The Wall Street Journal Article

I posted Tom Whipple's excellent article for the AEC community because I was thrilled to see the WSJ eating a little crow, and because I think Whipple is an extremely competent analyst.

Analysis is boring. Financial and economic analysis is even more boring than the analysis they do at Whipple's former employer, the CIA. My game is hours of tedious boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror (when your bets in the market are getting creamed) or pleasure (when you get it right, its the best feeling you can have with your clothes on). Last year's financial collapse was an interesting time for us. Anybody thinking that the American Energy Crisis that this blog is named after is always going to be so entertaining is going to be disappointed.

The WSJ article is just another "dot" in a collage of dots that I am trying to connect - that article measures "sentiment", the closing of refiners measures the "commercials" view of the future, the EIA data I report on measures the past.

The empirical facts support peak Oil imports have already happened to the U.S. If "Plateau Oil", as the WSJ refers to Peak Oil, is here for the world, by mathematical necessity peak imports are here for the importing nations - SIMPLE LIKE THAT. I write this blog to contribute to the debate about how to best prepare and adjust to a very different environment - business, economic, political, educational, etc... - here in the U.S. as well as the West's Liberal Democracies. I started writing to alert folks, but I think we are well past needing to be alerted now. I think from this point forward IDEAS are needed far more than alarms. I implore those reading here to contribute micro solutions (spare me the macro sh*t, if The Powers That Be can't make a dent in this... well, let us accept that we are less empowered than they to affect the macro outcome) on how best to organize our lives.

Too much discussion centered on which exact month, rather than discussions on how to begin the adjustment process, just isn't very productive. As a matter of fact, too much discussion - instead of DOING stuff - is a big part of the problem. We learn by doing. You can read a repair manual until h*ll freezes over, but get a tool set and fix something and you are on to something. So many folks in the doomer web site community talk about gardening that I suspect its mostly talk - if you ever raised a serious garden you'd know that gardening happens all by itself... its WEEDING that takes 80% of your efforts, and preserving what you have grown the other 20%. G-d and nature take care of the garden. If you can fix, sharpen, shape, carve, knit, fish, build, cook, soothe, brew, clean, butcher, dig, design, maintain.... stuff, well you have already made the adjustment away from specialization. Because that's what serious energy shortages mean - it means the end of specialization.

(PLEASE - I do not speak in absolutes! There will be a certain percentage of the population that will still be specialists - but this subset will be far fewer in number.)

I try to "practice what I preach", because what we face is a fundamental issue - how we live our lives. On my farm, in addition to growing a great deal of our food, I have outfitted a workshop, and have learned the all important HOW TO, that can accomplish most of the tasks I am likely to face. It took me several years and I would guess $10k (and I bought everything used, table saw, miter saw, drill press, air compressor, solar panel to charge battery set, generator, etc... from sources like craigslist and flea markets...this includes a decent inventory of parts and pieces in addition to tools, otherwise it might have been $20k), and now I can repair the barns, our house, tractors, and vehicles (parts will always be available for the creative home engineer - just look at how they keep cars running in Cuba), I can care for the animals (foot trimming, shoeing, vaccinations, milking, slaughtering and butchering), save seeds, preserve food, etc... Getting there takes TIME - years, not months or weeks. Now for a small business within the community.

Not that my, or your, solution works for everyone. Perhaps my solution won't even work for me. Energy crisis or no, we will still have to engage in commerce for a living. Union gigs and high paying government jobs with oodles of bennies are going to shrivel up like a Boca Raton trophy wife in the Florida sun. Somebody has to fish, somebody else is going to cut bait. If I am right about the Oil import situation, there will be no place to hide out in the Corporate world. This is the time to find another gig. Small business will once again, by absolute necessity, be the way most folks earn a living. It won't pay as much as that big corporate job, but that's the way it is going to be.

So let the debate come to an end, and let the good ideas roll.