Brad’s Take

If the people touting Peak Oil are correct, we are nearing the end of ‘cheap’ energy. While the projected $5/gallon gas, and rise in heating oil, natural gas, and propane costs to 50% more than last winter, may seem horribly expensive, the fact is that we may be seeing $12 gas in the next .. um .. four years, now. Cheap energy may well be over. Assuming it is, or for those looking to live a lifestyle with a lower carbon footprint, I ponder .. recycling!

I read some years ago that glass is the only consumer material that it pays to recycle. The energy needed to reprocess aluminum cans and plastics, transporting the materials to recycling facilities, then to manufactures to process the reclaimed material into new products – is still higher than the energy needed to produce those same products from virgin sources. Only government subsidies make the effort pay for those involved.

But now transportation and fuel and electricity costs are rising. Even government subsidies won’t be enough to keep recycling working.

And recycling has only ever been a philosophical or emotional benefit to the family and individual (unless they work for a recycler). A luxury, low cost by little cost benefit.

Scrap Iron and similar metals has been with us for a long time, and still pays. You might call your local scrap dealer, and ask what the prices are like – for metal being processed to ship to China, today’s current largest user of scrap steel and iron. Is this recycling, salvage for later use, or scavenging resources that will be lost to us?

With the end of cheap energy, we will have fewer luxuries. Luxury in four years will mean something that today looks like a necessity. What value the microwave oven and freezer when the electricity bill is too high to pay? Luxuries will mean something different to many of us, in the next few years.

Re-use.

I grew up poor, on a farm in Iowa. For the parents that might read this, it didn’t feel like poor, then or now. It was the way our family lived.

But I recall the Pioneer Seed Corn bag. A few years Pioneer Seed Corn handed Dad a plastic bag. Thicker plastic than today’s Zip-Loc bags, quite durable, the Pioneer logo in yellow and green (not that they wanted to look like they went with John Deere like butter with rice). Mom used that bag for years. She kept cookies, brownies, and other food in that bag and the several that followed, in later years. A simple, clear plastic bag with a Pioneer logo. Maybe 12 inches by 18. Re-use. It kept food in nice condition, was handier than Saran Wrap. I think the last I saw of it was many years later, filled with sewing patterns, another with scraps of material, etc. Mom may still have one or two.

The Amish consider clothes to be luxuries, and live quite frugally. They wear their good set of clothes for worship. When they get worn, they get a new set for worship. And wear the old set for everyday work. We did something like that. I wore jeans almost all my life. When they got worn from going to school, they were chore clothes. Most of my clothes were that way – used for ‘good’ occasions when new, more casual when they started showing wear.

And this is a powerful way to reduce the clothing budget. Consider carefully every garment purchase: How long will it wear? Will it work for nice occasions, then later casual, and later as chore or work clothes? Will it wear well enough to be handed down for wear to someone smaller or younger?

I have t-shirts I bought at Sam’s Club four and five years ago. I liked the feel of the (logo free) fabric. Last year I discovered that the manufacturer went out of business. When the t-shirt starts showing wear, first fading, I start wearing it only for work around the shop and the house. When it starts showing holes I use it at night for sleeping. Then they are cut up for shop rags. Comfortable and useful, even as rags. I seldom find a printed t-shirt intended to last as long as the print on the shirt. This kind of ‘expensive energy’ thinking flies in the face of all the t-shirt sellers out there. Everyone from community to community fair to church to people that want to sell anything someone will buy wants to print stuff on a t-shirt. It won’t be long, once we really get into expensive energy, before the garment, not the printing, will determine the sale.

Re-use means going back to the wood handled kitchen knife and hammer. The steel tool will last a long time. The time may come again that we need to replace the handle rather than the tool. We may even need to learn to make handles.

We can start now. Avoid garments, tools, and other purchases intended for single use. Borrow a wedding gown or prom dress, or make one intended to be handed down or re-used. Leave recycling to those that will be rich enough to afford the luxury.

Right now, there is a truck.  A big truck.  Rolling down the road.

That truck has an engine that drives the gears that makes the wheels go round.  The wheels grind their rubber against the pavement or blacktop or dirt or gravel, and scrape by to nudge the truck on it’s way.

While the engine is metering a tiny bit of fuel, a measure of air into each cylinder, waiting for the time to come that the fuel and air combine under pressure and heat, and explosively drive the piston part of the cylinder chamber away, to push a crankshaft, to twist a gear, to turn a wheel – the aftermath of the explosion in the cylinder is cleaned up.

After the fuel and the air have been burned, their exhaust products, water vapor, unburned fuel, any impurities in the air, will be vented through various mechanisms to limit the impact of the aftermath on the environment around the truck.

A bit of heat will remain.

When the air and fuel burn, they will heat the cylinder, the piston, the valves.  The heat will be conducted to the outside of the engine, and will warm the air around the engine.  This big truck engine is water cooled – water treated to manage boiling and impurities, is pumped into the engine to absorb heat.  The heated water is sent to a radiator that uses a driven fan to draw massive amounts of air through the coils of the radiator.  The radiator is designed to convey heat from the water to the air efficiently, and the cooled water is circulated back to the engine.  The heat carried from the engine is important.  Keeping the engine from overheating prevents overheating related breakdowns.  Too much heat can warp bolts and cylinders and pistons and gaskets and seals and ..  The potential for overheating damage runs from minor to quite major component failures.

So – why is the extra heat thrown away?  Instead of a radiator to heat the air around the vehicle, can’t that heat be transformed into stored energy, in the form of heat, or of ice (an ammonia-cycle freezer?), or of electricity, or compressed air, or ..?

We burn the fuel.  Why are we wasting the heat?

Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book, is awesome.  Sharon potently advocates preparing for Peak Oil.  Peak Oil is a code phrase, or description of the event that will cause immense economic rearrangement.  Change is measured in pain.  The gist of Peak Oil, is that inexpensive energy – fossil fuels in particular – will soon reach (or have reached) the ‘peak’ availablility, while demand for energy will continue to grow.  The result will be that, as we saw last summer, other nations and new applications will introduces undreamt-of levels of demand.  The result?  The end of ‘cheap’ energy.

Where today a single family dwelling is the ‘American Dream’, suburb life and horrendous commute to work in mostly single-occupant vehicles, and easy access to cooking and heating fuels, and access to the electric utilities grid, will all be challenged.  Sharon advocates growing your own food, re-learning canning and housekeeping from times before the first electric appliances, and relying on ecology-friendly approaches.  Other Peak Oil views expect a massive shortfall in food availability – farmers that can’t afford to plant for the low price of produce, and transportation costs so high no one can afford the available food.  Loss of municipal water sources, fire and medical services may well follow, making the Great Depression and the attendant deaths from starvation and disease and suicide likely to reappear.

Me?  I think we should plan for something like Sharon plans for.  That rural communities and groups of families and neighbors will gather to share resources, skill sets, tools, and trade labor.  I grew up in 1960′s NW Iowa.  Some of our neighbors had a flat-rack (made for hauling hay bales),  A few had a baler.  Dad helped three or four neighbors bale their hay, then they helped bale ours and put it up in the barn.  No muss, no fuss – and no begging off.

That is certainly doable again.

I enjoy working with draft horses.  Working draft horses can be the center-point of a rural lifestyle of hard work, rewarding life, and a great place to raise kids.  Ask the Amish - they have believed that for centuries, Their Anabaptist forbears were persecuted for witchcraft in Europe – when their fields outperformed their neigbors.  The Anabaptists introduced what became today’s modern agriculture.  Simply rotating crops, devotion to maintaining soil quality, fertilizing – were weird and suspect practices, and caused many martyrs before they migrated to the New World.  Today their lifestyle mingles only lightly with the modern world.  And they still believe that working the soil is the right way to raise children.

We have Amish examples that we can live today without the electric utility that some Peak Oil analysts believe will be too expensive for half the families in the US to afford, by about .. umm .. 2012.  Three years, give or take.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents that lived through the Great Depression of the 1930′s, and the food rationing of World War II, grew much of their own food.  Even in cities and apartments, there were ‘victory gardens’ to supplement what food was available.  And there are many people that concede the Peak Oil worries are valid – that are already growing their Victory Gardens.

For a number of years, people have been  interested in a slower-paced life.  Small Farmers Journal, published quarterly in Sisters, OR, covers rustic skills and early recipes, working and training workhorses and oxen and goats, etc.  Rural Heritage magazine from Jackson County, TN, covers an Appalachian perspective of regressed living styles.  The venerable FoxFire books detail the elder skills and implements for those looking to retreat from modern life, Mother Earth News helps the back-to-nature people find their way.

I think, if Peak Oil hits as the analysts claim, that we will see prices skyrocket – then return to a higher level, then keep ratcheting ever higher.  Companies will lay off workers and close doors as costs to provide services and produce and transport products put them out of business.  Those few tilling the land in the old ways will have the best access to the food – that they grow.  Small communities of like-minded neighbors will share work and resources.  Many will find themselves sharing a home with others, some with families, some with others.  Ready, continuous access to propane, natural gas, electricity, heating oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline and ethanol will become intermittent and prices will become prohibitive.

Most food will be locally produced.  To assure the best availability of local food, the time is now to begin preferring and seeking out local producers.  Establish the market now, so that production increases to keep up – and will be available when food from other counties, other states, or across the ocean will become rarities.

What is the down side of preparing?  If it doesn’t happen in our lifetimes – we recover some skills from history, we learn to live with less reliance on fossil fuels, we (eventually) live healthier, more active lives, we save a ton of money.  And we provide a useful, sane role model for our kids.