Canada could be called land of stranded assets. Trans Mountain pipeline could be a white elephant.

Canada could be called "the land of stranded assets." Oil assets in the ground that are problematic if still banked on as assets. Lots of oil in Alberta and still an oil thirsty world, but the world is thinking, "oil is a killer."

A while ago, a big oil company backed out of it's plan to expand Trans Mountain Pipeline. The plan was to expand a smaller pipeline that goes from from Alberta to Burnaby, BC.

Close to home, Trans Mountain has a branch to Whatcom County Refineries though the expansion plan was just to Burnaby.

The company backed out due to political obstacles, but Canada's government bought the stalled project, a few years back, to keep it alive.

Canada's Liberal Party Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, was walking the tightrope between Alberta's "family wage jobs" and environmentalists.

"Just one more pipeline, then we'll be done," but now it looks like that's not a good idea. Canada's government may have blown billions of dollars on a white elephant pipeline project.

I still see that many of these dilemmas are caused by so much focus on opposing production without opposing consumption. In this case, much of the oil would be for export to Asia and around the world, but consumption is still the issue along with the need for family wage jobs at the production end.

Yes, it's safer to ship oil by pipeline than rail, if oil must be consumed. Yes, maybe it's better to use Canadian oil than from the Middle East, though I hear that Alberta tar sands are about as dirty as it gets.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I think the main focus of activism needs to be on changing the way we plan our living habitats to make them less dependent on fossil fuels. Changing technology, changing lifestyle assumptions and changing neighborhoods.

If we just attack the supply chain, we pull cards out of the foundation of the card house we are living in. It falls on our precarious political situation and (if in USA) could even bring another Trump, if not Trump himself. - Inflation worries. Loss of family wage jobs before alternatives are in place.

My own lifestyle is somewhat minimalistic and not family oriented, however.

In the end, the card house falls on mother Earth which will survive in some form, but not necessarily good news for us.

Can geoengineering address climate change the way fracking reduced the energy crisis?

When I was in college, I thought, for sure, we were running out of oil. Pretty much everyone thought that with the gas lines and price hikes of the 1970s. I was looking forward to a future of bicycling and public transit. Liquid petroleum was running out and oil shale was expensive. Back then, they thought the shale would have to be dug up from mines, crushed and cooked. Gasoline prices would be through the roof and we'd have to go solar.

Little did I know that they found an answer. Fracking. Oil is now cheap, compared to the rest of the economy, but today's worry is global warming. There's still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, but carbon emissions are changing the climate.

As with the oil running out, it seems like an unsolvable problem, but maybe they will find another workaround? Geoengineering? Will we do something like put artificial sunshades above the earth? Solar energy is getting less expensive as well. Who knows.

Back in college, I was hoping the automobile would die along with it's highway traffic death toll of 30-40 thousand Americans per year. Little did I know that the self driving car would come to the rescue, or at least I hope it comes to the rescue. I'm almost always for accepting change.

Can life in British Columbia still thrive if Alberta cuts back on the oil tap?

Under the radar, here in USA, but I often listen to Canadian radio. This is big north of the border. Will oil rich Alberta turn off the supply to consumers in British Columbia? The threat is pushing up gas prices around Vancouver. It's about the expansion of Trans Mountain Pipeline. The pipeline brings oil from Alberta to Vancouver area. There are plans to expand it, but those plans have run into fierce opposition in BC. Alberta's Lieutenant Governor is miffed. There's talk of cutting back the existing flow of oil if expansion is not allowed. This brings up my basic philosophy about dealing with oil consumption as a consumer. It's one thing to try and stop a pipeline, but if the threat of cutting back on oil supply causes one to quake in their boots, it's time to think about the role the consumer plays in this whole question.

I know, it's kind of easy for me to talk cause I ride a bicycle. Yes, I consume products from oil as well. Still, I think we need to figure out how to make society less oil dependent. Stopping a new pipeline may have consequences to the way our current economy is structured, on both sides of the border. It's up to consumers and voters to really make the changes we need in society.

Speaking of both sides of the border, there is a branch of Trans Mountain that comes to Whatcom County. It's part of the supply chain for some of our largest local employers; the two oil refineries just north of Bellingham.

Good discussion on my Facebook wall after this post.

John: All this macho posturing in support of massive corporate profits. Never mind that the oil sands are creating a landscape that may never recover, that thousands of folks are poisoned by the runoff from those open sores on the land, or that this is the dirtiest oil on the planet. We see clearly the power of corporations to manipulate governments to do their bidding, and the people be damned.

Nathan: It's a bit worse than that. A lot of the oil the new pipeline would move is already being moved by train. As scary as pipelines can be, oil by train is terrifying. No municipality in North America has a plan in place for dealing with an oil train getting wrecked beyond "run like hell and let it finish burning." Canada already had an entire small town obliterated by one wrecking. So as long as consumers demand the product, it will keep being moved, just in a far more dangerous manner. Stopping the pipeline is not stopping the oil, it's stopping a major safety upgrade. Consumption needs to be targeted, not pipelines.

John: True, but there is the transgression of First Nations lands...and that needs to stop.

Nathan: I agree we need to treat them, their heritage, and their lands better. But that oil is already going through or near their land. Shutting down the pipelines is increasing the danger to their lands unless consumption is reduced to stop the need for oil trains. Robert riding his bike does far more to protect native lands than all the protestors burning oil to drive out and protest what are essentially safety upgrades.

John: While I might agree, it doesn't change the fact that those oil sands should never have been exploited for environmental reasons and anything that can possibly reduce their acceptability may not be a wasted effort. Reducing consumption is definitely a possibility, but not until alternative energy sources are found. Not everyone can ride a bike everywhere and while Robert is truly an admirable individual with a gentle wisdom about him, his solution is unique to him and cannot be pushed as a universal one. The war against environmental destruction must proceed on many levels.

Nathan: Then there needs to be efforts to stop what allows those tar sands to be developed, and the pipeline is not one of them. The trains, or the oil fields themselves need to be targeted. Shut down the pipeline and you still have made no impact to production, and the only impact you have made to distribution is to force a far more dangerous method of transport. The current tactic is like protesting car culture by trying to ban seatbelts.

Below, my response to the thread.

Robert: With oil trains and trucks rumbling through native lands in many cases and the exploitation of tar sands, it is important to reduce oil consumption. Approach this from many angles such as voting in favor of things like carbon taxes. City planning plays a big role as we should strive to reduce the commute time to work and errands. Making density more affordable is a key as, these days, I think there are a lot of people who would love to benefit from urban living in neighborhoods like Vancouver's West End, but can't afford it. If places farther out could be built like the inner city; transit, walking and biking would be more viable. Short of drastic changes in our culture, the biggest driver of change may have to be technology. Something like solar power creating hydrogen fuel.

Keyboards are getting so cheap in spite of the oil plastic connection

This friend of mine got a new keyboard for her computer. It was only $15 at a local box store. Wow. Keyboards must be coming down in price.

She was reluctant to just go out and buy a new keyboard as she lives frugally. Striving to be environmentally conscious, she reuses, recycles and repairs what she can, but her keyboard died a few days ago.

These days, repairing doesn't make a lot of sense. The cost of labor is often higher than the cost of buying new items. In an average household budget, rent (or mortgage payment) has gotten so high that it far out shadows purchase of new products. If keyboards only cost $15, one can buy 40 of them per month for the cost of renting a $600 apartment. There's not much incentive to save things and do repairs anymore.

Keyboards usually have a lot of plastic in them. Some folks feel that as oil prices rise, our world, which is largely from of plastics, will crumble. Well, I doubt that's likely to happen. From what I read, plastics only account for less than 7% of the oil consumption. Driving automobiles is a much bigger user of oil.

For most people, driving is a large blind spot. They keep driving their cars because they have to get to work, pay their high housing costs and put their kids through college and so forth. In the face of that household picture, $15 for a keyboard is nothing. Since time is often thought of as money, most people don't have the time to fiddle with repairs.

My frugal friend, who finally had to break down and buy the new keyboard, does save a lot on oil. Like me, she rides her bike everywhere. That's where the real oil savings comes in.

My keyboard has lasted 5 years and it's still going strong. It and the monitor are on their second computer. In 2009, I kept old peripherals when I got a new "box." The monitor is still flat screen.

Lettering has worn off some of the keys on my old keyboard so I'm guessing where the Es, Ss, and Cs are. I could do a simple repair job using tiny squares of paper and writing the letters with felt pen. If I do this, I would then tape the letters to the keys with scotch tape.

Do I have time for this, or should I just go out and buy a new keyboard? My rent is real low and my job is not very demanding. Maybe I do.

Repairs for my friend's keyboard wasn't so easy because the problem was electrical.

I hate to toss out this keyboard because all the electrical parts still work fine. I'd feel guilty because it's served me so well and doesn't deserve to be tossed in the trash. I know it's not alive, but it still feels kind of disrespectful to toss something that's working so well.

Maybe you don't have time to read all these details as you live in the world of cheap products, high rents, stressful jobs and busy lives. That's what we really need to change if we want to slow down consumption.

Back when I was a kid, my mom used to darn socks. Now days, people wouldn't be likely to know what darning socks is. If I remember correctly, my mom fixed holes in a sock by stretching it over some bulbous shaped wooden tool that looked like a spindle. She would then use needle and thread to sew up the hole.

That was back when a nice big house could be bought for around $25,000 and only one wage earner could support the whole family on less than $18,000 per year.

Today, socks are so much cheaper, relative to other things like housing and health care, that we just buy a packet of 6 tube socks for practically nothing.

I don't know if I'd want to go back to the days of darning socks, but having family members spending more time at home, or at play, while spending less time in the workplace seems desirable. When I was a teenager, I had lots of time to play with my radios and fantasies. I didn't have to work in a fast food place.

Food shortages may be less of a problem than other things due to peak oil

Blog post I put on the Transition Whatcom web site. Transition Whatcom members can post. Everyone can read. That discusses strategies for building new lives and economies as availability of fossil fuels diminish. Many fear food will be in short supply as oil is used in agriculture. I have a different take. Food may not be as impacted as some fear.

Locavore's dilemma

Out of season apple tree.

There are people who want to only eat food grown close to where they live. Say 1 or 200 miles.

Supposedly better for the environment not to ship food around the world.

Well, apples can grow around here, Bellingham, WA., but they get kind of mushy when stored in warehouses for out of season.

In spring, which is not apple season here, we get nice crisp apples shipped in from places like Chile and New Zealand.

To buy local, one would want to make canned apple sauce for the off season. Would that take more energy, cooking the apples for canning than shipping the apples from southern hemisphere?

One would need lots of containers also. Cans are usually tossed after one use even though metal can be recycled.

Glass can be recycled, but how much energy does it take to haul to the recyclers? Glass can also be reused. How much energy does it take to wash out the glass containers for reuse each year?

How much storage do people have? What if one just lives in a studio apartment?

People often try to move out into a rural area so they can grow more of their own food. Then they usually drive more because errands are farther away than living in town.

Dependency on the automobile; weakest link in people's environmental program.

If you need a bigger house to store food, how much energy does it take to refrigerate storage and heat a larger home?

I'm not a locavore when it comes to food, but there are some good things about locavore living. It means doing business with your neighbors, often people you know, rather than producer and consumer being so far apart that there's no personal contact.

Hoard your health instead of food. Before we starve medical care may run out first

Quite a few people are saying, "hoard food now, the financial meltdown is coming."

Well, I don't think it's quite that dire. Food is still pretty affordable and available for most people here in USA. Hoarding one's health, if you've still got it, is more to the point.

Health care is really expensive. Will we be able to pay for health care in the future? Will we be able to pay, especially with these mounting federal deficits?

The prospect for ever paying down the debt gets lower as we head into the future and postwar baby boom generation ages. Governments will just have to keep spending more and more for health care, social security and so forth. Wonder if it can be done?

Hang onto your health, you may need it. Ride your bike. It's likely to be more imperative than hoarding cans of food.

If your health is already gone, I hope for the best. Maybe they'll (or we'll) figure a way out of this "over consuming, financial instability, global warming, economic obesity" morass eventually.

People can eat longer than they can drive cheap, there's still oil in the Bakken Shale. It's just a bit more expensive

If housing and other things can be real expensive, so can energy.

Biking through North Dakota in 1998, I passed quite a few oil wells in the hay fields.

My 1991 trip.

While offshore drilling and Alaska's Anwar are being debated, quite a few people don't even think about North Dakota. Where's that? Who's ever heard of Williston or Lake Sakakawea?

I hear there's an oil boom going on in that area. Even this article, from 2 years ago, explains things.

Supposedly, there could be lots of oil there. Some other articles have even suggested oil comparable to the reserves of Saudi Arabia. It's just more expensive to extract, but at over $100 per barrel it might be doable.

New technology, such as sideways drilling into the Bakken Shale.

Expensive.

It isn't strip mining. Just letting it drip out, I guess.

Reassuring news, in some ways.

At least we aren't likely to starve. There's still oil for agriculture and trucking. It just gets expensive. We can still eat.

What's hit harder than eating is driving; especially long distance commuting.

In the cost of food, "energy" is just one of several expense items. In driving, it's "the elephant in the room."

With shorter commutes, even driving might still be affordable.

I've never driven though. Bicycling really shines these days.

Living in town helps. I hope living in town remains affordable. Pretty soon, a lot more people may want to move to town.

I do bike long distances, but it takes time. My lifestyle in the slow lane. An "alternative lifestyle."

In 1998, I biked through Williston, ND. and had lunch at Lake Sakakawea. Out in the grasslands. I was on my way from Bellingham, Washington to the Great Lakes. Took 2 months and I came back on Amtrak.

The world was a bit different then. Oil prices were really low. Low compared to other things in our economy. China was still a big consumer, but less of a consumer than it is now.

1 billion 3 hundred million people makes a difference.

In the late 1990s, Asian stock markets tumbled. Those economies slowed down and oil demand dropped. This freed up lots of oil for the West.

Energy was cheap and much of America was booming. Not the North Dakota oil country, however. It felt kind of quiet, like a back water.

Meditative however.

Miles of hay fields. Not a lot of human excitement.

Don't need to pay $400 for some Buddhist "quiet the soul" workshop. Just bike across miles of hay fields.

Meanwhile other parts of USA were almost exploding. Real estate was going up out of sight. The dot com bubble was growing.

Places like Santa Cruz, California were getting expensive. Rents and house values were skyrocketing. Pushing poor working souls farther out into the boonies.

Longer commutes, but gas was cheap.

"Drive till you qualify."

Remember?

Energy complacency.

Of course Americans didn't really address the energy issue back then. It was "back burner."

Most of us somehow survived spiraling health care and housing costs.

Now it's energy's turn.

I'm not necessarily for or against drilling. I just keep biking. People have to do what they have to do.

Now the news is full of our presidential candidates who have stances that evolve with time.

That's OK.

Both McCain and Obama starting to see the need for some offshore drilling.

North Dakota also, I guess.

Obama talks about the need to transition into cleaner energy sources. Transition toward more renewable energy. Solar power. Wind.

Here's even a picture of a wind mill somewhere in North Dakota, but wind power is a different kind of windmill.

Campaign strategies must now be saying, "oil is still needed to transition us to better futures."

For the long view, McCain is a big advocate of "non greenhouse gas emitting" nuclear power.

I'm still for Obama, but "nuclear" might be needed as well.

Also windmills, solar panels, my bicycling lifestyle and a lot of other things.

Other parts of the economy have boomed and gotten pricey. Now it's energy's turn.

You say, what about oil company profits?

Well, maybe they'll invest them in a variety of energy sources. Sideways drilling. Even solar power. Can get expensive.

If houses can be so expensive in places like Santa Cruz, CA., I guess energy costs something also.

Survivalist food store, could be a sitting duck. Mobility might be a better survival skill

Since seventh grade, I've heard about the pending doom of civilization. Stock market volatility, gas prices rising, planets aligning.

40 years ago, a seventh grade classmate was learning edible plants in preparation for his escape to the forest.

Problem is, if everyone gets that idea, the forests will be trampled by all the new "survivalist campers." Edible plants will have been eaten.

Fast forward 40 years. Another friend suggests growing a garden and storing food. Storing lots of food.

Then he says, "keep it safe from the rats and the thieves."

Yes, the thieves. If civilization breaks down, thieves could be everywhere.

But I say, a "fortress food store" could be "sitting duck."

Here's another strategy for survival.

Mobility.

Yes, mobility and agility.

Being able to move at moment's notice. I don't have much space to store food in my rented room, but I've got well over 100 supermarkets and restaurants within an easy bike ride, or even walk from my home.

Survival might mean being agile and traveling to the places where fragments of civilization still reside. Some supermarket with auxiliary power, for instance. This could be running as a community food bank.

I don't think civilization is likely to totally crumble in my lifetime. It's been on the verge of that since at least my childhood. Hasn't happened yet.

"Community" does offer a lot of redundancy, diversity, resiliency and flexibility.

It's kind of like the insurance company model. Spread and diversify risk.

With hundreds of supermarkets and eateries close by, there's a lot of backup. Some will close, but others will figure something out.

Thieves and rats cold hit some food stores while others remain available. If you are relying on just your own basement pantry for survival, wouldn't you know, that's bound to be the one destroyed.

There are hundreds of different kinds of businesses within nearly a stone's throw of my place. Mobility, diversity and adaptability can be the key to survival if, as they say, "the shit ever hits the fan."

A future of fortified homes with shotguns and people living off canned goods in the basement might not be worth living for anyway. Maybe it would be exciting and cozy for a few days, like being snowed in, but that would get boring after while.

Flexibility, and getting around by bicycle, without much to carry; that's a survival skill; especially in this age of rising gas prices.

I've always biked, never driven my whole life.

For us aging "post war baby boomers," food isn't really the big worry. The worry is more likely to be health care.

Yes, health care.

If civilization ever does crumble, it will be just in time for us to need nursing home care and stuff like that.

Wouldn't you know, the timing is perfect. Like bread always falling with the butter side down. A lot of us are retiring just in time for Medicare to go bankrupt. That is, of course, unless they fix it. Maybe I should say "we fix it."

I'm confident that innovations can fix things. Even fix things like the "Rube Goldberg duct tape and bailing wire" health care system of the US.

Meanwhile, bicycling can postpone those health issues, for a while at least.

So far, everyone eventually passes from this life anyway.

Where will people of the city go in the world made by hand?

Rural like mural on side of urban like apartment building.

Author James Howard Kunstler was recently interviewed on KUOW Radio about his novel titled "World Made By Hand."

Set after cheap oil basically runs out, the novel is about a future vision of society that's largely agrarian. People growing their own food in upstate New York.

Is this the life that follows our current world of suburban sprawl, interstate highways, box stores and Disnyworlds?

I doubt it, or at least I wonder what will happen to the people in places like New York City where there isn't that much land per person to grow food?

It's true that America's suburbs have a lot of problems. Over dependency on the automobile, encroachment on natural habitat, the list is endless, but part of what has driven suburban growth is nostalgia for a lost rural America.

Would Kunstler's "grow your own" vision just add to that nostalgia force for dumping more people into sensitive rural environments?

Suburbs provided the best of both worlds. Modern amenities, but still space for a garden, possibly even a horse. Some folks moved there so they could grow their own food, after collapse of society which has been predicted ever since I can remember, but hasn't happened so far.

It's time to retrofit our suburbs so they work more like the urban centers. The suburbs don't seem to be going away.

Now days, many are drawn to the suburbs by economics. They can't afford to live anywhere else. As traffic and other dysfunctional aspects of suburban life gets worse, the suburbs become less desirable and less expensive than urban settings.

"Less expensive" becomes their appeal.

In Kunstler's vision of a more agrarian society, I wonder what will happen to the urban dwellers who aren't currently spread out across the land and don't have access to soil. Rooftop gardens and vacant lots can help, but it's not enough.

Maybe I should write a "post cheap oil" novel.

My vision would be more recognizable to current American society, but consumption wouldn't be at such an extreme as it is in today's society. Taking the train more often, instead of flying, for instance.

Kunstler, himself, is a big fan of the railroad even though he seems to be flying all over the country promoting his book. While flying from one "book signing" to the next, he comments on the dismal state of America's airlines battered with rising fuel costs. He even suggests a future where electric power isn't even available so most of our high tech toys become trash.

From one extreme world to the next. Today's consumerism all the way back to the 18th century.

I'd say, "if we can have enough technology, organization and energy to run the train, we'll have enough electricity to run the Internet."

Trains can actually be quite impressive, technologically. Internet connections on board. GPS telling when the next train arrives. Good food on board.

It's true that air travel takes a lot more energy per passenger mile than railroads. Unless we can magically harness something like nuclear power and create some sort of hydrogen fuel, air travel is likely to remain in decline.

Maybe I should write a novel.

In my world, the suburbs would be retrofitted into denser, more urban worlds.

Automobiles would be rare while walking and bicycling would be the rage.

Public health would improve. People would be slimmer and sexier, in my opinion.

Public transit would be just about everywhere.

More trains and less planes.

Lifestyles would be less consumer oriented and more bohemian in nature. Folks would have more free time for artistic and cultural activities while living in modest spaces.

Automation could remain, but the human workweek becomes shorter.

"Work less, consume less, live more fully."

Percentage of the population raising families with kids would be smaller, but the fewer kids would inherit a friendlier somewhat quieter world. Eventually a less crowded world.

There would still be the kind of technology that doesn't use lots of energy. High tech electronics for the most part.

Food production would change to some extent, but most people would still shop for their food rather than grow it. Some folks would live on farms, but there would have to be quite a few farmland preservation rules.

Diets would become simpler in my post cheap oil world. Hopefully, people wouldn't be quite as obese as so many of today's folks are. Food from distant parts of the world would become somewhat more expensive, but it could still be available. Much of it would arrive in "sail assisted" cargo ships. Rooftop gardening would become popular, where roofs are strong enough to hold up the weight.

My vision of the world would kind of be like riding the train. Meeting lots of new friends in the dining car who marvel at how much friendlier people are on the train than on a plane.

I haven't had occasion to fly since the early 1980s. Haven't had any book tours with tight schedules.

Maybe I should write a novel.

Hard time for horses

There was a recent show on the radio about how much harder it is to own horses as the price of fossil fuels rise.

Some folks might say, declining fossil fuel era could bring back horsepower, but I would think not.

It takes trucks to bring in the hay. Trucks to take horses around to shows, the vets and so forth.

Land is getting more expensive and more hay fields are turning into grain crops for bio fuel consumption, rather than feeding horses.

Prices for horses are going down and it's harder to unload them, if one is stuck with a horse.

Horses are not really used for energy anymore and they take a lot of energy to maintain. They are kind of a throwback to the past.

Another radio show about some big solar power farms is more likely a wave of the future. NPR Science Friday March 14, Solar Power Scales Up.

Solar farms instead of horse farms.

One time I was bicycling over White Pass (US Highway 12 in 1986) on a hot day. At one of my many rest stops, a truck with horse trailer was stuck along side the road.

Vapor lock.

The drivers marveled as I started to pass them on my bike. Then I stopped again for conversation.

I suggested they hitch up the horses and pull the rig.

That was just good for a few laughs.

Eventually I biked on.

To be totally fair, I am sure the truck and horse trailer got into Yakima well before me. Eventually they got it going again and passed me on down the road, but they expected to get into Yakima a lot sooner. I didn't expect to get there till late evening anyway.

For me, it was a fun day.

I guess one could say, "horses are a hassle."

Peak Oil Coming, Don't Plant a Garden

Gardens are nice, but I bet a lot of people are struggling with gas prices and mortgage costs just so they can have a place with a garden.
Continued below.

I can bike to flowering trees. Spring is on it's way.
I live in a small rented room where there is no garden space, but it's just a short walk to the grocery store. Also a short walk to work.

Some survivalists fear that oil prices will cause a collapse down our food chain from fertilizers to the trucking industry. Oil does play a part in food production, but it's only a part. Prices at the grocery store have risen, due in part to energy costs, but energy is only a slice of the overall food cost pie.

At the grocery store, these price hikes are still mild compared to the relentless rise in health care costs that Americans have been enduring for years. Also the relentless rise in property values and in some cases rents that has taken place until just the last year.

Now property values are starting to drop to almost more reasonable levels. Southern California, still well over $400,000 single family home. Amazing how expensive home ownership can be.

As for energy costs, yes it does ad a bit to the cost of food. What's more devastating is the cost of commuting. Remember the phrase, "drive till you qualify?"

Those who live closer to jobs and errands might be less likely to have garden space, but the savings in automobile cost can be great.

Density.

Then there are community gardens that people can lease space in, if they have the time. If they have the time after working full time and trying to hang on to their health insurance.

Gardens are nice if one can afford the space to have one. Also I am glad someone is still farming so there can be food in the grocery store.

Also remember, there are people still planting flower gardens. Rather than always being practical, they are still bringing color to this world. That's nice, especially as I am biking and taking the time to smell the roses.

Glad I've never learned to drive a car and it's good to be healthy. Enjoy exercise.

Soft Landing Off Of Peak Oil

For people who drive, it's getting more expensive, but the sky is not falling on American life.

Many folks talk like "Chicken Little" who said the sky was falling. They notice that oil is used in products from food to clothing. They say the "thousand mile salad" is going to die.

No, that cornucopia of food at our supermarkets from all over the world can continue, maybe just a bit modified. Apples from New Zealand, grapes from Chile. It all takes oil to grow and ship, but oil is only one "line item" in a bigger picture.

Sure the price of products will inch up, but oil is only one part of the story. Oil costs can be absorbed into the "thousand mile salad" fairly easily. Energy prices are hidden among labor, land, technology, capital and other items in the cost of doing business.

Driving will really be the problem, not shopping.

The American economy will survive. It will just have to adjust the price for it's cornucopia a bit.

Local bus fares may go up to 75 cents to reflect a fuel surcharge, but the biggest costs are still labor for driver's wages and so forth. The WTA bus is sure a bargain at 50 cents per ride and 75 cents is still workable.

Most of this "pie chart" continues to be paid by the tax district anyway with the fare box just one sliver.

My point is that driving cars will be hit hard, but the rest of the economy will adjust more easily.

All these Bellingham people keep running around saying "the American economy is finished." "No more thousand mile salad, no more American petrochemical agriculture."

I say hogwash.

The American economy of products and services will adjust to oil's "line item" shock. The price pie for products is much bigger than that. The price can go up slightly, but business can keep going.

Car drivers are the one's who will suffer the most. Car drivers are also being hit by the cost of space for roads leading to traffic congestion as they can't afford to build more lanes. They are even hit with the "driveway runoff" problems in Lake Whatcom Watershed. Oil is just one line item in the automobile's illnesses.

The Chicken Littles will not be able to continue driving with their bumper stickers that say "buy local." They will have to bike or walk to the Food Co-op, but they will still find that cornucopia of apples from New Zealand.

The economy will not collapse, most likely. Not in my lifetime at least. It may change a bit, but still survive. Car drivers will have to change the most. Maybe they will still be able to drive, but long commutes will become the most costly. Much more costly than the thousand mile salad.

Those wonderful crisp (remember it's now autumn in New Zealand) apples will still sit in the bin next to the "buy local" posters on the wall at the Food Co-op.

Even the Co-op is now a "thousand mile cornucopia," but that's okay.

Even the milk isn't really that local. Dairy farmers get their hay and feed corn shipped in. It comes from far afield.

Field's afar?

The carton of "chocolate milk" that fuels my bicycle will still fetch it's inputs from all over; including the tropics where cocoa beans are grown. It may go up in price, but not unbearably.

As gas goes up 50 cents, I noticed only a dime "price hike" in my chocolate milk. The fuel costs that dairy farmers face are hidden in the bigger picture of labor costs, capital expenses and so forth.

America can survive a long time after peek oil. There is even plenty of tar sands in places like Alberta, if need be. We got clean coal. We can learn to use solar, wind. No need to say "good by" to the thousand mile salad.

Automobile driving will have to be reconsidered, but most of the rest of our economy can just be modified slightly.

Maybe people will still drive as electric cars and nuclear power could save them. Problem is the roads are too congested, even if we get our energy from nuclear.

Maybe computers will drive the cars so more can fit on I-5. Then "technology fix" can even reduce traffic.

Driving is the thing that will take the biggest hit, but the rest of our economy can adjust without too much trouble. The sky will not fall.

Speaking of sky falling, there is the green house effect. That's a big problem also.

Again, it's cars and driving habits, not the thousand mile salad, that will feel the most need to change. Everything can adjust if we are flexible and don't get too hot under the collar.