger one, but I am keeping tabs on the situation.

I've read recently that the Russians and OPEC may be holding back oil production. Usually commentators say this is to raise the price of oil and that seems a reasonable explanation. But I sometimes wonder if there may be more to it than that. It could be that they are hoping for a major recession. While they are conserving their precious resources we are fracking away full tilt boogie. This doesn't seem to me to be the most sensible strategy on our part, but I no longer expect our government to act rationally. On top of that, there are indications that all this fracking is not actually profitable, except for the folks who are lending the money to the oil companies for drilling operations.

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist because I'm generally skeptical of conspiracy theories. But there is a lot of evidence that high oil prices usually lead to recessions and Russia in particular might see that as being in their best interests. Do you have any thoughts on the matter or am I imagining things?

Doug Castle

Re: It's Back

[smwils1]

Well, hopefully, instead of a recession that maintains a status quo, this will be what provokes a Depression in which sweeping changes take places in its midst, just like the last one.

[lunchboxbike]

The US could finally get around to riding the bakfiets/Long John type of bike, so the kids or shopping can ride low in front, instead of perched over the back wheel, unpleasantly close to the parent's butt.

energy-shock

[(Anonymous)]

I was wondering when this topic would come up again. I've certainly noticed the up-tick in prices lately...

I know you're familiar with Chris Martenson, having been on various podcasts/interviews with him, it seems as though this analysis of his from last year is playing out as expected:

https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/109505/looming-energy-shock

-Jason P.

Stuff I am doing

[(Anonymous)]

Last year around this time, I had the privilege of buying a small, dilapidated, one bedroom handyman's special in a neighborhood that strikes fear deep into yuppie hearts because it features things like crumbling, abandoned buildings, a weird profusion of graveyards, and (gasps and clutches pearls) people who speak Spanish as their first language. Today I filled four raised beds that my husband built at my request with tomatoes, zucchini, and snow peas I started from seed a few weeks ago. The neighbor's children helped me. I also planted a cold-hardy holly, a rose, a dwarf pear tree from the hardware store, and some apple seedlings I sprouted from seed. If the apples survive, they will become an espalier. I hope to have most of the lawn ripped out by this fall. We were forced into putting a new roof on our house this year by the insurance company, so we made it a steel roof. It has cut our energy consumption down by half but there is a long way to go as far as Green Wizardry is concerned. I am also working on reducing my commute by moving my business closer to my house in the next few years. I have found useful advice in the book Surviving Apocalypse in the Suburbs by Wendy Brown. Wish me luck on the new garden, I'll need it.

Re: Stuff I am doing

[(Anonymous)]

Do you need to start snow peas from seed where you live? Where I live I have to start a lot of things from seed that people elsewhere don't, because the soil stays soggy for a long time in the spring. That includes cucumbers/squash. But I can start Golden Sweet snow peas in the ground 6 weeks before the average last frost date.

What varieties of tomatoes do you grow? I'm not growing any this year, but my favorites from other years are Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, and Stupice. Good luck with your garden!

--Cary

Stuff I am doing by Kimberly

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, I spaced that one and didn't sign my name to it. Off to bed now, have a magical Monday!

[drhooves]

A couple more things - I'd add that it's imperative to improve one's health and get off meds if possible. Many of us can stand to lose some weight, and reducing our reliability of using health care leaves more bandwidth for those that truly need it. I'm also scaling way back on Amazon and other similar web merchandise. When they announced raising their Prime membership fees 20% the other day, it's not because they think transportation costs are declining.

A local example of challenging government spending here in Portland are the options of building a third bridge across the Columbia (bad) or establishing a toll on the two bridges we have now (better). Question the metrics for growth and tax streams, the motivations of the parties involved, and priority vs other problems (i.e., homelessness).

Being a big horse racing fan in the middle of Triple Crown season, I must admit it's insane to support races where horses ship around the country or in from overseas. Improvements come in baby steps, and that's one I can take. There's plenty more steps in your Green Wizardry book, as well as the checklist online at the top of this forum: http://teresamcguffey.com/greenwizards.org/?q=forum/15

[smwils1]

If you're a working class person in the midst of "horse country", as I am, you get so tired of the elite drumbeat of "horse, horse, horse" all the time. Geez.

[kayr]

Yes I did notice. My main house keeping clients derives much of their income from oil royalties and I got a raise. So far I haven't had to suffer a cut in pay, but more recently when prices were so low, they had to get rid of her mother's house in the Virgin Islands. Too costly. Fortunately they were able to sell it before the big hurricane wiped out St. Thomas.

As for what I am doing, well, I certainly have a greater handle on growing my own food. With the help of a garden friend, we have quite a large garden area under production. We can, freeze, and ferment a lot of it. I have made connections to local meat producers and have learned to make use of scraps. Learning about what it takes to use less plastic is a real challenge, but progress is being made. We also continue to add to our current skill set.

My spouse and I are currently making efforts to de-junk, so that we can rebuild the garage into a more useful production space with which to support ourselves in our declining years as best we can. I am also looking at this as a more useful investment then the stock market.

We live in a suburb that was built in 1948 with a big backyard and is currently in walking distance of many services. We chose the place for the backyard, but most of the services were in place and it was close to work. For my spouse it still is although I have to drive.

It is all an ongoing project of adaptation as far as I can see and as conditions change I hope we can make the necessary adaptations.

[(Anonymous)]

There's another difference between last time and now: we've spent the past decade continuing the insane policy of tearing apart less energy intensive ways of doing things.

Wind power

[lterrell]

In an odd bit of circumstance, the middle of the US has been hitting records for wind power output. I think the current max for wind was 64% of all the electric power in North & South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and bits of Arkansas and New Mexico. The wind power output has been staying high (40% at night, 10-20% during the day. Even several weeks where it was above 40% the whole week)(https://marketplace.spp.org/pages/generation-mix)
Now the grand dream of a lot of green energy advocates was that all these wind farms were going to be built and the power shipped to the coasts, but the power line rights of way for the transmission of that power would be enormous and the costs to build those lines equally enormous (there is currently one project of that sort that will ship it's power all the way to Arkansas! i.e. not that far and it is only economical because the Federal Government is going to give the company a large amount of money to subsidize the project (https://windcatcher.invenergyllc.com/)).
In the long run these turbines will need a lot of maintenance so we'll see how economical they are, but in the short term "flyover country" is not going to be hit by high electrical prices.